Upon graduating from IE, it was very clear to Isabel Rodgriguez Calvet that she wanted to launch a startup. She had always been particularly passionate about health, fitness, and nutrition, as she is a very active person in her day-to-day life. These interests drove her to found Suprey, a nutrition company oriented at making high-quality, clean products. Currently, Suprey offers three flavors of clean protein.
Rodriguez began taking protein supplements long before co-founding Suprey, mentioning that taking protein truly changed her life. Without consuming enough protein, the body falls behind in various ways: metabolism runs slow, fatigue kicks in, and the mind doesn’t work as well. For Rodriguez, taking protein powder dramatically reduced these issues.
As time passed Rodriguez began to identify problems with the protein industry. First, many people have the impression that protein is for weightlifters seeking to bulk or extreme sports athletes, leaving many people outside the pool of potential consumers for protein powders. Second, those consuming protein weren’t having an optimal experience with it. Rodriguez testified to many people saying that protein leaves them bloated, or mentioning their intolerance to lactose or gluten, which most mainstream protein supplements contain. Some might argue that vegan alternatives already exist, but Rodriguez was not satisfied with the taste and quality of the existing products in the market. Existing vegan products were not enough of a solution to address the problems at hand.
Thus, Rodriguez’s three pillars for change emerged:
(1) Promoting education on nutrition and the importance of protein,
(2) Producing a clean and vegan protein product to solve issues of intolerance and bloating
(3) Resolving the poor taste and quality of vegan protein products
with Suprey.
“I want to educate. I want to give a clean product. I want to solve the issue that the taste is bad, [I want] to make it yummy. I think those three points going hand in hand is what made us do it,” Rodriguez said. She believes that protein is a solution to many problems, and via Suprey, Rodriguez aims to make this solution accessible to everyone.
Suprey protein powder is currently available online and in gyms across Spain, but it took abundant efforts and perseverance from Rodriguez and her co-founder to get to the point of launching. The pair of co-founders came up with the idea for Suprey two years ago. For essentially the first year and a half of developing their venture, they handled the entire workload by themselves.
The benefit to this was that the two got along extremely well, sharing one unified and strong vision for their product and equal commitment to the project. The two divided responsibilities and tasks: Rodriguez assumed the marketing, branding, and visuals, the web and social media – essentially, the ways of conveying Suprey to the world — while her partner assumed the legal end, talking to providers, dealing with the accounting, and more.
But, being the only two in charge of the entire process was understandably beginning to drain them. To resolve this, the co-founders decided to hire two interns from IE four months ago.
“You’re really excited one day and the next you’re very much drained. So, I think the idea with the interns was to bring in someone new, someone fresh, with new ideas and new energy that could kind of see everything from the beginning – kind of how I felt when I started it you know… We also wanted it to be someone younger because we thought it could connect better with today’s world, with the audiences, with social media,” Rodriguez said.
Journey to Launch
Before the interns, the road to launching Suprey was long. Rodriguez explained that the typical mechanism to make protein powder is to buy the protein base and additives for flavor, and then mix the two. Since the Suprey team was trying to avoid the typical issues that arise from this process, they tried something new — to build the protein powder, Rodriguez and her co-founder decided they wanted to go with a different provider for each ingredient. The product uses eight ingredients, meaning they had to coordinate with eight different providers all at once.
This process was extremely tedious and prompted Rodriguez to hire a lab to assist her in identifying what exactly was causing specific tastes. Once they had a good base flavor, then they added the three flavors Suprey currently sells: chocolate, vanilla, and berries. At this stage, the co-founders turned to friends and family for taste testing – a more light-hearted and fun way to test and gather feedback.
“That was pretty funny – you had people who had never tried protein who were disgusted, other people liked it. It was really fun to get that feedback,” Rodriguez said.
After 15 to 20 tries and six months of taste testing, Rodriguez finally landed on a mix that received no complaints. “And then, finally we reached the perfect blend, which was the most natural we could make it, not super sugary, clean. That final taste testing was amazing because everyone liked it, there were no disagreements,” Rodriguez said.
After this, Suprey was ready to take on the remaining obstacles for product launching. The co-founders had to go through the legal process of making Suprey a brand: finding a logo and name, and notifying the Spanish government of the products and their manufacturing process.
While handling the legal processes, Rodriguez also had to reflect on how she wanted the product to be sold, more specifically, in what format. This is where she decided to go with powder, as it was the most easy-to-use option. Once settled, they searched for an agency to do the marketing strategy for their brand. Rodriguez contacted around 50 different agencies before landing on one which could execute her vision perfectly. It may have taken time and much perseverance, but ultimately Rodriguez encountered the perfect fit.
Next, the team had to find the right supplier for packaging of the products. The easy option was to go with premade, existing, quick-to-make plastic tubes. Rodriguez, however, did not want to go in this direction. “We don’t feel comfortable buying plastic and making plastic products when our product is so high quality, so clean. We need it to kind of go hand in hand with something sustainable,” Rodriguez said. Now, more than ever, the prioritization of sustainable practices by businesses is incredibly important.
Rodriguez chose to call time and time again to find a sustainable packaging supplier. After countless calls, she found a Portuguese supplier for sustainable cardboard tubes. The provider began working on the packaging in May 2024, and shipped them in October 2024 to Suprey’s factory in Valencia, Spain. Just as soon as the packaging arrived, it was entirely destroyed in the DANA.
Originally, Rodriguez expected to launch the product in September, 2024, but, due to delays and the DANA, Suprey wasn’t able to launch until November. The DANA left no lives in Spain untouched. This event affected Suprey’s ability to enter the market. “That’s a lot of stressful months where you think you’re going to be able to launch and you have everything ready, and then something like this happens which, of course, it’s not something you expect, it happens… It’s really really stressful to hold on to ‘let’s start selling in September’ and then this happens and you have to wait for three more months,” Rodriguez said.
Still, the team persisted. Throughout the process, the co-founders have had the support of an investment fund aligned with Suprey’s goals. Once the original prototypes were made, the team made a business plan to secure investors, leading them to this wellness-conscious investment fund.
Now that the product has launched, Rodriguez finds it’s reaching who she wanted it to, thanks to four main reasons:
(1) Online sales,
(2) Word of mouth,
(3) Doctor recommendations,
(4) In-person events.
“We have around 10 [online] sales per day, which is crazy for how we just started a few months ago. The feedback is amazing. And, it definitely reaches all kinds of people. I think that’s what’s fun. Most of them are people who already take protein, who saw it somewhere wanted to buy a new one and then bought it because they saw it somewhere. And then, what I realized is that a lot of it is word of mouth,” Rodriguez said. Essentially, when someone likes the product, they share it with their friends.
Rodriguez was also quite surprised by the amount of nutritionists, oncologists, and other medical professionals who have asked her if they could recommend Suprey to their patients. Last, but most importantly, Rodriguez finds that Suprey gains traction from face-to-face events, as she is able to communicate the essence of the product more naturally than online.
Upon reflecting on Rodriguez’s venture with Suprey, the clear overarching takeaway is that everything good takes time, and often more time than expected. From initial taste testing, taste testing with friends, the legal processes in Spain, the journeys to find the right marketing agency and providers, and expansion in the market, each step took quite a long time. Despite this, the result was a product exactly how Rodriguez had imagined it.
Suprey protein power is a true manifestation of Rodriguez’s aspirations. With patience, perseverance, and entrepreneurial drive, Rodriguez transformed her passion into a startup that embodies her vision and values. Her impact on the health and lifestyle industry will only continue to grow thanks to her unwavering dedication to making Suprey the best it can be.
Suprey protein can be purchased online or at various physical locations across Spain:
Madrid: HOM, Cercle Studio, and El Galgo Coffee & Wine.
Segovia: Fitclub Collective Segovia
Barcelona: Casa Barre
Marbella: Palm Sporting Club
Featured image provided by Eloise Dayrat.
