How Jiří Votava built Brainmarket into a billion-crown brand

Jiří Votava managed to ride the longevity wave long before the word became fashionable. His company Brainmarket built the Czech dietary supplement market from scratch and this year is targeting revenue of 1.5 billion crowns.

The idea came to the entrepreneur after reading a book by Israeli author Ori Hofmekler, The Anti-Inflammation Zone — Votava was struck by the fact that everyday consumer goods can contain substances that disrupt the body's hormonal balance. Intrigued, he discovered that a market for products to restore that balance barely existed in Czechia.

In 2015 he developed his own product — the BrainMax 1.0 complex for improving memory, thinking and concentration. “At the time it was a groundbreaking idea. Customers didn't know what cognitive abilities were, let alone the word ‘nootropic,’” Votava recalls. Three years later came the Brainmarket online shop, bringing together all his healthy-lifestyle products under one roof.

“Back then, supplements were bought at pharmacies or fitness shops. If you'd walked into a pharmacy and asked for magnesium bisglycinate, they'd have looked at you like you were crazy,” the entrepreneur notes. Eight years later, Brainmarket has grown into a company with billion-crown revenue employing more than two hundred people, and magnesium bisglycinate has become one of its best-selling supplements, familiar to most customers.

From revenue of 17 million crowns in 2018, the company grew by 100% every year, except in 2022, when the war in Ukraine slowed growth to a third of its usual pace. Votava, who remains the company's sole owner, expects revenue of 1.5 billion crowns this year and gross profit of 300 million. “If we'd been listed on the stock exchange and someone had invested in such a fast-growing company at the right time, they'd be very rich by now,” he jokes.

The secret to his success, the entrepreneur says, lies in being significantly ahead of the market. By the time the longevity trend started gaining popularity three years ago, Brainmarket was already an established brand that customers trusted. But in the early days, the company had to educate the market almost from scratch: “Back in 2018, pharmacies sold inorganic forms of magnesium for a hundred crowns, and suddenly we came along offering magnesium for five hundred. We had to explain that bisglycinate is absorbed eight times better.”

Today, a search for this product brings up the Brainmarket online shop in 22% of queries. “When you're in business, you don't want people searching for the product category — you want them searching for your brand,” Votava explains, adding that thanks to its early start, the company spends only around 15% of its budget on marketing, noticeably less than its competitors.

Over the years, magnesium bisglycinate has become a genuine bestseller: while around 1,700 packs were sold in 2018, last year the figure reached 140,000 units, an increase of 84% thanks to a wave of interest in longevity and educational work by influencers. “On that one product alone we made 60 million crowns — simply because we were the first to blaze that trail.”

Another wave that carried Votava's business forward was biohacking, which gained popularity in 2020. After reading American author Dave Asprey's book Bulletproof, the entrepreneur started selling red, blue-light-blocking glasses — despite public scepticism that branded him a charlatan.