Background: Former NRL player Adam MacDougall launched The Man Shake in 2013 with his wife to help men lose weight without fad diets. What started as an online protein shake quickly expanded into supermarkets and chemists, then into The Lady Shake and Kids Shake, building a community of more than 500,000 customers.

What happened: The brand scaled fast, hitting $122 million in revenue and selling a majority stake to private equity firm Pacific Equity Partners, valuing the business at over $400 million. The plan was to expand into snack bars and new drinks. But now, PEP is looking to offload its stake in parent company Cranky Health, admitting the business is likely worth less than what it paid.

What else: The problem? GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. Medications like Ozempic and Wegovy are changing how people lose weight, cutting into demand for meal-replacement shakes. With consumer behaviour shifting quickly, PEP appears keen to exit before the shake category loses more ground.

What's the key learning

💡The biggest threat to your business often doesn’t look like you. Disruption is increasingly coming from adjacent industries solving the same customer problem in a totally different way.

💡Medications like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro do not compete on flavour or protein content. They compete on results. Instead of calorie deficits via shakes, people are opting for injections. In the year to April 2025 alone, more than 6 million GLP-1 jabs were sold in Australia.

💡Adjacent disruption can wipe out demand. The iPhone didn’t target cameras, but made them unnecessary, driving a 94% drop in Canon and Nikon shipments. GLP-1s pose a similar risk to shake-based weight loss brands.