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After its influencer-driven launch in 2023, every child on the planet bugged their parents for Logan Paul‘s Prime Energy Drink, with reports of some cans even selling on resale sites at $1,500 (R28,000). Today, retailers are struggling to get rid of stock.

The drink – originally electrolyte-spiked coconut water that expanded its offerings to a caffeine-loaded energy drink – became so popular that retailers were forced to put security stickers on individual bottles to deter theft.

But as with the frenetic energy levels after chugging a heavily caffeinated drink, what goes up must come down.

Less than a year after the hype, Prime – founded by influencers and content creators Logan Paul and Olajide Olayinka Williams Olatunji, also known as KSI – had gone from $1.2 billion (R23 billion) in projected 2023 sales to a product retailers have hardly been able to move.

‘A brand cannot live on hype alone’

In the UK, 2024’s first quarter sales for Prime fell 50% year-over-year, raking in £12.8 million (R300 million) compared to 26.8 million (R630 million) in the quarter the year before, per data from retail and consumer platform NielsenIQ.

Last year, X and Reddit posts showed photos of Prime drinks on clearance at retailers, selling for 31 pence a bottle. X users had a good laugh at those who paid $1,500 a bottle.

Prime and Logan got another klap last week after a class-action lawsuit alleged Prime contains excessive caffeine and forever chemicals. Logan responded on TikTok and Instagram, denying the claims.

 

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“This ain’t a rinky-dink operation,” he said. “We use the top bottle manufacturers in the United States. All your favourite beverage brands…use these companies. If the product is served in plastic, they make a bottle for them.”

Recent scrutiny of the brand has not been kind to Prime, but there’s another wildcard variable that could be the nail in the brand’s coffin, experts say.

It’s Gen Alpha, young people born between 2010 and 2014, who, now approaching 14, have an astonishing amount of spending power. The fate of Prime – and so many other content-creator-born brands – are in the hands of today’s tweens, who according to popular food-and-beverage author, Andrea Hernández, “cycles through fads rapidly, chewing up brands and spitting them out”.

“Prime’s velocity relied a lot on hype—a lot on the interest of a lot of preteens that are now approaching teenagedom, where they’re like, ‘Oh, that was really dumb. Why did I buy this stupid drink from this YouTuber?’”

Maybe Prime just had its time and hype isn’t enough to keep it aloft.

29-year-old influencer-turned-professional wrestler Logan Paul, who boasts over 45 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, and KSI, a 30-year-old British boxer and entrepreneur with over 24 million YouTube subscribers, made $250 million (R4.69 million) in sales its first year.

Prime’s success is owed in large part to kids obsessed with the brand. Between its social-media stunts and limited drops, Prime was built for the glued-to-their-phone tweens of today. But today’s kids have the attention span of a squirrel on crack, so it’s on to something else.

Logan and KSI seem to have made a good return on investment so far, so they wont have to sell their Lamborghini’s. Perhaps their popularity and internet status even led to the downfall of the drink as the demand completely outpaced the ability of the company to adjust.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Logan can ask Mike Tyson about that when Iron Mike clobbers him in July.

[source:ca.finance]