Badger Max is dead. The briefly popular sports drink, which had promised to bring in big bucks to the UW-Madison athletic department, is no longer being produced, a top athletic department official said Tuesday.
The university made just $12,000 in a year and a half, a fraction of what it had hoped for. The National W Club, which put up the seed money, broke even. And the former UW official who dreamed up the idea? He says he lost money on Badger Max.
``I think what we found was our best business was preparing sports...not preparing sports drinks,'' said Al Fish, the athletic department's administrative officer.
Makers of Badger Max had hoped fan loyalty would propel the drink ahead of its heavy-hitting competitors, including Gatorade. But the public just didn't buy it. Literally.
``We just felt there really wasn't enough consumer response to keep it going,'' said Steve Frank, president of Frank Beverage Distribution, the main distributor of Badger Max. ``People weren't buying enough of it.''
Frank said he no longer has any Badger Max in his Middleton warehouse. Some of it can be found in Madison-area grocery stores, but most convenience stores are out, Frank said.
Launched in spring 1994 in the afterglow of the Badgers' Rose Bowl victory, Badger Max at first ``just flew off the shelves,'' said David Ellis, a former UW athletic department official now at the University of Nebraska.
That created the first problem. The Iowa company that mixed and bottled Badger Max couldn't get enough plastic containers to keep up with demand, so it switched to glass bottles. Strike one.
``Suddenly, the glass was sitting there collecting dust. We looked like the old-fashioned brand,'' said Ellis, who is now coordinator for performance nutrition at Nebraska.
Strike two came when Ellis and the UW overestimated Badger fan loyalty. Ellis said sales of the drink were good in Dane and Rock counties but dropped off the farther outside of Madison it went.
And with no advertising budget to speak of, Ellis said, it was tough to compete with the international companies that market sports drinks, including Quaker Oats Co., which makes No. 1 seller Gatorade; PepsiCo Inc., which makes All Sport; or PowerAde, made by Coca-Cola.
``What seemed like a sure bet (fan loyalty) just didn't net out,'' Ellis said.
``Even if you've got the best idea, a better product and a decent priceyou still need to aggressively sell yourself,'' he added.
Strike three came in the form of the harsh financial realities of the business world. Large companies can afford to pay the ``slotting fees'' -- either money or free merchandise -- to get products onto store shelves.
Ellis said his company, Sports Alliance Inc., didn't have the ``six figures'' it would've taken to put Badger Max onto the store shelves in 1996. Badger Max never even made it into Milwaukee -- the state's largest market -- because the slotting fees were too high, he said.
It is possible Badger Max may be revived at some point, Fish said, since the UW continues to own the trade name and label.
But it won't be the same drink. Ellis owns the formulation and says he has no plans to distribute it outside of the few dozen universities that use the Badger Max formula -- under the trade name of Energy Mix -- for their athletes.
``I guess we were all a little bit naive. It's really kind of a jungle in there,'' Ellis said, referring to retail stores. ``It's hard for the little guys to make it.''
