ARTICLE / THE MAKING OF... SERIES
The making of...
Zuum Energy Gum.
With the health and wellness world going through something of a renaissance, new brands are entering the category looking to disrupt things and wrestle market share off the Multinationals and Pharmaceutical giants. Nothing is sacred as founders add not just products that align more with consumer needs but a heady sense of fun and energy that catches the eye and changes minds. Zuum Energy Gum is one such brand. We caught up with Co-Founder Eamon Roderick to chew the fat… and some gum. This is the latest edition of The making of… Zuum Energy Gum.
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The making of... Series
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#zuumenergygum #energygum #branding #brand #fmcg #cpg #startup #scaleup #passion #founder #founderstory
Good afternoon Eamon! First up, thanks for the gum. We’re loving it already. Now, what’s your back story? How did you come up with the idea for Zuum?
G’day. So, myself and Co-founders Hugo Grey and Alex Chambers have been best friends since year 8 of high school and all ended up at Monash Uni together. Dave Ansett got on board pretty much once we started.
During covid lockdown, we hatched a plan to escape Victoria by spending two weeks in a quarantine camp in Darwin so that we could then head to the Gold Coast for some sunshine, and freedom and to catch the footy finals. In the quarantine camp, we were trying to find energy supplements for workouts but the only options were cheap instant coffee and sickly sweet energy drinks packed with sugar and other nasty ingredients. We thought there had to be a better way and came up with the idea to create an energy chewing gum, that could provide a rapid boost of energy whenever you need it, but without all the crap. We thought we had invented the concept, but quickly realised that Energy Gums were starting to take off in the US and Europe so we reached out to every global manufacturer that had the capability to produce it and began developing our formula.
Co-Founders Alex (left), Eamon Roderick (centre) and Hugo (right). Dave Ansett (not pictured)
That’s a fantastic story. Making the smart break for Queensland aside, necessity is such a great catalyst for change. Once out of quarantine, how did you go about your research? How did you test your product-market fit?
We started by looking at all of the brands that had begun popping up overseas and how they were positioning their products. The category was so new at the time that there was almost no sales data to rely on so a lot of our early decisions were based on trusting our intuition and sense-checking with friends and family. The biggest thing for us was making sure that the quality of the product itself was the best it could possibly be. We met with and ordered samples from more than 15 manufacturers from Poland, Belgium, France, Canada, Italy, the US etc. until we were confident that we had found a team with the capability to execute what we were looking for.
Having a developing market overseas definitely helps expedite things when it comes to product development and production. Once you had zeroed in on your production partner, what were the first samples like?
We spent 12 months developing and iterating the formula until we were confident that we had the best-tasting, highest-quality energy gum in the world. We would show up every weekend with ziplock bags filled with gums of all shapes and sizes (which looked a little dodgy on nights out). Our friends got incredibly sick of testing these samples every week (some of which were disgusting) but this early development work might have been the most important thing we did to ensure that the actual product was and still is the best in the market.
Iteration is key to getting the right product. We’re sure your friends didn’t mind that much. When it came to funding all of this, how did you go about things?
We pretty much tipped in our life savings which was just enough to cover some design and branding work and our initial stock order of 3 pallets. Our parents thought we were nuts at the time and to be honest they were probably right because we then had 35,000 packs of gum sitting in our house and nowhere to sell them. Looking back it does seem a bit crazy, but we were really confident that we were on to a good idea and that people would like it. Thankfully, we met with Chemist Warehouse and they loved the idea and were willing to take a chance on us.
Having that early retail support can make a massive difference. Good on Chemist Warehouse for seeing the potential. Ok, let's talk about Zuum’s branding journey. What was the process?
The biggest challenge was coming up with a name. We sat in a room for weeks trying to come up with something, I think we ended up with a list of more than 4,000 potential options. Some of which were so bad it's funny, at one stage Hugo was keen on 1-2 Dingo as an option! But he also eventually came up with Zuum so we just had to trust the process. Once we had a name, we then spent months driving Dave, who is also our branding specialist, insane with endless rounds of minute tweaks followed by complete redesigns of packaging and branding until we were satisfied (sorry Dave). But the process was incredibly important because we had this clear vision in our minds of what the brand represented and what it needed to convey and it really just took time and many rounds of revision and development until we were satisfied that we had achieved this.
Love the branding and how it flows across the touchpoints. Good work Dave. With the brand identity sorted, how are you getting the word out there? How are you driving awareness?
To be honest we seriously underestimated how difficult this would be. We naively thought that we could have a cool, novel concept and once it launched on shelves everyone, in the country would come across it or hear about it, but we very quickly realised this wasn't the case. Digital marketing and trying to capture attention on social media is obviously incredibly important for building brand awareness. But we have found that nothing really compares to sampling and actually just getting the product in people's hands. Our biggest marketing activity to date was a University orientation week giveaway where we donated 15,000+ free packs of Zuum to Uni's across Australia. The word-of-mouth effect was enormous and we saw sales at Chemist Warehouse jump way up in the months following.
Sampling and creating positive word-of-mouth is valuable for any new FMCG/CPG brand, especially in Health and Wellness. Your Ambassador program looks great as well. Future challenges, what’s on the horizon?
There are lots but I think the biggest is continuing to grow our market awareness and educating consumers about the product. We are sitting at the crossroads between billion-dollar chewing gum and billion-dollar energy drink brands which makes it difficult to fight for consumer attention, shelf space and distribution. But it's also really exciting knowing that less than 1% of Australians know that energy gum and Zuum exist so there are so many customers out there for us to try and convert.
An exciting challenge! Ok, final question time. Knowing what you know now, what tips would you give another founder embarking on their first startup journey?
I think just get started, we knew absolutely nothing about this industry when we began and I think sometimes that is the best way to be. You learn along the way and there is always a solution or workaround to the problems that pop up. But you definitely do have to be resilient and learn to ride the rollercoaster of ups and downs because we have definitely figured out that the startup journey is not a smooth one. I would also say don't be afraid to reach out to other founders or industry experts for help, people are usually incredibly willing to spare some time and expertise which has saved us from making some pretty painful mistakes.
