#129 | Tom Ryder & Aaron Heidebreicht | Applied Nutrition Arnold Classic 2025 |

In this episode, Nick Rizzo sits down with Tom Ryder, founder of Applied Nutrition, and Aaron Heidebreicht, CEO of AN USA, to unpack the explosive growth of one of Europe’s fastest-rising sports nutrition brands. 

Fresh off a $450 million IPO on the London Stock Exchange, Tom shares the journey from his days as a scaffolder to building a global wellness powerhouse, while Aaron dives into the strategic push to conquer the U.S. market. 

From securing Walmart listings to launching the innovative AN Performance Series, this conversation reveals the grit, vision, and bold moves driving Applied Nutrition’s stateside expansion. Tune in for an inside look at how a British-born brand is flexing its muscles on the world stage.

00:00 From Retailer to Nutrition Brand Reviver

03:13 Product Revamp Sparks Sales Growth

09:02 "Success in U.S. Market Entry"

09:52 Relentless Ambition and Family Ties

14:53 "Embrace Failure: Keep Showing Up"

16:12 Expanding Applied Nutrition's Audience Reach

20:02 "Execute Ideas: Lessons from Tom"

25:18 Global Expansion with Kraft Partnership

27:07 "Future of Applied Nutrition"

Transcript

0:00

Well, first and foremost, I want to thank both of you for not only bringing myself out here, but for putting on an amazing exhibit at the Arnold so far. And we have one more day tomorrow. It's been an amazing showing. We've had tons of people swarming the booth, tons of amazing feedback from the an performance side to the all black everything side. It's been a huge success in my eyes. And I know that day three is going to be nothing short of what we've already gotten to do for the last two days. So I want to thank both of you gentlemen for putting on a great show so far, for real. Thank you, Nick. The the team today, I mean, I only flew in last night, but. But the team today have been absolutely amazing. Every single team member has worked the butt off. The energy has been insane. We've created hype like no other booth here. And for sure, every exhibit, every single person that's been to this show will go home. Remember remembering who Applied Nutrition an is. It's amazing. And one of the cool things that I've gotten to learn over the last couple of months on the media side for the an performance an SUPS team has been the differences and similarities of both companies. Coming from the head in the UK I of Applied Nutrition. Just to jump in there, please. It's one company, one company. Applied Nutrition Global is one company. AN is an abbreviation. Applied Nutrition. It is absolutely one company with the same vision. 100% beautiful. I'm glad you cleared that up because a lot of people have been asking that question and they're not entirely sure. Now, I do want to go into really quickly the way that you started. So from a little bit of research that I was able to do on a short notice. So 10 take us back to 2014. The spark that made you say, I'm gonna build Applied Nutrition from the ground up. What was that like? All right, so 2014, I was a retailer. I had a couple of stores, I was a wholesaler, so I was distributing other brands, many of the brands that are in the expo today. I lived and breathed supplements as I do today and as I did for 10 years prior. And I was just very much, just absolutely obsessed with the industry. I seen an opportunity with Applied Nutrition. It was a brand that I stocked at the time, but it was a brand in decline. So when I say a brand, it had a few products, but only one product of real note, and that was a mass gainer. So if you go back to 2014 and 10 years back from then, mass gainers were really A dominant product within sports nutrition. Huge. And that was a product called Critical Mass, still within a portfolio today, but we've got a couple of different versions and it's been amended a couple of times. And I felt that I understood why it was in decline. I thought the pack size was wrong. I thought it never evolved with the industry. I thought it had too much sugar. I thought the design was very much focused towards a bodybuilder and very much outdated. And I thought if I could take this brand on, I could not only turn the Critical Mass around, but I could plug more products in. So we'd give it a go. It was a big risk. I went all in. I was obligated to two more production runs with the current product, brought them over, sold them, but at the same time, I was working in the background to try and redevelop the product, try and correct the fundamental issues, why I thought the product was in decline and did that. So, like I just said, then I increased the pack size from 4.4kg to 6kg, redesigned the product, reformulated the product, took sugar out, changed the flavor profile, and straight away we started making some good gains. We started gaining some trajectory with the product. I already had a good network of specialty stores because that was my life at the time. And I was already selling other brands prior to applying nutrition to them. I was able to plug in some more products around Critical Mass. So it started becoming a brand, started looking and feeling like a brand. And then in early 2016, I took production in house, which, again, was another big gamble. I was going to say, what is that like bringing production in house? When I look back, I think, wow, I'd come home, I'd have dust in my fingernails, my eyebrows, I'd be full of dust. You've seen it? I've seen it, yeah. Seen the scrapbook, I've walked the facility. And it's a whole nother world when you're stocking ingredients, you're manufacturing, you're adding line time and then you're staffing it, you're keeping up with all the employee headcount that it takes to go vertical. Yeah. And if you fast forward to today, where we are now, you know, in the UK, we manufacture 90% of our own products. All of the lines at a manufacturing production facility is like bespoke towards. It was designed from all the mistakes that we made from early 2016-2017-2018-2019. Back then, when we were just literally knocking through different warehouses, we were going around corners, we were just making do it with the space that we had, the constraints that we had, but I wouldn't change it for the wealth because now it's made us more efficient, more dialed in, more tuned on the lines that we have. And you know, they were hard lessons to learn, but they've stood us in good stead for where we are now and where we're going to in the future. And obviously the quality control, bringing everything in house is next to none when you're able to do that. Exactly. Quality is absolutely everything for us, first and foremost. And if you look at it, I mean, Aaron's been to the UK a few times and the US team is very familiar with the UK team and the quality control that we have in place, the credentials that we have in place, we own it from literally from ingredients coming in to final product going out, we, we own the process from start to finish. And I think that that vertical integration aspect is very important and one of the differentiating factors from any other brands. Yeah, I mean, we also cut down on speed to market. Right. So to commercialize a full line, you look at the lines behind us. AM performance, all the rebranding on Abe, those took a matter of weeks, not years. Versus. Yeah, I was going to say years. You know, in my past life it could take anywhere between 12 and 18 months to fully commercialize one product, let alone a brand, a line, whatever it is. Yeah. Most of this was done in a matter of weeks just with the US and the UK teams working really close together. Yeah. That's so cool. It really is. It's so cool to see and obviously watch as things unfold on the US side of things especially. And obviously going public on the London Stock Exchange, huge milestone for the brand and the company with that valuation. What was going through your head when you rang that bell and how did it feel to see the decade long hustle hit that peak right there? Yeah. With more to come, you know. You know what? Right. It was absolutely a milestone for Applied Nutrition to ring the bell on the London Stock Exchange. There's not many brands within our industry that can say that they've done it. Thankfully, Adam was right by my side. I had the family with me and it was a nice, it was a real nice moment, but it wasn't, I don't know. People say you finally, you think that you finally made it and for me, absolutely not. That, that is, that is not what I was thinking at the time. I was thinking this is the start of a new journey, this is the start of a next chapter. Because within this industry you know, Applied Nutrition haven't scratched the surface of where we could be. Literally, we are a pinprick in the US Right now, and thankfully we're added on board. And the amazing team that he's assembled, and I mean, he's assembled an amazing team. We are going to be a dominant player within the US like we are globally, but still, even globally, we've not scratched the surface. So when I'm ringing that bell, I'm saying, okay, it's great that we've got this far. It's amazing. We're absolutely blessed. We're fortunate to be in this position. But there's so much more to go. You know, and so that piggybacks onto my next question, which is my last one for you before I move on to Aaron, the big dog on the US side. So you said you're just scratching the surface. What does that mean to you now? That Applied Nutrition is a global company and a public company. So, I mean, listen, we're now a PLC with a public company and I think that global credibility that that offers and gives us helps us in becoming a global dominant brand. But, yeah, and there's certain countries that we are more penetrated in, we are more stronger in. But still, when I say we've not scratched the surface, we play in that many different categories. We play in that many different areas, from health and wellness to elite sports nutrition to beauty, we're venturing into that many different categories. We've got so much growth to go. Being a PLC is great because it's often US credibility, but we've got so much more to go at all. Right, I appreciate you, Tom. I'm going to come back to you in a couple seconds. I got Aaron over on my far right left for all you guys watching at home. So, Aaron, you've got 20 years in sports nutrition, GNC, Nutribull, Caged, and now you're leading the an SUPS tier in the States. So what was it about Applied Nutrition's mission that made you say the. This is the team that I want to focus for the US market. So for, for me, it was the people I've actually known, Tom, Steve, Joe and the team at Applied for many, many years, but knowing their vision and being able to look at the vision and say I can help them get there and scale this thing up, and knowing that we can, you know, be a big player here was something that, you know, I thought about for a long, long time. You look at the brands that have come to the States, especially the European brands, most of them Fold within the first six to 12 months. We've already been here over two years. We have some of the biggest retail support behind our brand. And, you know, you look at the rebrands that we've done, it's a, it's a, it's a global synergy that has not been seen before. Because, because most European companies that come here, they're, they're, they're one foot in. They're not all in. And, you know, you asked Tom about what it was like for the, you know, ringing the bell and what it felt like. What was really cool about that day for me was that that same day, it was a family event, one I got to meet everyone's families, meet Tom's kids, I met Steve's parents, Joe's parents, all everyone's family was amazing. But that day, after we did that, we all had a cocktail and then they were off to Dubai and I was off to go launch a. And performance. The very next day, like, very next day, right. Like, actually that evening, like, we did not rest, you know, and a lot of our investors look at that and they say that's such a cool mindset because these guys haven't taken the mindset of. They've made it. Like, we really were just getting going, so we were off doing our own thing. Like, the UK team left, did a major, I mean, just a mega event, very much like what we just did here at the Arnold. And then I came to the US where we as a team here launched, you know, our biggest platform in the us which was AIM Performance, which really brought the applied vision in. And the whole idea around Applied was to be the most trusted but also the most innovative company. And because we were vertically led, it was a big reason why I joined as well. Just having that speed of market and having the financial and visionary support from Tom, Steve and everyone else that's over there. So AN performance hitting the ground running. Hydration supplements, partnerships with the vitamin shop. What's the one thing that you want American athletes to feel when they pick up an AN product? We want them to feel that what they're taking is safe. You know, what is in the bottle, you know, what it says on the label is in the bottle. You know, we're, we're dual verified. We'll say dual verified when, you know, for informed sport, informed choice, informed protein. But it's the facility that it's made in that makes it so special. You know, like, we go way beyond just an informed accreditation. We go way beyond just an NSF accreditation, like if you go to our facility, it is an impressive machine, like from the people that are working it to the way that it's operated to the new equipment, quite frankly, like our, this line. That mic up, Keep that mic up. Okay, I got you. So it was made on new equipment. So it's the facility that really supports the whole machine and the engine. Yeah. You knew I was going to ask this. So you've been a professional athlete yourself. How does that experience shape the way you're steering an supplements with athletes and the everyday fitness folks alike? Well, so professional athlete, fast and loose. I've done a lot of different things in my life, but what it's done is given me a competitor's mindset. It's made me super resilient. I failed in my life, I've succeeded. And the one thing that I know that is no matter what hurdle comes in front of you, as long as you keep moving forward, things will work out. And the team around you is more important than the collective injuries individual. So one of the things we, we talk about a lot here at Applied is it's not about the name on the back of the jersey, it's about the front of the jersey. Right. So the applied name, you'll like the New York Yankees in that way. Right. Like we're, we're all a team and it's about the greater team. And coming from a competitive background of professional baseball to then getting into bodybuilding for a while and then taking that same mindset of what it took to really dig deep and go through some dark times, you know, personally, professionally, through physically, all that leads to the tenacity I have now. Like, I just, I, I, I will not quit. And if you doubt me, which you seem. No, never, never. Nick's laughing behind the camera. Never. It's the greatest asset I have is when somebody says I can't do it. So like sometimes we hear different partners in the media say, well, you know, applied has a, an IP issue here or whatever it is. I love that stuff. I love it. I don't, I've been listening to like that for years, since 2014. Oh, he's a backstreet brand. Oh, he's only going to be, he might do well in the local gyms. And you're like, no problem, no problem. We'll see. Yeah. You know, and I look, the Tom Brady effect. Yeah, that's right. I mean, look, look what we just did. It's fine. I actually, I'm fine with it. You know, people doubt you and people say, oh, it's not going to do this and it's not going to do that. I'm fine with that. No problem. Because it's what, it's, it's what you know yourself, it's your own mentality as, as Adam just said, that resilience. If you've got resilience and you just, you will always plow forward, no matter what obstacles get in your way, you will succeed. And what's really cool about Tom and I, like one of the things we, I mean we kind of joke in turn. I'm like a us version of Tom. And so we both have that retailer mindset. I started at the ground level. I started as a part time sales associate 24 years ago, just through college. It's a funny story. The way I got into the space was I was marrying my wife or I was going to. I asked her hand in marriage, which is the traditional thing to do in the South. I'm from Tennessee. So I asked her father for her ain't in marriage. He says, well, son, what's your plan to support my daughter. And I was in college, I was poor. I said, well sir, I don't have a great plan, but I have a plan. And that plan is I'm going to go work part time at gnc. I'm working my tail off, I'm working the corporate ladder. And what it ended up doing is put me in a position to make some incredible connections, actually grow up the corporate ladder, realize I have a lot of potential, a lot to offer outside of retail and then get to a brand side where, you know, I had a pretty good career with a couple brands. And it's pretty, it's pretty cool to see how like every step that everybody has taken has led to like this moment right here. It's pretty amazing when you think about all the things that maybe you thought you should have pivoted a different way or things didn't, weren't going to work out. But I'm still going to keep showing up. Like you said, Tom, just keep showing up and putting the work in and it leads to amazing things with long lasting results as well. You know, like you said, you failed. You know, we all have, we've all failed and had to pivot and learn from it. And that's actually what kind of makes you a better version of yourself. In the moment, it sucks. Like in the moment it doesn't look like that and you don't feel that way. But 10 years, four years, however many years down the line, you look back and you go I got it. Now, that was that little life lesson road bump. So I got one more for you. I'm gonna ask a couple joint questions quickly because I know I don't want to keep you gentlemen too long. We've been here all day. But an tagline is fuel your moment. What's a moment in your career where you jet fueled to push past the sidelines and into something bigger? Ooh. It'S an incredible question. I told you, deep dive. Yeah. So you know the, the tagline, fuel your moment. Let me start with, can you see. It in the video? You might be able to see it in the video. It might be above in the corners. You know, we look at what our industry has kind of done and from an evolution standpoint, how the consumers have shape shifted into a lifestyle mindset. And we really looked at our brand as Applied Nutrition as a brand that fuels many moments of many different consumers days. That can be from the guy that wants to be the fittest dad at the pool, which is myself, it can be to the hardcore bodybuilder, the professional athlete, or the soccer mom who's literally just trying to have enough energy to make it from work to home to practice and potentially make dinner, whatever it may be. I would say that when you bring it full circle as to where that inflection point was, for me, fueling your moment specific to Applied was really when we all sat down and we said, how do we make this brand resonate with a much wider audience in the US and then take it outward even further? And that moment was an inflection point. I remember I'm sitting down with Tom and Steve in Dallas at one point and we're all spitballing and we're actually bringing the sales guys in, we're bringing people in, we're asking their opinions and we're talking about, well, what would it look like if we really leaned into this? And one of the things I thought about was, you know, Applied Nutrition, as big as it was, we weren't really acting big here in the states. We're actually thinking small. We're playing small ball, right? And I was like, we can think much bigger. Like, we have tremendous funding, we're financially in a very great place, but we have brand recognition that goes so far beyond what we were giving ourselves credit for. And so we really sat down and that moment, actually, I think I left the office that day, you know, started spitballing ideas and we were thinking about, like, okay, what would that look like if we changed our tagline? And look, this is A tagline for the company. This is not just in the U.S. like, we use this on everything now. And it really was about thinking larger and thinking about doing things in a much bigger, broader way and taking risks, quite frankly, because Tom wouldn't be where he's at today if he hadn't taken a risk. Right. Multiple risks. Same on my end. And I think that's the entrepreneurial mindset. And again, bring it full circle. That's how we fuel our moments. Yeah. No risk, no reward. So, Tom, you've got the UK roots. Aaron, you're the US muscle. What's one lesson, literally, you guys see that bicep vane? What's one lesson you've learned from each other that's pushing Applied Nutrition to new heights? I think for me, I think, obviously, and by the way, we tried to get Adam a couple of years before we got him, because we, we. We know how he is the American muscle. I think for me, I think with Adam, what I've learned from him is I think patience is good as well. I think he's very, very strategic. And I think we had the same vision in wanting to bring the Applied Nutrition core range to the US and thank God we did. Thank God Aaron did, because now we are bringing the Applied Nutrition core range products to the U.S. but not only that, by doing that, as has communicated an even bigger global message than what we were communicating prior to bringing it to the States. Because the world looks at the States, right? The rest of the world looks at the States. Yeah, they look at the UK and they see UK as trust of brands, but they look at the States a lot. So for me, I think just watching Aaron and watching them create the Applied Nutrition core range within the States, AS has made me realize how many eyeballs are on the stage, because I see that communicator message in every single part of the world that we go to. Again, many lessons learned since being here, but from Tom specifically, it's really been process and pace for me. Like, the pace that he works at is a very similar pace to me, but we do it differently. And I think where Tom's really helped me is actually not being so rigid in my own processes and overthinking and just executing. And we talk about this a lot. Like, great ideas are fantastic, visions are great, which I have a lot of ideas, but if I don't execute, it doesn't matter. And oftentimes when we're having our conversations or spitballing ideas, Tom's like, just go do it. Just go do it. Like Take the risk, it's okay. And for me, it gives you a lot of confidence as the guy that's running the business to say, I got somebody who's backing that. We can take some risks here and there. And it's good to know that you can, because you're not too uptight. Right? In that same sense. But. But the process and how you get to that decision has also been a really cool experience for me. Between working with our CFO and our COO and honestly, the broader team, we make decisions like this. We do not sit around. If I have something that I want to present back to the team. We meet same day, we talk it through, and it's pretty much a go. And for me, that's a really unique thing, and it's a unique talent and kind of like, mindset that Tom brings. He's helped me adopt that. So when we think about we need to act faster here, historically I've been slower because I was so process driven. Coming from a different corporate structure, in some sense, I've been able to adapt kind of a blend of both. And it's made us faster. It's made us, yeah, much smarter in how we're thinking about what we're doing. And honestly, we're getting the full support from both sides, because if we only acted in our us silo, it's only going to go so far. And so what I've loved. What I love when I see is, like, whether it's a social media campaign, an athlete activation, or, you know, new branding concepts like abe, like the new packaging. That's a global thing. We took it everywhere. We did that in, like, two weeks. Yeah. And that again, for. It's beautiful. You know, you look at the packaging, you look at the design. So for me, we were like, we've got great design in house, designers in our headquarters. We've got over 200 staff. We've got a design team, we've got a marketing team. We've got team after team after team. And sometimes you need to take a step back and say, okay. And our designers are unbelievable, by the way. They're really, really good. But sometimes you have to take a step back and say, well, you're not the best at everything. So we were like, Adam was like, I want to have a go with this. I want to redesign some of these products. So we're like, okay, no problem. Initially, you're a little bit hesitant in saying, we know better. So you take a step back, and then he comes up with masterpieces. So we're like, straight away, we take that masterpiece and we apply it globally. It's not just for the US So it's not like we're creating something just for the U.S. as I say, we're one company. So if we feel collectively that Aaron has created something great, I want to roll that out globally. I don't want to say, okay, that's only for the U.S. it's like, okay, let's take lessons learned from everywhere, you know? And thankfully, we've got an amazing design, but not only for the AB line, but also for the AM performance. For the appliance vision core range, I. Would show you the new can design, but we sold out of them, so they're gone. Like, they did not last that long. What about the. We could grab that Chiquita collab. That's an approved design. There's another one. Just. It's great. It really is. Look at the collaboration with Chiquita. That's another one. So we're looking at collaborations with confectionery companies, sweet companies. Sometimes we do a collaboration with an athlete. Then Aaron comes in and says, I want to do one with a banana company. And we're like, it did put them back on their heels for a second. Yeah. What? So we're scratching our heads, and I don't like to question Adam too much because 99% of the time he's right. So we're like, okay, let's see where he's going with this. And he's saying, I want to do a better for you collaboration. I'm like, okay, so starting to tick now. And he's saying, yeah, I want to put the exact amount of potassium that's in a banana. I want to put it in per serving of the protein shake. Okay. I think he's onto something now. Then the design concepts start coming in the. And then you start trialing the products. And you're like, he's nailed it again. And then you saw Nick in a banana suit, and that was it. That was it. It was sold. And then before you know it, you've got global partners, Partners in Dubai, partners in Australia, partners in China. They're like, when are we going to get Chiquita? We're like, yeah, yeah, they are onto something. Because he's communicating another global message. You know, we were able to announce also, which we don't have behind us because we gave it out in mass. Tang collaboration, as well as millions for Cherry Slushie. We're super excited about Tang. We're partnered with Craft. We've got actually several licenses under that umbrella. But Tang is the first one. We debuted it here at the Arnold. We sold out within maybe an hour. I mean it did not last long. We had the Tang Abe can walking around, which is hilarious. But you know, one of the things we're doing in our collaborations, like they're, they're either better for you or they're authentically joint marketed. It's one or the other. That's it. And you know, we've thought about these things very differently because the industry's not new to collaborations. Like we see flavors all the time. Whether it's adolescent confectionery through candy and all the other things. But the opportunity to work with the largest produce company in the world, that's a really interesting opportunity. Not only partner with them, we're partnered with them in a very deep level like working with their sales and marketing teams to help gain distribution. Kraft is giving us full keys to basically put it into any and every, all products and again, joint license, joint market. And so the assets that they're providing us is not just a logo slap. Like we're going far beyond that. And we've got a couple more that are going to open us up to a couple thousand more doors, which are pretty insane too. But we really thought differently. As much as we can take these things across the globe, we will. And that's also a unique opportunity. Like here in the next two months you'll see the first global launch between the UK side and the us. Everything will look the same, everything will taste the same. We'll do it at one time and we'll be, you know, E commerce ready for it as well. Which is going to be a really interesting twist to our brand as we've recently been scaling that that side of our business up. It's really exciting and watching the collaborations that you see a lot of other companies do, it's, you know, no dissing any other companies, anything like that. But I feel like some collaborations aren't well thought out and they're not strategically done in the right way to better the consumer that's going to be looking for that collaboration. You know what, Nick, I think I didn't got it right before. It's the relationship and the deep relationship that you have with the collaboration partners. It's not just transactional. Now a lot of other brands, and again no disrespect because they might prefer it that way, but it's very much transactional. You're just paying to put a logo on your product, whereas if it's not a Deep partnership. It just doesn't work for us. If we're not all in together, then there's no point in doing it. Exactly. And the collaborations that we've got, both UK collaborations and US collaborations, we are absolutely all in. We're all invested to deep levels. And I think that's why they're working and I think that's why they're drumming up so much interest. All right, gentlemen, last one and then it's time for some food. What's the one message you want? Every listener, from the gym rats to investors, to anybody that sees Applied Nutrition and where are they headed next? I'll quickly answer that. For me, I can follow on, but for me, I just want everybody to know that, you know, we're a brand that's been around for 10 years. We're a brand that's going to be around for another 20 years. We've not scratched the surface. So no matter how big or how small you may think we are, we've literally not scratched the surface. We've got so much more to go at and we will not, we will not rest until we. Applied Nutrition becomes the world's most trusted and most innovative sports nutrition brand. I want you to be able to spin a globe, stop it. And we'll be a dominant player within that, wherever you stop that globe. So, yeah. In a similar vein, you know, my message for folks is that Applied Nutrition is a company that not only resonates, but inspires people to do more, to push harder, to live longer and live more fuller lives. In that same sense, we're here to fuel those moments, but we're also here to be a bridge for the next chapter of their life. You know, you think about as you age, as you. As you move to that next chapter. I just turned 40, by the way, which is like, it's a whole new thing. Like, my back hurt the day I woke up, right? Back hurts. Now I'm 33, so. Oh, man. One of the. We talk about being the most trusted and most innovative. We have categories that range all over the place to support whether you're coming from a place of youth or, you know, novice level fitness, to expert to healthy lifestyle and anti aging, right? And so for me, I want folks to know that we're the company that you can trust for a long journey, because fitness is a long journey, wellness and health is a long journey. We are that brand, but we're one brand, we're one global brand. And to Tom's point, we haven't scratched the surface. Like, we're just getting started. Yeah. Listen, gentlemen. Amazing. I'm looking forward to a day three with you. It's been phenomenal getting to know you. Tom. And obviously, Aaron, we've had the privilege and pleasure of already meeting in your hometown of Nashville. Guys, Tom, Aaron, once again, I appreciate you guys, everybody listening, please follow along for the journey, as you've heard here, just scratching the surface. I appreciate everybody for hanging out with us, but for now, peace.