DTC #108: Starting a supplements brand (101)

It's almost 1 year building a supplements brand. Ingredients, quality assurance, trust building and price - how did we do it? What challenges did we face?

👋 Heyyy! Welcome to Out of Singapore. I am Shan. I started writing this newsletter last March to share about navigating challenges in life. It was named “Navigating Life”. I wrote about life, entrepreneurship and my failings for first few editions, before settling on writing about business building in Singapore. Here are some funny and amateur write ups from last year. Read them when you lazying, I am sure it will crack you up (at my expense).

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This week, I wanted to skip writing and take a break. It’s 5 pm on Sunday. And I have finally started writing. On other Sunday’s, I am done at least 50% by now. Partly because I had a tough week and I have found it difficult to focus. Anyways, that’s part and parcel of life. Let’s get to today’s topic - How to start a supplements brand?

Estimated reading time: 5 Mins

We will cover

1. All that you need to know about supplements.

   1. What are supplements?

   2. Why do consumers take supplements?

   3. How to start taking supplements?

2. What are the different segments of supplements?

3. How to build a brand on supplements?

Before I begin, here is something you should know about.

The three core pillars of health are diet, exercise and sleep. All interventions fail if the core pillars are not strong.

Now let’s get started.

#1 All you need to know about supplements

A. What are supplements?

ChatGPT says - “A dietary supplement is a product intended to supplement the diet and provide nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, fiber, fatty acids, or amino acids, that may be missing or may not be consumed in sufficient quantities in a person's diet. Some dietary supplements can also contain substances that have not been confirmed as being essential to life but are marketed as having a beneficial biological effect, such as plant pigments or polyphenols. They can come in various forms, including tablets, capsules, powders, liquids, and bars.”

Now, these supplements could be natural or made in lab. Natural supplements could be sourced from plants, animals and also, humans.

B. Why consumers take supplements?

Consumers can have one these health goals

1. Cover up for their nutritional deficiency due to diet and lifestyle gaps.

2. Enhance performance for either sports, exercise or age related losses.

3. As precautions against lifestyle diseases. (now this is more guilt spending)

4. Lose weight (damn, such a big category)

5. Boost sexual stamina (men are never satisfied)

6. To live “forever”.

C. How to start taking supplements?

It would be easiest to take what your friends or colleagues takes. However, it may not be the right way. The best would be

1. Health Screening - Blood tests, DNA tests and other forms of tests to find areas of improvement in your body.

2. Research and consult - Please read regularly. Do your research on scientific papers, talk to other people taking the products and then take your call.

3. Verify purity and claims - Supplements is not a regulated space - which means claims vs reality could be different. Hence verify the authenticity of the products and then make a purchase.

4. Observe, measure and screen - Taking pills without monitoring your body is a crime. Observe how you body reacts and changes, measure the difference in key health parameters and finally get that health screening done regularly.

One final piece of advice - don’t take too many supplements, doesn’t help anyone except the supplement brands. Stick to 1-3 supplements for a long period of time.

Don’t forget to look at the concentration. Taking too less is useless. Recommendation is to take higher than DRV (daily recommended value). But again, most new age supplements do not have DRV.

It is simple but an involved purchasing process.

#2 Different segments of supplements?

Let’s keep this quick to jump to the main section after this. Supplements can be

1. Vitamins - Most common. Water soluble vitamins such as Vit C and B. Fat soluble vitamins like A, D, E and K.

2. Minerals - Also common. Magnesium, zinc, copper, iron, potassium.

3. Antioxidants - These help with problems associated with inflammation in the body. Common examples are resveratrol, polyphenols, astaxanthin and curcumin.

4. Amino acids - They are building blocks of protein. Common examples are L-arginine and L-glutamine.

5. Fatty acids - Again, very popular. Think omega-3, omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acids.

6. Probiotics and prebiotics for gut health. Gaining popularity due to gut health awareness.

7. Herbs - Think ginseng, ashwagandha, curcumin among others. These are part of traditional medicine in India and China.

8. Speciality supplements - These would new age lab derived supplements, for examples, NMN, spermidine, AKG and NAC. Many more are coming up every few months.

This list covers most of the supplements. Finally note that the form of the supplements also differ - powder, capsules, liquids, softgels, gummies, lozenges, chewables, sublinguals, effervescent tablets, patches and sprays.

In terms are categories, they are

1. Sports nutrition - protein powder, creatine. Pre workout, post workout.

2. Sexual health - Enhance sexual performance and fertility. Maca root, ginseng, ashwagandha, black ginger.

3. Weight loss - body fat management and metabolism boosters. Caffeine, green tea extract.

4. Beauty - Collage, biotin, white tomato extract to improve skin, hair and nail health

5. Longevity - These are supposed to counter effects of aging. Enter NMN, AKG, NAC, Taurine.

6. General health - Antioxidants, heart health, joint health, digestive health, hormone health, brain health, immune support and many more.

#3 How to build a brand on supplements?

Hahah, you must be wondering, why is this the last section? I needed to give you the information above to appreciate the complexity. Here is a step by step method to build a supplements brand

1. Address specific pain points: Commonly supplements promise to solve all problems of the body. This does not work. Be specific - heart health or gut health? Sleep or nerve support? A brand can be started on just heart health and all products addressing different aspects of heart health.
   This will also give you the target customer segment. You can also select a segment and then decide on pain points to address.

2. Select ingredients and form: You will be amazed at the amount of ingredients available for same health goal. Hence this needs a fair bit of scientific reading and talking to experts. Finally, look at the market - which ingredients are popular and which forms are good for you target consumer group. You want commercial ingredients that will sell. Don’t launch something completely unknown.

3. Educate consumers about supplements: Consumer have no idea about different types of ingredients. What does each ingredient do and side effects? This can happen on Telegram group, Tiktok Livestream, Instagram page, YouTube channel or Facebook ads. Address key topics like absorption, bioavailability and interference.

4. Certification: Since supplements are a “food” that is consumed, consumers are careful. Hence quality certifications about the place of manufacture, ingredient purity and safety and expiry period is paramount. There are at least 5 basic tests that each batch of production must go through.

5. Credibility: This is qualitative metric about who are brand owners and can they be trusted? Hence, scientists, researchers and doctors as partners are important to build the credibility. You will notice brands have a “scientific advisory board” to drive credibility among consumers.

6. Don’t price too low: Nobody likes to play games with their health (except when it is lifestyle and food choices). Supplements should be priced reasonably high to give the psychological assurance of quality.

7. Social proof: Essentially, this is talking about all the above 3 points on social media, email and ads. Plus add real customer reviews - not just text, but images and videos.

8. Answer customer questions: Consumers will ask you questions when you first start selling. Answer them quickly and be concise. This builds relation with your first few consumers.

9. Follow up with consumers: Supplements is a low sku count and high repeat business. Hence, build a relation with consumers by asking how are they doing and what progress have they seen? If they have a complaint, address it with a refund or advice.

The above 8 points are nuances of supplements business. I have not touched on other key important things - selecting suppliers, building you supply chain, cash flow management, inventory management and team set up. I will cover them as separate topics (some are already covered earlier in DTC series).

That’s it for today! Thank you so much for reading today. This is the 51st post of this newsletter. Next week will be 52nd post - exact a year worth of writing. 🥳🥳🥳

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You are a rockstar! A small tap on the like button will make my day 😍 Like, like, like. Hahaha.

One of my goals with the newsletter was to reach 200 subscribers in October 2023. I have hit 50, far off from 200. However, open rate has been high (avg of 60%). Like rate has been low (how do I get you all to like, haha). I will be working on increasing the distribution of this newsletter by

1. Consistent LinkedIn Posts

2. YouTube Channel (finally)

3. Instagram Page

4. Lemon8 - seems very interesting, since it is text based platform.

5. TikTok - I have to get in.

These are plans. I will see the best I can do. I will also need to think about the newsletters future for next one year in terms of changes and topics.

I am happy to reach this stage! Thank you all for the support. Means a lot! 🥹

Jisoo Fan club

Here is Jisoo’s pre party to our 52nd edition next week. Looking forward to writing the next week edition.

Thanks again! Have a great week ahead. Bye :)