Beverage start-up Shine+ Drink has won the Small & Succeeding Award at the NSW Telstra Business Awards. We spoke to co-founder Steve Chapman.
I first met Steve Chapman at AUSPACK 2017 in Sydney, on the stand of the company's contract packer, Multipack. At the time, the start-up had launched its first SKU in a brand new functional beverage category – nootropic drinks. Nootropics are a group of ingredients and compounds that have been shown to assist cognitive function and mental clarity, and Chapman and co-founder Dr Sam Prince had developed a 100ml nootropic 'shot' branded shine+. They were listed in 150 retail outlets and Chapman was excited about the future.
With due cause, it turns out. Fast forward to today, Shine+ Drink products are available in multiple SKUs and two sizes, 100ml and 400ml, and are listed in 5000 stores, including Coles, Woolworths, Coles Express, Harris Farm, IGA and Caltex Starmart. When we spoke to him shortly after the award was announced, Chapman said that the company has just launched into 7-Eleven stores with a new Peach & Passionfruit SKU in its 400ml carbonated range.
"Winning the NSW Telstra Award gives us major credibility as a brand. The judging process involved a thorough scrutiny of our business, and the win validates our business model and our marketing strategy," Chapman says.
It's not the company's first accolade either. Shine+ Drink was a finalist in the packaging industry's PIDA awards earlier this year in the Beverage category for its custom tall and thin 400ml bottle which "conjures thoughts of health and wellbeing through bottle shape and the shrink sleeve label design".
It has also won a World Beverage Award for its social corporate give-back programme, Shine for Water. Every bottle of Shine+ sold gives a day’s worth of clean drinking water to someone in need.
Shine+ Drink now goes on to compete in the National Telstra Business awards, to be announced at a gala dinner in Melbourne in November.
