DNA Brands Inc (DNAX)

[Ed the Trader]

"Relying on the distributor to do the work for them is one of the main reasons why they're in their current predicament."

Yes, this was a very big problem. Distributors distribute product to retail stores... period. They generally do not have advertising budgets to support marketing. They expect either the manufacturer or the retail stores to do the advertising.

I can tell you that DNA was in over 100 Quik Trip stores in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. That is the fourth largest metro area in the country and there was the potential for enough sales in that one metro area to sustain and even grow the company and DNA blew the opportunity.

There was ZERO advertising. I talked to Quik Trip store personnel in roughly ten different stores and most did not even know that DNA was in their store. The checkout counter was a mere 15 feet away from cans of DNA sitting in a cooler and they did not realize their store sells the product!

If store personnel don't even know about it, how do you think that consumers were going to know about it?!?

DNA was sitting in a golden situation where sales could have skyrocketed. Just some simple advertising on the cooler windows and some product giveaways at local college campuses to build product awareness could have turned DNA into a prosperous company.

Instead, they got the distributor to put new product on the shelf once a week and they let it sit there with no advertising support... NONE!

After something like 9 months of this sorry situation, DNA was pulled from Quik Trip stores and replaced with another energy drink that no one will recognize.

I cannot stress what a wasted opportunity this was and how rare such opportunities are. In this part of the country, Quik Trip is just as popular as 7-11 and DNA had managed to get their product placed in all of the Quik Trip stores!

Because DNA will now be seen as a failed product, you can pretty much count on the fact that DNA will not be back in any of the major convenience stores in the area again until DNA first has a proven sales record elsewhere.