Farmington Hills biz behind $1B 5-Hour Energy

Put this in the "Betcha didn't know" column. Living Essentials, the company that makes the 5-Hour Energy drink (and has sued out of existence the 6-Hour and 8-Hour Energy copycats) is a billion-dollar company in our own backyard. That's right, billion -- with a "b".

Excerpt:

"The privately held Living Essentials doesn’t report revenue or profits, but a source with knowledge of its financials says the company grossed north of $600 million last year on that $1 billion at retail. The source says the company netted about $300 million. Checkout scan data from research firm SymphonyIRI say that 5-Hour has 90% of the energy-shotmarket. Its closest competitor, NVE Pharmaceuticals’ Stacker brand, has just over 3%.

Yet Bhargava, 58, is so under the radar that he barely registers on Web searches. His paper trail is thin, consisting primarily of more than 90 lawsuits. This is his first press interview. “I’m killing it right now,” he says, adjusting a black zip-up cardigan from behind the table of a soulless conference room in a beige low-rise building in a suburban business park in Farmington Hills, Mich. “But you’ll Google me and find, like, some lawyer in Singapore.”

Read the rest here.