BIOSTEEL PLOTS NEXT MOVE
It’s a warm, late summer morning in August, but inside a small private hockey rink north of Toronto, the temperature hovers near zero degrees Celsius. Groups of reporters shiver in full-length sweaters while watching players representing millions of dollars in NHL contracts skate around on the ice. When a whistle stops practice, the players file off past tables loaded with plastic cups of pink liquid they grab on their way to the dressing room.
They’re drinking BioSteel. The small, Toronto-based company organizes the camp that has become popular among NHL players preparing for the upcoming season.
“It’s really helped us get our name out there without spending too many advertising dollars, because it’s all PR,” says company co-founder John Celenza in reference to the NHL players camp. His comment hints at the strategy behind the small company’s rapid ascent on a minimal marketing budget: three-year-old BioSteel now boasts one of the widest distributions in Canada for any dry-powder supplement.
Long known in NHL circles as the “pink drink,” BioSteel recently signed major distribution deals with retailers such as Loblaw, Sobeys and Rexall. Soon the product will be available in 2,000 stores across the country, compared with about 350 at the start of the year.
Six months ago BioSteel joined a pilot program run by Y&R to be one of the agency’s incubator companies. Celenza works out of Y&R’s office, with staff from the agency handling all of BioSteel’s marketing and strategic planning free of charge. The assistance will be valuable as BioSteel makes the jump from word-of-mouth brand among elite athletes to the mass consumer market where it squares off against a slew of popular sports drinks.
BioSteel is the brainchild of former Toronto Maple Leafs strength coach Matt Nichol. A longtime researcher of nutritional supplements, he devised his own concoction for Maple Leaf players when the NHL introduced drug testing in 2004 to ensure his players weren’t taking anything illegal. The product he came up with is a powder that’s mixed with water.
Eventually, he went into business with Toronto-native Celenza, and the two sold BioSteel directly to various NHL teams before branching out to other pro sports such as basketball and baseball. Word about the “pink stuff” spread among pro athletes and the drink was increasingly spotted on the benches and dugouts of stadiums around North America.