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Gatorade test subject: NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade at a Bradenton (Fla.) research lab Floto + Warner
The Original Sports Drink: Wins and Losses From left: Courtesy UF Health Science Center Archives; Courtesy The Division of Medicine and Science/National Museum of American History/Smithsonian Institution; Focus on Sport/Getty Images; Duomo/Corbis; Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images; PRNewsFoto/Gatorade
It's not a drink, it's a system Courtesy Gatorade
Iman Shumpert is eight minutes into his Fatmax test at Gatorade’s new Sports Science Institute in Bradenton, Fla., before the first sheer layer of sweat appears on his shoulders. The National Basketball Assn.’s 17th overall draft pick has traded a New York Knicks cap and Beats by Dr. Dre headphones for a mask of tubes that makes him look like something out of Alien. At predetermined intervals, attendants boost the speed and grade of the treadmill he’s running on while computers record his heart rate and oxygen levels. The Fatmax figures out when a body is burning fat (as opposed to carbohydrates) most efficiently. “Hold out as long as you can,” Gatorade scientist JohnEric Smith tells Shumpert. Maximum effort yields the best results. Smith cranks it up another notch. Shumpert picks up the pace. “Good,” Smith beams.
Shumpert is among a string of athletes that includes NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade who have come to the new Bradenton lab looking for insights into their bodies (Shumpert has suffered muscle cramps for years) while Gatorade tests a series of new products, such as energy chews, intended to boost athletic performance. The lab is located at IMG Academies boarding school, which was founded by the late New York private equity magnate Theodore J. (Ted) Forstmann. The lab primarily serves IMG’s student-athletes, nearly 1,000 high school kids from all over the world who pay as much as $60,000 a year to go to boarding school nine months a year, splitting each day 50/50 between classes and their sport. “It’s Hogwarts for athletes,” says Trevor Moawad, director of the IMG Performance Institute, a unit of the academy. And for Gatorade, it’s a skunkworks with a captive crew of guinea pigs. “Where else is a population like this?” Smith says after Shumpert concludes his test and downs a bottle of lemon-lime G Series Pro O2 Perform, an update on its original drink, which introduced electrolytes to the mass market.
More than 40 years after football players at the University of Florida first sipped what would soon become Gatorade, parent company PepsiCo is looking to move the brand beyond beverages. In the same way PepsiCo rules the potato chip aisle, its Gatorade division has embarked on an audacious plan to cover the sports nutrition world with offerings to challenge a full spectrum of energy and after-workout “recovery” products, including energy bars, gels, protein shakes, and pretty much anything else athletes put into their bodies. “One beverage can’t serve all your needs as an elite athlete,” says the brand’s chief, Sarah Robb O’Hagan. (Her official title is Gatorade president, North America, and global chief marketing officer, sports nutrition, for PepsiCo.) Gatorade’s goal is to go from a big fish in a $7 billion U.S. sports-drink industry to an even bigger fish in a $20 billion sports nutrition market.
The plan so far is in its infancy, visible to the outside world mostly in the repackaging of its three core product lines—the G Series, G Series Fit, and G Series Pro. Each now comprises pre-, during-, and post-workout products labeled 01 Prime, 02 Perform, and 03 Recover. They require a flow chart to keep straight, and some industry observers view the metamorphosis warily as a work-in-progress. “I think it’s a very confusing brand,” says Tim Hoyle, director of research for PepsiCo shareholder Haverford, a wealth management firm, and an avid cyclist.
Gatorade has its work cut out for it. It will need to persuade everyone from high school jocks to weekend tennis warriors that they should trade bananas for packaged carbohydrate chews, and peanut butter sandwiches for processed protein bites. And it must overhaul its distribution system. Instead of just stacking beverages high and selling them cheaply in grocery and convenience stores, the new strategy requires the company to rethink everything from advertising to in-store displays. Gatorade now is selling to GNC vitamin shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Whole Foods Market, and specialty sports stores. “It’s about being where athletes shop and sweat,” says Andrea Fairchild, vice-president of brand marketing.
