Client Spotlight: Elivar

We are proud to be working with Elivar, the world’s first and only sports nutrition range targeted at athletes aged 35 years and older. Of course, we are even more chuffed at the fact that Elivar use Unleashed for all their nutrition inventory management needs.

What does your business do?

Elivar is a sports nutrition company that has developed the world’s first range of products designed specifically for athletes over 35 years old. Our products have been developed initially for endurance athletes – runners, cyclists and triathletes – and are sold in the UK, Ireland, Holland and Germany.

Can you give us a brief history of your business and the growth it has experienced so far?

Elivar was founded by two ex-rowers, Donal and Len. Both had reached middle age and were still active in endurance sports including cycling, open water swimming and triathlon. As consumers neither felt the existing sports nutrition products on the market addressed the obvious changes in their nutritional and health needs. Working with sports and clinical nutritionists they developed a range of products that focused on age-related health issues that impacted on performance for athletes over 35. The products were designed to deliver on the need for energy during and recovery after exercise but using ingredients that didn’t compromise one’s general health. Launched initially online in late 2013, Elivar is now available online at Elivar.com, amazon.co.uk and is also stocked in over 100 retail outlets.

How is Unleashed helping your business grow?

From the very start, Elivar has been a committed user of cloud-based systems. It provides flexibility and if you pick the right ones they will grow within an ecosystem of other related cloud systems to deliver more value over time through integrations. Inventory management is a key area within the Elivar business, especially when managing ingredients with best before dates and multiple packaging formats for different products. Our research prior to launching the business highlighted Unleashed as being the leader in this space and with three years of experience under our belt, we’re delighted to say that it has met and exceeded our expectations. In fact, we recently changed our cloud accounting service to one that integrated with Unleashed to further streamline our operations — that's how important Unleashed is to our business!

What is a particular problem that Unleashed has solved?

Initially, we were looking for an inventory management system that allowed us to manage our finished goods inventory across multiple warehouses as well as build those finished goods from tracked component parts or ingredients.

What’s one of your favorite nutrition products?

Our bodies change as we age – sports nutrition has finally caught up. From around 35 years old, it becomes harder to maintain muscle mass and the time needed to recover for intense workouts increases. Elivar’s RECOVER range has been specially formulated to support the longer recovery period needed by older athletes by delivering a unique blend of fast-release Whey Protein and slow-release Casein. RECOVER has been formulated to ensure the body has sufficient BCAA’s circulating over an extended recovery period.

Why do you think your customers like this product range so much?

Elivar’s customers feel the difference when they switch to our products from traditional sports nutrition. With our range using only low-GI sustained release carbohydrates as our energy source as well as protein blends targeting slower recovery speeds, Elivar delivers the performance our customers demand of their sports nutrition, while at the same time looking after their health. Over time as volume grew and the number of different channels grew it was necessary to formally track best-before dates and batch tracking. Unleashed gave us the traceability we were looking for and it's easier to manage our products. As our business developed we also sought integration with our accounting package to track stock levels and costs of sales. With Unleashed delivering such a solid inventory management system we decided to replace our existing cloud-based accounts system with one that would integrate with Unleashed. This eco-system approach has again brought significant efficiencies to our operations with Unleashed firmly at the center.

Is there something your business is particularly proud of?

While Elivar products have won a number of awards and recognition from Men’s Running, Triathlon Plus, Cycling Weekly and other speciality magazines, the biggest buzz has to be when we walk into a store and see our products sitting on a shelf alongside what would have been household names to us when we started the business. I don’t think we will ever tire of this.