Nick Smith revs up his passion for Supercharged Beverage venture

Nick Smith will be the first to admit that it takes boundless energy just to launch a sport drink company, much less nurture its growth to more than $500,000 in sales before its first anniversary.

But the naturally high-energy Smith — who grew up in the mountain town of Andrews, N.C., visiting family often in Columbus before making a permanent move with his wife to Harris County — appears up to the challenge. After all, he researched and developed Supercharged Beverage Company all while holding down a full-time job more than a decade with the Columbus Water Works, which he left at the end of December.

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But the time ultimately arrived last April for the launch of his natural sports drink called Supercharged, and its presence has been growing ever since in local supermarkets like Publix and Piggly-Wiggly, as well as in quite a few convenience stores. But that’s simply a sip from the bucket as Smith, 33, now is working — with a little help from his friends and distributor connections — to expand in markets other than Columbus, LaGrange and Macon, Ga., and east Alabama. (The drink even has a small presence in Chicago, Ill.) At the moment, the company is tackling the college town market of Athens, Ga.

Ultimately, Smith, who is a race car fan, expects sales to reach $1 million by his company’s first anniversary this April. From there, only time and even more hard work will tell how far the man — whose grandfather was Allen Horne, the late veteran Ledger-Enquirer photographer — can go.

“He constantly encouraged Nick and instilled in him a passion, a positive attitude, and an unrelenting work ethic that drives Nick today,” Smith’s bio says of Horne.

The Ledger-Enquirer sat down with Smith recently to discuss his job as president and chief executive officer of Supercharged Beverage Company, what it takes to get a product from the dream stage to in customers’ hands, and some of the help he has had along the way in his quest to compete with major industry players such as Gatorade and BodyArmor. This interview is edited for length and clarity.

Q. First, might I substitute Supercharged for my daily coffee drink?

A. For somebody that wants to have a cup of coffee at 2 o’clock, this can be right there for them as well if they’re not a coffee drinker.

Q. There’s not a lot of calories, I see?

A. No, there’s 80 in the whole bottle. The carbs are derived from oats, like eating a sweet potato instead of a baked potato, and the sugar is organic cane sugar and stevia. The only thing this has in common with any kind of energy drink is your natural vitamins, your B12s and stuff like that, and then the caffeine comes from green tea extract. So the caffeine level is equivalent to one 8-ounce cup of coffee. It’s the vitamins and the caffeine and all of that meeting together that sustains your energy over time.

Q. Keeping down calories and carbs are a key thing for folks?

A. Correct, and one of the things with this is we are half of what a Gatorade would have in it as far as calories and sugar. So you could almost drink two and a half of these (Supercharged) compared to one Gatorade. There are no preservatives added like there would be in a regular Gatorade ... And this hydrates you at the same time and it’s full of electrolytes. So you get the best of both worlds.

Q. Gatorade is your biggest competitor?

A. BodyArmor and Gatorade are competitors, absolutely. Versus if you went into the (basic) water category, there’s Life water, Smart water, Dasani water, Aquafina water. Or if you went the energy way, there’s Monster, Red Bull, Rock Star, Amp, Full Throttle. There’s tons of them. So I’m going into a market in which there is room.

Q. There’s also the matter of distribution?

A. The distribution part of it is you’re hitting a specific target for specific drinkers. Distributors, when they pick you up, they want to sell, sell, sell and get the entire crowd. They want to hit all ethnicities. They want to hit African-Americans, white, Hispanic, they want everybody. That’s how distributor minds think. (Supercharged’s natural ingredients and flavor) is more for a specific crowd, so it is harder.

Q. How did you come up with the product and flavors?

A. I told the (development) team that this is what I wanted. I wanted it to be the best flavor, low calorie, low everything, but it had to stand out and taste the best or we wouldn’t win. It’s a tough market. I knew hot flavors were things like blood orange just through research. I would go to beer companies and find out what kind of beers were selling as far as flavors. Blood orange was a flavored beer. So if a flavored beer was selling, why couldn’t a flavored drink sell for a person not drinking a beer.

Q. There was testing?

A. Yes. What I did is I had a panel, and I had different ethnicities. So I had African-Americans try this, I had Hispanics try it, I had white people try it, and females try it. I knew that if I liked it, that was one thing. But if I could get all ethnicities to like this, that was great. I put a panel in and I would never tell them I marked the bottom of the cup, and I would pour in Gatorade blood orange and Supercharged blood orange. I would pour strawberry kiwi Monster and so forth. It was mostly non-carbonated stuff, and that’s how we came up with it and locked these flavors in.

(Note: The flavors include Georgia Peach Jolt!, Raspberry Lemonade Boost!, Blood Orange Passion Fruit Surge!, Pomegranate Blueberry Shock! and Kiwi Strawberry Static!)

Q. How did you come up with the name?

A. I was always into cars and race cars and things like that. I like NASCAR. I like pro mods and street racing, dragsters. And a supercharger is a power adder on a car, like nitrous oxide. And I have a lot of energy. So I thought if people could just feel good all day with a drink, and it be good for you — or better for you than other ready-to-drink stuff — then we would have something. Because everybody wants to feel good. Nobody just wants to sit around. You want to feel good and want to be hydrated, especially Millennials. I just said, I need to supercharge my day the natural way and, boom, that was our slogan.

Q. I understand you had a eureka moment for the drink in the middle of the night?

A. That’s right. I grew up idolizing (NBA star) Michael Jordan, as many of us did. As I watched Michael on Gatorade commercials, I thought to myself, “I’m going to create my own sports drink one day.” I shared the dream with my family and later my wife ... Then one night at 2 a.m., I sat up in bed and declared to my wife: “I have to do this! I have to make my own drink!” Soon after that night, I identified a brand development company that helped me perfect the formula ... It took several test runs but, finally, we had four flavors.

Q. What are the steps to launching something like this?

A. I had to learn the hard way. Basically, someone with funding and someone with know-how to do it, and who have already been in this business, would probably be a lot faster. If Gatorade said, I want a new flavor, they could probably have it be the end of the day. I didn’t know any of these obstacles. I didn’t know who to contact. All I did was research while working my full-time job and hired who I believed at the time was the best to help me, and it turned out pretty good.

And there’s people that have helped me along the way that have to be paid, and I just had to save up for things. I believe my little tiny bit of success that I’ve had is because I have taken everything slow, and I had to think about things. When I made mistakes, I could make them because it wasn’t so detrimental to where it could put us under (financially). For instance, the lids were too light; we ran into that and had to fix it. Some of (the wrapping) didn’t come all the way down the bottle, and we fixed that.

Q. So take baby steps, in essence?

A. Definitely crawl before you walk, 100 percent.

Q. And lean on as much knowledge as you can find?

A. Definitely. And there’s people that’s willing to give you some of that, but there’s a lot of people that are not willing to give you some of that. But I ended up meeting Lee Jackson, who owns (Columbus-based) Triangle Wholesalers, and his business is J&L Ventures. He’s been great and I wouldn’t be where I’m at if it wasn’t for him. He’s a wonderful guy. That’s my distributor.

Q. That really is about finding a mentor?

A. Yes. He’s been a mentor and is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met. He is always working, sunup to sundown, seven days a week. But he’s a great guy, and I praise him every day in my mind and thank God that we met. I really do.

Q. How did you juggle all of this while working an assistant manager job at Columbus Water Works?

A. It was really hard, (but eased somewhat) being this was a long process and I could do a lot of research and wouldn’t have to make quick decisions … I started with the water works 12 years ago as an assistant on a truck, a bottom-level job, and then just worked my way up through certifications and hard work. I had been the assistant manager, since I started this, in field services in our department.

But it was tough, and I was juggling a wife and a baby. It’s really hard for me to explain how I did it. I just did it. It was very tough, but I thought if I sat back and let tough defeat me, I wouldn’t get nowhere. So I just found a way and kept finding a way and still find a way today. Luckily, through my tenure at Columbus Water Works I was never out much, hardly ever, so I had a lot of vacation time built up and things like that. And they worked with we me on taking my time and doing all of that because I had been there for so long. The water works has absolutely helped me get to where I am. There’s no doubt about it. A great company. I can’t say nothing bad about them whatsoever.

Q. At what point did you know that you could go into the business full time?

A. When the demand pretty much starting calling and asking, hey, when are we expanding here, when are you going here? But the whole process is I wanted to move slow. I learned from people in this business that have done this and made the mistakes. They said, Nick, you have a great package, you have a good product, and a good drink. But don’t outgrow your budget. Move slow. Own where you’re at each time, and then move somewhere. We’re currently in Columbus, in LaGrange and Macon. We have now launched in Athens … a huge market that covers a big territory there. That’s what we’re doing now is pushing, doing samplings, making everybody aware of it.

We’re also in Publix here locally and in Piggly-Wiggly, all of your local places. I’m a huge local person and anything I can do locally is great ... We’re in several stores in Auburn, Opelika, the Phenix City area. We wanted to cross the bridge a little bit just because of demand. People were saying, ‘I’m having to come over to Columbus to buy it.’ So we needed to find a way to get it there.

Q. Finally, a story like yours often can end with your company growing large enough that someone like Gatorade or BodyArmor wants to buy you. Have you thought about that yet?

A. Yeah ... or maybe Coke or a Dr. Pepper/Snapple Group. (laughs) It’s always in the back of my mind. I think I have a number to where I would want to be at. But I want to grow this, and I want to be behind it some. Hopefully, if that time comes (for a sale), I’ll move on to my next thing. I have several more ideas for beverages. It’s something that I have a passion for now.

This story was originally published January 19, 2017 at 10:00 PM with the headline "Nick Smith revs up his passion for Supercharged Beverage venture."