SoBe Beverages
Upon his departure from the NFL, Bello took a position as VP Marketing with Brooklyn, New York-based Ferolito, Vultaggio and Sons, makers of AriZona iced tea. At AriZona he joined a former Pepsi colleague Mike Schott, then COO of AriZona Beverages. After four months he left AriZona to create his own beverage company in partnership with Tom Schwalm that became the South Beach Beverage Company, named after the trendy South Beach area of Miami.
The new company, based in Norwalk, Connecticut, marketed so-called "New Age" beverages—exotic juice blends and ready-to-drink iced teas—but faced formidable competition from its predecessors, including Snapple, Mystic, Nantucket Nectars and AriZona. South Beach needed a point of differentiation in the marketplace, so Bello added trace elements of various herbs and nutrients—such as ginseng, ginkgo biloba, guarana, carnitine, Echinacea, yohimbe, taurine and praline—and promoted their benefits beyond hydration. He launched a "3G" line of drinks, which included supposed energy boosters like ginseng, ginkgo biloba and guarana. He also expanded the brand's iced tea portfolio to include more exotic offerings such as Black Tea, Oolong Tea (with bee pollen), Green Tea (with Echinacea) and Red Tea (with selenium). Under Bello's direction, SoBe launched a line of "3C" Elixirs (containing calcium, carnitine and chromium) in varieties such as Orange-Carrot, Orange-Tomato (including lycopene), Energy (with guarana, yohimbe and arginina), Power (taurine, creatine and praline), Zen Blend (triple ginseng tea with schizandra), Wisdom (with ginkgo biloba, St. John's wort and gotu kola) and Eros (with dong quai, damiana, foti and zink).
He created the "dueling lizards" design and took a lead role in the company's guerrilla marketing effort, proclaiming himself as the "Lizard King" in radio advertisements. He gave the brand an "attitude" by enlisting athletes who were somewhat out of the mainstream—such as golfer John Daly and downhill skier Bode Miller—as official spokespersons for the brand. The SoBe marketing team also wooed independent beverage distributors, offering them very high margins and a small chunk of equity in the company.
From its creation in 1995, SoBe's sales rose rapidly and climbed to $275 million by 2000. The following year, the brand rode the "good-for-you" trend among American consumers to break the quarter billion dollar barrier in 2000. SoBe was sold to PepsiCo for a reported $370 million cash on October 30, 2000. Bello remained with Pepsi overseeing SoBe until early 2004.
By the end of 1999 the company had sold 14.8 million cases of drinks and taken in $166.4 million. South Beach challenged rival AriZona in sales and was pursuing Snapple for leadership in the new age drink category. Less than pleased, rival AriZona slapped the company with a lawsuit claiming that SoBe had copied its bottle design or stolen trade secrets. Then Judge Sonia Sotomayor ruled in SoBe's favor denying a preliminary injunction. Legal action proceeded and persisted on the federal and state level until 2007, long after the company had been sold to PepsiCo. In 2007, the court dismissed all AriZona claims on summary judgement
In 2001, Bello was named Ernst and Young's National Entrepreneur of the Year in the Consumer Products category for his accomplishments at SoBe.
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