AI for Prototyping, Humans for Launch: Hyperice's Playbook

0:00Hyperice is a company that started 12 years ago now and the first product was developed for Kobe Bryant. Hyperice is in honor of the Hyperdunks, which were Kobe Bryant's shoes. We are the leading recovery technology company in the world and we partner with the NBA, NFL, NLB, PGA, UFC, pretty much every professional league in the world. And we help athletes perform at their best when it matters the most. In terms of marketing for Hyperice, what has been, for example, the biggest challenge in building what I believe is now a global brand since you've partnered with all these different leagues of different sports?

0:33The product is the marketing. We try to make the best products in the world for the best athletes in the world and let the results speak for themselves. The challenge, I would say, has been translating that to the general public. But if a product is useful enough for the most demanding athletes in the world, they can definitely understand what the product can do for themselves and how they can benefit from them.

1:01Hey, everybody. Thank you for listening. My name is Andres Vieira, and I'm going to be your host for the day. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Company, helping fast-growing teams hire exceptional remote talent from Argentina, South Africa, and beyond. We make sure to connect companies with world-class professionals who bring skill, reliability, and global perspective to every role. And just for our listeners, we're offering an exclusive 10 % discount on your first hire. All you need to do is visit GlobalTalent.co, click Start Hiring, and mention the podcast listener discount that we get in touch.

1:34And today with me here, I'm speaking with Andres Jimeno Saldana, the Director of Growth Marketing at Hyperice, a company whose mission is to help everyone on Earth move better, live better, and be better. So, Andres, how's it going? Welcome to the episode. It's a pleasure to have you here. Hi, Andres. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. No problem at all, man. No problem at all. I must say that when I started to do the whole investigation about you guys and just learning about Hyperice, I must say I got really excited for this episode just because I want to give you also the chance to give the audience some context as to what Hyperice is in your own words and a little bit of your background.

2:13So Hyperice is a performance technology company. We create products to help athletes and everyday people to recover faster, warm up and feel better, move better in general, so they can practice sports in a more enjoyable way, but also move better on their everyday life. From what I saw, Andres, is it too that you guys are partnered with the Super Bowl for this year? Not this year. Well, we've been partners with the NFL for many years, and the Super Bowl has been the largest event in the NFL every year. So we've been partners with them for a long time, and we've been in the Super Bowl. But we are in the sidelines of every single NFL game with our products.

3:05Wow, wow. Yeah. And like when I when I started to look at the whole page and everything, I saw that you guys even have like a partnership with Nike. And there's this whole boot you guys sell that helps. Well, I'll let you explain better what it does, because I am not completely sure. Yeah. So I can give you a little more context before we get into that. Hyperice is a company that started about 12 years ago now. And the first product was developed for Kobe Bryant, our founder. saw Kobe Bryant practicing in the off-season in Irvine, and he saw that he was icing his knees with the ice packs, you know, the regular transparent plastic bag with a surround wrap, and that was leaking everywhere.

3:47It wasn't very convenient, and he thought that he could make a better product. So Anthony developed that product and showed Kobe, and Kobe loved it and decided that he would wear that on the sidelines of the games. so the first name or the name of the hyper ice it's in honor of uh the hyper dunks which were kobe bryant's shoes wow fast forward 12 years now and we are the leading uh recovery technology company in the world and we partner with the nba nfl mlb bga ufc uh pretty much every professional league in the world and we help athletes perform at their best when it matters the most. Okay. Okay.

4:35Yeah. And last year in April, we announced the Hyperboot partnership. So the Nike and Hyperice partnership to launch the Hyperboot ahead of the Paris Olympic Games. We presented the product in the Olympics for a very limited edition just for the Nike athletes there. And it was very cool to see how some of these athletes were using the shoe right before they were competing on their events. And this year, we launched the shoe to the mass market, and it's been a great success so far. I'm actually wearing it right now. And it's been very exciting. Wow. And could you be a little bit more specific as to what the Hyperboot exactly does?

5:24That's the one you guys are also selling to the general market, right? Yeah. So the Hyperboot is the first recovery shoe in the market. It has the Normatec technology that we have on our Normatec pants, compression pants. So it does a lymphatic drainage of your feet to improve circulation, reduce inflammation, and also it has heat. So it helps athletes warm up and get their feet, ankles, Achilles tendons ready for performance ahead of their games, their races, or activity. And this isn't a shoe that you would wear to just go out and take a short walk or go to buy something at the supermarket. It's mainly to have it for those specific moments before you start your game or you start playing or afterwards when you need the recovery, right?

6:18Yeah, I mean, you could walk with it. It's not designed for long walks. It's more designed for when you're traveling, when you're getting ready for your games. A lot of professional athletes use them on the bus, going to the stadium, on the planes, so their feet don't get swollen. and right after a game so they're ready for for the next competition oh my goodness i think i need one of those because i get my feet swollen when i go on a plane all the time man in terms of marketing for hyper ice what has been for example the biggest challenge in building what i believe is now a global brand since you partner with all these different leagues of different sports and how has what has been a challenge in building this in as a global brand in sports and wellness space yeah so for as a hyperize uh the marketing strategy is uh very simple uh the product is the marketing we try to make the best products in the world for the best athletes in the world and let the results speak for themselves the challenge outside has been translating that to the general public uh products that uh professional athletes use can sometimes feel intimidating for the general public.

7:35But if a product is useful enough for the most demanding athletes in the world, they can definitely help and benefit the everyday person that wants to just to take better help, better care of their health and feel better. So I would say our main focus is on education, helping the consumer understand what the product can do for themselves and how they can benefit from them. What you guys are selling and the way your products are created, I do feel that it's more tailored to a premium public and it has a premium price, right? It's not just like it's an accessible shoe that anybody could buy. Yeah, no, absolutely.

8:16We make premium products. We don't compromise quality over price. We are trying to develop products for the best athletes in the world and also then scale them for the everyday person, everyday public. So our products are high quality, very premium, and they perform very well, but that obviously comes at a cost. What we do try to do is reduce friction, maybe not by discounting, but by allowing flexible payments or for example in the US all our products are FSA to say eligible so you can purchase them through your insurance. In terms of the marketing you guys have had I imagine and from what I hear and I believe it's that when in terms of marketing to elite athletes when Hyperice has their ad in the game they're playing or they see somebody like Kobe Bryant wearing that wore those at the sidelines then they're like hmm what is that i'd love to i love to use those i love to understand what it is and then the product sells itself because it actually works but for the um what's it called but for the everyday people and the general public do you have an example of a campaign that you guys have used or or created that has worked and led to conversions with the general public yeah so so we use the professional athletes in their games to generate brand authority and the credibility that our products work but then we work with a ton of creators in different areas to create content ugc content that resonates more with the general public so we'll work with nurses firefighters weekend warriors amateur athletes and anybody in between that can closely relate to the end consumer to generate this content that can educate and show the benefits of an everyday person like it could be you and me that can benefit from these products.

10:28Because we understand that the lives of the professional athletes are very far away from the everyday consumer from us and we can connect more with somebody that just plays pickup basketball on the weekends or runs just for fun or goes to the gym. So we create a lot of UGC content and we run that. And that has been super successful for us. Wow. Okay. Okay. I understand. Yeah. And user-generated content is a way to bring the eliteness of the product, make it a bit less, and that way make sure the public understands that, yeah, you can use it after a pickup game. You can use it even after going to play golf with your friends.

11:11But in terms of age and what you do, it might be necessary and it will surely be helpful. That's what people need to know. And, Andres, from what I was, when I looked at your Hyperice's website, I did feel that the main focus in the area of the body that you guys help restore is lower body, right? You don't have like Normatech for shoulders or for the elbows or stuff like that. So the Normatech is a very interesting story. Normatech was originally created as an oncology product. The doctor that invented Normatech was an oncology doctor that realized that cancer patients had lymphedema. So they had liquid retention problems on their extremities, both legs and arms.

11:57and she created, developed the NormaTech, which does a lymphatic drainage of the extremities, which are the parts of the body with the worst circulation. Okay. And she created that for the legs and for the arms. So there is a NormaTech for the arms. You can see it's for the whole arm, as well as we have the ones for the whole legs and the hips. for the neurotech technology's objective is to act as a second heart and help the extremities get rid of toxins and human waste from activity and also from accelerating the way that the body works naturally. And in terms of, Andres, competition, do you guys feel that you have to compete in the market a lot or are you already placed as the best product there is so the competition is practically none?

12:56There are competitors, but we don't see them. We're always going to be the leading innovators, so we're not too concerned about the people that are following us. There are more followers than competitors to us. We are always trying to break the limits of how an athlete can recover faster, warm up better, or perform better in their sport. And a lot of these other brands are just trying to follow and make a quick buck. So, yeah, there is competition in the industry, but that's because it's such an industry that's growing so much as a whole. The wellness, health and wellness industry is exploding right now.

13:45I think we're right at the beginning, and everybody is trying to take better care of themselves, watch what they eat, do more sport. So it's an exciting time. Oh, yeah, I totally agree with you because I've seen about, I want to say, one or two years it's been since people really started to get into fitness, into lifestyle and wellness. And after getting so into fitness, the next logical step is getting into recovery because if not, you can't get even more fit. So I do agree with how you read the room and how it's going because I feel it too. And Andres, in terms of Hyperice, then how big is the company?

14:27How big are you guys? Because I feel you must be huge because of so many sports, athletes, leagues, and different industries that you help out to recover. So would you be able to shed a bit more light about that? Yeah, the company itself in headcount is very small. We're barely over 100 employees worldwide, but we are very efficient and we rely on some very trustworthy partners to help us in some areas of the business. And is HyperEyes a remote first company or are you guys all based somewhere and work together in an office? We do have two offices, one in Irvine, California, and another one in Boston, in Massachusetts, in the East Coast.

15:15And everyone else is remote. So we have the two U.S. offices and then remote employees all over the world. And I also wanted to know, because after I ask about Teams and how big the company is, then I go to the most trending topic of the moment, and that is AI. And would you be able to tell us a bit more about how you guys are leveraging AI nowadays? Yeah, obviously, being a small team, we need to be super efficient. And AI is a great tool to allow to supercharge our teams and do more things better and faster. We don't use AI as an end product for anything. You will not see anything AI created released to the market in any scope.

16:04So no creative, no nothing. But we do use AI to help prototype faster or to help bring to concept ideas or brainstorm different ideas. Sometimes in the past, doing a mood board for a photo shoot would take a long time. And now with a few prompts, you can translate an idea to the creative team much faster. We're able to identify insights from each different market. The biggest challenge of being a small team in a global expansion is that each different market is at a very different stage. and also they're very different culturally. So we need to be able to identify what resonates in each country and to be able to connect better to the end consumer.

17:05I love that. And do you have, for example, do you have any example of that difference that you're mentioning, Andres, between cultures and countries that you've marketed to and what resonates with each one? Do you have any off the top of your head? I have an anecdote that I can talk to. about is when we were expanding into the eastern europe we launched a a new website it was a very nice looking and everything but we saw that the it wasn't performing very well at first and then we doing some research with the with our local team there we realized that the main payment method that this region was used to using was paid on delivery.

17:53And that was something that we would have never even thought. In the U.S. or in Europe, we don't use pay on delivery. We use credit card. They receive the product, and once it's in their hands in their house, they pay there. And most of the time, they pay in cash to the delivery company, and then the delivery company pays us. Okay. That was something that culturally we hadn't even thought. But then when we realized that and we added that payment method, the sales exploded in that region. Okay. That is very interesting. I did not know that either. In Eastern Europe, it's where this is the most common.

18:30Yeah. Also in Southeast Asia is also very common. Okay. In terms of, Andres, the present day right now, what would you say in your marketing mix in terms of the UGC content that you guys are creating? which is the best channel that's working for you guys right now to generate and convert consumers from the general public? Because I understand elite athletes and how the higher ups work. But for the general public, what is working best right now? Yeah. So for UGC content, we do a lot of meta ads. Obviously, we've done some TikTok as well. Pinterest is something interesting that we've been testing.

19:11and and then amazon uh ads recently launched some new formats where uh ugc content makes sense as well and we've been testing that with good results the types of users you create you mentioned that then you could be using an influencer that is very useful and has a lot of what's it called has a lot of content about pickup games or you could be using an amateur runner do you guys have a certain sport that you feel the consumers are buying the hyper ice products for the most or is it just more general and everybody's using it everybody can benefit from from our products but it's true that there is uh endurance sports can really see the benefits right away from uh from our products because their sessions training sessions are so intense so iron man triathlon cycling, long distance running.

20:09These athletes can really see the benefits from day one. And that's also why we've been focusing when we activate in events, we've been focusing on marathons, we've been focusing on running events, triathlons, Ironman. These endurance athletes go through very intense sessions of training and we can help them recover faster so they can get into their next session and andres okay um we've talked about where hyper ice came from we've talked about present day channels that you're using and what's working the most and and how sales are being converted um would you be able to also give us a bit of insight in regards to in terms of marketing what your number one priority would be for the next 12 months like for hyper ice in 2026 what is it that you guys are most interested or most set on accomplishing from the product side we're going to continue innovating and launching new products we launched five product finding five new products this year we'll launch more next year and what we want to continue doing and i think we've been doing a great job uh in the past few years is uh educating a consumer uh about the benefits of our products and how they can help them.

21:29When you teach a consumer something and they really understand the benefits, that's very sticky and the consumer ends to stay with you for a very long time. So educating consumer on products. And since we're doing a global expansion right now, we're in the middle of a very intense global expansion, localizing the content and the message to each region and each culture. So it resonates the most with each entity. And in your global expansion, Andres, do you have a set number of how many countries you're trying to expand to or that you are currently expanding to right now? We are currently present in about 65 countries.

22:15Probably next year will be closer to 75. but we're now in the middle of growing these regions more than opening new countries, if that makes sense. We want to develop and settle down in the countries that we are present instead of opening new territories. Is Argentina in those plans? I'm asking for a consumer here that just wants to know. Argentina, we are currently present in Argentina and hopefully we can, maybe with your help, we can grow even more there. Oh my goodness. Yes, please let me know. It's like you have all these soccer teams here that would love to use Hyperice. I'm so sure. Like, oh my goodness.

23:00If you're able to put one of those boots on somebody for the Boca Juniors or River Plate or something like that, I bet it would actually really stick here in this culture. It would be crazy. We've worked with quite a few soccer players from the Argentinian national team. Nice. Now, I wouldn't expect any less. I wouldn't expect any less because I feel you guys are very, what's it called? Like you already have your brand very set up and you're recognized and really have been able to place yourselves in this premium area of the products that you offer. And people understand that what you guys are doing, what you're selling is actually worth what it costs.

23:36Because sometimes with premium products, I see that they may inflate the price a bit more just to make it feel more premium. but um from looking at you guys's website at what the products you do and the technology you have i feel it's crazy it's like a real game changer for somebody that really has um their mindset of recovering properly to be able to get better at fitness oh and andres i noticed that we're almost at time but i did want to give you the moment before we finalize the episode um to let us know uh first of all how anybody who's listening to the podcast right now if If they're interested in Hyperice and what you guys offer or if they even just want to make sure to investigate a bit more to see if they want to purchase your products, where can they find out more information and through what platforms or through what marketplaces would they be able to buy your products?

24:30We are. Obviously, Hyperice.com is a great resource of information, but also we're very active on social media, Instagram, LinkedIn, if they want to find more information. If they want to reach out to me through LinkedIn, welcome to do that. And we're present in most marketplaces around the world. So Amazon is also a great place to buy our products, Best Buy, and many others around the world. So yeah, highprice.com, LinkedIn, social media, give us a follow, and we show great content. Amazing. I'm certain that at least you guys will have one new follower today, which will be me as soon as this call ends, because I loved everything that you guys stand for.

25:24I believe so much in your product. I kind of knew it from before, but today is when I have actually understood where it comes from and what you guys do. So really appreciate your time, Andres. And to anybody here that was hearing, you have heard it here first. Just go to hyperize.com to learn more. Or maybe you can just look up Andres via LinkedIn or even just follow the company through their socials and in the different platforms. That way you'll be able to get more info. But Andres, it really has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for hopping on the episode with us. It really has been super interesting.

25:58It's been great. Thanks, Andres. Thanks for having me. And to everybody that was listening, thank you so much for being on this episode with us, for hearing us out and learning about the new companies we bring on. And hopefully you'll return to also keep learning about the different personalities that we speak to. So without further ado, thank you so much.