Rekt Drinks Sellout Shows How Brands Can Leverage Crypto to Launch Products

Rekt Drinks sold out its entire batch of flavored sparkling water—the firm’s first-ever product release—in under 48 hours of launch earlier this month. Ovie Faruq (aka OSF), the co-founder of Rekt Brands, believes this proves that the crypto industry’s track record of building communities also lends itself to selling physical products.

“In my opinion, Web3 principles allow you to build a brand and IP in an accelerated fashion, which creates a window of opportunity to do something big,” Faruq told Decrypt.

Rekt Brands and the beverage line spawned from an Ethereum NFT project called Rektguy, from which a community has been sustained for two-and-a-half years. They then launched a podcast called Rekt Radio with the co-founders Faruq and Mando, as well as pseudonymous trader Keyboard Monkey, under the Rug Radio banner. Finally, they launched Rekt Drinks.

(Disclosure: Rug Radio is a sister company of Decrypt. Ovie Faruq’s Canary Labs is also an investor in DASTAN, the parent company of Rug Radio and Decrypt.)

“It’s taken us almost 18 months from our initial idea to full product launch, so it’s very relieving to see a theoretical idea actually become successful in practice,” Faruq said. “It’s game-changing for the future of Rekt. We’ve gone from being just an art project with a strong community to a fully-fledged brand with the ability to generate real revenues outside of Web3.”

The “Liquidated Lime” drink is sparkling water flavored with a dash of lime and pineapple. Rekt’s branding boasts that it is free of both caffeine and alcohol, positioning itself as a beverage for social occasions when you don’t want to get drunk—or “rekt,” as its advertising comically quips.

There are countless beverage brands out there, but Rekt Drinks was able to leverage the existing Web3 community to move initial product and build some buzz around the launch.

“Traditional startups may have a great product, but they often struggle to get off the ground as they have a lack of community or existing customer base,” Faruq told Decrypt. “Conversely, Web3 excels at fostering die-hard communities.”

One of the most successful drink launches in recent years is Prime, led by YouTubers-turned-boxers KSI and Logan Paul. While not Web3-native, the drinks sold out upon launch and were in demand thanks to the two influencers’ cultlike followings, with fans queued at shops to get their hands on the drinks.

While Rekt believes it has a strong community, it’s not nearly as large as the 40 million subscribers that KSI and Logan Paul collectively command.

In this absence, Rekt engaged its community using a rewards system that feels native to Web3 audiences. By completing social tasks (such as liking a tweet or following an account), purchasing Rekt Drinks, or owning particular NFT collections, users earned DRANK points.

For now, what these points will add up to is unclear. Faruq would not comment specifically on the topic, citing legal reasons.

However, this is a similar viral mechanic that helped push the success of the tap-to-earn genre, as Telegram games encourage users to share projects socially in exchange for points. What these points will add up to is often unknown early on, but eventually the points typically determine how many tokens players will receive in an airdrop.

Regardless of whether Rekt will have a future airdrop or not, the launch of its drink is being billed as a success, with 222,000 cans of Liquidated Lime sold across 32 countries in less than two days.

“I genuinely believe we have something really special with Rekt,” Faruq told Decrypt, “and the fact that we’ve been able to achieve what we have from a free mint at the beginning of a two-year bear market is a testament to how loyal and die-hard our community is.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward