Bloom Nutrition just launched a functional beverage that puts them in direct competition with their largest investor. So, why did Nutrabolt (owner of C4 Energy) not only encourage this Bloom product strategy, but help make their vision a reality? For those that missed the investment deal news from earlier this year in January, Nutrabolt made a significant minority investment into Bloom Nutrition for an ownership stake of approximately 20%. If you remember from my earlier content analyzing that deal, I stated it would be accretive to both companies…but in uniquely distinct ways. While most pundits focused on how the Nutrabolt investment would provide strategic growth capital to fuel and accelerate many key areas of Bloom's business, I concentrated on something not explicitly stated within that press release. And that’s because I knew that Bloom’s problem was never lack of speed. Instead, it could benefit from the decision-making maturity of Nutrabolt. I might be biased because of my strategic brain, but I’ve always believed that direction is more important than speed. Bloom Nutrition might be within its aggressive scaling phase, but every “leveling up” in CPG requires a directional checkup to ensure strategic alignment. And the directional checkup needed in early 2024 was determining which category should start Bloom’s “ready-to-mix powder to ready-to-drink liquid” beverage identity crisis. But why did Bloom pick energy drinks when it’s the top-selling greens supplement brand within any large U.S. retailer it has placement? It mostly comes down to fulfilling a growing Bloom customer want (within the largest functional beverage category) and that being much easier with the brand's ability to leverage the core expertise of Nutrabolt in energy beverage innovation and commercial expansion. Bloom Sparkling Energy is positioned within a great intersection of various wellness-minded consumer product trends, the beforementioned Bloom core customer's expanding wants/needs, and within a fragment of the energy drinks market that’s more incremental than would cannibalize its friend (the powerful C4 Energy). Also, I believe the Bloom Nutrition deal is already proving to be value accretive for Nutrabolt. In 2015, when Nutrabolt started dabbling with a smaller-format RTD liquids extension of its Cellucor pre-workout C4…I believe it triggered a butterfly effect that became the single-most important strategic shift in the company history. This lead to C4 Energy becoming a beverage powerhouse…aggressively climbing the energy drinks market leaderboard into the Top 5 brands and catching the eye of Keurig Dr Pepper, which invested $863 million for about 30% of Nutrabolt in December 2022. That large capital infusion from KDP went towards fueling the growth of C4 Energy, but also allowed Nutrabolt to take on the role of investor (with Bloom Nutrition being the first minority investment but likely not the last). With the Bloom Sparkling Energy launch, it helps Nutrabolt (and KDP) get exposure into the growing wellness energy drink subcategory, but also into today’s female Gen Z audience that’s highly incremental overall and extremely important with the overall energy drinks market. But I'll end this content with a deep examination around what this all could mean for the energy drinks market, Bloom Nutrition, Nutrabolt, and KDP.

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