DEFY, the CBD sports drink brand co-founded by NFL Hall of Famer Terrell Davis, announced this week it will launch its first non-CBD infused product line with DEFY Water, a new bottled alkaline water for which a portion of all proceeds will support veteran, female and minority-owned nonprofits.
DEFY Water will have a pH of 9.5 and will rollout to select retailers in three sizes — 20 oz., 1 Liter and 1.5 Liter bottles — this month. The brand is working with online platform Pledgeling to help facilitate donations to a number of charities as well as the National Association of Women Business Owners to help support female entrepreneurs.
CEO Megan Bushell told BevNET that the brand is currently in the process of vetting a number of charities that it will repeatedly donate to, including to nonprofits aiding disabled veterans and the Black community.
“DEFY is a Black-owned, woman-owned and veteran-owned company,” Bushell said. “We saw this as a natural extension of our product portfolio continuing to focus on the performance category, while also providing an opportunity to combine performance with purpose, meaning that this water launch is entirely mission driven.”
Davis said a core focus will be on supporting access to healthcare in Black communities. He noted that racial disparities continue to affect Black people who frequently receive fewer health screenings and report higher rates of certain diseases, such as lupus.
Case-in-point: the COVID-19 pandemic, in which Black people are 1.4 times more likely to contract the virus, 3.7 times more likely to be hospitalized and 2.8 times more likely to die from the illness, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Bushell noted that the pandemic in particular was a catalyst for the new charitable mission, saying it “created a pressure cooker for conversations that were long overdue to be had.”
“I think it just goes back to playing ball and being a celebrity and all that stuff, there’s a certain amount of expectations and obligations that we all have to give back to our community,” Davis said. “It feels good to give back and to be able to help families. And then everything we went through the summer, you just kind of look at the landscape and say what can we do to make a difference in this world? And so we realized that we can do so much and we need to start to put our footprint into the communities that are supporting us.”
Founded in 2018 by Davis, Bushell and president and chairman Beau Wehrle, DEFY was an early entrant into the CBD sports drink category. According to Davis, the idea for the company came after he began treating chronic pain from his pro football career with CBD and, working with his co-founders, recognized the cannabinoid’s potential for a recovery beverage.
DEFY Water, however, will be the brand’s first foray into non-CBD beverages. In addition to opening up access to more retail chains which do not carry CBD food and beverage products due to regulatory restrictions, the move also represents a broadening of DEFY’s brand platform. Bushell noted that although DEFY’s flagship product was a CBD drink, the brand was “always designed to be a performance and lifestyle company.”
Going forward, Bushell said, with DEFY Water, the brand will add over 1,000 doors nationwide over the next three months and enter “some of the largest distributors in the nation.” The brand is currently available in 30 states and the water will enter Sprouts Farmers Market stores in April.
DEFY is also developing several new beverage products in a variety of form factors, including both CBD-infused and non-CBD products, Bushell said.