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Traders find hidden benefit
Product marketing to athletes
LONG ISLAND, N.Y. -- A new product designed to improve the agility, coordination, and reaction speed of athletes has found its way onto Wall Street.
Vizuo XL Sports Vision Enhancement is marketed as a dietary supplement that improves sports vision, which consists of visual skills such as dynamic visual acuity, depth perception, peripheral vision, eye-hand coordination, visual memory, and several others that are important if athletes want to be successful.
Will Horan, president of Natural Athletic Nutrition, the Long Island-based company that makes Vizuo XL, was caught off guard when he first learned about its new usage pattern.
"I always assumed that these financial traders were buying it for their high-school or college kids that were playing sports. While talking with a bunch of them to gain marketing insight, we discovered that many were buying the product not for their children but for themselves. Apparently they felt that if it could help athletes make faster decisions on the playing field then it could help them execute trading decisions more quickly," says Horan. "I guess this is what the pharmaceutical industry would call an off-label use," he adds jokingly.
The product works in two ways. First, it supports and maintains the health and structural integrity of the eyes themselves. Second, it enhances the other half of "seeing," which has to do with what happens after the eyes take in the visual data from the world around them. When light enters the eye through the pupil it is focused on the retina by the lens. Rods and cones react to this light and pass information to the brain via the optic nerve. The brain processes this information and then sends nerve signals through the neuromuscular system, which direct the body to move in a certain way. By increasing levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and acetylcholine, the product helps the brain process visual information more quickly thereby allowing the body to react faster.
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