How Nick Bare built a six-figure supplement brand while serving in the army

Executive overview

Nick Bare launched Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) from his college apartment with a $20,000 interest-free army pre-commissioning loan and one SKU of pre-workout. He ran the business remotely while deployed to Korea, waking at 4 a.m. to contact manufacturers before army PT, then working until midnight.

A YouTube channel documenting military life drove explosive subscriber growth and became the primary acquisition channel. By the time he returned stateside, BPN was doing six figures a month.

The core insight: a tightly defined niche — military athletes — gave BPN a loyal, word-of-mouth community that no paid acquisition could replicate.

Starting out

• Pre-launched with a single pre-workout SKU, mixing ingredients in bulk himself at ~$30 for four months' supply
• Used a pre-commissioning army loan ($20,000, 0% interest for six months) as startup capital
• Father handled shipping (3–5 orders/week) while Nick was at training
• Avoided GNC-style retail early on — retail margin requirements often force reformulation, destroying brand integrity

Growing through content and community

• Started a YouTube channel to document training and nutrition; shifted to military life content while in Korea
• One "day in the life of an infantry platoon leader" video took the channel from 35,000 to 90,000 subscribers in three weeks
• Military niche had almost no competition on YouTube at the time — early mover advantage
• Channel growth fed supplement sales directly; the military community is tight-knit and pushes products to peers
• BPN built a strong presence on military installations purely through word of mouth

Early customer retention tactics

• Wrote handwritten thank-you notes to every customer from Korea, shipping them back to the US
• Ran a one-day campaign: place an order and receive a personal phone call as thanks — generated hundreds of orders and a week of calls
• Added low-cost gifts (wristbands, dog tags, stickers) with orders; perceived value far exceeds actual cost
• Fast order fulfilment: shipping label generated within an hour of purchase confirmation

Scaling operations

• Goal on arriving in Korea: $10,000/month revenue — hit it within 45 days
• Rebuilt the website and rebranded labels while deployed
• Moved brother to Texas before returning home to take over fulfilment
• Opened a gym in the same facility on arrival; closed it four months later as supplements overwhelmed capacity
• Worked 1–2 a.m. shifts at the warehouse after full army workdays at Fort Hood (an hour's drive away)

Expanding distribution

• Email list tripled in a month using Sumo.com email capture; pre-launch email blast for a new protein generated 1,000+ orders in 24 hours
• Picked up by a veteran-owned supplement retail chain (300 locations, expanding to 700)
• Amazon certification required three months of manufacturer audits and certificate-of-analysis for every product; projected 200–600 orders/day on the platform

Brand strategy

• Personal brand drove early business growth, but Nick deliberately stepped back to reduce brand dependency on his identity
• Military authenticity — unit patches sent in by customers, actual deployment footage — was the differentiator competitors couldn't copy
• Kept product line focused: pre-workout, protein, a pump product, and a greens powder in development