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Bloom Nutrition began as a supplements brand. Then it got into beverages, and everything changed.
In 2025, Bloom Nutrition moved more than 155 million beverages. Its Sparkling Energy line went from zero to eight figures in six months, surpassed $100 million in sales in its first year, and now drives 60% of total company sales. It’s now the number two energy brand on Amazon’s best-seller list.
None of that happened because Greg LaVecchia invented something new. In fact, LaVecchia, Bloom’s founder, will tell you plainly: “I don’t think there’s a ton of original ideas left.” That’s why he’s built a systematic approach to entering markets that already exist and are proven — then finding the white space that first movers missed, and out-executing them.
He calls it the Second Mover Advantage. It’s what drives his product strategy at Bloom, and it led directly to his company-redefining energy drink line.
“When I see a saturated space, I think that someone has already done so much education for me,” LaVecchia says. “When you are launching a new idea to a total addressable market, so much of your marketing has to go towards educating the consumer.”
Long before LaVecchia released an energy drink, he was watching a different marketplace: green powders.
Athletic Greens (now called AG1) was dominating the category. They were signing major podcasts, landing celebrity endorsements, and spending heavily to explain to consumers why greens powders mattered.
LaVecchia saw opportunity.
“They were getting the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and they were explaining to everyone how important it is to get your greens powder,” he says. “But they were a hundred dollars and only direct to consumer.”
Image credit: Courtesy of Bloom Nutrition
That’s where he found his white space. AG1 had educated the market, but they’d left a massive gap in accessible pricing and retail availability. Bloom launched its greens powder at a lower price point and took it into mass retail — Target, Walmart, Costco — where consumers were already looking for exactly what AG1 had taught them they needed.
“The white space exists,” LaVecchia says. “I was like, what within this saturated space, and what are smaller variables, aren’t being addressed?”
The Second Mover Advantage isn’t just about copying what works and doing it cheaper. It’s about identifying the specific variables that first movers got wrong or ignored entirely.
When Bloom’s team started to look at the energy drink market, for example, they saw an extremely saturated category. Monster, Red Bull, Celsius — the shelves were already full. So LaVecchia looked for who wasn’t being served by the current offerings.
“We felt like the female consumer wasn’t being properly addressed with a slightly better-for-you formula in the can,” he says.
When you’re a second mover, he says, you also have the advantage of adopting familiar market signals. For example, consumers expect energy drinks to come in thin aluminum cans. There’s no reason to mess with something like that, LaVecchia says.
“I’m a big fan of not recreating the wheel,” he says. “Just taking the wheel and trying to make it a better version of that wheel.”
When you’re thinking like a second mover, you’re letting the market lead the way. That means you need to take market signals seriously — and move fast when you see shifts.
LaVecchia saw it happening with green powders. Bloom’s product was doing well, but he believed that market was going to soften — and that there was a lot more opportunity in the energy space. So he deliberately shifted resources away from the powders, even though they were profitable and still growing, to chase the energy drink opportunity.
“We are never afraid to give up the good for the great,” he says. “If something’s going good and it’s a seven out of 10, it’s comfortable. But you almost need to sacrifice and give up on that previous lower opportunity thing.”
The Second Mover Advantage won’t work for every entrepreneur, he says. It requires honest assessment of where white space actually exists, the discipline to focus on a few variables rather than trying to reinvent everything, and the willingness to move on before the current opportunity peaks.
But for entrepreneurs who feel intimidated by crowded markets, LaVecchia’s wants you to see things differently: Competition is actually the proof of concept that you need.
“Whenever I have seen a saturated space,” he says, “I think that someone has already done so much education for me.”