Energy Drinks
Power Horse vs. Red Bull
The following was reported in "Format" on August 9, 2002 by Gabriela Schnabel
Gabriela Schnabel wrote that Arabs love horses, and that according to a legend, Mohammed the Prophet was supposedly the one who chose the first five Arab mares for breeding. And that is probably not the only reason people who live in the Arab world drink the "energy drink" from Austria that comes in a can with a picture of a horse on it. The owner of Power Horse International Handels, Inc., Alfred Inzinger, at 41 years old, boasts that his product enjoys the same status in the Arab world that "Red Bull" does in Europe. Mr. Inzinger, a well-known Scientologist born in Kaernten, goes practically unnoticed in the shadows of the world's market leaders, but has still made 70 million euro-clams from his pick-me-up drinks, 90 percent of which he said came from Arabian nations.
Inzinger said he ended up selling in Arab states because he wanted to stay out of "Red Bull's" marketing territory. He said he obtained his first Arab contract in 1998, the other Arab nations followed suit, and now Red Bull doesn't stand a chance on his turf. Inzinger says that as a Scientologist he is "of course" constantly making donations to the controversial cult that calls the USA home. A representative from Red Bull, which made a billion eurodollars last year, said she was surprised that Inzinger was even around any more. She may have underestimated the competition, according to Schnabel, because now Power Horse sells five million cans a year through Austrian distributor "Hofer" and is the only serious contender that Red Bull has left in that country.
According to Schnabel, Inzinger says he now has his sights set on eastern Europe. While things are going well for him at present, he was not always so fortunate. Soon after he started, his business manager apparently got caught sending out anonymous "poison drink" letters out to other companies in some sort of fraud. Inzinger said he got in a lot of hot water over that one, but he pulled through because he could get his hands on some ready cash. He said he had helped found the Pantitan company in 1989. He did that with Gerold Pankl, primary owner of Pankl Racing, and medical technician Peter Poesch. The company developed and marketed artificial limbs. It was later sold for 500 million shillings to Stratec Medical GmbH, and that, according to Inzinger, is where he got the money to keep Power Horse afloat. He said they had come out of the red only two year prior.
It was also reported that Inzinger knows many celebrities, and that his daughter, Alina, goes to Scientology Delphi school in Oregon, for which he spends 40,000 dollars a year, not including air fare.
Power Horse is said to be expanding at the rate of 250 percent per year. A 20-story Power Horse Tower was planned in Bahrein.
Speaking of designer drinks, here's American columnist Dave Barry on designer water. This is only the section that mentions designer dirt, a prospect which may interest some of the bolder entrepreneurs of the group ...
Making Water
What's next, designer dirt?By Dave Barry
Sunday, August 11, 2002
Gatorade is now making water. I know this because I saw a Gatorade commercial that asks the intriguing question: "What if Gatorade made water?"
(Intriguing answer: Gatorade will charge you a dollar for a small bottle of it.)
The commercial features the usual cast of hyperactive Gatorade people, who have to constantly ingest massive quantities of fluids, or they shrivel up like dead toads on hot asphalt. Gatorade people dehydrate rapidly because they are fanatically dedicated to exercise, and as a result, perspiration-wise, they are human fire hydrants.
Even when they stand still, sweat gushes from their every pore, so that within seconds they're surrounded by an expanding puddle of their own bodily secretions. People are constantly slipping and falling around them, but the Gatorade people don't notice. That's how dedicated they are.
The Gatorade people are similar to the Nike-commercial people, another group of fierce, focused, grunting competitors who give a minimum of 175 percent and would not hesitate to elbow their own grandmother in the teeth if she stood between them and their objective (usually, a ball). The message of these commercials is that Nike people are winners, because they have heart, willpower and the one "intangible" asset that all true champions possess: severely overpriced sneakers.
Here's an intriguing question: What if a Gatorade man married a Nike woman? That would be a competitive wedding. The happy couple would race each other down the aisle, the bride gaining a momentary advantage by jamming her bridal bouquet into the groom's eye, then the groom countering by yanking on her bridal veil, snapping her head back like a Pez dispenser, while the guests cheered and jumped up and down in their sweat puddles. At the reception, everybody would eat a wedding cake made entirely out of PowerBars, and take turns bench-pressing members of the band. Blood would be shed during the limbo competition.
But getting back to my point: Gatorade is now making water. It joins the rapidly growing list of companies, including Coke, Pepsi and (any day now) Yoo-hoo, getting into the highly profitable, multibillion-dollar business of making water.
Of course, when I say that these companies "make" water, what I mean is that they "do not make" water. There's no need to actually make water, because there's already water all over the planet--water in lakes, water in rivers, water falling from the sky, water in your home plumbing system, water escaping from your home plumbing system causing your ceiling to collapse when you're away on vacation, water just everywhere.
What the bottled-water companies do is get some of this water, put it in bottles, give it a brand name, sell it to consumers, then smack themselves on their corporate foreheads and say, "We can't believe we're getting away with this! Do you think they'd buy air? How about dirt?" [rest snipped]
comment: Have we found a potential market for designer dirt?