TRURO, N.S. — Just call him Super Anil. Or, perhaps, Marvelous Makkar.
While tagging the Truro dentist and entrepreneur with a superhero moniker might not have seemed plausible in the past, a fresh look at his New Age Performance Mouthware website might change that perspective a tad.
“Our mouthpieces now are going to have the characters of Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, all the characters that Marvel Comics has,” New Age partner Makkar said, of an endorsement partnership with the action figure superhero company that became official this week.
“And they’ve also given us the rights to their worldwide distribution, which we’re really super pleased on.”
While the New Age mouthpieces have been endorsed by numerous professional athletes in the past, as well as receiving high praise from the CBC’s Dragons’ Den panel of venture capitalists, the deal with Marvel Comics will elevate things to a whole new perspective, Makkar said.
“That puts you on a different level because there’s a lot of people that just love Marvel heroes and they will buy that just because they want to be associated with their favourite hero.”
The partnership with Marvel is the culmination of a two-year endeavour by New Age CEO Rob Charlton based on the concept of relating comic book action figures with the New Age Performance products.
“Our mouthpiece is used by a lot of people that go to the gym, fitness people and stuff,” he said. “It just kind of goes with that whole theme, right?”
Makkar said when Charlton approached Marvel with the concept of an endorsement agreement, “they immediately got excited about the whole thing. And they said they’ve never ever been in this kind of an arena before but they say our product goes perfectly with their whole theme,” he said.
“So, this is actually the first mouthpiece that Marvel has endorsed in the history of their company.”
In 2017, Makkar and Charlton were featured on an airing of the Dragons’ Den, during which all six of the business moguls made offers on a partnership with New Age Performance. mouth piece and mouth guard company.
"we’re going to get obviously a whole new audience looking at our product because Marvel has a huge audience."
- Anil Makkar
Ultimately, after working through the due diligence process, however, Makkar and Charlton decided against a deal because it didn’t offer the benefits they were looking for.
"Because basically, at the end of the day we're looking for their guidance and their mentorship to take us to where we want to go," Makkar said, in a previous interview. "Their response was:
'You guys are doing all the right stuff. We don't know how much more we can help you with."'
But that did not make the experience a waste of time.
“Ever since our Dragon’s Den premier in 2017, we’ve had a huge spike in business and we’ve maintained that spike all along,” Makkar said. “So, from that spike, we’re going to experience another spike of growth and we’re going to get obviously a whole new audience looking at our product because Marvel has a huge audience. We’ll get that audience looking at our product too, which will be really super exciting.”
And Makkar said Charlton now is predicting a “200-per-cent increase” in mouthpiece sales because of the Marvel endorsements.
In fact, orders started coming in immediately after the Marvel Heroes Collection launched earlier this week on the New Age website.
As for his own reaction to the latest development?
“Just through the moon. Like, I never thought in my wildest dreams that Marvel Comics would ever endorse our products. But the more I thought of it, they’re exactly right, it’s a good fit for both of us,” he said.
And his own favourite Marvel character?
“Spider-Man,” he said. “When I was a young boy, I got addicted to the Saturday morning TV show and it always stuck with me. Who wouldn’t want to shoot a Spidey net from their hand?”
