Revolution Nutrition faced a pivotal moment in 2020 when COVID disrupted its business-to-business sales (B2B) strategy. The Quebec-based sports nutrition company, founded in 2007 by a team of health and technology enthusiasts, had built a thriving wholesale business supplying protein powders and supplements to more than 1,000 retailers in Canada and the U.S. But pandemic-related restrictions forced them to reimagine their entire business model.
“We had to transition from B2B to building direct relationships with consumers online,” explained Michael Koka, vice president of digital commerce at Revolution Nutrition.
The company had briefly experimented with selling in the Amazon store years earlier, but without dedicated resources, the effort hadn’t gained traction. Koka saw an opportunity to change that. He approached the founders with a proposal: restart their Amazon business with proper investment and focus. He’d watched other nutrition brands thrive in the Amazon store and knew there was an audience hungry for Revolution Nutrition’s protein powders.
In 2023, Revolution Nutrition relaunched in the Amazon store with a focus on connecting with consumers. Today, Amazon represents nearly one-third of the company’s overall sales, with year-over-year growth of 140 percent. Currently offering roughly 82 products, Revolution Nutrition plans to add 200 more within the year, Koka said. Revolution Nutrition has also expanded its team to over 100 employees, primarily in Canada, and continues to also sell its products in retailers like GNC and Costco.
Revolution Nutrition is now eyeing international expansion. The company is planning to launch in Mexico, potentially by the end of 2026, and is opening a warehouse in New York state to support fulfillment for both the US and Mexico.
Many of Amazon’s seller tools helped Revolution Nutrition expand to direct-to-consumer sales, including order fulfillment and customer engagement. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which provides storage, picking, packing, fulfillment, and customer service for orders, helped the business meet consumers’ expectations of fast deliveries. “Amazon takes care of the handling and shipping and all the issues that can arise in terms of customer service,” Koka noted. “We would have to allocate resources and some extraordinary setup to be able to serve our customers so quickly.”
Building trust with new customers in a competitive space required strategic use of Amazon’s Vine program, which helps sellers generate high-quality, authentic reviews for their products by connecting them with trusted reviewers called Vine Voices. The program has become essential to Revolution Nutrition’s product launch strategy. “It’s a very good way to start a product for visibility and trustworthiness,” Koka explained. “It builds a reputation around the product if the product deserves it.” The company puts every new product through Vine, using honest feedback to refine formulations. “If they don’t like the product, we bring it back and try to improve it,” he added.
Subscribe and Save, which provides customers with discounted pricing and coupons if they sign up for regularly scheduled deliveries, has helped Revolution Nutrition build a loyal and growing customer base. They’re seeing new subscribers every month and now have 2,000 subscribers in Canada and 200 in the US.
Amazon Ads has also been instrumental in cutting through the noise in the competitive protein powder category. “It catapulted our reach and got us a good chunk of store purchases,” Koka said. Their High Whey product has become one of the top three most-clicked protein powders in the Amazon store, he added.
They operate from a facility outside Montreal, Quebec, that houses manufacturing, warehousing, and offices. The business also includes a five-person research and development team, which is always testing new formulations. Koka said the protein powders are known for their fun and true-to-taste flavors like chocolate hazelnut, pistachio ice cream, and cookies and cream.
“I want to replicate the fun people can have when they eat their favorite dessert,” Koka said.