Since retiring from the National Basketball Association (NBA), Kobe Bryant strives to be the best in the business with an ambitious goal of growing the sports drink company BodyArmor into an ultra-competitive sports drink market. According to CNBC, the former Los Angeles Lakers star aims for the company to become the number-one sports drink in the beverage market by 2025.

Bryant attended the NACS Show 2017, a retail trade show in Chicago, where he met with CEOs of convenience stores and attempted to appeal to the audience for the product.

In 2013, he began to invest in BodyArmor, which publicly revealed plans to challenge PepsiCo's Gatorade and Coca-Cola's Powerade in a competitive market.

Bryant became the third largest shareholder after chipping in millions of dollars in BodyArmor, which was launched by co-founder Mike Repole in 2011. The NBA legend also launched his own company called Kobe Inc.

In addition to Repole and Bryant, Dr. Pepper/Snapple group has purchased an additional stake in BodyArmor as an allied brand. The group has become the second largest shareholder in the company.

Creating healthier product than competition

Five years ago, the five-time NBA champion initiated a business relationship with Repole, one of the most successful food and beverage entrepreneurs who were determined to launch a healthier product for customers in sports nutrition and hydration than the competition.

BodyArmor is now obsessed with developing a better, more effective product for customers as well as athletes.

Repole, a Queens, New York native, was a co-founder of Vitaminwater and SmartWater, and in 2007, both brands were sold to Coca-Cola for $4.2 billion. He departed the company but came back when he discerned a possibility of launching a healthy sports drink business and creating a new drink product.

"I watched sports evolve from equipment to training to uniforms, and the same sports drink from 1965 is still the drink that people are going to," Repole told CNBC.com Thursday. "We created a better-for-you sports drink - natural ingredients, potassium-packed electrolytes, coconut water, vitamins."

In Bryant's endorsement portfolio, he was a spokesman for Sprite, which is owned by Coca-Cola, one of the most popular and biggest-selling soft drink products in the world, but the idea of establishing a startup suits him.

Maintaining a recognizable brand through storytelling

In the business world, Bryant embraces the challenge to be more than just an athlete endorser. Being an investor in BodyArmor, he has taken over as a creative director and narrator of BodyArmor's advertising campaign with a mission to deliver and communicate the product to the mass audience. He said, according to Fox Business, that he enjoys being a storyteller in a unique way.

"As an investor in BodyArmor, this is the additional value I bring to the brand," Bryant told Fox Business Network six months ago. "I'm able to provide a creative voice -- as an athlete -- to give the product an authentic and credible voice."

BodyArmor and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) forged a sponsorship deal as a part of marketing strategy to urge consumers to engage with the drink, Bloomberg reported early this month.

As a part of the pact, which begins in 2018, the brand will be advertised on the UFC website as well as social media channels, and inside the UFC's world-famous Octagon.

BodyArmor has long way to go to challenge competitors

According to market research firm Euromonitor International, Gatorade and Powerade dominate more than 90 percent of the United States sports drink market. According to Nielsen, Gatorade holds 78 percent market share, while Powerade holds 19 percent. BodyArmor possesses 3 percent share of the market. Repole anticipates the company will reach 5 percent market share by the end of 2017.

Over the first year of 2016, BodyArmor generated $1 million in sales and is pursuing a target of $200 million this year, Repole noted.

While BodyArmor is the fastest-growing sports drink brand in the market, the company still has a long way to go to reach the top. According to the firm, by comparison, Gatorade sales totaled $6 billion at retail last year, while Powerade sales tallied $1.4 billion.

Bryant took time to tweet to advertise his own product after PepsiCo announced early this month that the company's sales slowed down amid weaker demand for Gatorade.

BodyArmor items found in convenience stores, grocery chains, and sports clubs.

World-class athletes are BodyArmor endorsers and equity partners, including James Harden, Dustin Johnson, Dez Bryant, Richard Sherman, among others. In 2015, BodyArmor signed a multiyear deal to serve the Los Angeles Angels as the official sports drink. The company now plans to work on finding more consumers.
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