LINCOLN PARK — A Lincoln Park mother of four left her law partnership after almost 20 years to create a sport drink.
If that sounds crazy, the drink is named Kra, with a long "A," pronounced as in cray-cray, but it's actually an acronym for Keep Rising Above, and it might just make a whole lot of sense and a whole lot of money.
But for now Sarah Hardgrove-Koleno is just trying to get her product off the ground. It launched in April, and her first reaction was, "We won the race! But the reality is we are tying our shoelaces about to take our first steps of the marathon."
And it wasn't quite as crazy as just leaving a well-paying job to create a sport drink.
"I was a partner at Jenner & Block for almost 20 years," Hardgrove-Koleno said Thursday. "Hard job, busy job."
But she also had four young kids at home.
"So I knew I was going to be leaving Jenner & Block, and I wanted to do something healthy, fitness- and sports-related."
Her kids all play soccer, and she's a tennis player herself.
"And everyone's chugging Gatorade," she said.
"It's bright blue!" Hardgrove-Koleno added. "You shouldn't put that in your body.
"And there are very few other products that have less sugar, fewer calories, organic, clean, no dyes, no artificial junk." There were alternatives, "but none of them taste very good, or they're just not cool."
There seemed to be a natural place for a natural sport drink, and she and her partner, Dan Trainor, an old University of Illinois Law School chum, set out to fill it.
They hired flavor architects, telling them: "It has to be five, six, seven ingredients that we know what they are, you understand what they are."
As it turns out, the list of ingredients for fruit punch Kra includes filtered water, organic apple juice concentrate, organic cane sugar, natural flavors, organic lemon juice concentrate, fruit and vegetable juice for color and sea salt. And it still comes in at 40 calories for an eight-ounce serving.
"It's got to taste fantastic, and it's got to look cool," Hardgrove-Koleno said. She knew teens wouldn't be caught dead picking up some drink with a green tree on it or some such thing.
It took between 1½ and two years to develop the drinks and the snazzy, brightly colored packaging.
"It's a much longer process than I imagined," she added.
But it was ready on Earth Day, April 22.
"Earth Day, birthday," Hardgrove-Koleno said. And since then it's sold about $100,000 worth in the first six months in Washington, D.C., where Trainor lives and works, and in the Chicago area.
It's made in the East near D.C., but Hardgrove-Koleno said they're looking for a Midwest manufacturer, or co-packer in the business lingo, "to take us to the next level."
It's in Whole Foods stores in D.C., and in about 40 small, quality grocers and in places like the Lakeshore Athletic Club and the East Bank Club in Chicago. And Hardgrove-Koleno just sealed a deal this week to get it into Mariano's, which she hopes will lead to national deals with its corporate franchises Kroger's and Roundy's.
One of her first deals, however, was with a taco truck often seen at American Youth Soccer Organization games.
"I happened to see two guys walk up to the taco truck, and they were standing there drinking Kra," Hardgrove-Koleno said. "And I took a picture of it. Somebody I don't know drinking Kra!"
People they do know, from coast to coast, can get it through Amazon, which helps, she said, as does social media.
"It allows you to get the word out in a way that's much different from 10 years ago," Hardgrove-Koleno added.
"It's the chicken and the egg, because people have to know it exists," she said. "It tastes great. It looks cool. The trick is making people aware of it.
"It's hard work, determination and a little bit of luck to make a breakthrough in the marketplace."
Which doesn't sound so crazy at all.
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