75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. At any given moment, the vast majority of America is walking around at a level of hydration that doesn’t enable their peak level of focus and performance.
John Sherwin is here to change that as the cofounder of Hydrant, a powdered hydration mix with nearly three times the electrolytes as a regular sports drink.
“I’d been thinking about hydration in general for a long time before I got started with Hydrant,” he says.
After studying biology at Oxford University, John moved to the U.S. and started working in Silicon Valley — but he didn’t feel great during that time. Despite drinking tons of water every day, he struggled to feel healthy and find a strong work-life balance.
That’s when he remembered the powdered electrolyte packets medical students downed at university. They tasted horrible, but it spurred an idea.
Using his background in biology, John created a formula for a powdered drink mix to rival the typical sports drink. (You’ll need to listen to the episode for the full scientific breakdown.)
After raising a round of seed funding from the Sixers Innovation Lab, John worked with an agency to turn his coastal brand from “hipster” to the fun, approachable “for-everyone brand” that you see today.
Later, Hydrant brought creative talent in-house. Agencies are helpful when you’re still getting your footing, but John’s in-house creative team was “instrumental in shepherding the brand to where it is now, and continuing to elevate and differentiate it.”
In an oversaturated market of sugary drinks claiming to be healthy, Hydrant is pioneering the true hydration market with its science-backed, data-driven formula designed by actual scientists.
What’s John’s ultimate goal? “To be the most trusted beverage company in America.”
Prentice’s Takeaway👉 Brands are not in control anymore, consumers are in control. John described that Hydrant is aiming to be the most trusted drink brand on the market.
Head to drinkhydrant.com, click on the ‘Learn’ section, and check out the Hydration Institute blog. John is arming Hydrant’s fan base with great learnings backed with science-based facts. It’s a smart, resourceful tactic that Hydrant is using to empower word of mouth marketing.
Featured Challenger👨🔬 Name: John Sherwin
⚙️ How he challenges: As the cofounder of Hydrant, John is redefining wellness by taking on the sports drink market with a powdered hydration drink mix based on a formula developed by actual scientists — including himself!
🚰 Company: Hydrant
💎 Noteworthy: John graduated from Oxford University with a degree in biology.
🔍 Where to find John: LinkedIn
🔍 Where to find Hydrant: Instagram | Facebook
Challenger Wisdom 💡 When making ‘outlandish’ calls ends up paying off“We have, still to this day, I think a very unique proposition even compared to a lot of the other powdered entrants into this space. We've made some calls that initially seemed very outlandish, frankly. I'll give you an example: in a time when everyone was going sugar-free or extremely low sugar, we made our first product with sugar. No stevia, no artificial colors, or flavors … literally just cane sugar as the first ingredient. Which is like, whoa, a lot of people would see that and be like what are you doing? This is not the way the market's going.”
💡 Don’t only market to yourself “People think about who they are and they want to market to themselves — my co-founder's from the finance world and I was from the tech world. So that was the initial plan, and our initial branding spoke to that audience and the positioning of the product, too. But through iterative testing we realized, you know what? This is not the smartest way to grow this business. We want to be a brand for everyone — a sort of approachable, all-American brand.”
💡 Investing in content to educate consumers“If you're ingesting a product of any kind, you need to trust the brand that you're buying it from. So we've really overinvested in blog posts, content about the products we make, what is in it, stories about ingredients, the science behind it.”
💡 Leveraging consumer feedback to improve your products"When we got started, we launched with a single flavor, which was the lime flavor. I thought, 'Well, everyone's going to be here because our product is from a scientific standpoint and it is basically perfection at hydration — there's nothing better out there.' But, of course, people care about taste and I very quickly learned that. We've subsequently really invested in that side of the business."
💡 Diversifying marketing channels can take time“We've done really well with word of mouth and referral which, of course, is free, so we love that. We tested [to find] a referral program that worked best for us. We have a 50% off your next order, 50% for whoever you refer, and it's been really successful for us. … Trying to foster that word of mouth is the goal, but performance marketing through Facebook and Instagram is absolutely the majority for now and, over the course of time, we want to move away from that and diversity.”
💡 Finding the perfect white space and knowing how to address it“For us, the white space is really moving people off big, ready-to-drink sports drink brands and onto Hydrant using A) healthier formulation, so less sugar B) more functional, with the better electrolyte balance and C) getting them away from the ready-to-drink plastic and using a reusable water bottle and pouring the product straight in.”
💡 Keeping functions in-house to maintain growth and consistency“When you first get started, a lean team and bringing on a lot of agencies is kind of what you're forced to do. Agencies can seem like a good deal at first. For us, what we've found is, because of this data-driven mentality, we want to own all of the data and make sure all of the insights from that become institutional Hydrant knowledge. So for us, it was really important to bring a lot of functions in-house, especially growth and data analytics.”
💡 Branching out from D2C to nationwide retailers“We're also pushing out the retail side of the business. From the beginning, we knew it was not going to be 100% direct-to-consumer — that's an old playbook that doesn't really work for a product like ours. So we wanted to use that as a starting engine and then, over time, really start building up relationships with retailers across the country to get more distribution and get in front of customers.”
Top quotes:John Sherwin
Quote #1
“There are a lot of entrants with powdered hydration products, but there is so much white space in terms of taking share away from the big bad sports drinks that we welcome everyone into the category to try and keep moving the needle.”
Quote #2
"The one thing that hasn't changed is to be the most trusted beverage company in America. … If you're ingesting a product of any kind, you need to trust the brand you're buying it from."
Quote #3
“I don't think I can honestly sit here and give you a specific customer segment that is shouting, but what we try to do is find those brand evangelists and empower them with content.”