World champion boxer Katie Taylor has made her first venture into business as a co-creator of a new soda called Fizzique.
Fizzique Drinks Ltd, which formally lodged papers with the Companies Registration Office in January, is a sister company of Irish wellness brand SiSú, which is a family business founded by Brian and Fiona McGann and now run by their daughter Aisling McGann.
Taylor is a shareholder in Fizzique and Aisling and Brian McGann are listed as directors.
SiSú makes plant-based milks, kombucha, cold-pressed juices, and functional shots, while Fizzique is described as a “better-for-you alternative to traditional soft drinks” that contains no sweeteners.
Speaking at the launch in Dublin on Tuesday, Taylor said she had dinner with Aisling McGann last year having become aware of SiSú some years earlier. They plan to take the product global.
“The characteristics that it takes to be a top athlete are some of the characteristics that make a top businessperson as well,” Taylor said.
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“You have to be willing to grind and hustle. You have to be able to pick yourself up after setbacks. You have to be unafraid of failure. You need to know the competition and be willing to go further and work harder.
“There is a specific set of skills I don’t have, and that’s why you partner with people like Aisling and Brian, and people who are experts in their field.”
Taylor said it was only after edging her third fight against Amanda Serrano in New York last July that she began to think about the next steps in her life.
“It’s only really since my last fight that I started thinking about retirement,” she said. “You have to be completely committed [when you go into the ring] with your heart, mind, and soul. Anything less is dangerous.
“After the last fight, it felt different. It felt like I was passing on the baton. I felt a sense of closure. I felt a sense of fullness of the journey. I’ve been talking to SiSú and the guys for a few years now, but over the past few months especially.
“I happen to love fizzy drinks but I can’t afford to be putting junk into my body. So the next level of ambition is to make soda that’s not bad for you, and the next level after that is to make it genuinely good for you.”
Having been a full-time athlete for more than 20 years, Taylor said she has been approached by many brands in the health and wellness industry. “Very rarely would I say yes because possible partnerships would take away a lot of my time,” she said.
“You have to ask yourself two guiding questions: what’s the culture like and what’s the vision like. I spent a bit of time with Aisling and Brian and I got a sense of their culture of honesty, their authenticity.
“That’s married with the excellence and the ambition they have. They want to be the disrupter in their own field, and those are principles I have carried very close to my heart over the past few years. This felt like a perfect fit.”
Aisling McGann described Taylor’s involvement as a partnership rather than a sponsorship, and said she was involved in the creation of the product.
She said the product is “high in fibre, infused with magnesium and Vitamin D, made with juices and natural flavourings, low in sugar and low in calories”.
There are four flavours: zesty lemon and ginger; passion fruit and yuzu; watermelon, lime and mint; and blood orange and mango.