• by Les Luchter , 4 hours ago

Bringing under-the-tongue “explosive immediate energy” to the booming preworkout supplement market, Aspire Biopharma has launched Buzz Bomb, delivering 50 mg of caffeine (equivalent to about half a cup of coffee) directly to the bloodstream.

Supporting the launch, the company said it had given 30,000 sample packs to attendees at two major fitness conventions earlier this month -- FitCon in Salt Lake City and FitExpo in  Anaheim. Hundreds of attendees also took the “Buzz Bomb Challenge,” with a promotional video highlighting reactions from several of them, including those of UFC veteran and fitness trainer Bobby Maximus (“it’s like I drank a preworkout 20 minutes ago.”).

Another celeb, mixed martial artist Brandon "MidWest Kong" Copeland, is featured in Buzz Bomb’s launch press release, and Aspire says it is working on lining up additional influencers as consumer marketing gets underway.

With products sold at BuzzBomb.com in four flavors (tropical fruit, mixed berry, peach mango, and coffee mocha), the company said it is also talking with resellers and “potential licensing partners in the nutritional and supplement space that can help us drive increased consumer awareness.”

While most preworkout supplements must be mixed with liquid and drunk some 20 minutes before working out, another brand -- Solid -- comes in a dissolvable round lozenge, also said to deliver its ingredients (in this case includingcreatine as well as caffeine) directly to the bloodstream.

Buzz Bomb and Solid are playing in a huge product category, which also includes capsules and ready-to-drink beverages, in addition to those powders that get mixed with liquids.

But the latter dominate, with 88.1% of global preworkout supplement sales, which Grand View Research says totaled about $19.58 billion last year, 35% of that in North America.

Grand View estimates the category will grow 5.9% annually, to $27.97 billion by 2030.

“The rising awareness of the benefits of preworkout supplements, such as enhanced energy, focus, and endurance” is boosting demand in North America, the researcher says, along with “the increasing number of fitness centers, gyms, health clubs and boutique fitness studios,” rising interest in personal fitness and bodybuilding, growth of fitness influencers and social media platforms, and “well-developed retail infrastructure.”

While brick-and-mortar retailers like supermarkets, hypermarkets, and specialty nutrition stores  continue to dominate sales, Grand View expects rapid growth in online sales as well.

Among other significant recent developments in the field, Gran View points to the launch of  Premium Pre-Workout from Gold’s Gym, available exclusively from Amazon or the Golds’ Gym site.