Robert Neuner: How a Beer Distributor Built a Global Oxygen Brand | DSH #1630

Speaker 1 Boxing were banned and MMA were banned and tennis were banned and USTA bans the use of oxygen.

Speaker 1 I lived with one guy, Winder Bill, had only one lung and he had to get special dispensation from the USTA to use our oxygen. Wow.
And people are like, you know, why are you selling air?

Speaker 1 It's like, it's not air. It's pure oxygen.
I'll be honest, that was my first reaction when I first saw it.

Speaker 1 Okay, guys, we got Rob from Boost Oxygen here. What a cool product, man.
He made these custom bottles right here. Thanks.
He did. Yeah, it was all Bill Banks, my

Speaker 1 social media guy.

Speaker 1 These are sick. And I took a couple of, what would you call it, hits?

Speaker 1 Inhalations. Yeah, you could call it what you will.
Yeah, can you explain the process of inhaling oxygen, what that does for the body? Yeah, so

Speaker 1 oxygen will do essentially nothing for you if you're not depleted. So if your SBO2 levels are low, if you're short of breath,

Speaker 1 if you are at altitude and you're short of oxygen, you breathe it in, you feel better. Got it.
And as you get older, you lose some oxygen levels too. You do, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 I think what's it, 2% of your lung capacity every year after the age of 50. Wow.

Speaker 1 So people who are older or hiking and stuff

Speaker 1 really, really appreciate having a little extra oxygen. Yeah.
Was that why you created this on a hike? Nah, so

Speaker 1 kind of a long story, but I was in the beer business before.

Speaker 1 I imported beer from the Czech Republic and distributed beer in Connecticut.

Speaker 1 Sold that back in 2006.

Speaker 1 And a friend of mine said, well, what are you going to do now? And I said, I have no idea. And his father was an executive at Precision Valve.
And he had seen these oxygen cans in Germany.

Speaker 1 I had seen them in the Czech Republic. And he said, well, we could do oxygen cans because we have the background for it.
So one thing went to another. We experimented and

Speaker 1 Mr. Murnogue Daminogue took me by the hand, showed me all the

Speaker 1 spliers, where to get it filled, and just learned as we went along. What a big change from the beer accompanying.
A little bit, yeah.

Speaker 1 So I tell people, I spent 10 years getting people drunk and the next next 20 years getting people sober. I love it.
So it's fun. So this was taken off in Europe?

Speaker 1 Yes. We have an office in Prague still.

Speaker 1 And actually, my partner from the beer business is still

Speaker 1 doing the boost auction for us as well. And yes,

Speaker 1 it's worked out really well. We sell a lot more in the UK and Germany, but quite a bit in Czechia, too.
Interesting.

Speaker 1 So 20 years you've been doing this. Did it take off right away? Yeah, almost no.
So

Speaker 1 oxygen is considered to be a drug, a prescription drug. We sell it without a prescription.
And we knew that we were selling it legally because it's not 99.2% or above.

Speaker 1 It's aviators breathing oxygen, which you could buy without a prescription, but still we were selling oxygen. So the first five, six years, we sort of dabbled along, kind of sold it

Speaker 1 not under the radar, but weren't really sure about investing a lot in it. It made some money, some contract manufacturers.
And

Speaker 1 then, you after about five, six years, the FDA came to visit me. Oh, yeah.
And yeah, officially.

Speaker 1 I bet that was pleasant. It was surprising.

Speaker 1 But they showed up at my door in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And they stayed there for a week.

Speaker 1 And at the end of the week, they said, okay, well, as long as you don't make medical claims, we'll allow you to continue to sell this.

Speaker 1 And that's when I

Speaker 1 went all in and said, okay, now I can invest money

Speaker 1 in a bigger way. So that was a big hurdle.
It was. And it wasn't like we were going to call the FDA and ask them for permission because they usually don't give that.

Speaker 1 Um, so we're sort of waiting for that knock on the door, uh, and it and it came finally.

Speaker 1 We did, we were selling at Sports Authority at the time, a big uh, it was a big uh sporting goods distributor store, retailer. Oh, I remember that one, yeah, yeah, you guys crushing in retail.

Speaker 1 That's how I found you. I think what grocery store were you in?

Speaker 1 It might have been Walmart or CVS, you in Target, uh, not yet, we're working on it, um, might have been Walmart then, yeah, Walmart, uh, Walgreens, yeah, we're in all the Walgreens, uh, natural grocers, uh, a lot of a lot of different uh a lot of independent pharmacies.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's because you're at the right distribution from the beer industry.
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. Know how to get into stores and brick and mortar places.
Amazon, too? Amazon's been big. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's kind of a weird dynamic with

Speaker 1 Amazon and online sales versus brick and mortar. Yeah.
How that's evolved. How do you choose what to focus on?

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 we focus more on Amazon with the advent of the online marketplace.

Speaker 1 But initially, and still do focus a lot on retailers, especially in the mountain regions. Right, because people probably need to walk in and grab it real quick.
Yeah, big time for Amazon.

Speaker 1 Right, right. Also, like, you know, with oxygen, people are out of breath, and they're out of breath.
They want oxygen now. Yeah.
And so having it locally is

Speaker 1 very advantageous. Was there a lot of psychology pushback at first? Because people are like, why do I need to buy this? Yeah, see, because we were like the first movers on it.

Speaker 1 And people are like, you know, why are you selling air? It's like, no, it's not air.

Speaker 1 It's pure oxygen. And, you know, it's the same stuff that you would get in a hospital or the back of an ambulance.

Speaker 1 But this, you know, people was like, well, no, it's just, you know, they think the air is 100% oxygen and it's only 21% oxygen. So I'll have

Speaker 1 just a little bit more or a little less oxygen, you really feel it.

Speaker 1 I'll be honest, that was my first reaction when I first saw it. I was a little skeptical, but then I did some more research and I was like, okay, I could see the benefits.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, in Las Vegas, they pump oxygen into the

Speaker 1 sphere as well.

Speaker 1 I learned, yeah, yeah. So they're pumping oxygen into the sphere, many casinos to help keep you sober, alert, obviously gambling, awake.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it's not nicotine or it's not caffeine. It's not going to really give you a charge.
It's not a narcotic, but it's just, it's healthy. That is interesting.
It's very natural.

Speaker 1 Need some oxygen in your life.

Speaker 1 Exactly, exactly. So Shark Tank 2019, walk me through that experience.
Yeah, so they called us, which was interesting.

Speaker 1 And at first I didn't really believe it, but then I looked up Mr. Burnett on the internet and found out he was the executive producer.

Speaker 1 And I spoke to my COO, Mike Grice, and my best friend, Mike Minogue, and we said, because there was disadvantages, they could skew you.

Speaker 1 You can go on and they could be really highly critical of your business plan, of your business

Speaker 1 direction. So, but we decided that

Speaker 1 the benefits outweighed the risk. And one thing led to another.
We went out to California and taped. And it was a really, really cool experience.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you've had other sharks on here, I think. Yeah, Damon's been on trying to get Kevin on.
Yeah. No.
Let's see if I can make that happen. Yep.

Speaker 1 So we went out and first you have to pitch to the producers and you got to clear that hurdle.

Speaker 1 And then you have to pitch to the sharks. They don't air every single episode that

Speaker 1 they actually tape. So you got to clear that hurdle as well.
You got to be interesting, right? Yeah, kind of. It's just reality TV.

Speaker 1 It's got to be somewhat engaging. So it's, but we're up there for an hour, over like an hour and 15 minutes, and they condensed it down to seven minutes.
Jeez. Yeah, it was a fun experience.

Speaker 1 The sharks at ABC, Sony, were great from top to bottom, the way they treated all, well, at least us as entrepreneurs. Yeah.
And actually, the sharks, too, were really fun, too.

Speaker 1 So it was a good give and take. Now, obviously, you got investment, but was there a plan going into it on who you wanted to target? Yeah, sort of.

Speaker 1 You know, we knew that there would be four sharks that we eat, like Lori, Kevin, Barbara, and Mark. And it was always a sort of surprise, fifth judge.

Speaker 1 I thought it might have been Robert or Damon, but it turned out to be Rohan.

Speaker 1 And so we weren't really prepared for that. But with Mark, we kind of were leaning towards Mark or Kevin with the most business experience.

Speaker 1 Lori also with Bed Bath and Beyond, but that was a shrinking.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. That was a shrinking retailer, but she was really, really nice.
Barbara, not so much because of the retail experience that she didn't have.

Speaker 1 And then as we went along, Mark also doesn't like to get into sort of supplements and found that out. So, but Kevin was really engaged from the time we walked down that aisle.

Speaker 1 And we sort of focused on him as we went along. That's interesting that Mark isn't because you think you want to have your athletes take the best stuff, right?

Speaker 1 You think, yeah, actually, the Mavericks used us. Oh, they do.
Yeah. And during the taping, you know, Mark said, hey, you know, the Mavericks use us.

Speaker 1 And so, but he's like, he said he wasn't really into the supplement.

Speaker 1 Kevin was really interested as we went along. So I think everyone sort of deferred to him.

Speaker 1 I guess Kevin had blood in the water, but it was fun. It was really good.
And Kevin's been great. I'm going to have to start bringing this to my basketball men's league games.

Speaker 1 If you're out of breath, it's going to help.

Speaker 1 i i guarantee it's quick like oh yeah no it's like something like if it takes you you know 10 to 20 seconds to gain your breath back it cuts it in half maybe yeah yeah so that's a hack right there so a lot hockey is really um important so like in terms of people short burst um aerobic anaerobic type of movements and efforts uh and so they don't have much time between shifts uh and getting uh and then actually if you lose your breath once and you become anaerobic uh you get your you go back into aerobic respiration faster that's which is which is cool that's super brilliant because recovery takes a while depending on the sport right right right especially with the endurance yeah but we're banned actually in the boxing boxing were banned and MMA were banned no way and tennis were banned you take that as a compliment uh he'll hold it it's just oxygen in general not just me oh okay yeah um but it's yeah because we uh tennis is because with a lot of older people play tennis as well right uh and they're competitively and USTA bans the use of oxygen I had with one guy uh winder bill uh he had only one lung and he had to get special dispensation from the USTA to use our oxygen.

Speaker 1 Wow. And it helped him out.
So he was able to continue playing into his 80s. Well, that to me shows how powerful oxygen is that it's

Speaker 1 banning it. Right, right.
So it's, yeah. So, and actually, boxing bans it, but

Speaker 1 it's mandated to be at every single bout because if someone gets knocked out, they need oxygen.

Speaker 1 But you cannot use it in between rounds. What about like marathon runners? No, that's legal.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we sell at the Boston Marathon. There's a heartbreak kill.
There's a Walgreens at the top of the and they sell copious amounts of

Speaker 1 people passing out well yeah but also like you know they uh once they get into that anaerobic respiration um it it really helps people um especially older people have trouble breathing yeah i'm sure for biking it's good too yeah biking is really good um we're on the simpsons uh and do you hear that story no well

Speaker 1 so uh there's a biker bar in the simpsons and uh the uh the biker bar wasn't a biker biker bar it was a um uh exercise exercise. It was the healthy bikers.

Speaker 1 And they were drinking wheat grass and all this stuff and using our oxygen.

Speaker 1 So the guy crushed the oxygen against his head. It was kind of funny.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it was a... Wow.
That's an iconic show. It's really fun.
It was kind of a nice little bump after the beat. You didn't know that was coming? No, I had no idea.
Holy crap. No idea.

Speaker 1 All of a sudden, the oxygen showed up on the show, and

Speaker 1 it was cool. No way.
Simpsons. That's legendary, dude.
It was fun. And now you guys are doing some big commercials, too, right? We are.
We're with Tatari. Wonder Ads.

Speaker 1 a company actually that's backed by Kevin O'Leary. And it's remnant TV advertising.
So there's excess

Speaker 1 TV space every day on like 3 million channels.

Speaker 1 And we clear on those and they track where we are, where we appear. Mostly it's Kevin O'Leary ads, but we've got other, well, Kevin O'Leary is in the ad for us.
Got it. Which is kind of cool.

Speaker 1 Very curious how effective those are because TV is dying, right? It is. Yeah.
Yeah. But our demographic demographic is older and older people are still watching TV.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, it's and but Tatari also does streaming and programmatics. So we're on that as well.
So that's pretty neat. Yeah.
What have been the most effective marketing channels for you?

Speaker 1 Because I'm assuming word of mouth is pretty big, right? Yeah, no, word of mouth is very big.

Speaker 1 You know, Fox has been great.

Speaker 1 Fox has been very, very good. CNN, some play BN Sports

Speaker 1 has been great.

Speaker 1 Those are the big ones. We've done some radio and actually airline, I'm sorry, airport advertising.
So if you're going to Denver, our ads are all over the place.

Speaker 1 Again, getting people before they go to the media. Denver's a great.
Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So it's been successful there and just in-store.
We do a lot of

Speaker 1 signs as you walk into a building. And

Speaker 1 it's been

Speaker 1 our salespeople are great in terms of merchandising and stuff. So it's,

Speaker 1 yeah, the marketing mix is something that we work on constantly. Well done.
Any new product launch ideas or anything?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we've got a hydration packet coming out. Hydration.
Electrolytes? Electrolytes, yeah. Sort of like liquid IV, but different.
It's using bicarbonate,

Speaker 1 baking soda, essentially, as the source of the electrolyte. Interesting.
I take electrolytes every day. Yeah, you do.
Exactly in Vegas.

Speaker 1 It's so dehydrated if you don't. Big time, big time.
And actually, but this is, you know, like you probably take some of the sodium chloride and potassium chloride. Yeah.
That's the source.

Speaker 1 All of them use, but we're potassium and sodium bicarbonate, which helps with your pH levels of your blood

Speaker 1 so which helps with the oxygenation of your cells wow I'll have to try yours then yeah I'll send you some it's gonna be out probably mid-August

Speaker 1 it's also really great for altitude acclimation and also just working out if you if you google bicarbonate and sports there's a whole bunch of research as to it really helps with the

Speaker 1 the limitation of lactic acid that's produced so it's kind of exciting yeah it's a little different than liquid IV it's not yeah um it's uh we're kind of charting cart it charting out a new course is that the first time you're branching off from the oxygen ball?

Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, so uh, it's it's different. Um, we're actually growing up 30% this year.
Holy crap! Yeah, and still grows, it's it's it's been great.

Speaker 1 You guys are 20 years in and you're still growing, still growing, yeah.

Speaker 1 And a lot of that's because of the TV advertising that we started, yeah, uh, and a lot of the Amazon actually do a lot of work on Amazon in terms of advertising there too.

Speaker 1 Nice, um, and just like snowballing effect, you know, we built up a trust with our customers, uh, we're very highly ranked

Speaker 1 great branding, yeah, very recognizable. Yeah, we manufacture ourselves and uh we do a private labeling like you saw with your yeah

Speaker 1 which is pretty cool like hotels and sports teams and weddings you know people do for a while yeah people come out to Vegas buy some as well so it's

Speaker 1 it's a challenge and we but we thought that the electrolyte packet especially for out to acclimation because it really really helps with hemoglobin affinity for oxygen helps release the oxygen into the bloodstream and it's

Speaker 1 we're excited about it as a compliment to the cans. Well, I've done that.
So, you like working with Kevin Alair? I do. He's fun.
Call him Uncle Kevin. And he's very opinionated, but

Speaker 1 he's got great opinions. I love how direct he is.
He is. He's not going to mince worse.
Which is, in business, is good, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 He's good.

Speaker 1 And he'll call me up and say, hey, Rob, you got to go after this retailer or you really got to get more money from this source or whatever. So

Speaker 1 and, but yeah, he's, he's pro-tariff as you know which is

Speaker 1 um and which is sort of concerning but the um

Speaker 1 has that messed up your margins it is yeah no because yeah it's just everything because it's stealing aluminum that's an aluminum can and even if you buy it in the united states like we do in pittsburgh they're still buying their aluminum from canada uh or or china so the the markups are still there but we've we've actually held the line on price increases which is great

Speaker 1 yeah and hopefully you know the the tariffs will come down again and and our costs will get under control but you're not you're holding strong like the dollar fifty hot dog at Costco. That's right.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 But no, because a lot of senior citizens rely on us.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they're budget constrained. So we're really trying to keep the price lower for them.
Respect. Respect.
Any other sharks you're working with or talking to? Damon.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's been great. He launched a product called Shark Jevity.

Speaker 1 A lot of supplements, some of their products that go out to his influencers.

Speaker 1 And he was just actually, Suismonte

Speaker 1 started showing us on his social channels. Like he would use it as part of his writer wherever he goes.
He needs boost oxygen

Speaker 1 just to help him acclimate to places. That's cool.
And yeah, so he reached out and said, hey, I'm doing this shark Jevity thing. Can you do a private label for us? And we said, sure.

Speaker 1 So that's, we're starting that actually September 1st. I think it goes into all his boxes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. But he's also great.
He's a great

Speaker 1 advocate and terrific guy as well. Great health journey, right? Having cancer and then battling through that.
And now he's super healthy. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Well, not for our product, but actually, you know, cancer can't live in oxygen environments. Oh, really? Yeah.
So not for oxygen, but just shows you the efficacy of oxygen. Holy crap.

Speaker 1 I saw Gary Breco say that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 People use hyperbaric chambers and things to really get rid of it. But I started using that.
Oh, really? Yeah. How do you like it? I think it's good.
I need to use it more, but do you use it?

Speaker 1 I've tried it once.

Speaker 1 I don't need to with this. Exactly.
It's different, though. I get a little claustrophobic.
Oh, you do? Oh, yeah. So it's

Speaker 1 tall, so you need a big one i know but yeah jokovich uses one yeah so that's my favorite tennis player yeah me too big time yeah that dude's a legend yeah i wouldn't be surprised if he uses this too i hope so before it got banned yeah exactly yeah was that a recent ban or it's always been bad it's always been bad okay um but it's it's only you know oxygen uh is always it's actually

Speaker 1 you know since the you know turn of the century uh has been available but it's also by prescription only.

Speaker 1 So we haven't really done anything different than other than provide it without a prescription. Got it.

Speaker 1 So So we try to just make it accessible and affordable to people who could use it, who would benefit by it. And we have very, you know, we're not for medical purposes.

Speaker 1 It's not, you know, it's not going to save your life. It's not going to cure anything.

Speaker 1 But it can help. It can help with shortness of breath.
It can help you perform better. It could help you at altitude, just breathe better.
I can't wait to use this on the basketball court.

Speaker 1 There you go. What's the difference with the prescription oxygen? It's just stronger or? So it's 99.5% or above.

Speaker 1 It has humidity added, and it's also a minimum of six liters per minute of continuous use for 10 minutes. Got it.
Which we don't.

Speaker 1 We don't. This is like a quick hit.
It's a quick hit, yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. That makes sense, dude.
Well, I can't wait to see what you do, man. Anything else you want to close off with here?

Speaker 1 No, just you know, I appreciate you've shown your buffs here and

Speaker 1 love what you do. And yeah, it's

Speaker 1 to anyone who's looking for a quick hit of oxygen and access to oxygen, look for a boost. Yeah, look for boost, retail on Amazon.
If you've got a website too. Hey, yeah, boostauction.com.
Perfect.

Speaker 1 Check them out, guys. I'm going to be using this.
I'll document on Instagram how I feel. Yeah, cool.
Show me next to Master. Yeah, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe.
It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.