Daniel Cray racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles working on sports advertising campaigns in his native Melbourne, Australia.
He’d be at an airport every month and it was on “a long-haul flight to London that left me feeling rubbish” that he came up with his idea for Phizz.
“I noticed the massive impact of putting your body through a flight; losing a litre of water every five hours onboard,” says Cray, now 34 and living in Bermondsey.
“It was a stark reminder of how dehydration depletes our energy, focus and overall health.” His concept was for a fizzy tablet full of vitamins and minerals that’s added to water to hydrate the body.
At the time, in 2014, Cray’s boss in Australia had just given him the go-ahead to spin off his own start-up, using spare media space to champion artists from around the country.
“That was on the Friday — then I came in on Monday morning and sheepishly said to my boss, ‘scrap that project, I’m moving to London.’”
Cray flew here the following year with two co-founders, Rory Simmance-Freemantle and Jon Knight (one a childhood friend, the other a work contact); they had all quit their jobs and cobbled together £50,000 of savings between them: “that was everything we had — so we really needed Phizz to work, and to have something to sell, and fast.”
They chose London because of “the size of the market, the UK’s connection to the rest of the world and Europe, and the fact that more people fly in and out of Heathrow than live in Australia”.
Cray brought in neuroscientist Paul Anastasiades as another co-founder. “He took the concept of a multivitamin and electrolytes and helped us collate the ingredients so the hydration part is really effective.”
The team spent nine months working with a Swiss R&D laboratory to refine a tablet that tasted good, worked, and had natural ingredients. Away from the lab, the founders honed their brand: “we were looking to disrupt an outdated category — effervescent vitamins, where Berocca was the category leader — with a blend of science and creativity.”
Over the past eight years, they have grown Phizz to £2.6 million revenues — but not without drama. “We’ve had our fair share of ‘what the hell do we do now’ moments,” Cray admits.
“Arriving at our warehouse to see our first pallets of products arrive, it felt like Christmas morning we were so excited — but the 100,000 tubes all had the wrong coloured caps. Almost our entire investment was tied up in that production, but thankfully, our Swiss laboratory covered the cost to replace them.” Sales took off when a newspaper touted Phizz’s first orange flavour as a “miracle hangover cure”.
“The Shopify app makes a ‘kerching’ noise when you have a sale, and before the article came out, it would fire off a few times a day, but then my phone just started blowing up — we did 5,000 orders in three hours. We didn’t sleep for two days just packing up orders — the flat we founders shared looked like Santa’s workshop.”
Phizz targeted airlines, hotels, and professional sports teams, and Emirates Airline signed a £100,000 order to offer tubes of Phizz tablets to its First Class passengers in 2016.
“I’ve never been offered it on board,” Cray laughs, “because whilst Phizz flies at the front I fly at the back of a plane.”
Today, B2B orders bring in less than 10% of turnover, but customers include big names such as members of Arsenal and Liverpool football clubs, the West Indies and South African cricket teams, and the Saracens rugby squad. Phizz went out to fundraise in late 2019, when sales were about £250,000, and secured backing from a Middle Eastern family.
“We’ve grown the business by 900% post-raise, and are in profitable growth,” Cray says. There are now five flavours, including a caffeinated cherry one, with tubes on sale in Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Boots — although Cray is constantly checking for rivals: “when you have something special but lack the big bucks, the thought of someone swooping in can be nerve-wracking. We turned down interest from Dragons’ Den a few times because of this fear.”
His first two co-founders have stepped down from day-to-day roles, over health issues and another career opportunity: “they remain on our board, but not having them by my side daily has been a challenging adjustment,” Cray says.
Phizz is already available via Amazon Europe, but Cray wants to expand further abroad, and faster. “We’re in profitable momentum, revolutionising hydration habits — there’s no ceiling as to what we want to achieve.”
