Pour the Holiday Spirit all over your face

First things First, it's almost Thanksgiving...WOOOHOO.

Now that we have that taken care of, let's get on with some business. About a week ago we provided drinks for a 10k held at FLCC in Canandaigua. I won't bore you with too many details, but I will share one story. After the race, a runner came over to our table. While gasping for air, he grabs one of our drinks and says he thought our drink was water before the race and poured it over his head. I guess it got in his eyes. Who pours an orange drink on their face!? He had good spirits though and drank the Vital Energy the second time around. This taught us our lesson of the week - always have a video camera at the Vital Energy booth because this needed to be on youtube.

Last Friday we co-sponsored a fashion show with another start-up called FanShoes. The show was great, the models were fabulous, the shoes were hot, and the band rocked the house (The Blackened Blues). We sampled Vital energy to the fashion show guests and made our presence known. We had some help from a friend named Chrissy, who put a nice touch on our display, took amazing pictures, and helped us out big time!Our big sale of the week was to SUNY Brockport's Union Square! We are now available next to the Red Bull, check out the pictures below!

Jake and I also made a visit to our High School alma mater, Pittsford Sutherland, and spoke to students about our experiences starting Vital Energy. We brought over 100 cold drinks to pass out to students, but unfortunately we weren't allowed to hand them out because of the caffeine content. It was pretty cool being back there and the students were amazing.This week is officially the beginning of the Holiday Season :) I'm craving me some Turkey, Stuffing, and Mashed Potatoes! Hope everyone has a wonderful thanksgiving filled with Vital Energy and Holiday Spirit.

Happy T-Giving
-Mike

Giving Thanks and Taking Names

I have been eating Thanksgiving dinner for the past few days and am now more excited than ever for the real one coming up. It will be nice to sit on my butt and not do anything work related for a few days. By the end of this week I will have worked 14 days in a row. Whoooooo!

So between Monday and Tuesday of this week we have moved over a pallet out (102 cases) which is $$$ in the bank. Holla. Our big new store is SUNY Brockport and we are doing a sampling on the 19th from 11-2pm.

We have started up a Vlog (Video Blog) with FANSHOES as an avenue to talk to people about what it is to start up a new business and cover different topics related to that. It also will allow us to talk about some of the benefits (and drawbacks) of being located in upstate and western NY. We are hoping over time to become an authority as we navigate this whole process ourselves.
The first episode should be posted this week with the 2nd one shot today and hopefully edited by this weekend. The goal is to shoot the video every Wednesday, so follow along, send us any questions or even drop by during our shoot.

Shout out to Sutherland HS. We are giving a speech to them on Friday. We are also hosting our first big event on Friday at the German House in Village Gate. Our FIFA fashion show with FANSHOES goes from 6-10pm with afterparty at the Keg (bar under the german house, go figure).

We also met with a distributor again today and it is looking good for us! They said to come back around Feb. 2010 and we should be ready to sit down with them for a more serious talk about distribution. They like what we are doing and how we are doing it. Cause we doin it and doin it and doin it well. Ughhhhhh.

So check out our first Vlog and remember a lemon or lime with your Vital Energy.

-J

PS: Did you talk to at least 5 people today about Vital Energy? Or ask at least 1 store if they carry it?

Power Play

So using some tips we learned last week, we managed to move almost 2 pallets this week. For those of you keeping score at home, that is a lot. We have about 10 new displays set up and in the process also grabbed some new stores. Our total after we drop some product off on Monday looks to be creeping up to 80!

Samplings have become our new secret weapon. This week we had 3 different samplings at 3 different locations on 3 different days (yea its alliteration but with numbers). These really help us out because it gives us a chance to educate people about what the product is and who we are. With so many choices out there it is getting ever more difficult to stand out from the crowd. The response usually is pretty positive and it makes the store owners happy because it is publicity for them and helps move product which is good for both parties. We are planning to use this weekly.

On other news, FANSHOES (www.myfanshoes.com) and Vital Energy are continuing their partnership and are starting our own weekly vlog. We want it to be another avenue for people to get to know us as well as interact with us more personally. The general topics covered are going to be about starting up a local business and what is involved with that along the way. We are also going to talk about what is going on and upcoming with us and any new projects we may want to discuss. We are also hoping to eventually get guest appearances by local business people.

Crash course in video here we come.

Other than that, we are speaking at a DECA event on Tuesday, Sutherland HS on the 20th and co-sponsoring the FIFA fashion show with FANSHOES on the 20th. Join the facebook page and feel free to ask us any questions you might have.

Don't forget to ask stores for it by name, Vital Energy.

Til then, try VE Acai Blueberry with a slice of lime/lemon and Tangerine with a slice of Orange.

-J

Meeting Mr. X

We started Vital Energy knowing next to nothing about the beverage industry. Recently we've met a beverage industry veteran, let's call him Mr. X. On our first meeting, Mr. X grilled us for a few hours and made sure we really wanted to move forward in this business. Since then, he's helped us fix some of our mistakes and given us some priceless advice.

On Friday, Jake, Mr. X, and I drove down to Buffalo to check out our locations and show X how we've been making our sales to stores. We are currently in a 7 Eleven on N. French Rd in Buffalo, and have sold around 4 cases to them over the last couple of weeks. The store owner really likes us, but wouldn't let us put a sign on the door because most companies pay to put advertisements on their door windows.

X walked us through making a 'better' sale to the 7 Eleven. After talking with the owner and making a few moves, we left the store having set up a display of 10 cases smack in the front of the store. We also were allowed to put a sign up on the front door, 3 signs up on the cooler doors, and position our product right next to Monster on the shelves! Check out the display below :)Going along with the display theme, after we received positive reviews from sampling Vital Energy to St John Fisher students, we were picked up by the Cyber Cafe on campus. They gave us our own shelf below Red Bull and Amped, and even let us put up a large sign to inform students about our product.On the promotional front, we demoed Vital Energy at Hegadorn's grocery store in Webster and put it on sale for the day. Customer's loved our drink and bought over 6 cases in a few hours. We even met the store owner, who bought some for his daughter. He showed us an article that just came out yesterday on the health benefits of Caffeine. It was written by a well known doctor in Florida who states that Caffeine is extremely beneficial before workouts, and it even has beneficial effects on Alzheimer's disease and heart health!!It's been a great week overall! Mr. X has taught us a lot and we've been learning how to make displays and maximize our Point Of Sale advertising (POS).

Drink Drink Drink
-Mike