Michelle Cordeiro Grant launches energy drinks brand Gorgie

To say Michelle Cordeiro Grant is exemplary to the world of women entrepreneurship is an understatement: In less than four years, this former Victoria’s Secret executive founded online intimate apparel company, Lively, to bring confidence and effortless styles to women, and scaled it to a $101 million brand upon raising $6.5 million in a venture-backed series A until selling to Wacoal International Corp. for $105 million.

The secret sauce to her lightening-fast path to success, Cordeiro Grant said, is “building brands backwards,” meaning rather than debating which product to launch in the beginning, focusing on solving pain points for target communities. So when she decided to get back to brand building in the wellness space last summer, it only made sense to do it all over again.

“There was a very strange feeling of déjà vu when I realized how much the society has shifted towards wellness, but there wasn’t anything in this $20 billion category that represented this trend,” Cordeiro Grant told me in an exclusive interview about her recently launched clean energy drinks line, Gorgie.

Energy drinks have remained a robust, yet hyper competitive market in the U.S. for years: on one hand, there’s the long-standing Red Bull that continues to account for a lion’s share of the market at over 35%, Nielsen data showed. On the other, a slew of new celebrity and influencer backed brands, including Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s ZOA, and Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime, aim to gobble up a notable chunk of the category.

Consumer heavyweights are also racing to cash in on the opportunity with Coca-Cola
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acquiring a significant stake in the category runner-up, Monster Beverage
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, for $2 billion in 2014, and PepsiCo
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snapping up Rockstar for $3.85 billion and subsequently investing $550 million in the lifestyle brand Celsius in 2022.

‘By Woman, And For All’

In many ways, Gorgie, a namesake derived from Lively’s former slogan “gorgeous human,” already had an established fanbase even before it was developed, and the energy drink is an ultimate embodiment of their call for a healthier lifestyle, according to Cordeiro Grant. “It started out as powders and pills, and then candy. But when we surveyed our customers on where they want to see these functional benefits, they were like ‘nope, we want a drink’.”

Boosted with l-theanine, biotin, and 150mg of caffeine per slim can, Gorgie offers six different bubbly varieties, including citrus burst, watermelon crush, and mango tango. These products, all packaged in bright-colored designs with a slight touch of ’80s film grain, are available in about 700 retail locations across the country, including Sprouts and Whole Foods. The current momentum is expected to push the brand further into 1,000 stores by the end of this summer, generating seven figures in its first-year revenue.

“January 11th was the first day when we sold our first can of Gorgie at Whole Foods,” Cordeiro Grant said, “and now we’re finding so many people in New York City shop Gorgie as their coffee fix, and us in vending machines on the 22nd floor of an investment bank where the demographic is predominantly men.

“Clearly, my first brand was ‘by woman, for women’ —that was the generation of we wanting to show that females can be founders and business owners,” she stressed. “[Gorgie] feels like the sequel — ‘by woman, and for all’ —and it’s only going faster.”

Tapping Industry Veterans To Accelerate Growth

Cordeiro Grant attributes Gorgie’s swift gain of its market foothold to her business partner Jason Cohen, a seasoned CPG entrepreneur, who previously pioneered a number of high-growth brands, such as SkinnyPop (acquired by Hershey
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) and OWNY Protein, much as she accredits Lively’s success to Yossi Nasser, CEO of Gelmart International.

“I always say Yossi was like winning a lottery because they’re the largest manufacturer and Walmart supplier of private-label intimates. With Jason, I won the lottery twice,” Cordeiro Grant jokingly said, recalling how the duo only met a year ago during lunch to vision board Gorgie, and quickly realizing how their skillsets are complimentary.

“He knows the ins and outs of the beverage space in terms of suppliers and distributors, whereas I come from the world of branding, social media, and digital marketing. That’s when the magic came together in August, and for [the following] six months, we were texting back and forth different ideas until the product hit the shelves,” she said.

Cohen also commented: “I’m super proud of the Gorgie team… Fast forward, the brand we created is on a rocket ship thanks to her leadership and has the right consumer confidence. Gorgie certainly has what it takes to be the leader in its category.”

The pair’s proven records of entrepreneurial success also enabled them to pull in their respective network when raising pre-seed capital. Gorgie ended up closing $6.5 million with backing from the entire board of Lively; Nasser; former CEO of Nautica and board member of Under Armour
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, Harvey Sanders; Hans Tung, managing partner of GGV Capital; as well as founder of Orgain (acquired by Nestlé) and currently co-founder of Humble Growth, Andrew Abraham.

The freshly injected funding will enable Gorgie to accelerate online and retail expansion, build out a fully operating team, and spearhead several marketing initiatives, according to Cordeiro Grant, which will likely help the brand triple its revenue next year. But more importantly, Gorgie’s goal is to ultimately capitalize on the convergence of beauty and wellness.

“I picture Gorgie coolers at the checkout line of Sephora and Ulta, and the end cap of Target
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that happens to face the beauty aisle because we’re at the intersection of energy meets wellness,” Cordeiro Grant said. “Everybody’s ready for this rollout to happen, so I’m manifesting it out loud.”