Celsius Holdings Inc (CELH)

[Toxic Avenger]

Personally I think the problem was trying to build a national distribution without anywhere near enough money. It's great to be in 40k retail locations covering gas stations to health clubs to supermarkets to Walmart, but if you have no money for a national ad budget and have to bear the cost of being all over the country and in multiple niches with very different customer bases, it would take a Coke or Pepsi to make it work, at best.

Add to that a constantly evolving product line and you have the recipe for disaster that unfolded.

IMHO, the company had its best shot going the Gatorade, Energy Drink, Natural Soda route of building up a small and loyal base, then expanding along one axis (geographically, customer-type or retailer size) and building until the one axis was profitable. Then moving along the other axises.

Unfortunately, I agree that it may well be too late now.