Breaking into the competitive energy drink market with CordyXtreme, an energy drink with Cordyceps

The global energy drink market has grown into a multi-billion-dollar market. A market that is very lucrative but increasingly difficult to get into successfully.

But it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. Try to find niche and concentrate on offering that niche something new that they haven’t seen before.

That’s exactly what HKS health solutions Austria set out to do. They wanted to create a more natural energy drink with an added boost from medicinal mushrooms to give online gamers a healthier way to get their energy fix.

Now, energy drinks and online gaming are pretty much inseparable. Gamers need a long-lasting source of energy to get them through hours of gaming. And what better way to do that than with an energy drink?

Most energy drinks on the market are not the healthiest product choice. They usually contain either a lot of sugar or sweeteners, and a lot of artificial flavors and colors.

Enter CordyXtreme, an energy drink made for online gamers containing only natural sweeteners and flavors and the added boost from Cordyceps extract.

That sounded so interesting to us, that we sat down with Barbara Sachon and Stephan Prähauser from HKS Austria. From this case study you can learn how to launch a new medicinal mushroom product successfully into a competitive market.

The cast of this case study:

Key takeaways

• Check the legal requirements for medicinal mushroom products in your target countries.
• Create a clear vision for your product / brand by answering the questions “to whom” and “why” in one (short) sentence.
• Know your target audience inside-out regarding their habits and needs, in their personal lives as well as regarding the type of product you are creating.
• Make sure medicinal mushrooms and what they represent fit with your brand, its values and general offering.
• Figure out how much your target audience knows about medicinal mushrooms and how receptive they might be to them.
• Don’t offer your target audience too many new ingredients (medicinal mushrooms) and product types at once.
• For maximum effect, use extract, especially if your product is to be mixed with liquids.
• Marketing is crucial.
• Marketing is a lot easier when you have a packaging ready.
• Let the target audience participate in the development process of the product, by e.g. testing flavors.
• If you’re using influencers (as you probably should), go for quality and not for quantity. At least the beginning choose a few smaller influencers in your niche to really build relationships with the influencers and their audiences as well.
• Don’t be online-only, even if it’s easier. Go where your audience physically hangs out or attract them to your events and develop relationships in real life.
• Ensure you’re purchasing high-quality medicinal mushrooms raw materials for your product.

Want to dig into the details? Great, let’s go.

The vision: To offer a new and a healthier, long-lasting energy boost for the gaming community

As any product developer and/or marketer knows, if have a clear vision for your new product, it makes everything a lot easier. Creating a vision starts with two questions: to whom and why?

To answer the first question, the team at HKS Austria had clear answers. Both Barbara and Stephan have had experience with the gaming community, so they knew the needs and challenges of online gamers when it came to staying energized and focused.

The “why” part was also easy to come up with. As the company operates in the dietary supplement market, helping people lead a healthy lifestyle is one of HKS Austria’s core values. It was very important for the team to offer the gaming community something that was at least a little bit healthier and more natural than similar products already on the market.

After all this, it was easy for Barbara to summarize their vision for CordyXtreme without me even really asking:

“We simply wanted to bring a product onto the market that has a positive effect on energy and focus and also has a positive effect on health.”

Now, a lot of ingredients could fit into that vision. But, for obvious reasons, the team wanted to use medicinal mushrooms, and Cordyceps in particular, to fulfill their mission. Medicinal mushrooms are not only healthy as well as natural, but they could also help the company to bring something new to the highly competitive market.

There aren’t any energy drinks with medicinal mushrooms (at least in the German-speaking market) that only target gamers.

Combined with the target audience’s growing interest in health and wellness in general, as well as their interest in using food or supplements to enhance their gaming performance, the team could see a lot of potential in the product.

Why Cordyceps was the only medicinal mushroom used

The team wanted to start simple and create a product with just one medicinal mushroom.

Medicinal mushrooms are still a niche topic that often requires explanation. The team wanted to avoid giving the gaming community too much new information to absorb before they could make a purchase decision. Hence the choice of only one mushroom species.

And if you can only use one medicinal mushroom for an energy drink, Cordyceps is basically the only choice for two main reasons:

Reason 1: Cordyceps is the perfect medicinal mushroom as an energy boost

According to several studies, it has the potential to improve blood circulation. This allows the human body to have more oxygen e.g. in the muscles and in the brain.

More oxygen in blood, especially in the brain, can in turn improve performance and concentration. They both are of course very important when playing online games. Yes, playing online games can be very strenuous. It’s called e-sports for a reason.

Cordyceps also doesn’t have a strong taste, so it can be used in drinks with different flavors and varying degrees of sweetness.

Reason 2: Cordyceps was already known by the gaming community

Cordyceps was already familiar to the gaming community as it appears in a popular online game called “The Last of Us”. In the game the mushroom can infiltrate humans and turn them into zombies, which, well, doesn’t necessarily make it that appealing to be drank.

Now, in real life the mushroom can’t infiltrate humans. Still, despite the negative association, the old saying of “all publicity is good publicity” is true in this case. The gaming community is more curious about CordyXtreme than if it contained an unknown mushroom. And curiosity leads to more awareness, which is crucial for more sales.

Recipe development and testing

The next step in the project was recipe development, which was conveniently done by an in-house colleague. She looked at what competitors were doing and the types and amounts of ingredients traditionally found in energy drinks.

The team wanted to keep the recipe as close as possible to what people were used to in energy drinks. This enabled them to keep the number of new ingredients introduced to the target audience to just one: Cordyceps extract.

How Cordyceps was used

Only powdered Cordyceps extract was used for the product for two reasons. First, extract is around 10 times more potent than mushroom powder. And CordyXtreme needed to be effective. Second, unlike mushroom powder, mushroom extract is completely water-soluble; a crucial point in drinks.

The amount of Cordyceps extract per a dose of 5 g, 250 mg, was also well thought of. There is no recommended daily value for Cordyceps use, but there was another ingredient that dictated how much of the mushroom the product should contain: caffeine.

According to Stephan, gamers have come to expect that an energy drink should have at least 120 mg caffeine. Otherwise, they might not believe that the product has enough of an energy boost. Lesson learned again: know your audience and how they are used to using products similar to yours.

After this base amount for caffeine per daily dosage was set, all other energizing ingredients needed to be adjusted to that amount. The team didn’t want to create “energy zombies” with too many boosting ingredients.

Marketing a medicinal mushroom product

All right, we have the recipe, the name and the packaging. It’s time to launch it and get the word out there!

Marketing a medicinal mushroom product can be challenging, though. Especially when launching a product for a crowded market like the energy drink sector and targeting people who aren’t the “usual” target of ingredients such as medicinal mushrooms.

Luckily, the HKS Austria team has already many months’ worth of product marketing behind them, so they can give some advice:

If you’re using influencers, go with quality and not with quantity

Influencers are usually one of the first, and also smart, options if one wants to market anything to the gaming community. Finding the influencers might take time, but it’s important to do your research.

The biggest influencers are usually very expensive. You also often need to get through a system of managers and agencies before you even get to introduce your product to them.

So, the HKS Austria teams recommends starting with a few key influencers and to focus building a good relationship with them and their audiences. These communities of smaller gaming influencers may even be more engaged than those of larger gamers.

Form real-life connections over just staying on social media

Social media marketing is hard to master. It might take a long time and deep pockets to truly break through.

That’s why, in addition to their social media presence, the HKS Austria team continues to attend gaming conventions to create real-life connections with the gaming community. Even for the always-on generation, this approach can create a more lasting impression of the product than if they had only learned about it online.

Don’t forget the legal aspects

Last but not least, you need to be aware of the legal requirements in your country regarding developing, selling and marketing medicinal mushrooms. Consult the dietary supplement or food market authorities in all your target countries before you get started.

We can’t give you any legal advice as we are not lawyers. But in the case of CordyXtreme, we can say this much:

In the EU, any products containing Cordyceps are considered to be dietary supplements. So they need to be produced and marketed as such, even if they are incorporated in a food or sold as a beverage. What can be said about the potential benefits of medicinal mushrooms is also very limited in German-speaking Europe.

Final notes

Although the journey hasn’t been easy, the team is happy with CordyXtreme and the feedback it has gotten. Once the people try the product, they’ll realize it’s a high-quality product that truly works, and they will order again and again. So, the team will continue touring trade fairs and gaming conventions. Further products are also planned, such as a caffeine-free version of CordyXtreme.

And, although Barbara and Stephan didn’t say it explicitly, there is one more very important key takeaway:

Make sure you are purchasing high quality medicinal mushrooms for your product.

Your supplier should be able to provide you with detailed information about the growing conditions of the mushrooms, their production methods, and quality testing results from third-party laboratories.

Only that way you can ensure that you are providing only effective and safe medicinal mushroom products to your customers.