new York
Cnn
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Mike Keech, CEO of Liquid IV, think you have a problem that you may not even know.
“The majority of consumers, Americans and people around the world are chronic dehydrated,” he told CNN. “They just don’t know it.”
Even if consumers I don’t know if they really suffer from a lack of liquids, they always buy products filled with electrolyte As they are. Liquid IV has become one of the biggest brands to capitalize on hydration, part of the global trend of well-being “better for you” which was percolate Within the food and drinks industry in recent years.
Hydration, in particular, has been at the center of social media trends – like #WaTertok on Tiktok – and Bourding viral products with projected analysts It has become a market of several billion dollars in the coming years.
“The category has benefited from the evolution of consumption models. It is no longer only a question of sporting recovery, but of maintaining daily well-being and the management of the wood of wood,” a product in consumers wrapped in CNN Nate Nate Rosen. “Many people just don’t like ordinary water and really treat these hydration drinks as a way to savor their water.”
Liquid IV was launched in 2012, initially targeted to hardcore athletes who recover from difficult training. The flavor The powder mixture is marketed as a healthier alternative to sports drinks filled with sugar, with the potion containing salt, vitamins and electrolytes that support rapid hydration.
“The category was really tired and dusty,” said Keech. “Before, it was a sportsman who was sponsored and the idea was:” If it was good enough for them, then it’s good enough for me. “”
It was initially a successful proposal and sales soared, which prompted Unilever to buy Liquid IV at a unknown price in 2020.
Under Keech, who became CEO of Liquid IV after the acquisition, the brand and its team expanded His “positioning him towards a much wider audience”, going from sports stars to “The Business Host, The Mom and the Gym Bunny”.
From there, the distribution of the brand has doubled and the product has increased the number of flavors, including a viral firecracker mixture, as well as a new selection without sugar. Liquid IV is on the right track to become a unit of $ 1 billion with Unilever qualifying a “food brand” in its latest report on the results, which helped its Well-being category reach the growth of two -digit sales.
“We have recognized that hydration is simply not for athletes,” said Keech. “This is where takeoff happened.”
Hydration has been largely dominated for years by liquids, notably Pedialyte, which is commonly used to prevent or treat dehydration in children. But the drink gained popularity in the mid -2010s as Young people used it as a remedy against the hangover And the athletes drank him for recovery.
Then there is Pepsico Gatoradewho holds a dominant lead In the sports drinks category, the more Mexico -based electrolt, which invests $ 400 million in a new American factory to meet growing demand.
However, powders have recently become a “success”, according to Howard Telford, manager of soft drinks for the EUROMONITOR analysis company.
“The great thing is convenience: this is something you can have on the kitchen counter, the office drawer at work or in the gym bag. There is no bulky purchase where you have to allocate space in your refrigerator,” he told CNN. “The flavors are also good enough for Liquid IV, which is not nothing.”
Keech also attributes the convenience factor of the growth of Liquid IV, pointing to the festival -goers of Coachella, which he sponsors, as an example.
“You can’t just get rid of all kinds of water bottles,” he said. “It helps us to hydrate people in a way that others cannot.”
Sales of powdered mixtures have reached the growth of two -digit sales in the past four consecutive years, which has recently increased by 20% in 2024, by raising a category of $ 1.5 billion, according to Circana, a market research company based in Chicago.
Growth has triggered new entrants for portable mixtures ranging from Gatorade, whose sales of improving, have increased 200% in the past four years, and Coca -Cola bodyarmor to smaller startups such as the LMNT adapted to the food and popularity of sustained Novak Djokovic – all in the hopes of the popularity of the emotional market.
“When a mark reaches a significant traction in a space, many fast followers emerge, especially when the original has nothing really owner beyond a big name,” said Rosen, who writes the Newsletter Express Checkout. “After all, anyone can produce an electrolyte powder.”
Bodyarmor, who Recently relaunched all its linesaw A Bright point of growth with its Flash IV hydration drinks and powders. The two products generated $ 120 million in sales during its first year.
The space “has seen a big consumption jump during the cocvid because people began to achieve how important hydration was. There is also a very increased meaning for longevity as wells, immunity and also the overall addition of vitamins in your body,” said the CEO of Bodyarmor, Federico Muyshondt, in CNN.
Liquid IV is “obsessed with science,” said Keech, adding that he spends a “sum of money very important on clinical studies to ensure that we can bear the assertions we make”.
A page on the Liquid IV website claims that its product has “superior hydration” compared to simply drinking water, proclaiming that if you are thirsty “then you can already be dehydrated”.
However, Heidi Skolnik, a senior sports nutritionist at the hospital for special surgery in New York, is skeptical about dehydration is a common problem for people with access to water without restriction and that people “chronically dehydrated are probably overestimation”.
“Athletes and active people can benefit from the use of electrolyte powder and drinks,” she told CNN, but “less active people probably don’t need it.”
Although The water itself is sufficient To hydrate the average person, she said that flavoring them “helps people drink more, which is positive and that it increases their consciousness of what and how much they drink”.