Hey Team,
If you visit our site, social and other public domains this week, you’ll see a ton centered around our two private label lines,
Signature and
Elite.
Not everyone realizes that here at Bodybuilding.com, we create our own in-house formulations and lines. In fact, we have a few talented employees whose time here is dedicated to creating new products that are made to fuel your journey to optimal performance and wellbeing.
In celebration of BBCOM week, I thought I’d take you on a journey of just how we brought our most recent line, Elite, to life, and a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into launching something new.
Let’s dive into the deep end 🤿
Part l: Ideation
After the successful
evolution of Signature, we knew it was time to bring an elevated product geared towards our performance-based customers. While we pride ourselves on providing tools for all levels of fitness, the time had come to take things one step further.
Our private-label team put their heads together to make this our most researched and tested line to date, including trademarked ingredients and Informed Sport Certifications. This allows us to confidently provide our product to athletes who may undergo banned substance testing or those who want nothing short of the best for their bodies.
Elite by Bodybuilding.com features products for the pre, intra and post workout phases, but includes a few stealthy supplements that can be used throughout your work day.
Once we understood the type of product and key customer demographics, it was time to formulate the ideal blends to match their lifestyle.
Part ll: Formulation
Formulation is an art form. With the abundance of ingredients and pairings available to us today, it’s more important than ever to understand precisely what you’re looking for in the finalized product. Here’s what makes Elite products so unique:
Elite Ultimate Pre-Workout: This pre-workout contains 300mg of caffeine, 450mg of PEAK ATP®, and 1,000mg of GlycerSize™ to give you the energy to crush your next workout.
Elite Ultimate Stim-Free Pre: Designed to help prime your body and mind before your toughest workouts without flooding your system with extra stimulants. This formulation used the available scientific literature to give you an effective dose of six proven performance boosting ingredients without the caffeine.
Elite Energy + BCAA: The 75mg of caffeine in this supplement comes from the plant camellia sinensis, which is commonly used to make tea. Caffeine has been scientifically proven to boost your aerobic and anaerobic performance by increasing your muscular endurance, power output, high-intensity interval training, and resistance to fatigue. Don’t get it twisted, this supplement is great for all day focus too.
Elite Thermo + BCAA: This formulation provides you with several ingredients to enhance your exercise performance including 5,000 mg of Micronized BCAA, 1,500 mg of Carnipure™, 250 mg of MitoBurn®, 150 mg of natural caffeine, so that you can burn as many calories as possible.
Elite Power + BCAA: Designed to help improve your power output, reduce your muscle fatigue, and increase your strength during the toughest workouts. It contains 1,600 mg of Betaine Anhydrous, 1,600 mg of CarnoSyn® Beta-Alanine, 750 mg of Con-Cret® (Creatine Hydrochloride), 150 mg of elevATP® to support muscle recovery and growth.
Elite Advanced TEST: This testosterone support product stands above many commercial sports nutrition products that are potentially contaminated with banned substances or dangerous chemicals. It contains 600 mg Ashwagandha, 600mg Fenugreek, and 470 mg ZMA, all of which can help reduce stress and anxiety, improve cardiovascular endurance, and can help increase natural testosterone levels.
In layman's terms, these formulations are some of the best on the market. Humble brag.
Part lll: Creation & Execution
I may be biased, but this is where we get to have some fun. Once the formulations are locked in, our creative team gets to work on branding. This is where we bring a product to life.
Step 1: Create a Mood Board Knowing the type of customer we’re aiming to befriend with this line, it’s time to shut the phone off, blast some music, and dive into what is essentially a digital brainstorming session.
We pull colors, images, ads, other brand inspo and audio tracks to fully encompass the essence that reflects the demo and piece together a presentation. It’s a part of the process where we throw everything from our brains into a collective board of visuals with type treatments, taglines, brand statements and messaging, i.e. THE VIBE.
A few generalized options are presented to the larger team and we collectively design which direction to move forward with.
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Step 2: Creative Exploration Once we’re aligned on general look and feel, we’ll work with our designers to elevate the mood board into a concept board. Multiple sketches, color palettes, first stabs at icons, etc. Multiple concepts will be constructed, upwards to 5-6 different themes before ultimately deciding on which one to mold into a mocked product.
Step 3: Version 1 (V1’s) Mock-up(s) Once we understand the concept, we brief our label designer so they can move into further expansion by placing the visual concept onto products. They’ll create multiple sets with different icons, logos, pairing of colors, label layouts, and more.
We’ll begin to piece together the most aligned details from each set before moving into formal mock-ups. Perhaps a type treatment from concept E, the layout from concept B, the colors from concept A, etc.
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Step 4: Version 2 (V2’s) Mock-up(s) We begin to build out an entire mocked line to envision the line grouped as a family. Our goal is to accomplish a cohesive yet distinct look for each specific product. With Elite, we differentiated by category, assigning bolt yellow to Pre to represent electricity, orange to BCAA to reflect on refreshing elements of citrus, and red for TEST to mirror blood pumping qualities.
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Step 5: Export and Expand Once the final labels, logos, and color panels are locked in, we send the designs to the manufacturer, but we’ve still got our work cut out for us. It’s time to dig in to create marketing assets that will tell the story of this brand. Messaging, ads, studio photoshoots, lifestyle photoshoots, user generated content from athletes, ingredient breakdown articles and more. Once the line is launched, you’ll likely find the team catching a few extra ZZZ’s.
The best part of the process? Opening a package to discover the product you helped jolt to life. Be a part of our story by shopping for the
full family of products.
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There you have it. An exclusive look into how we bring a brand to life here at Bodybuilding.com. Be on the lookout for exciting expansions and the debut of multiple new BBcom lines coming this fall.
Until next week. 👋
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Danielle Bitts
VP of Brand, Bodybuilding.com 
