Podcast

Learn from Fast Growing 7-8 Figure Online Retailers and eCommerce Experts

EPISODE P08

What this Entrepreneur Learnt after his Sports and Energy Drink Product Failed



About the guests

Tyler Benedict

Kunle Campbell

Tyler Benedict is a mountain bike enthusiast. Because of that, he started two beverage brands, sports drink and then energy drink. After years of making it work, he eventually accepted the fact that it is not “cool” enough and decided to stop it. After almost a decade after the failure, he turned his passion for travel, bicycles and tech into Bikerumor.com, the world's largest, most popular cycling tech blog. Now, he's taking the lessons learned and his global connection to brands large and small to inspire entrepreneurs to launch their startup with The Build Cycle.



Almost every episode on 2X eCommerce to date has focused business success but today’s episode breaks the mould by talking about a product failure and lessons you can learn from it.
Tyler Benedict started a sports drink business because of his personal interest in nutrition and cycling. He felt that cyclists needed an energy drink that they did not have to dilute with water to lessen the taste and effect like Gatorade, so he came up with Propel.
Later on he launched an energy drink he called BURN but still didn’t get the success he wanted. Until he decided to close the company and launch his own blog BikeRumor.com and a .
We reflect with Tyler on this episode, as to why he didn’t see traction and how he would have done things differently.

He now takes the lessons learned to inspire entrepreneurs to launch their startups on The Build Cycle.

On this episode, you will learn about:

  • How Tyler launched a sports drink in 2000 that had more caffeine and more minerals than Gatorade and actually tasted better all because of his personal interest in nutrition and cycling.
  • How he launched another product in 2002, this time an energy drink that has more vitamins and more caffeine than Red Bull.
  • How he moved towards closing the company in 2008 when he ran out of money and decided that he no longer wanted to invest his time and capital.
  • How he sold his remaining inventory and launched BikeRumor.com because he didn’t want a real job.
  • How he is now doing great with his blog and how he plans to do more.

Guest’s Top Tips:

  • Before shelling out some cash for advertising purposes, make sure you understand the market and you know what you are going to get, because you might end up throwing money away.
  • Make use of Social Media, bloggers and influencers, these people have followers that can help you get your name out there.
    When you fail, do not take these stuff personally, it will just bring you down.
  • In thinking about your competition, you have to understand that selling your product for a low price does not always result to success. Your customers might love you for the price, but your distributors and retailers may not.
  • Always start local and start small.
    You have to make your product matter.

Parting Advice – The Lightning Round:

Future Plans

He plans to continue bikerumor.com and at the same time launch a podcast that interviews people about how they started to help future entrepreneurs.

Hiring People

The full time people he has now just called or emailed him out of the blue saying they’d love to write for him. He has put up a writing post in the past, but haven’t been successful in getting writers there.

Best Mistakes and Lessons

  • He learned that you always have to spend money intelligently.
  • Didn’t do the RIGHT kind of market research and had no idea how the sales channels worked
  • Trusted the wrong people, from distributors to sales people to accountants
  • Spent money foolishly
  • Didn’t get good (or any) advice
  • Assumed consumers and buyers cared about the wrong things
    Product wasn’t different enough

Best Advice

You have to make your product matter, because if you don’t it will just be another product in the market.

Book or resources

Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris

Key Takeaways (with timestamps)

(9:40) It is so much easier to promote products now compared to when there is no social media as we know it today.
(16:08) It pays to have someone who understands the industry that you are entering help you.
(31:55) Tyler thinks that they failed because they couldn’t afford to compete. To do so, they would have needed to shell out several thousand dollar, which they didn’t have. That is the reason why their products never got “there.”
(34:00) It not about having the most unique product that gets your name out there. You can have the unique product but then you still have to be “cool.”
(36:10) In addition to being cool, you have to make sure that your product matters.
(42.50) Before getting into anything business-wise, you have to understand what you are getting yourself into.

About the host:

Kunle Campbell

An ecommerce advisor to ambitious, agile online retailers and funded ecommerce startups seeking exponentially sales growth through scalable customer acquisition, retention, conversion optimisation, product/market fit optimisation and customer referrals.

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