5 hr energy story

Right away, though, he knew 16 ounces wouldn’t sell. He didn’t want to compete with Red Bull, at the
time new to the market. Nor did he want to share fridge space with Coke or Pepsi. “I thought, If I’m
tired, am I also thirsty? Is that like having a headache and a stomachache? It didn’t make any sense.”
He glanced at the ingredients label and made a mental note. Six months later his version was on the
shelves, two ounces of caffeine-infused B vitamins such as niacin mixed with acids like taurine.

Bhargava’s team still had to convince stores and buyers alike that their product was safe. The initial job
of getting 5-Hour Energy on the shelves went to Rise Meguiar, Living Essentials’ vice president of
sales and the only woman on a team of 17. Health chain GNC was the first to bite, agreeing to stock 5-
Hour in 1,200 of its stores in 2004. Slowly but surely, Walgreens, Rite Aid and regional chains like
Sheetz followed.

“What we did wasn’t rocket science,” says Bhargava. “It’s not the little bottle. It’s not the placement.
It’s the product. You can con people one time, but nobody pays $3 twice.”

synchronicity for me - Early on he realized he didn’t much care what sort of business he was in as
long as he was winning at it. At 17 Bhargava noticed that blocks of low-income homes in the roughest
North Philly neighborhoods were being razed and cleared. Bhargava bought a 1.5-ton 1953 Chevy
dump truck for $400 and started clearing out debris from the demolition. He’d find rats bigger than cats
among the garbage and rubble. “The stench was mind-bending,” he says. He remembers hearing
gunshots outside a crumbling house on crime-ridden Girard Avenue and learning an old man had been
killed for $5. Still, Bhargava made $600 that summer—and resold the Chevy for $400. He didn’t care if
the work was unglamorous. It was profitable.

“5-Hour Energy is not an energy drink, it’s a focus drink,” he says, turning one of the pomegranate-
flavor bottles around in his hands. “But we can’t say that. The FDA doesn’t like the word ‘focus.’ I
have no idea why.”