BIOLYTE is sporting a fresh new look.
The medical-grade hydration beverage brand this Spring introduced an updated package design, intended to help drive trial in retail and better reflect modern aesthetic trends in premium brand design.
The refresh marks the third major packaging update in BIOLYTE’s history, the last rebrand occurring in 2019. BIOLYTE founder and CEO Jesslyn Rollins said that BIOLYTE experienced a major sales lift following that previous refresh – taking revenue from around $1.3 million to over $7 million in short succession – and now the company is hoping this upgrade will help produce similar results.
The label upgrade had been a long time coming, said Rollins, but the real push to make a change came after a buyer at QuikTrip told her that the brand’s packaging was not doing enough to communicate the premium position of its over-$3 price point.
“My Spidey senses were already saying we needed a turn of the page,” she said. “They went from zero to 100 when we got on a call with our buyer at QT, and the buyer said ‘Listen, I use your product, I love your product … but you’re the most expensive product on the shelf, and your packaging does not command that. If you’re going to be sold at a premium price point, you have to look like it.’”
The new design aims to “make the complex simple,” Rollins said, seeking to invoke the idea that it’s an “IV in a bottle” that is a superior option to leading sports drink brands and can go anywhere, while still serving as a casual, everyday beverage.
“We wanted to make it look like this drink could be seen on a football field, on a basketball court, in your home and in a hospital,” Rollins said. “And so we think that this package really covers all of the bases of our consumers.”
Last month, BIOLYTE promoted its Chief Operating Officer Trey Sinclair to the joint position of President and COO, with the intent of helping fuel velocities in retail and further professionalize the business. Previously the founder and president of Dry County Brewing Company, Sinclair first joined BIOLYTE in 2023 as VP of finance and operations, and Rollins believes his experience will help charge the brand’s growth in the coming months.
Although “passion and excitement” have gotten BIOLYTE far, Rollins said, the goal now is to focus on scaling.
Alongside the refresh, BIOLYTE is also expanding its powder stick line, which debuted online last year, with a new rollout into 6,000 CVS and Walgreens locations.
Rollins admitted the brand may be a bit “late to the game” when it comes to sports drinks introducing stick packs, with competitors like Gatorade and PRIME embracing the fast-growing segment. However, she believes BIOLYTE is poised to compete on function and flavor, noting the powders contain three-times the electrolytes of most other products on the market.
While BIOLYTE’s overall business is up roughly 30% year-over-year, it’s been a robust online business – growing around 50% through DTC and Amazon – that’s been doing the heavy lifting as of late.
According to Circana, the brand’s sales in U.S. retail and MULO, including c-store, were down by 19.4% to around $32.2 million in the 52-week period ending December 29, 2024, ranking at the time as the sixth largest branded sports drink in the category, far behind PRIME ($532.9 million in the period) and just ahead of Ghost ($26.2 million).
More recently, BIOLYTE’s internal data show the brand’s volume in MULO accounts up 35% in the past 13-weeks with units sold per store per week up 9% year-over-year. Dollar sales fell 7% per store due to “heavier promotion as we launched new retailers and geographies,” Rollins said.
Not one to sugarcoat the rough, Rollins said that BIOLYTE has had periods where the business had “gotten over our skis” by attempting to grow too large, too fast. Because the company has taken no external investment and runs off cash flow, this has meant pulling back at times from retail accounts the business can’t afford.
“We are being very methodical and strategic, and we’re having to turn retailers down, because we are not in a position where a retailer can just be a marketing expense for us,” she said.
“We don’t have the ability to just turn on ads and spend a million dollars a month on ads, we’re trying to figure out ways in which we can win and work within the budget that we’ve got,” she added. “And to date, that has been incredibly successful for us.”
However, the brand is still in more retail doors than it’s ever had at one time at around 20,000 total, with Kroger, Publix, Pilot, QuikTrip, RaceTrac and Ingles among some of the top accounts outside of the drug channel.
The immediate goal is to grow the business in the Midwest, where Rollins said the brand sees an open runway.
“We’re still growing, even after nine years,” she said. “But, Illinois and Wisconsin and places like that, that is something we’re trying to figure out. How do we get the word out about BIOLYTE and get those velocities up? And right now, we’ve got a couple of strategies that are in play.”