Red Bull launched in 1987. Monster followed in 2002. Between them they built the modern energy drink category, and they built it talking to basically one customer: young men, thirty years of motocross, skateboarding, gaming, and UFC sponsorships. It worked. Monster still pulls more than 60 percent of its revenue from men 18 to 34.
That same number is the whole story. Thirty years of talking almost exclusively to one half of the market means the other half spent thirty years looking at the category and concluding, correctly, that it was not built for them. Two women looked at that gap and walked straight into it, with two different playbooks, and both worked.
The same numbers, walked through on camera.
Why Red Bull and Monster left half the market on the table, and exactly how two women built billion-dollar outcomes walking straight into it.
What did Alani Nu actually do?
Fitness trainer Katy Hearn launched Alani Nu in 2018. Same category, same basic caffeine mechanics as Red Bull and Monster, built for the customer nobody in the category was really talking to. Different flavors, different can design, different everything, and her audience is reportedly around 90 percent women. Celsius Holdings acquired Alani Nu in a deal reported at 1.8 billion dollars, which closed April 3, 2025, seven years after Hearn started the company.
How did Bloom do it, without a celebrity founder or outside funding?
Mari Llewellyn and Greg LaVecchia started Bloom Nutrition in 2019 selling a greens and superfood powder, built on Llewellyn’s own transformation story. They bootstrapped it to 175 million dollars in revenue in four years before taking any real outside capital. When Bloom launched its own energy drink, Bloom Sparkling Energy, in July 2024, the category reaction was immediate: more than 35 million cans sold in under a year, according to retail data firm Numerator, the most-trialed launch in the history of the energy drink category. By 2025 the beverage line was outselling the greens business that made Bloom famous in the first place.
Neither brand invented anything new. So what was the actual innovation?
The formula was not new. The can format was not new. The caffeine dose was not new. What was new was who the product was built and marketed for. Alani Nu and Bloom did not out-engineer Red Bull and Monster. They looked at exactly who the category leaders had spent decades talking to, and built for everyone else. The innovation was entirely in the positioning.
Is this actually copyable for a business that is not selling energy drinks?
The mechanism is copyable even though the exit numbers are not. Every category has a leader, and every category leader built its position talking to a specific customer, which means every category leader has, by definition, spent years not talking to someone else. The exercise is not “find an underserved niche” in the abstract. It is: name your category’s biggest player, name specifically who they are not talking to, and check whether that audience is actually large enough and reachable enough to build a real business around, before assuming it is. Not every blind spot is a business. Alani Nu and Bloom both did the work to confirm theirs were.
What should a business owner do with this on Monday?
Look at whoever is winning your category right now, and get specific about their customer, not their product. Then ask who is being left out of that picture entirely. Sometimes the answer is nobody, the leader has genuinely covered the market. Often the answer is a whole half of it, quietly buying somewhere else or not buying at all because nothing was built with them in mind. That gap is where positioning work actually starts, before a single ad runs.
“Your competitor’s greatest strength is usually sitting right next to their blind spot.”
How does PELORA think about this for its own clients?
This is the same exercise behind the six-direction positioning work we built using our own brand: typography, color, and audience are not decoration, they are the mechanism that decides who a product is actually for, and who it deliberately is not. Businesses that try to stay appealing to everyone tend to end up essential to no one. The ones that pick a direction, including the customers it costs them, are the ones that build something like what Alani Nu and Bloom built.
Questions about the blind spot strategy
What blind spot did Red Bull and Monster leave open?
Red Bull launched in 1987 and Monster followed in 2002, and both built the modern energy drink category talking almost entirely to one customer: young men, through motocross, skateboarding, gaming, and UFC sponsorships. It worked. Monster still draws more than 60 percent of its revenue from men 18 to 34. But three decades of talking to one half of the market means the other half spent three decades feeling like the category was not built for them.
How did Alani Nu take advantage of it?
Fitness trainer Katy Hearn launched Alani Nu in 2018 in the same category, with the same kind of caffeine, built for the customer nobody in the category was talking to. Different flavors, different can design, a different audience, reportedly around 90 percent women. Celsius Holdings acquired Alani Nu for a reported 1.8 billion dollars, a deal that closed April 3, 2025, seven years after Hearn started the company.
How did Bloom do it differently?
Mari Llewellyn and Greg LaVecchia started Bloom Nutrition in 2019 selling a greens and superfood powder, and bootstrapped it to 175 million dollars in revenue in four years with no outside investment beyond a later 2024 raise from Nutrabolt. When Bloom launched its own energy drink, Bloom Sparkling Energy, in July 2024, it sold more than 35 million cans in under a year, according to retail data firm Numerator, making it the most-trialed launch in energy drink category history. By 2025 the beverage line was outselling the original greens business that made Bloom famous.
Did either brand invent a new product?
No. Neither the caffeine formula nor the can format was new. Both brands used the same basic product mechanics as the category leaders. What was new was who the product was built and marketed for. The innovation was in the positioning, not the formulation.
Is this blind-spot strategy something a small business can actually copy?
The mechanism is copyable even though the exit numbers are not. Any category leader that has spent years talking to one customer profile has, by definition, spent years not talking to everyone else. The exercise is to name specifically who your category’s biggest player is not talking to, and to check whether that audience is large enough and reachable enough to build a real business around before assuming it is.
What does PELORA Marketing actually do?
PELORA Marketing is a creative-first marketing agency in Newport Beach, California, working with clients nationwide. We produce the photography, video, and motion, run the paid media on Google and Meta, build the landing pages the ads point to, and handle search and AI-answer visibility. The through line is that we make the creative and run the media in one team, rather than handing a brief to a separate production vendor.
What does working with PELORA cost?
There are six retainer tiers, from 2,500 dollars a month at Launch to 18,000 dollars and up at Full-Service, plus a one-time 4,500 dollar setup fee on every tier. The minimum is three months, then month to month with 30 days notice. Ad spend is billed to you directly by the platform and is never marked up. Every engagement starts with a free 48-hour Growth Audit.