I went to Logan Paul and KSI's Prime pop-up, where everything was gold and fans lined up down the block to try to win a $500,000 bottle
Marta Biino
- Prime, YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul's electrolyte drink, has become a status symbol for young people.
- To celebrate the sale of its billionth bottle, Prime opened two limited stores in London and NYC.
It's a Prime world, and we're just living in it.
The Prime beverage, which comes in a "hydration" version and an "energy" version, has become a cult drink among young fans of YouTube megastars Logan Paul and KSI since its launch in early 2022.
The company announced last week it expects to reach $1.2 billion in sales by the end of 2023. It's also sold its billionth bottle, and to celebrate the milestone, Prime went brick-and-mortar, opening two "gold" stores in London and New York City.
The stores were open for just 48 hours between November 10 and 12, and featured the opportunity for visitors to win a gold Prime bottle worth $500,000 if they guessed a six-digit code. The bottles would be melted if nobody guessed.
Luckily, on Sunday night, as the 48 hours were drawing to a close, a young boy in London got the code right and secured the gold bottle.
In New York, where Logan Paul was running operations at the local Prime store, the matching gold bottle was recorded melting, as there could only be one winner.
Earlier this year, an advertising blitz, paired with supply problems that caused shortages of the drink, sparked hysteria in the UK. Parents and kids were seen lining up for hours outside of grocery stores, and an aggressive black market emerged, with bottles being sold for up to £25 (about $30).
While the supply issue has now been curbed, with the drink being sold across major grocery chains in the UK, the hype around it has seemingly not died down — likely because of the regular limited-edition drops of new and rare flavors. For example, visitors of the Prime London store received a gold bottle with a custom flavor and the words "London 1,000,000,000" printed on it.
On Friday, November 10, about an hour ahead of the London Prime store opening, the line of young people waiting to try their luck stretched to the end of the block.
Ellie Whitby and her friend Emanuele Maccotta, who were first in line to enter the store, had been waiting in front of it for about 15 hours, braving the rain and the 50-degree London weather.
The two said they hadn't originally planned to line up for that long, but when they walked past the store location the night before its opening, they spontaneously decided to pull an all-nighter.
Whitby, who runs a YouTube channel with 290,000 subscribers, said she'd come primarily to shoot content for her social-media profiles.
Next in line was Steve Cooper, who runs the online candy store Central Sweet Supply. He told Insider that for him, business around Prime has never been as good as in recent months.
After visiting the store, Cooper stood outside waiting for visitors to come out and offered to buy the coveted gold bottles off of them.
Now, the gold Prime bottle can be found for sale on the Central Sweet Supply website for £139.99 (about $171).
Here's more of what the scene was like:
At about 2:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon, hundreds of people were lining up for the Prime store opening.
It was near Piccadilly Circus, in the heart of London.
By 4:00 p.m., when the store officially opened, the line was circling the block. Most of the visitors were teenagers and children with their parents.
Inside, the first thing you'd see was a gold mannequin wearing branded Prime boxing apparel.
There was also a floating gold bottle pouring gold liquid.
The front and back of the gold mannequin said '1B Prime.'
This was a nod to the sale of one billion bottles of the drink.
The store also had a wall of gold bottles of the Prime electrolyte drink in a special limited-edition flavor.
It had Prime-branded t-shirts and caps, as well.
Visitors would receive these three items for free when coming into the store, after trying their luck at winning the gold bottle.
The shop was full of objects that could be used to shoot content.
That included the branded puff coats of the store employees.
The store even had a custom-branded gold motorcycle displayed in one of the windows.
While the store was full of Prime-branded objects, nothing in there was for sale. Some merch would be given away as freebies to the visitors, but the rest was only meant to act as props for photos and videos.
The prized gold bottle was held inside a massive vault, and encased in bulletproof glass.
YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober had designed the glass case.
At about 3:45 p.m., KSI arrived in a van.
He was carrying a briefcase that held the coveted $500,000 gold bottle.
Here's KSI placing the gold bottle in its glass case inside the vault right before the store was set to open.
The visitors would then walk up to the glass case and type a six-digit code in a keyboard in front of the bottle to try and win it.
Afterwards, KSI started playing around with gold objects in the store.
These included a London phone booth with a Prime-bottle-shaped receiver.
The store included a number of gold objects.
This gold pair of Crocs was displayed in one of the windows.
There was also a pair of gold, Prime-branded boxing gloves.
This is a hint to KSI and Logan Paul's former boxing mega-rivalry.
Before they founded Prime, the two YouTubers competed in amateur boxing matches in 2018 and 2019, and were known for being enemies, although Logan Paul admitted in 2020 that the rivalry was "all for show."
There was even a pair of gold Jordan Nike sneakers.
These were also branded, and said "Prime" in blue on the side.
At 4:00 p.m. the doors opened, and people could start playing to try and win the gold bottle.
Visitors would line up to enter the vault and would have 20 seconds to type in the six-digit code for a chance to win.
KSI was there to take some content and sign autographs.
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