 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, the show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today, my guest is Dr. Tom Ches, co-founder of Intent Brands and the Beverage Sly. And he's also a doctor of optometry. So today, we're talking about redefining the gamer persona for grassroots journey. Welcome, Tom. Welcome. Thanks so much. I really appreciate your time and have me on the show today. All right, so tell us about your product and how that relates to eSports. About five years ago, my wife came to me and she's an optometrist as well. I'll call her my better half, Amy. So Dr. Amy came to me and said, you know, I just can't stand drinking water. And I said, well, you know, we kind of need that the hydrator is talking to patients all day. And she was drinking a lot of Diet Coke at the time. And I said, we got to get you all that stuff. So she got off a Diet Coke and then she transferred over to the little packets like Crystal Light or what have you. I call them kind of cancer packets. And I said, we got to get you off those too. And she said, well, I need something to help me hydrate. So why don't we put our medical minds together and create something that actually has a purpose and a point to it and actually have good ingredients that could get you throughout your day. Sarcadian rhythm, you know, is a part of our normal process. So we based our product on Sarcadian rhythm and time of day and using ingredients that kind of help you sort of morning, noon, night. So we created a prototype product several years ago and we developed it with a formulator. It kind of came from Pharmaceutical and we got it out on to the market in Arizona and some grocery stores and some direct consumer. It was called intent at the time and it was more like a functional water. And it was sort of built for soccer moms, things of that nature came in a plastic bottle at the time. And what we noticed was it wasn't the soccer moms that was purchasing it. It was professional athletes. So I was with my daughter at a football camp one day and we were sort of handing it out and I was getting Instagram messages from Arizona Cardinal players. Hey, can you slide this over? Can you drive it over to our training camp and like give it to the Bellman? And then we were getting calls from brand managers at Phoenix Suns to players that we thought was a joke. And then we got introduced to Team USA and the Racquetball Division and came an official drink sponsor for Team Racquetball. And we're like, wow, okay, this is interesting, but our packaging at the time like didn't do the trick, not for who was buying it. But at that same time, I went to Arizona State University. My buddy Doug Kennedy and his wife Tracy, they created Guitar Hero, rock band. He's the co-founder of Studio Wildcard and the video game Arc Survival. And he saw what we were doing with our product and he said, listen, I'm a type one diabetic. You know that and I have to take care of my health. And I'm just so tired of this Mountain Dew Cheetos in the basement with gamers. Like let's put our heads together, join forces and let's create some healthy products for gamers and streamers and athletes. And that was basically about November, December of 2020. And we just decided, let's not go from the top down. Let's build this from the bottom up. And that's how really my wife and I got involved in gaming and esports. So we started out, we surveyed about 125 gamers and streamers and we found out what they actually wanted when we asked them. And that wasn't more caffeine. That wasn't more sugar. They wanted healthy ingredients. They wanted something that was non-carbonated. More importantly, they wanted something to calm them down. Whether they were an esports, whether the esports or gaming or like my 13 year old daughter now playing a lot of Fortnite and Overwatch, they needed something to calm them down and help them sleep. So we're like, wow, this is really, really interesting information. And they said, well, we're willing to pay for organic ingredients and all that. So we kind of went back to the drawing board and went back to our formulator. And then I decided that I wanted a third party validation on it from just from another person. So I found a woman who went to Scripps. She's a food scientist and she actually worked for Beachbody, which is the really popular like P90X. I mean, I do some P90X or used to do more back in the day. So she helped with their Shakeology product. And I handed it over to her and I said, listen, I want this to be efficacious. I don't want it to be fluff. And let's get out the ingredients that are good and ones that, you know, maybe are not scientifically valid yet. Because I had about 13 different ingredients, four kinds of mushrooms, all this stuff. So she came back with a report and she said, here are the doses. Here's what, you know, I think it should be, you know, be dosed at and this will work. Now you just kind of make it taste good. So with all the plant-based ingredients that we have and the good stuff we have, we went to our gamers and streamers and we brought them to the lab during COVID, about 12 of them. And in Southern California, male, female mixes and they did all the flavors. So we were there for 11 hours, sampling, tasting, just going back and forth. And they did all the flavors and we rated them and then we were kind of off to the races. Sly came about just from, you know, a name that we had from college, Doug and I. And then what we wanted to do was our branding firm, Interact Brands. They do lots of really great food and beverage products. They gave us 22 different names for us to test. And we got them out to our eSports directors, our gamers and streamers and they voted on it in Discord and other ways, you know, all the way from the U.S. to the U.K. and back. And they voted Sly as the name. And then we had five or six different can renditions through Interact and we had the same thing. We got them voted on and this is what we ended up with. So, you know, we're really, we like to say we're truly an endemic brand to gaming gamers in eSports because we asked for what they wanted. It wasn't the corporate, oh, we think that they should have this and another energy drink product with 200 milligrams of caffeine. We kind of asked them what they wanted and that kind of has really segmented into having relationships all over the country with different eSports directors. Gamers, content creators, now athletes, musicians. So it's really blossom from that and that's how we're really after sort of change this persona of gamers in a variety of different ways. I came up. Go ahead. Sorry. I think it's interesting that you consider yourself to be an endemic brand. Because I, you know, I normally would think of a beverage company as being non endemic. And so that's kind of an exciting thing to actually create a brand that isn't like a keyboard or isn't a mouse or something like that, or some kind of like software and be considered an endemic brand. And I think, you know, using that term, I certainly don't want to step on anybody's, you know, toes or shoes, but this is the way we wanted it created. And, you know, with Doug and Tracy that really wanted to be integrated into the, you know, space of gaming where they can't came from. And my wife and I really just, you know, jumped in the deep end of the pool, getting to know people across the country and people have been so welcoming like Johnny Weaver. I'll mention his name from Oklahoma. He's a former professional Halo player. He goes around the country and sets up tournaments for students now after his pro career is over. He gave us an hour and a half to two hours of his time just explaining the sort of, you know, esports and what the challenges are with the different leagues and how it's, you know, convoluted in a section and it just on and on of people that have been so welcoming. And I guess I use the word endemic because we wouldn't be here right now without all the feedback from ordinary gamers to esports players to just, you know, people involved in the industry and content creators who are playing games like tactical grandma. She's on our team. She's a partner company. She's, you know, amazing. So that's that's the reason why I sort of go down that route of thinking. Wow, that, you know, that's fantastic. So let's show the video. It really makes me thirsty. On Shark Tank, Mr. Wonderful and probably Mark Cuban playing about beverages. And so when someone pitches a beverage, they say, well, you know, I'm not interested because there's too much competition in that space and it's really hard to get shelf space. What have you, have you found it challenging in that sense, like Mr. Wonderful says it is? Well, one, I'll go back to my wife when she said, let's start a beverage company. I said, are you crazy? Like, do you know how difficult the beverage industry is and type of competition that she had? So it is, that's the reason why, whether it be Mark Cuban or any of them, except Rohan, Rohan is involved in the, in the beverage industry. It is difficult. The amount of money that you need in order to develop in order to get on shelf, all those types of things, what's called the slotting fee. So for slotting fees, let's say you're getting in a grocery store that has 200 locations, they may ask you for $100 per location just to get on their shelf. That's how the beverage industry works in some sense. Now, there's been a little bit more leniency. We're a female, we're a women owned company. My wife's the CEO. She's the boss. There can be some leeway is what they're, but really our goal to launch this product was really through gaming, through streamers, not the traditional route through grocery. That's sort of the last place that we really want to be when we, when we find that they're, we could go into grocery stores. That may be a possibility because there has to be a certain amount of education or a product. People are going to think, they immediately think when I do sampling, whether it be our drink or any others, it's an energy drink or a seltzer. That's pretty much everybody sees in a skull tall skinny can and we are not a caffeinated, you know, energy drink. I like to use in the beginning to get people to respond. I would say, well, we're the opposite of Red Bull and be like, huh? What do you mean? You have to tell me about that. So we're doing a lot of our direct consumer. We're locally in Arizona. I was just on the phone today finalizing with a high school district in Tempe, Arizona, which is where Arizona State is. 13,000 students and they love us because we are a non threatening product to their students. They do want caffeinated drinks in their schools on campus and they're finding them that they're there in the vending machines. And they told the vending company that we do not want energy drinks with caffeine on our campuses. So they've been really, really happy with us because we have no caffeine. We have nothing that's really bad. They can actually read the label. And that's a funny story. When we went into the first meeting, they thought that we were another energy drink. And once my wife and I got started, they started smiling at the end because they looked at our cans and our ingredients. They're like, oh, oh, this is actually healthy for you. And it looks like it's a pretty fun brand. We're like, yeah, that's who we are. Right, right. Yeah, well, when I was looking at your ingredients, I saw that it had no caffeine and that was kind of exciting for me. And I have to say that there are markets that are non caffeinated markets like Utah. You could probably and even Arizona and Idaho. There's a lot of non caffeinated markets and, you know, definitely schools, but let's bring up your website and the page where it says. Boost chill, relax where we have the actually boost chill dream. This part of your website shows the ingredients and I know that the viewers can't really see it, but can you describe like, let's start with boost. What's in. Sure. The main ingredient, which is more of focus and clarity product is rodeo rodeo as a, you know, as plants. Basically rodeo gives you that focus and clarity along with the mixture of B vitamins. L thining, which is integrated with green tea, but L thining is sort of a calmer. So we have ingredients there that give you that focus and clarity that are there without the caffeine. Also, acetylcholene derivatives are in there. Bilberry is in there. Bilberry is for the eyes. Bilberry was used in World War 2 for night vision. So being that we're optometrists, we wanted to have a little bit in there dealing with the eyes. We couldn't add lutein. Lutein is a fat soluble, which doesn't mix well with water. But those are really the main ingredients. We use organic honey as a base for our sweetening. So, you know, again, zinc as well. So we wanted immunity properties in there as well, along with the potassium for. We tried to cover sort of all bases between hydration, immunity, and then also what the product stands for boost as far as the focus and clarity. So that's kind of a wrap up of boost comes in tropical and berry flavors. Sure. And okay, let's talk about Chil. Tell us about what's in Chil. What's in Chil is a great combination. There's chamomile, valerian, and ashwagandha mixed with magnesium. All four of those together. And there's biotin in there as well. All four of those together really calm you down. There's really no other product that I've found on the market that has all four of those. Some of the products just have magnesium. Some might have ashwagandha. Some might have just chamomile. But all four of those together really work synergistically to really, you know, balance you out and calm you down. And whether that's, you know, in the evening or whether that's in the middle of the day, you're stressed out. You've had, you know, five different Zoom calls and you need sort of a break. It just really kind of calms and settles you down. And that's kind of the, you know, basics on that, because again, there's not a lot of ingredients at all in these products. Sure. And let's talk about the third, which is Dream. Dream is basically the same formulation as Chill. The only thing that we did is we added a small amount of two milligrams of melatonin to really help you sleep. And there's really no more than two milligrams that's needed at all because the chamomile, the valerian, the ashwagandha, and the magnesium that are already in it basically calm you down. And then the melatonin just kind of kicks that over into the sleep realm. And that's, that's really the summation on that. Yeah, again, all with organic honey. How much valerium is in there? I know I tried some valerium tea and boy, that was a not a good experience. There's really valerian that would are Danielle who helped us with the the food scientists that I speak that I spoke of prior. She said, man, valerian is tough. So flavor wise, so valerian was really on the lower end. There's more amounts of chamomile in there first. Then ashwagandha, then valerian, because it has a tough flavor to it has sort of a, you know, a really earthy flavor to it. But again, in combination, it creates the punch. I don't know the actual milligram percentage that's in there, but it's more just the combination and the synergistic of the ingredients that creates really the balancing act for it. So if, if a per if a gamer is going to be in a tournament, or, you know, they're playing and they want higher energy, so boost is the ticket then. If they're looking for that, yeah, like one of one of our coaches, she used to work for cloud nine. She is a scholastic coach now and Bethany said, listen, I would give a lot of my players the chill product before the game, depending on the depending on the personality, depending on the level of anxiety. I mean, there's plenty of people there that are on Adderall or Vyvance or whatever it might be. And it just depends on the personality type that she might give a eSports player before a tournament chill rather than boost, just depending on their own personality type. And that's where they can be used, you know, in a variety of different ways. Now, I wouldn't be giving anybody dream in the middle of the day. That's for sure, not unless they work nights. So, but, but I think it just depends on the person. Right. Okay. So, is there, is there any like drug testing that's done in eSports right now? Or has there been any discussion about whether your products would be flagged as something that would not be allowed? No, we've already done that's why I hired Danielle because 1 stipulation we told her in our formulation when she reviewed it that it had to be water compliant and US doping compliant because we wanted this product to also be in the hands of athletes. Like Marquise Brown, who's a part of our company that plays for the Arizona Cardinals. I'm on green, who's also the eSports director, University of Nebraska, but a former athlete. He loves our product. I'm actually, I think I just shipped his team like 8 cases he texted me. He's like, we have an event. Can you send some up here please? Cause we can't buy it up here. But, but anyway, no, all of the, there are no ingredients that would get flagged on a urine test or anything having to do with doping. We made for certain of that. The one thing we would like to do in the future is, is get the certification. Is it NR, NRC or NRT certification, which you'll see that a lot like in NFL football. With some of the, some of the products, but yeah, it won't be flagged for doping. Sure. Well, you know, I have this kind of theory about certain businesses and like Starbucks, for example, that they're kind of, they create a sort of, you become addicted to their, their products. I mean, even though that's legal and it's, you know, but it's caffeine. Do you, do you find that when people use sly that they, they become like psychologically addicted to it or, or otherwise and that they, they yearn for more and, and, and that can up your sales. Well, let's just, let's just say I hope that happens in some sense, but I think, I think just the flavor is really good. I will, I will tell you, this is the importance of any food and beverage company going out and sampling and meeting the public because it's a really interesting scientific was quasi scientific experiment. The second that people would, would come up, they're like, one, they think it's an energy drink, whether they way you tell them that or not. And then they go to take a sip of it and quite honestly, I don't think a lot of the energy drinks out there taste really great. And then they will taste in per se are pop tropical, which is the yellow can behind me, which is probably the favorite and they're like, wow, like, this is amazing. And, and then, then they want more just from the flavor alone. I mean, you can be the healthiest product in the world, but you have to make it taste good. And that's all of our, you know, advisors and said, listen, you've got to have a good product that tastes good for the public to continue to continually want to consume. And it was funny, I was at the National North American Championships of XB League, which is a franchise that about 60 or 65 across the country. And it's literally like the Boys and Girls Club of eSports really great organization. I know the founders and we were at the national championship and I set up a little booth when we were sampling and all the parents were literally like, okay, we're not, you're an energy drink. Our kids are not going near your table. And I was like, I'm not an energy drink on the opposite of Red Bull. And that's where I started that phrase. And then they came over and they're like, wow. And then the kids are like, can I try some mom and dad? Oh, it doesn't have anything bad here. Go ahead. Oh, again, everybody's got this mentality of energy drink. And if people want to call ours an energy drink, that's fine, but it has absolutely no caffeine and totally safe for, you know, for their kids or for adults or people that don't want to get it wigged out and on the sugar and the caffeine because it has, you know, two grams of sugar or less and 10 calories or less. I'll note another thing as my wife likes to say it's also a really good mixer. So it's used as a mixer in some of the places that we sell to so my wife calls it a skinny cocktail. Right. Okay. So you and it's 10 calories. So would you call it a diet drink? And you know, how does it, how do you distinguish it from like a diet soda, which I consider to be bad? I mean, I would just say it's just it's just low in calorie. I mean, we use organic honey and we use the natural form of Stevia. And before I got into this business, I'm not a big Stevia fan at all. And what our, what our formulator said is listen, there are different forms of Stevia from cheap to expensive to that are made in different ways. And we happen to find we found one that's a little bit more expensive, but doesn't have that nasty after after taste. And that's when you blend it with the honey, the honey sort of creates a smooth flavor to our products. And that's one of the things that, you know, that we did, you know, along with his assistants. So I guess I wouldn't call it necessarily a diet product. It just it's just low calorie. Just low calorie, low in sugar. I mean, for, you know, diabetics could certainly have this depending on, you know, what level of diabetic that they are and talking to their doctor, of course, as they should about their A1C values and those types of things. So are you a gamer? I used, I mean, I am a gamer in the sense of Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, all the old games is what I can play. If I try to play with my daughter, I really don't know how to use the fancy spancy controllers. So when I look back in the day, I'm certainly a gamer. I mean, that's where everything through, you know, elementary school, I mean, I'm a tarry person. So I'm showing my age here. So it's a tarry, you know, that led into the 2600 that led it, led it to that. I don't, I'm a little bit too busy right now to be playing games. I watch my daughter play her fortnight in Overwatch. But I'm certainly a gamer at heart. And I think a lot of people, you know, I'm 53 years old. I think when we look back at my generation, we started the whole video game process from Pong, you know, onward. And if they say that they're not gamers, I think they're full of it because, you know, people don't understand the average gamer is 34, 35 years old with a house and a child. That's the average gamer when you look at stats by Nuzu and others. So. Sure, sure. And a lot of people are gamers, but they don't even know it because they're playing something on their phone or. Yeah, like my daughters, like my daughters, you know, in the ways. And I think the other thing that I've really segmented to do, I call it, I sort of tagged the phrase or the word gems. Just like a, you know, a stone or a gem. And it stands for, it stands for gaming, entertainment, music and sports. And when you look at those, that's sort of the four pillars of sly. Because when you look at today's generation, it's a, it's literally a Venn diagram of all those things. Marquis Brown, why is he with our company? He's a huge gamer. He plays football professionally. And you look at the overlap of all the things that are going on now. Look at Eminem's concert inside of Fortnite. They're all intertwined, like I said, is a Venn diagram and all those components of our world today, whether it be in the US or beyond, are all becoming, you know, intertwined with gaming, entertainment, music and sports. So it's just fun to drive our company in those directions where we're, you know, literally becoming fans of everyone in those particular industries as we sort of get started. Because we literally only launched the company October by at TwitchCon softly with me walking around with a backpack handing out drinks to people with some of our content creators. All right. So how can people find you? Let's just show your, your website and. Sure, you can find us at drinkonthesly.com. We also have an app that you can get on the Apple store or an Android and you could just search drink on the sly. All of our socials and everything are drinkonthesly, Instagram, Twitter or X, Twitch, all the above Pinterest. They're all generally at drinkonthesly and that's how you can find us. All right. Well, thank you, Tom. This has been great. No, thanks so much. I appreciate your time. It was a pleasure. And I'll get that to you in Hawaii. All right. Thank you to our viewers for watching today. So you in two weeks. Aloha.