Booming on shoulders of golfing giants

Once Rory McIlroy was seen eating a tube of Wyldsson’s ProMix trail mix during a break in play at the US PGA championship last week, the start-up’s sales have rocketed, writes Trish Dromey

Since Rory McIlroy was seen eating a tube of ProMix trail mix during the US PGA Championship, last week, orders have been pouring in at Wyldsson, the Dublin company which makes it.

“We had so much traffic on Monday last week that the website crashed. We got it fixed at three in the morning and orders kept coming — we had the equivalent of one month’s sales on Monday and also had a high number for the rest of the week,” said Wyldsson managing director, Dave McGeady who has been selling snack products to the PGA winner since before he won the British Open.

The brand wasn’t visible on the product Rory McIlroy was seen eating on TV during a break in play at the PGA, but Wyldsson’s customers quickly identified the tube and spread the word on the social networks.

This is the kind of publicity that a small start-up company, with no advertising budget, simply couldn’t possibly buy.

Mr McGeady is hoping to use the credibility he’s gained from selling to these well-known athletes to help build exports, first to the UK and eventually to the US.

Starting out as an investment banker, Mr McGeady worked in a medical device company before redundancy prompted him to look at the sports nutrition industry in 2012.

Identifying a gap at the top end of the market for nutritious snack products for athletes, which didn’t contain gluten, added sugar or preservatives, he set out to develop one.

“I went to the Local Enterprise Office in Tallaght and they gave me a feasibility study grant to research the idea,” he says, explaining that he researched nutrition and ingredients by travelling to trade shows around the world.

The result was a trail mix with ingredients like Inca berries, Persian Mulberries and African mango.

Establishing there was a demand for this type of snack, Mr McGeady found premises at a food manufacturing unit in Tallaght in early 2013 and called the new venture Wyldsson.

The initial plan was to target the retail market — selling though health food shops — but he quickly decided that this wasn’t a runner. In August 2013 he set up a web store and decided to only sell though this to keep his prices down.

The move also led to the creation of a range of new products, since Mr McGeady realised that online customers were less likely to purchase a site offering just one item.

“I added muesli, which is going very well, and at the end of the year I launched nut butter and porridge topping and now I have 12 products.”

These include ProMix, which costs €18.99 for 10 tubes, while Pro7 muesli costs €12.99 for 1.5kg.

“Business has taken off this year. Sales doubled in January and I took on my first employee and sales doubled again in February and March,”

Approximately 70% of sales are to customers in Ireland, while the UK accounts for another 25%.

The company is planning to launch a new variety of muesli later this year and the immediate plan is to develop UK sales where the market for healthy snacks is worth €1bn.

“Sales have grown by a factor of 10 since January — we are expanding rapidly and the exposure we got from Rory McIlroy eating our product has been brilliant,” he said.

Fact file

- Company: Wyldsson

- Location: Tallaght, Co Dublin

- Managing director: Dave McGeady

- Staff: Four

- Website: www.wyldsson.com

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This story was edited on May 10.