Eight years ago, Adrián Gutiérrez was selling homemade protein bars to gyms in León, Guanajuato, with labels printed at a local print shop and no ecommerce experience. In our conversation, he described a very different business today: Holix Lab had been valued at MXN 400 million, operated with a team of 17, and had taken its founder onto Shark Tank México.
Adrián joined Getmore's monthly webinar for a candid conversation about 2026: rising costs, raw-material shortages, and a sales channel that went from generating millions of pesos a month to a sharp decline. Here are the lessons he shared about protecting customer relationships and building a more resilient ecommerce business.
From the MXN 100 protein brand to Shark Tank
Adrián did not set out to work in ecommerce. A physical education teacher from La Piedad, Michoacán, he discovered protein supplements while working out at a gym during his studies in León. His first tub cost almost a week and a half of his teaching salary.
The business started when he showed that tub to a chemist friend who specialized in infant formula. His friend estimated production costs at around MXN 300—far below what Adrián paid for established brands. They began making their own versions and selling directly to gyms with printed flyers and no marketing experience. As Adrián put it, they were selling protein, not running a marketing operation. In those early years, people simply knew them as the MXN 100 protein brand.
The move online happened by chance. During an internship at a shoe factory, Adrián spent MXN 100 on a Facebook ad promoting a catalog, when far fewer advertisers were competing on the platform. Hundreds of comments and messages asked where to buy. He soon applied the same approach to Holix Lab. The idea began in 2016; by 2018, the brand was selling in gyms and running digital ads.
Shark Tank followed that same year through a sequence even Adrián cannot fully explain. At an event in Guadalajara, he heard Jorge Vergara speak and share his phone number. Adrián called to offer his protein bars; two weeks later, an invitation to audition arrived by email. He reached the studio carrying samples in an egg carton that broke on the way and had to clean up before presenting. At the time, annual revenue was MXN 600,000. According to Adrián, Holix Lab now generates that amount every two or three days.
Eight years of profitability with little outside funding
Unlike brands that raise substantial capital and build a large team before demand supports it, Holix Lab grew with very little outside funding. Adrián sees that constraint as an advantage: decisions had to make financial sense from day one because there was no cushion for sustained losses.
Adrián said that the previous year, a fund introduced by his mentor Rodrigo Herrera valued Holix Lab at MXN 400 million—four times its annual sales.
He illustrated that discipline with a simple example: when shipping costs rose by MXN 10 per parcel, people around him dismissed the increase. He saw a direct cost that would compound across orders unless addressed. Knowing the numbers behind each decision, he said, helped keep Holix Lab profitable for eight years, with growth reaching 100% or 150% in some periods.
What to do when costs rise and sales fall
At the end of 2025, Adrián tried an exercise suggested by Rodrigo Herrera: list five events that could threaten the business overnight. His list included protein costs tripling, the US dollar rising above MXN 25–26, an inability to source raw materials, a digital sales channel losing liquidity, and a physical disaster such as an earthquake.
Adrián described 2026 as a period when several of those pressures arrived together. Whey costs increased, sourcing became harder, and currency exposure added pressure. At the same time, he said Mercado Libre sales fell from MXN 5–10 million a month to MXN 1.5 million, a change he linked to a tax adjustment. These are the operating conditions reported by Holix Lab, rather than a forecast for every brand.
Looking back, Adrián identified two mistakes and three decisions that helped:
The mistakes
First, removing a product that was selling well out of fear that higher costs would make it stop selling. Second, failing to explain price increases clearly. His lesson: customers expect brands to communicate the reasoning behind decisions that affect them, not simply change the price and move on.
What helped
Absorbing part of the increase instead of passing it all to customers. Making products more accessible through smaller sizes and new flavors. And increasing marketing investment while the business was under pressure. Adrián said that combination meant accepting temporary losses deliberately for the first time in eight years to protect longstanding customer relationships. It was a choice about retention and cash flow, not an automatic recipe for preserving margin.
Rebuilding the advertising approach around Meta Andromeda
Around the same period, Holix Lab also reworked its advertising approach as Meta's ad systems evolved. Andromeda is Meta's personalized ad-retrieval system: it helps select candidate ads before later ranking stages. It does not impose one required campaign structure on every advertiser.
Adrián described the brand's previous approach as audience, product, and offer, with campaigns judged largely on the offer's performance. Holix Lab now tests several creative angles within an ad set and looks at their combined role in reaching and converting buyers. That is the brand's testing approach, not proof that weak ads must remain active to warm up an algorithm.
Holix Lab runs a campaign per product with up to 10 ads per ad set, testing angles and formats while distinguishing between cold audiences and people who have already bought or interacted with the brand. The team reviews performance every two weeks to avoid reacting to normal daily fluctuations.
They are also investigating a weekend performance decline. Their hypothesis is that competitors in related industries increase auction pressure on those days. They now adjust product budgets around the days that perform best, while continuing to test that explanation.
How much traffic justifies a custom landing page?
Holix Lab builds custom landing pages for selected high-volume products when the investment makes sense. In the webinar, Adrián and Alejandro used 10,000–15,000 visits per landing page as a practical planning reference for highly customized builds. It is not a universal minimum or an A/B-test sample-size calculation: the business case depends on traffic quality, conversion rate, margin, development cost, and the improvement being tested.
Both emphasized the product page as a high-priority investment. Alejandro called it your digital sales associate: the page that must answer objections and close the sale, regardless of how many campaign landing pages exist. With more than 90% of Holix Lab's traffic coming from mobile, according to Adrián, the team designs for the phone first.
How to start selling with a limited budget
Asked what he would do if starting again without Holix Lab's current budget, Adrián outlined a sequence: build a community through consistent content, earn trust, generate initial organic sales, and then invest in paid advertising.
For low-cost competitor research, he recommended Meta Ad Library and looking at ads that have run for a long time. Longevity can reveal messages worth investigating, but the library does not disclose profitability: use those ads as research inputs, not evidence that an offer is winning.
What a trip to Thailand suggested about consumer demand
Adrián connected the discussion to a recent trip to Thailand. He noticed convenience stores filled with competing pharmaceutical, beverage, and snack brands, and contrasted that variety with categories dominated by a few large brands in Mexico. He also reflected on the delivery-security challenges Holix Lab faces in some Mexican regions.
His view is that rising purchasing power and more competitive logistics could create room for emerging Mexican brands to challenge established players. He pointed to TikTok Shop's investment in delivery as one influence on that competition. This was his reading of the opportunity, not a guaranteed market outcome.
AI content and livestreams: building trust across channels
Adrián also shared how Holix Lab is experimenting with AI content. He reported that one AI-generated protein-shake video received 1.2 million views, 6,600 likes, 369 comments, and 30,200 shares in three days after roughly three hours of team work. A similar video posted the next day reached 89,000 organic views and 136 likes. The gap surprised the team and remains something they are trying to understand; reach alone does not establish sales impact.
He sees three directions for AI in marketing: improving content execution, preparing for product discovery through shopping agents, and introducing new formats gradually so that customers still recognize the brand's voice.
Holix Lab is also investing in Sunday-night livestreams with recipes and nutrition professionals answering questions. Adrián reported 400–600 concurrent viewers. He sees that direct connection as a way to build the trust that supports future purchases while reducing dependence on any single sales channel.
Frequently asked questions
What should an ecommerce brand do when product costs increase?
Review contribution margin, cash flow, pricing, and retention before deciding how much of the increase to pass on. Holix Lab tested smaller formats, clearer customer communication, and continued marketing investment. Absorbing costs can protect demand, but it reduces margin unless other gains offset it. At Getmore, we help brands identify conversion and average-order-value opportunities so they can evaluate those trade-offs with store data.
How can you explain a price increase without losing customer trust?
Explain what changed, why the increase is necessary, and what value customers continue to receive. Giving context is stronger than silently changing a price. Clear communication cannot guarantee retention, but it gives loyal customers a reason to understand the decision.
What is Meta Andromeda, and how does it affect advertising?
Andromeda is Meta's machine-learning system for retrieving relevant ads before they are ranked for delivery. For brands, the practical task is to test differentiated creative and measure business outcomes. It is not a rule requiring a fixed number of warm-up ads; Holix Lab's campaign structure is one brand's approach.
How many visits does a landing page need to justify the investment?
There is no universal threshold. The 10,000–15,000-visit range discussed in this webinar was a planning reference for highly customized landing pages. A profitable low-volume offer may justify a page sooner, while an A/B test can require more traffic. Getmore evaluates the offer, margins, traffic, and existing product-page performance before recommending where to invest.
How can you start selling online with a small budget?
Start with a clear offer, consistent useful content, and evidence that customers will buy. Adrián recommends building trust and initial organic sales before scaling paid media. Begin with manageable tests and increase spending as conversion, margin, and retention support the decision.
Is TikTok Shop worth considering?
It can add discovery and sales, but access to customer information and communication is governed by the platform's rules. Evaluate it alongside your own Shopify store, where you have more control over the shopping experience and consent-based customer relationship. Build channel diversity instead of making the business dependent on one marketplace.
Want more lessons from real Shopify brands?
- Ecommerce trends for 2026
- What is a Shopify Partner, and how can one help?
- Register for an upcoming Getmore webinar
The original webinar video is in Spanish.
Facing similar pressure in your store? Talk to Getmore about Shopify conversion optimization. We help identify friction in product pages and the buying journey, then prioritize improvements using your traffic, customer feedback, and commercial goals.
