#1 Ovrload

I sat down with Johnny Lye to talk about the numbers of his company, ovrload.

What is ovrload and who is Johnny Lye?

ovrload is a protein supplement business founded by Johnny back in 2022.

They’re a brand willing to take on the big guys in the industry and are currently seeing their highest levels of growth since starting out.

Positioning themselves as the competitor brand to large supplement brands like Myprotein. Johnny has built a loyal following of just under 20,000 followers on Instagram over the past two years. Tackling the challenge of a diluted market full of brands trying to do the same, the messaging of the company has been pivotal to its success so far.

Despite being in such a monopolistic space and knowing the challenges that came with that, Johnny wasn’t phased. He knew that it was important to build something that he was passionate about. If he made protein that he and his friends would enjoy and use consistently, he knew other people had to be the same.

Timeline and numbers

Johnny was interested in entrepreneurship, and although he had secured a place at Durham University, he thought he should give himself a year to make something happen.

“I’m not that interested in drinking, so I wasn’t that interested in going to uni.”

Starting in July 2022, a week after finishing A levels with around £4000 in savings and an £8000 government loan, Johnny spent 9–10 months developing the brand's message on socials and researching the product. Going through prototype products in the lab and figuring out how to make the best protein. He was confident that this was the best way to win over customers from competitors. During this time, ovrload was creating some noise on Instagram. Johnny used this to start off selling branded shakers and t-shirts.

Once creating and marketing their first product through socials ovrload launched their first release in mid-2023. The first release was a clear whey protein, and this sold out in just a couple of weeks. Selling around 1000 units, Johnny was able to generate circa £25,000 in revenue, having had their best month for revenue so far.

At this time, Johnny was still researching to find ovrload’s differentiator. This was when he first came across crealyte and the positive studies behind its impact on training and recovery. He realised that he wanted to create the first creatine-electrolyte blend on the market and got to work. In September 2023, Johnny did a proof-of-concept of his new Crealyte, again selling out in a few weeks.

As a result of their early success, ovrload attracted a handful of angel investors. At the end of 2023, Johnny raised £50,000 in angel investment to fuel their growth.

With the brand finding a product to focus on in 2024 has seen ovrload grow at its fastest rate so far. Since January 2024, revenue has grown 450%, doubling consistently month over month. ovrload is projected to do £1.2 million in revenue in 2024 after only around 6-months of full trading.

Distribution

ovrload has leveraged free distribution channels like social media to amass solid followings and get eyes on the product. Much like Instagram, TikTok's following sits at 28,000, with the top videos hitting almost 2 million views. Johnny mentioned in the early days that they didn’t have the money to run ads. This meant that for them, leveraging free distribution channels was crucial for ovrload to gain their initial traction.

Now, Johnny works with 3–4 agencies to help scale the brand further, nail down their messaging, and take market share from competitors.

Launch

Building the brand on social media allowed Johnny to find early success just selling branded shakers and t-shirts.

He was able to shift around 1000 units within the first 9–10 months of the product development phase. This gave Johnny the capital and further confidence to know ovrload as a brand had the legs to be great.

Lessons so far from building ovrload

Much like a lot of e-commerce brands, dealing with stock issues especially on a budget is hard to navigate. Although it was a nice problem to have Johnny mentioned that one of the main hurdles was being able to fulfil the demand for  orders. Without the stock to meet the sales ovrload was generating, potential revenue was being lost.

“Sometimes it’s frustrating having to leave meat on the bone.”

Alongside this, in the early days, buying enough stock was tricky because of low cash reserves. This meant tightly managing cash flows was very important to keep the business operating. One way he solved this issue was to focus on being as profitable as possible on first purchase. For example, Johnny focused on his relationships with suppliers. In the early days, ovrload had no credibility with suppliers, meaning terms weren’t as favourable as they could be, lead times were longer, and prices were higher. Over time and effort of consistently negotiating terms and prices, each sale was generating more profit for the brand. By doing this, Johnny maximised building up their cash reserves to make sure they wouldn’t have this problem again.

Next steps for ovrload

With the recent boom in growth, Johnny is now hiring to increase the brand's operational efficiency and scale further. There is interest for ovrload to raise more money to eliminate further problems with stock and have the opportunity to scale faster.

Links:

• Johnny’s LinkedIn

• Take a look at ovrload

- Luke

If you own a growing business or know someone who does and wants more eyes on what they’re doing, let’s connect on LinkedIn

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