The Idea
In 2018, apple cider vinegar was one of the most searched wellness ingredients on the internet and one of the least consumed. People read the studies, bought the bottle, took two shots, and quit. It tasted like something you'd use to strip a floor.
Michael Bitensky, a Montreal entrepreneur, looked at that drop-off and drew a different conclusion to everyone else in the supplement aisle. The ingredient wasn't the problem. The delivery was. Nobody quits a gummy.
So he went hunting for a manufacturer who could hide the vinegar without losing it. The answer was pectin, pulled from orange peel rather than the usual animal gelatin, wrapped around real ACV and flavoured to taste like apples. Vegan, organic, kosher, and patent pending. Bitensky brought in Deepak Agarwal, a serial e-commerce operator, to get it off the ground, and set up shop in West Hollywood with a five word promise printed on every bottle: taste the apple, not the vinegar.
This was the beginning of Goli.
The Execution
- September 2019: Goli launches the world's first ACV gummy, made with pectin instead of gelatin, with a patent pending on the flavour-masking formula.
- 2019 to 2020: The brand skips retail-first and goes straight at social, building what becomes a 100,000-strongarmy of influencers with Jennifer Lopez, Alex Rodriguez, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato attached. Goli goes viral on Instagram and TikTok and racks up 350,000 Amazon reviews on the ACV gummy alone.
- Late 2020: Goli hires Centerview Partners to explore a sale, telling buyers to expect $750 million in revenue and $75 million EBITDA in 2021. No deal materialises.
- July 2021: Riding those projections, Goli orders $281 million of finished goods from contract manufacturer Better Nutritionals, plus a verbal order for 300 million bottles. By August, the lawsuit later alleged, Goli had cut its sales projections by more than 90%.
- October 2021: VMG Partners puts in $100 million for 4.5% and two board seats. Actual 2021 sales come in at $438 million, a top 25 US supplement brand, but a long way short of the $750 million pitched.
- December 2022: Better Nutritionals files for Chapter 11 one day after suing Goli, Bitensky and Agarwal for no less than $200 million, claiming it built a factory for orders that never came.
- 2023: Class actions over health claims, a trademark fight and the Better Nutritionals feud pile up losses and legal fees, even as the brand holds 5 million DTC customers and 100,000 retail placements.
- March 2024: Goli obtains a stay from the Superior Court of Quebec and sells itself to Group KPS, Bastion Capital and one of its original founders under Canada's CCAA, avoiding bankruptcy by weeks.
- 2024 to 2025: The new owners rebuild the demand engine on TikTok Shop, gamifying affiliate commissions with iPhones, Miami retreats and BMWs. One campaign does $4.1 million in 30 days, and Goli ends up the top health supplement brand on US TikTok Shop.
- March 2026: Now the #1 consumables brand on TikTok Shop, Goli throws the first Goli Gala with TikTok at Expo West, flying in 600 creators for a black-tie awards night.
The lesson?
Goli built one of the fastest demand engines consumer goods has ever seen, and the forecast almost killed it. The $750 million number was doing double duty as a sales pitch and a purchase order, so when the real figure landed at $438 million the gap took out a factory, triggered a $200 million lawsuit and pushed a top 25 supplement brand into creditor protection inside three years. The demand, though, was always real. That's why the same playbook, moved onto TikTok Shop, put the brand back at number one. Goli never had a demand problem. It nearly died of a spreadsheet.