Hemp THC products startup Shift Naturals is freshly funded and ready for showtime, with NBA star Kevin Love now backing the business and promoting its DownShift sparkling waters, gummies, and its latest innovation: ready-to-drink Shift Cocktails.
Love, an NBA champ currently playing for the Utah Jazz, has joined Shift as a co-owner, the company announced earlier this month. Alongside his personal investment, the startup has also raised funding from The Angel Group.
“I’ve spent my career exploring ways to optimize both physical performance and mental health,” Love said in a statement. “What Shift Naturals is building is exactly what today’s athletes and everyday people are looking for: smarter, hemp-based tools to recover, relax, and feel their best. I believe this is the next big thing for the category. I’m excited to be part of the team driving this movement forward.”
Shift Naturals was founded in 2023 by CEO Ryan Evans and launched in its backyard of Bend, Oregon in January 2024 with its DownShift sparkling water line, containing 2mg of hemp-derived THC and 10mg of CBD per 16 oz. can.
“Kevin’s a mental health advocate,” Evans told BevNET. “He’s a wellness advocate and that is why we were interested in partnering with Kevin – not because of the accolades on the basketball court, but because of where his passions really lie, and it’s where our future as a brand kind of really sits.”
According to Evans, the goal for Shift is to create lower-dose THC products that can aid athletes in post-workout recovery and serve as a non-alc relaxation option – without leading consumers to find themselves far too high.
“The goal isn’t trying to get stoners to drink hemp beverages,” Evans told BevNET. “The goal is trying to get the person like me, who’s looking for something like a light beer that represents and is similar to that.”
Evans is a serial entrepreneur and brand leader, but admits he took an unconventional path to the business world; after graduating from college in the early 2000s with an international business degree, he opted for the less-lucrative career of kiteboarding instructor, making $25,000 a year. Following that passion, however, led to a job at global kiteboarding manufacturer Best Kiteboarding, ultimately rising to the role of President for North America before leaving the company in 2015.
Since then, Evans has founded a number of businesses, including electric longboard maker Inboard Technology, animal-themed social networking app Zoomie and business development firm EVcorp.
Shift Naturals is his first play in CPG, and Evans said it’s been a whirlwind experience thus far. Shortly after its 2024 launch, DownShift’s beverages were onboarded into Midwest beer DSD house Krey Distributing Company in April, which is operated by Steven Busch (great grandson of Augustus).
But as an intoxicating hemp drink, the path to market has been a “spaghetti knot” of setbacks and huge leaps ahead in a brief period of time, Evans said.
As different states have gone back-and-forth with regulations on hemp THC sales, so have distributors – Downshift has often found itself eagerly embraced by potential partners who, reacting day-to-day to the news, have a tendency to quickly back away from the hemp category before re-engaging months later.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently offered a clear approval of hemp this fall, Evans said. Which has led more potential distributors and retailers to come on board. Earlier this month, Target and Circle K both said they will begin selling hemp THC beverages, another massive green light for the category.
Evans noted that many Republican-voting red states have been “very bullish” on the category, leading Downshift to rollout into Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, as well as New Jersey.
“It’s a really weird category in that it makes for somewhat strange bedfellows,” Evans said.
But the regulatory environment is still creating holdups for the brand: “We’ve had a distributor order pending for Connecticut for, like, three months, and it’s because Connecticut has one different stipulation in their manufacturing supply chain process than others,” he added.
The new financing from Love and The Angel Group come as the brand now looks to scale the DownShift brand, as well as the growth of its non-alc Shift Cocktails line, made with a higher 4mg THC, 12mg CBD per 12 ounces and available in Margarita, Paloma and Ginger Sour flavors.
Additional product launches are expected by the end of the year, Evans said. As well, the company intends to up its field marketing and event activations in the near future.
“Our customers are a lot of your trail runners, they’re mountain bikers, they’re cyclists, so honestly, we’ve gone through a lot of those places,” he said. “We’ve gone to bicycling stores and running groups and sponsored local running organizations and thrown meetups at bars afterwards.So, we’ve really tried to take a grassroots approach to this.”