Entrepreneurs frequently put their heart and soul into their products, but for Perfy founder Vasa Martinez, the new functional soda brand is personal from the name to the ingredients.
Launching direct-to-consumer online on January 4 – with a marketing plan targeting the NFT and Web3 community in which Martinez is a member – Perfy is a line of low sugar, functional sodas containing adaptogens and nootropics. Available in Blood Orange Yuzu, Fruit Punch and Tropical Citrus flavors, each 12 oz. can contains 3-4 grams of sugar and are intended to provide consumers with a calm and balanced mood.
The brand’s launch comes as better-for-you “functional pop” brands like Olipop, Poppi and Health-Ade Pop, each featuring both low sugar and ingredients to support gut health, have expanded their presence in the market. However, rather than focus on digestion, Martinez designed Perfy to meet trends around nootropic ingredients and relaxation need states, putting the product in line with brands such as Moment and CBD beverage makers like VYBES and Recess.
While the brand’s imagery is vibrant and colorful, Martinez, a former marketing manager for Quest Nutrition and the founder of digital marketing agency Growthbuster, said that the idea for Perfy was born out of personal tragedy. Martinez recounted several illnesses that struck his family members since 2017, including his mother, brother and a cousin who died from diabetes. As well, in that time, he lost one friend to a drug overdose and another to suicide. But it was this string of losses that inspired him to develop a brand and a product that was both healthy and had a positive effect on mental health.
“It’s been really hard for me and I needed to channel my energy into something positive,” Martinez said. “Typically that’s by doing work for clients or reading a book or whatever it may be, but I really needed to take that next step and find my own personal ‘why’. And that needed to check off all the boxes of how to memorialize my friends that I have lost and also create something that helps others that may be going through the same thing.”
The choice to use mood enhancing adaptogens and nootropics, he said, was inspired by his friends’ deaths, with the hope that consumers may feel happier from the functional benefits. The brand’s name also has a connection to his mother; “Perfy” was a word Martinez called her when he was two years old, presumably meaning to say “perfect” or “pretty.”
“I needed to make a delicious beverage that also achieves what I wanted to achieve, and that’s focus and balance,” he said. “When you drink a Perfy, there’s a noticeable effect, a kind of chill, almost like a buzz. And it helps me when I’ve had a tough day, I’ll drink a Perfy instead of drinking another energy drink. We’re not an energy drink, we’re soda for your brain, but it’s helped me on those days where it’s just seemed a little bit unmanageable.”
As Perfy goes to market, Martinez said he plans to launch the brand online first in single flavor and variety 12-packs. From there, there may be “curated retail opportunities” shortly after January 4, but about 80% of the business is expected to be online for most of the first year.
Currently, Martinez is the sole employee of Perfy, but plans to use his other company, Growthbuster, as a marketing arm for the brand while he also contracts with R&D and operations experts.
However, when it comes to marketing, Martinez said that rather than invest in traditional brand building campaigns like events, trade shows and extensive sampling, Perfy will be focused on connecting with consumers in the Web3 and NFT community where the brand has already made an impact.
Martinez said he has been invested in cryptocurrencies since 2017 and has been an active member of Doodles, an online community for NFT creation and trading, and earlier this year decided to create a Perfy can featuring an NFT he owned. The image was instantly popular and led him to create a wave of can mockups featuring tokens owned by other community members, which quickly spread out to the broader social media landscape and has helped generate pre-launch buzz for the brand.
Martinez said there’s already demand for printed cans featuring original artwork and in the Spring he plans to launch a limited edition flavor with NFT can art. The company also intends to further integrate Web3 technology, such as blockchain and Metaverse, into its overall business structure, he added.
In particular, he was optimistic about Metaverse – the virtual reality platform being developed by Meta (formerly Facebook) – as a way for CPG brands to activate and reach new consumers. While the technology has not been widely rolled out yet, he suggested that the cross section with NFTs and brand iconography could be beneficial down the line as Perfy seeks to more intimately connect with consumers online.
“It’s not necessarily about how great the artwork is, it’s about the strength of the community,” he said. “You can’t have a solid project without a solid community. So that’s the first thing I’m building – ‘Community’ is a buzzword in CPG, but there’s a lot of brands out there following zero people. And to me, that’s not really walking the walk. So for me, it’s being in the trenches engaging with these folks, as a founder, no matter how busy I am, answering questions, listening to people.”