Sexy billboard has many others reaching for Cold Fusion bars

The ads are for Cold Fusion protein pops, the brainchild of 29-year-old Collin Madden, a Seattle native whose family has been in the local ice cream and dairy business for three generations.


	The billboard that Cold Fusion is banking on to get attention. "We're a new company, and the ads are edgy. The idea was to show someone indulging, but still looking good," marketing officer Lara Jackle said.

"I rowed crew in college, and I'm a runner," Madden explained last week, seated behind his grandfather's desk at the Vitamilk Dairy in Green Lake. "I started blending my own shakes with protein and fruit juice. Then I just had an epiphany; it was like a bolt of lightning."

That was 1998. It took Madden several years to get his company off the ground. Cold Fusion Foods began selling the protein pops, its first product, in March 2000.

But Madden said the concept didn't take off right away. At first he peddled the bars to health clubs and gyms. They were bigger than the ones that Cold Fusion makes now, and at $2.49 each, they were also more expensive.

But in February, Madden reformulated his juice bars, made them cheaper -- they now go for $1.99 a piece or three for $4.99 -- and smaller. The company changed its marketing strategy, deciding to go after grocery store chains rather than health clubs.


Tim Wilson checks one of the Cold Fusion protein juice bars on the production line just before packaging. Cold Fusion has been picked up by major grocery retailers, including QFC, Fred Meyer, Whole Foods, PCC, some Thriftways and, just recently, Trader Joe's. Phil H. Webber / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

"What we found out is that health clubs, candidly, really have no interest in retail," Madden said. "They're interested in selling memberships, not products. Health clubs are still a good market for us, but they're not our primary revenue source."

Since then, Cold Fusion has been picked up by major grocery retailers, including QFC, Fred Meyer, Whole Foods, PCC and some Thriftway stores.

The company just signed a deal with Trader Joe's, and Cold Fusion bars will hit the shelves at the grocer's West Coast stores next week, Madden said.

Nancy Lisac, vice president and Nutrition Center merchandiser for Fred Meyer, said that all 127 stores in that chain will begin selling the frozen pops within the next month.

"They're a unique, all-natural product, and they have 11 grams of lactose-free protein," she said. "That's a great selling point. These look to us like a very nutritious treat."

Still, industry experts said that the tiny company, which has a full-time staff of eight, including Madden, has its work cut out for it.

Danny Warshay, managing director and co-founder of Health Business Partners in Providence, R.I., said that products such as calcium-enriched juices -- called functional foods -- are part of a rapidly expanding category.

"I think these guys have picked up on that trend and tried to apply the same concept to the related, but slightly different category of frozen novelties," Warshay said. "They have a distinctive and interesting product."

Still, Warshay the company is going to have to muscle its way into an industry that is already crowded with well-established companies.

"They're going to be competing just to get on shelf with lots of big food companies, who guard their space aggressively," Warshay said, adding that Cold Fusion is the only company he knows of that puts protein in its frozen bars.

Madden and his team work out of both the Puget Sound area and Los Angles, though the juice bars are made here in Seattle.

In both markets, Cold Fusion has done its best to get noticed, appearing frequently at races and other athletic events to hand out miniversions of the juice bars.

And then, of course, there are the billboards. Madden said that he realized early on that raising awareness about his product would be key.

So, Madden, who invested $600,000 of his own and raised some additional capital from his family and other industry investors, also signed a deal with The Ackerley Group of Seattle that helped bring the flashy billboards to life.

The company, which is breaking even right now, is looking to raise an additional $2.5 million for additional promotional efforts.

But while Lara Jackle, Cold Fusion's vice president of marketing, acknowledged that the ads are provocative, she said they're helping Cold Fusion get noticed.

"We're a new company, and the ads are edgy," she said. "The idea was to show someone indulging, but still looking good."

P-I reporter Marni Leff can be reached at 206-448-8142 or marnileff@seattlepi.com

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