Revvies: Succeeding with simplicity for sports nutrition
“The idea was that we wanted to bring high-quality, highly-targeted products to everyday athletes as well as the elite," said John Nolan-Neylan, co-founder of Revvies. "We started with our now award-winning energy strips, thanks to Nutraingredients, which is always a lovely way to be able to introduce a product as an award-winning product."
The Revvies Energy Strips received the NutraIngredients Award for Sports Nutrition Product of the Year in 2021, which Nolan-Neylan said helped to underscore the quality of the brand.
"Paired with the elite usage that we have, as well as being able to say we’re an award-winning product, really gives people the confidence in the brand and reassures them that we’re not just making claims that the product won’t deliver,” he added.
The energy strips provide either 40 mg or 100 mg of caffeine encapsulated into vegetable oil, which is dissolved onto the tongue for an on-the-go energy boost. The strips launched into the leading retailer Boots across the UK this month.
Personalisation for targeted benefits
Nolan-Neylan highlighted the product’s success among professional athletes, drawing attention to recent collaborations with top UK runners including Charlotte Purdue and Natasha Cockram. Revvies also supplies over half the premier teams in the National Rugby League in Australia.
“The product really does work for elites, but it also delivers probably more benefits to everyday consumers, and it does that by just focusing on that one simple task,” he explained, attributing the product’s success to the targeting and efficient optimisation of the specific area of energy and personalization capability to specific sports, lifestyles and caffeine sensitivity levels.
This positive response inspired the brand to focus on targeted health and launch its Hypertonic Electrolyte Drink last year, providing efficient hydration through formulation with rapidly absorbed electrolytes. The product sold out online within a few weeks of launch.
“We saw in the marketplace that there were a lot of products that are combining fuel and hydration," Nolan-Neylan said. "I'm not saying that those are not ideal… for example particularly for football, which Gatorade was developed for, they're great. But for endurance athletes and people that are exercising maybe for less than an hour a day, it's not always necessary to be combining your hydration with your fuel and extra calories that aren’t necessary.”
He added that these isotonic drinks on the market often contain around five times the number of sugars compared to the Revvies hypertonic drink and take around 40% longer to absorb into the body.
In comparison, Revvies electrolyte drink contains 351 mg sodium, 200 mg potassium, 30 mg magnesium and 20 mg of calcium, as well as sucrose, glucose and natural dried berry juice powder flavouring.
“So, like our energy strips, it's fast acting, it's easy on the stomach," he said. "It's designed to do one simple task and do it well."
And Revvies continues to focus on personalisation as it develops a suite of products that can be used in conjunction with each other but each targeted to a single task.
"Focusing on one thing allows people to add products together, so people can take our caffeine and they can take our hydration and later on in 2024, spoiler… they'll be able to take it with their fuel," Nolan-Neylan said.
"This really suits the modern consumer and the rise of individuality. People wanting to express that through product is really important and that also drives this trend of people wanting to be able to control and make their sports nutrition their own. And I think our approach allows that stacking of products to occur."
NutraIngredients Awards
Entries are now open for the 2024 NutraIngredients Awards, and this year the programme celebrates 10 years of championing the nutrition industry.
To acknowledge this significant milestone, we will re-instate our face-to-face awards event where winners will be presented with their trophies during an awards celebration in Geneva on 15 May 2024.
There are 14 categories of award to enter, but hurry! Entries will close on February 5th.
