Meet Rafael Rozenson, Founder at Protein Brand: Vieve

We make a range of innovative, great tasting products for consumers that are on very high-protein diets.

All our products are high protein, with zero sugar dairy or fat and all are low in calories. We started off with our range of 20g protein waters, then expanded into powders with a plan to bring in more categories in the future.

We have been around since 2018 and have been roughly doubling the business year on year. Our primary sales channels in the UK are online and Amazon, but we do have a fairly large export business and trade with about 12 countries in Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa. The business is run all by myself as a sole founder, with various 3rd party partners who help manage different aspects of the business.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
I had been taking sports supplements for over 20 years and never really liked the experience or taste of the products. I absolutely hated protein shakes and I am also lactose intolerant so had a really difficult time taking some of the products.

One day I was working at Evian and I looked at a bottle of water and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if you could get protein and it was refreshing and hydrating, and didn’t involve any messy mixing. That was my lightbulb moment and hence the idea was born!
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
The pandemic was a really challenging time, as previous to this we had invested a lot of time and money into building up the fitness challenge. Now with gyms closed and the general chaos of the early days of the pandemic, we really weren’t sure if our business was going to go on. Plus, all the challenges with our warehouse and factory, which were shut for weeks on end due to COVID.

We had to pivot online and thankfully our amazon and direct sales have always been really strong, so we found most of our shoppers just pivoted to buying our product online. We now focus almost entirely on the online channel in the UK, and our Amazon business has grown 2500% in almost 4 years!
 

What can we hope to see from Vieve in the future?

 
Our brand has tons of opportunity as we have barely scratched the surface in terms of our potential for growth. We have just launched our new range of vegan protein waters – they are one of the first of its kind in the world and the initial feedback on the range has been really positive.

We are looking globally for our biggest expansion opportunities – I would really like to get this product into the USA as I think it would absolutely fly and the market is massive. We have very limited physical availability in the UK, so I could definitely see us trying to explore this more too in the future.