Scot Delorme, Serial Beverage Entrepreneur and Co-Founder of A SHOC Energy

Scot Delorme grew up in Orange County and after college fell into the beverage business by accident. Whilst away travelling a family friend reached out about a business opportunity to become a partner in a drinks company when he was 25. Scot learnt all aspects of the business and eventually took over the company. He started another brand called 24C, an emergency vitamin c packet. He sold the company after just a year. He knew how to create beverage brands which down the road lead to working with Monster Energy where he became VP of Innovation and would come up with all of Monster’s flavors. 

Scot stayed at Monster for 8 years. He then partnered with Lance Collins who foundered FUSE and BodyArmor to launch A SHOC in 2019 which at the time was called Adrenaline Shoc. Scot wanted to launch a brand that was health, had no sugar that athlete’s could drink. They got NSF Certified started an athlete team including Paul Rodriguez (P Rod), Chase Elliott, Billy Kemper, Dashawn Jordan. 

Joining us is sports performance trainer Joe Cancellieri who runs the onsite athlete gym and program at A SHOC. Joe will be running us through their fitness center and Scot will give us the lowdown on what campaigns A SHOC has coming up.

Scot Delorme Rad Season Podcast Episode

Gap In The Market

This new category comes out of nowhere. So we came up with the name Reine, like reigning champ. It was an exciting step into that space. We created that product when I was at Monster. Mark and I would always have our moments. I’d have an idea, he has an idea and it went on, like  that for 10 years. 

I had a different vision, I think for what I ultimately thought that product would be. Not to say it wasn’t successful, I think we rolled it out and it did about 400 million the first year. That’s how prime this space was for this new category that was emerging. Bang was the only one sitting in there at the time. We knew if we just played a card we’re gonna take this other huge chunk.

A really good friend of mine, who I’m partners with now, Lance Collins, he started NOS and Fuze. He sold both those brands to Cok. He was founder of Body Armor that recently sold to coke for like, 8 billion I think. He also started core water and sold it  Dr. Pepper. 

I ended up leaving Monster and partnered up with with Lance. We put a deal together with with Dr. Pepper straight out for a national distribution deal and launched A SHOC. At the time it was called Adrenaline Shoc. Then we evolved.

Launching A SHOC

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Oli Russell-Cowan: What was it like launching A SHOC during the pandemic?

Scot Delorme: I look at it now like it was a blessing and a curse having an incredible national distribution partner. It’s always about distribution. You’ve got to have a great product. We had this access to national distribution overnight, in a category that was so hot that I knew even if we could be the next guys to make a play, we’re gonna go in and take a little piece of that.

So everybody, all the retailers, everyone’s excited now that Dr. Pepper has a play at it. I’m behind it, Lance is behind it. So everybody’s like, we’re gonna put our bets on this one. So pretty much everyone took it.

Overnight we’re in 50,000+ stores the next year. That’s how big of a reach these guys have. Then all of a sudden, March 1st hits and the world shuts down and you’re sitting on all these shelves.

People don’t know your brand. And knowing how you start brands, the best way to start brand is you make it cool, people find out about it, the next guy finds out about it goes from being a cool California brand to Texas and you build that story.

Whereas we had overnight distribution but didn’t really have all the marketing assets. The biggest challenge of launching this brand has been how do I make a really cool brand organic growth, you build the story. 

The brand story is what people buy into. They want to be a part of the brand and the product has to be good and tastes good.

Building the Brand

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Oli Russell-Cowan: Did you try and sell direct to consumer?

Scot Delorme: 100%. We had a little business on Amazon, but we weren’t really set up for that direct to consumer. We weathered the storm really over those couple of years. I will say what has been good for us during that time, 

I feel like we’ve gotten the brand tuned up.

And you always do that I think in any beverage you’re always fine tuning. The early couple years I think not necessarily flavours but packaging more so and I think for us one of the biggest things is we ended up changed from Adrenaline Shoc to ASHOC.

Watch the Scot Delorme Episode on Rad Season’s YouTube channel or Facebook Page.

You can also follow what A SHOC are up to on Instagram on ashocenergy