First 6 Months Challenges and Accomplishments

It’s been an amazing first 6 months for Vert. Thousands of gel packets have been saved from landfill, and many standout performances have been fueled. Perhaps the most exciting thing has been the number of people who’ve reordered Vert. Seeing so many people posting about using Vert has been inspiring and let us know we were, perhaps onto something.

Athletes are using Vert in ways and quantities that we didn’t anticipate. To make caffeinated gels, athletes have been using unflavoured and maple syrup with either shots of espresso or cold brew. Some customers are making “ice tea” by adding cold black tea to mango, lemonade, or raspberry.

Vert seems to have found a niche with Ultra runners. While packing 20 gel packets in a vest is kind of impractical and messy, one 500ml flask filled with Vert has the equivalent of 22 gel packets, and you don’t have to worry about sticky wrappers. We had one customer run 120 grams of Vert for 10 hours with no issues during a trail ultra.

Challenges

• Humidity proved to be our biggest challenge. The dehydrated fruit we used flavouring caused a clumping issue. We’ve now replaced the fruit with natural flavouring, which has stopped the clumping issue.
• Shipping had some issues to start with, but these have now been resolved.

Successes

• Having customers that have reordered 3 or 4 times is our biggest success.
• Winning an entrepreneurship grant from ShipStation.