BYU graduates launch new energy product without caffeine

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What originally started out as a school project for Marriott School graduates Dave Fryer and Greg Wilson changed over time from an idea to a living, breathing business.

Fryer, a recent graduate from Park City, and Wilson, a graduate from Seattle, both completed degrees in business management with an emphasis in entrepreneurship. Their product Go Time Smelling Salts started off as an idea for a product in a class. Now they have their own business called Mountain Top Labs and have recently launched Go Time in stores.

(Photo courtesy Go Time Smelling Salts)
Go Time Smelling Salts are created to bring alertness without caffeine or sugar. (Photo courtesy Mountain Top Labs)

“We were in an entrepreneurial marketing class and we had to come up with a product,” Fryer said. “It started off as a school project, but the results from our focus groups were good and showed that it would do well.”

The Go Time product is a reformulated ammonia inhalant that provides users with an instantaneous boost of energy without using caffeine or sugar. Focus groups revealed that Go Time had many different uses including alertness for playing sports, drowsy driving and taking finals.

Both Wilson and Fryer agreed that smelling salts provided a unique opportunity for a new product and business.

“We bounced around a couple of different ideas and we saw these energy drinks that were cool but tasted really gross. We thought about doing energy powder, but realized that those really aren’t all that different from what is already on the market,” Wilson said.

Smelling salts are used in sports, but they’re not something that everyone knows about.

“You see smelling salts a lot more if you know where to look for it,” Fryer said. “They are used in the NFL, the Olympics and even here in the BYU football program.”

All that Fryer and Wilson needed to do was find a way to make smelling salts more consumer friendly.

“(Smelling salts) weren’t in the form that consumers could use,” Wilson said. “We made a consumer version that is more friendly, less strong and better smelling.”

Many athletes use sports energy drinks when they are exercising and aren’t used to using smelling salts, but the use of smelling salts is different from what a sports energy drink is supposed to accomplish. Sports energy drinks often times replenish what athletes lose through sweat as they exercise. Smelling salts are designed for an instant boost of alertness.

“They aren’t superior to energy drinks, but they kind of do a different thing,” Fryer said. “Smelling salts give you a quick boost of alertness, pretty much like a slap in the face.”

Fryer and Wilson were mentored by Gary K. Rhoads, a BYU professor of marketing and entrepreneurship. Rhoads had seen different ideas for smelling salt products from students in the past, but he never had any students get serious about taking the product to market.

“This is a really impressive team, Dave and Greg,” Rhoads said. “They had the potential not only to bring up the idea but to execute the idea.”

Rhoads was willing to help Fryer and Wilson find the right connections while simultaneously offering advice and guidance for the team as they started their business.

“You don’t need mentors for money, you need them for advice that will save you thousands of hours of misery,” Rhoads said.

With a lot of hard work coupled with the help of their faculty mentor, Fryer and Wilson have been successful in the launch of Go Time Smelling Salts.

Go Time can be found online at crushsmellgo.com.

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