Women-led, vitamin-infused, clean energy drink brand GORGIE launched today, just six months after founder Michelle Cordeiro Grant first came up with the concept, tested it via TikTok and began building an online community dedicated to wellness and energy, complete with magazine and a host of followers.
The retail launch marks GORGIE’s first step in bringing its digital charisma and community to the physical world, beginning at Whole Foods’ newest New York City location at One Wall Street, which opens today.
It’s a playbook Grant is familiar with: she founded lingerie and leisure clothing brand LIVELY in 2016, leaning heavily on social media for growth, and sold the company for $105 million last year. With GORGIE, her goal is to create a brand around the idea of energy, through a “female-first lens,” while utilizing clean and functional ingredients.
Debuting with three sparkling flavors – Watermelon Crush, Electric Berry and Peachy Keen – GORGIE derived its first innovation from feedback gathered from the brand’s early online following. The energy drink does not contain any sugar in order to achieve optimal gut health and digestion benefits, said Grant. GORGIE carries 150 mg of caffeine (derived from green tea), 5 calories, vitamins B6 and B12, and functional ingredients L-Theanine and Biotin.
“We are just tweaking [what already exists] and making it better,” said Grant. “I don’t want to swim too far away from where [the customer already is], I want to go adjacent and make the products better, more relevant, more pristine and healthier. It’s very logical, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you just have to take a look at what’s around you and make it better.”
Having worked for fashion and beauty giant Victoria’s Secret before starting LIVELY, Grant said she was able to build that brand in a way that pivoted from the approach of the industry leader, but was not overly niche and did not alienate market share. She said she she intends to follow the same route with GORGIE.
“[The industry leaders] have incredible, huge market share but don’t evolve fast enough with society – you have to be both timely and timeless and I think that’s where community comes in,” said Grant. “There also needs to be a women-owned and women-first brand in this industry”
The idea for GORGIE was sparked from Grant’s own frustration from a time when she was taking six supplements daily for hydration, gut health, skin, hair, and nail support. That frustration spiraled into a new brand idea that married energy with the wellness attributes she was seeking, and was later followed by a TikTok video to test the concept which ultimately garnered upwards of 100,000 likes within a few weeks. She polled her early audience to help continue refining the idea and create an initial product, later taking those learnings, along with some preliminary liquid, to industry experts on the floor at Natural Products Expo East in September.
The brand boasts former Halen Brands CEO Jason Cohen as a strategic partner and investor, in addition to Samuel Kestenbaum (CEO at ParmCrisps and Thinsters), Pete Lescoe (Founder of Food Should Taste Good) and Yossi Nasser (CEO of intimates manufacturer Gelmart) as investors.
Though a handful of energy drinks aiming to appeal to women already exist in the market, such as Alani Nu, Celsius and ZOA, Grant believes there’s room to upend market share held by top industry players like Red Bull and Monster. None of the leaders are making an effort to reach this untapped market, she said, with too many “linear points of view” when it comes to product innovation and developing brand identity.
“Men are doing a really good job trying to create something that caters towards women, but they just don’t know how we think and work, which is more visual and really focused on wellness,” said Grant. “There’s this opportunity to really infuse the way that we market beauty and fashion into beverage.”
Just because GORGIE aims to approach energy through the wants and needs of women, doesn’t mean the brand is aiming to build a single-gender audience. The brand’s social media presence has garnered interest from both those who identify as male or female, split at between a 30 to 70 ratio, said Grant.
To continue developing its social media community pre-launch, GORGIE sent samplers to early fans, including a sorority house at the University of Michigan. Grant said the samplers helped build momentum within GORGIE’s target audience and execute against her goal to have a clear vision of the brand, crafted with the help of its community, ahead of a product rollout.
Now, as the priorities shift to its debut and brick-and-mortar distribution, New York-based beverage company Joe Tea, which self-distributes, will bring GORGIE to Whole Foods stores across the city beginning this week. Expansion to the broader tri-state area, including retailers across Connecticut and New Jersey, is already in the works, but Grant said partnering with the family-owned and operated Joe Tea helped reduce a lot of the friction that comes with getting a new brand onto the shelf and highlighted that the relationship will allow GORGIE to test, learn and iterate before locking themselves into a long-term distribution deal.
The beverage will also be available direct-to-consumer –and with each order, customers will receive a copy of GORGIE Magazine as well as add-on beauty and wellness products from other female-forward companies. The add-on concept is another learning Grant took from LIVELY and she believes it will help GORGIE deliver on its promise to be a brand with benefits.
“It gives tangibility to the brand – you can open up [the magazine] and read, dive in and feel a part of the [GORGIE] experience,” said Grant. “Coming from fashion I think it sets that stage, but it also gives an opportunity to people in the community to be in the magazine and to be on the can. On the back where we share the [beverage’s] benefits, there are profile pictures of people who have been a part of this journey. We really want to bring and invite people into the experience both digitally and physically.”
That community-led ethos will also inform GORGIE’s brand building approach as it gains traction in the market. Grant noted that the brand has already received inbound, unsolicited partnership offers from influencers, including a tennis player and an artist, and while she said they will entertain those ideas, GORGIE’s primary awareness-building strategy will be rooted in micro-influencers. By the time she exited LIVELY, the brand had over 165,000 ambassadors. According to Grant, those die-hard fans, who happened to have substantial online followings, brought more value than a single celebrity face at the forefront.
As she looks towards GORGIE’s potential evolution, Grant sees a brand that offers more than just a beverage and will likely introduce peripheral products that appeal to GORGIE’s target consumer.
“At LIVELY, I always joked today we’ll sell bras, tomorrow we’ll sell concert tickets,” she said. “It’s the same thing here. We are a brand with benefits and energy is really our main benefit. We are creating something that’s ‘energy meets wellness’, but it’s also so much more than just that. It’s delivering on the promise to really make your life fun, impactful and full of discovery.”