Real Hydration, Real Growth: How Pricklee Turned Buzz Into More Doors

Pricklee turned a family recipe and a Shark Tank deal with Barbara Corcoran into one of the fastest-growing names in functional hydration. Co-founder Mo Hassoun built the brand's real-fruit prickly pear water on a drink his grandmother used to make him growing up in Lebanon, and it's since earned real retail distribution: nationwide at Sprouts Farmers Market and expanding across Whole Foods' West Coast stores.

The product had already proven itself with loyal customers. The next goal was proving it deserved a bigger shelf. With Shopline helping sponsor a coast-to-coast Relisher activation, Pricklee partnered with Relish to turn everyday hydration moments into the kind of visible demand that gets a national retail buyer's attention.

The Opportunity
Pricklee wasn't short on fans. It was short on shelf space at the retailers customers actually wanted it in. The challenge: how do you take a brand that's already winning at Sprouts, Whole Foods, and H-E-B, and generate enough real, visible momentum to make the case for the next, bigger retailer?

With Shopline helping sponsor the activation, Pricklee and Relish had the scale to run one story across a dozen markets at once, rather than one city at a time, and to pair it with real customer research that could speak directly to what retailers want to see: proof of demand.

The Strategy
Relish and Shopline built a "Real Hydration Adventure," a coordinated, multi-market Relisher campaign that put Pricklee in front of local audiences from Los Angeles to Miami at the same time.

Key tactics included:

• Retailer-anchored activations: Dedicated campaigns tied to specific stores, including H-E-B in San Antonio and Houston and Whole Foods Market in Austin, so content led directly back to where customers could buy.
• National scale, local faces: Running the same campaign concept across 12 metro markets simultaneously so momentum built everywhere at once instead of trickling out city by city.
• Themed content drops: Cross-market series like "The Sprouts Hunt" and "Calling Moms" gave creators outside a specific retailer activation a shared story to plug into.
• Occasion-first content: Briefing creators around real use cases (on-the-go, post-workout, beach days) rather than generic product shots.
• Built-in customer research: An 84-Relisher post-campaign survey turned the buzz into hard data on taste, repurchase intent, category fit, and which retailers customers wanted to carry it.
• The tone: energetic, on-the-move, and unmistakably tied to real life, not a studio shoot.

The Results:

• 185 pieces of creator content
• 251,089 total views
• 12,393 engagements
• 4.9% engagement rate

The post-campaign survey backed up what the content was already showing. Of 84 Relishers surveyed: 94% liked or loved the taste, 83% said they'd buy it again with their own money, and 86% called it easy to find in-store. One in three said Pricklee would directly replace a coconut water or electrolyte drink, putting it in the same conversation as category names like Vita Coco and Poppi. And the clearest signal of all: 63% named Target as the retailer they most wanted to find it at, even though not a single surveyed Relisher had found it there yet.

Why It Matters
Pricklee's campaign didn't just prove the product works. It proved the demand exists in exactly the markets and retailers Pricklee needed to reach next.

That combination- hundreds of pieces of real, local proof and a customer research base showing genuine repeat-purchase intent and specific, named retail demand- is what turns a regional favorite into a national retail conversation. The excitement this campaign generated helped bring several larger retailers to the table, the direct result of showing up as loyal customers asking for a brand by name, not a brand asking to be noticed.

Because the fastest way to win a retailer's shelf isn't a pitch deck.

It's hundreds of customers already asking where to find you.

Ready to bring your Shopline brand to life locally? 👉 Let's talk.