After fifteen years of selling syrups, sauces and drink mixes, Jordan’s Skinny Mixes is getting a makeover.
The company is bringing together its full range of products – over 100 different flavors spanning numerous categories, formats, nutritionals and use-occasions – under new “unified” branding across its icons, lock up, logo treatments and neck wraps, as well as adopting front-of-pack food photography.
Homogenous color schemes are also a key part of the refresh: Flavors will now be matched with colors in line with “category norms,” said Skinny Mixes CEO Tim Snyder, citing French Vanilla’s association with the color blue. The bottles’ macro-aesthetics will bring a noticeable focus on pink and, alongside the color uniformity, all of the lines will now be folded into the Skinny Mixes brand name.
“We got to the point where we have a great number of lines out there – we’re competing in four categories today, and we had four different looks and feels,” said Snyder. “[When] I talked with my team, [we said] there’s only one Nike swoosh – you don’t have multiple views of the Nike swoosh. What’s our equivalent of that?”
The question reflects Skinny Mixes’ expansive reach: its products are sold online and in over 14,000 retail doors nationwide across grocery, mass and club channels. Despite that, the Florida-based brand has maintained a strong focus on serving its core consumer, Snyder said, typically “a foodie, likes to experiment, most likely has above average income and or education… and she’s [drinking] it for health reasons.” The brand has a deep consumer base in the Southeast and Southwest regions of the U.S., evidenced by both retail and ecommerce sales, said Snyder.
The sugar- and calorie-free products are formulated with a range of alternative sweeteners, depending on the line; its naturally sweetened coffee syrups include a combination of stevia, monk fruit, and erythritol while its Flavor Burst drops are made with sucralose. In terms of availability, the brand has also maintained its DTC-roots with its full lineable available on its own site and a selection of flavors sold on Amazon and Walmart.com.
Snyder said he was attracted to Skinny Mixes, where he joined as CEO back in May 2022, due to the product-market fit, solid fanbase as well as the business’ strong internal team. On the heels of shifting consumer preferences in a post-pandemic world, Snyder said he identified a massive potential to keep growing the business beyond its “core, established distribution” footprint and bring it into a wider array of brick-and-mortar locations.
“The business obviously had significant tailwinds behind COVID [and] we’ve maintained those tailwinds as well as grown tremendously since then,” he said. “That proves out that a focus on the fundamentals, focus on the core, and you’ll continue to delight consumers as well as attracting new ones.”
Snyder joined just ahead of another major growth driver for the Skinny Mix business. Between April and May 2023, the #WaterTok trend took off with TikTok influencers feeding out a near endless array of new homemade flavored water combinations. That informed a new strategy for Skinny Mixes where it engaged with the trend on social media and began working to also capitalize on dupe culture, Snyder said, by showing consumers the power of at home mixology across all beverage occasions.
“We’re creating demand where there wasn’t demand before [for] what she didn’t [know] she needed,” said Snyder while referencing the brand’s core, female-leaning base.
While there are plenty of other beverage mixes and flavorings on the market, Snyder believes the brand’s loyal following gives it a long term runway to continue innovating and expanding its already extensive product portfolio to meet emerging taste and nutritional needs.
“We bring many unique flavors that our competition doesn’t, not to mention low no calorie flavors,” he said. “She can get her water intake and vary it from day-to-day. She can also get that same type of hydration through her coffee drinks, without the added sugar, without the added calories, and bring in protein with it as well.”
But social media trends aren’t the only external factor shaping Skinny Mixes’ growth strategy. Snyder highlighted that the brand has an eye on everything from the rise of Ozempic and its impact on calorie consumption, the growing popularity of NA cocktails and economic factors as it charts its long term trajectory.
“[Our consumer] can’t and doesn’t want to pay $15 for two coffees during the course of the day,” he stated. “She can buy one of our products for less than $10 and have it for many uses, occasions, and we show her how to [create] dupes… at pennies on the dollar. Especially in today’s trying economic times, she can still have what she’s used to, do it on her own and do it in a low, no calorie way.”