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the Joshua Schall Audio ExperienceAuthor: Joshua Schall
Welcome to the Joshua Schall Audio Experience On my podcast, youll hear episodes of my popular short-form Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) news segment "Consumed", a long-form CPG entrepreneurship interview segment "Formula For:", deeper dive segments "Deep Dish CPG", public speaking engagements, and any of my new and current thoughts that I record specifically for this audio experience! Leave a review on iTunes and let me know what you think! Language: en Genres: Business Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Can Cizzle Brands Avoid History Repeating Itself? | Flow Beverage Acquisition
Tuesday, 30 December, 2025
Business history repeats itself…first as tragedy, second as farce. But for the sake of Cizzle Brands' future, let’s hope lessons were learned the first time! While the company is managed as a single operating segment, Cizzle Brands started with a flagship brand CWENCH Hydration. Then, in January 2025…Cizzle Brands launched SPOKEN Nutrition, an NSF Certified for Sport line of athlete-grade sports nutrition products. Next, the company entered the functional foods segment this past September…launching a high-protein product called Sport Pasta under the HappiEats brand. And over the trailing twelve months, Cizzle Brands reported generating revenue of slightly above $10 million. And while most will likely recognize that Cizzle Brands is (at least currently) a much smaller active nutrition company compared to typical categorical competitors highlighted within my content pieces...purely judging the edutainment value of this business story based on the current level of Cizzle Brands revenue generation would undoubtedly show your ignorance surrounding last year’s “reverse takeover transaction” examination. Though, beyond the seemingly intentional (yet) eerily similar growth strategies of BioSteel and CWENCH…it’s a recent M&A transaction that really has me questioning if we’re in some kind of business wash cycle right now! And that’s because on Christmas Eve, Cizzle Brands announced that it had completed the acquisition of Flow Beverage for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $61 million. But while John Celenza isn’t (technically) purchasing that same company (or even facility) twice, the M&A strategic rationale is quite similar. According to Cizzle Brands, the acquisition secures in-house manufacturing capacity for CWENCH, materially reducing cost of goods sold as volumes scale while improving production control and reliability. Additionally, it’s said to strengthen the long-term operating platform…and create meaningful synergies that should materially accelerate its path to profitability. In just about 1.5 years’ time, Cizzle Brands’ products are available already in close to 6000 multichannel distribution points globally. Additionally, Cizzle Brands recently entered into a distribution agreement with a Canadian subsidiary of Keurig Dr Pepper. Though, for the foreseeable future, demand levels of CWENCH Hydration wouldn’t even warrant turning on the lights daily at this approximately 150,000 square foot Tetra Pak manufacturing facility. So, Cizzle Brands NEEDS to ensure its laser focused on how it can better serve current contract manufacturing customers that includes BioSteel or Joyburst. And speaking of the largest co-packing customer of Flow Beverage (aka Cizzle Brands Manufacturing), you probably saw the news by now…but it just sold to Anheuser-Busch in a deal worth more than half a billion dollars! So, if Beatbox Beverages wasn’t already large enough (and assumably smart enough) to possess levels of operational buffering…it certainly is now! Consequently, we don’t know fully what that could mean for Cizzle Brands Manufacturing yet…but I’d assume M&A due diligence triggered conversations with Beatbox Beverages (and AB InBev) cementing confidence that previous manufacturing agreements would be honored into (I believe) the end of the decade.
