Dosed like a premium product. Priced like it is not.
There is no good reason a proper electrolyte stick should cost what it usually does, or be treated as something you save for a race day. We build ours to the amounts that make sense, then sell it for eighty pence.
What you actually get
2,703mg of
declared actives.
That is the combined weight of everything we name on the pack, in a single stick. Nothing about it is rounded up or worked out generously.
| Nutrient | Per stick | %NRV |
|---|---|---|
| Taurine | 1,000mg | — |
| Sodium | 750mg | — |
| Chloride | 653mg | 82% |
| Potassium | 200mg | 10% |
| Magnesium | 100mg | 27% |
| Total | 2,703mg |
— No NRV established. The remainder of the stick is flavour, stevia, citric acid and anti-caking agent. Full disclosure here.
One box
15 sticks for £12 — eighty pence a stick.
Three boxes
45 sticks for £30 — sixty-seven pence a stick.
Three boxes, subscribed
£25.50 — fifty-seven pence a stick.
Where the money goes
We spent it on
the formula.
There are only a few places a brand can save money on an electrolyte stick. We took the expensive option on each of them, and made it back by not spending it elsewhere.
01
Citrate, not oxide
Magnesium oxide is the cheapest magnesium on the market and it is what a lot of powders use. It is also poorly soluble, which is why those drinks leave grit at the bottom of the bottle. Ours is magnesium citrate. Potassium is citrate too, rather than potassium chloride, which carries a metallic edge.
02
A full gram of taurine
Taurine is not cheap, and it is easy to include a token amount so it can appear on the label. We put in 1,000mg — a full gram — and print the number on the front. You can check it against the batch certificate.
03
Two sodium sources
Refined table salt would have done the job for less. We use unrefined pink Himalayan rock salt for 425mg of the sodium and sodium citrate for the other 325mg, because the two behave differently in water and in the mouth.
04
No sugar, no filler
Sugar and maltodextrin are the cheapest way to make a powder taste acceptable and fill a sachet out. There is none of either in here. The sweetness comes from stevia and the stick is that weight because that is what the formula weighs.
And where we did not spend it
No athlete on a retainer. No stadium hoarding. No agency. We are a small operation in Manchester selling direct, and the difference between what that costs and what a marketing budget costs is sitting in the sachet instead.
Judge for yourself
Five things to check on any electrolyte label
We would rather arm you than tell you we are the best. Take this list to any shelf, ours included.
- Is the amount printed, or just the ingredient?A name on an ingredient list tells you nothing about how much is in there. If a brand will not print the milligrams, assume there is a reason.
- Which form is the mineral in?Citrate, oxide, chloride and carbonate are not interchangeable. Oxide is the cheapest and the least soluble. The form should be on the label.
- Is there a %NRV column?Nutrient Reference Values let you compare across brands honestly. A nutrient below 15% NRV is legally too low to carry a health claim, which tells you something.
- What is the rest of the sachet?If a 10g sachet only names two grams of actives, the other eight are doing something. Usually that is sugar, maltodextrin or bulking agent.
- What is the price per serving, not per box?Box prices are designed to be hard to compare. Divide by the number of servings and the picture changes quickly.
The bee
Not a logo we
picked from a book.
It is the emblem of the city we are from, and it has stood for the same idea here for nearly two hundred years.
1842
Manchester was granted its coat of arms. Seven worker bees were placed on the globe at the crest, chosen to stand for the industry of a city that was rebuilding itself around cotton and machinery.
The hive
The mills were spoken of as hives of activity, and the bee came to mean the people inside them rather than the owners. It has always been a symbol of labour, not of wealth.
Still here
It is laid into the mosaic floor of the Town Hall, cast into the bollards, painted on the bins and inked on a good number of arms. After the Arena attack in 2017 it became something more again — a mark of a city that closes ranks.
What ours means
A worker, not
a superhero.
Our bee is on the pack for a reason. It is not there to tell you that you are elite, or that a drink will transform you.
A single bee is unremarkable. It is small, it is not fast, and on its own it achieves very little. What makes a colony work is that every one of them turns up and does the same unglamorous job, every day, and the results compound into something none of them could manage alone.
That is the whole idea. Not the big day, but the four hundred ordinary ones either side of it. Not the grand gesture, but the small things done properly when nobody is watching and it is raining.
Be ready is a stance, not a slogan. Sort the small things out in advance, so that when the day asks something of you, the answer is already yes.
Together
One bee is a curiosity. A colony changes the landscape.
We are not interested in building an audience of spectators. We would rather have a few thousand people who quietly get on with it — the toddler who was up at four, the shift that overran, the loft that needs clearing, the five-a-side on a Tuesday.
Ambition does not have to be loud. Most of it looks like doing a slightly boring thing repeatedly and not making a fuss about it. That applies to a Wednesday every bit as much as it applies to a training block.
What we can do is make one small part of that easier to sort out, tell you exactly what is in it, and not charge you a premium for the privilege. The rest is yours.
Turn up. Do the work. Be ready for whatever the day asks of you.
Launching soon
Now go and
check the label.
Ours is published in full, down to the anti-caking agent. Read it first if you like — we would rather you did.