YOUR FOOD SUPPLEMENT IDEAS MADE REALITY.
Starting a food supplement business can feel like you’re in the middle of a minefield. But with the right information and guidance, you will fly right over.
GET A FREE STEP BY STEP BASIC GUIDE OF HOW TO START YOUR OWN SUPPLEMENT BUSINESS.
IF YOU WANT TO START YOUR OWN FOOD SUPPLEMENT BRAND, YOU’VE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE.
I know how overwhelming it feels, I have been there.
Hi, My name is Rob. I lead the team of food supplement geniuses at Profortis. We own a couple of brands that are being sold by pharmaceutical groups and even grocery delivery services like Gorillas and Getir.
We help companies formulate their own products, navigate through the very complicated regulatory affairs, and find their unique selling propositions.
Make sure you subscribe to get my personally written step by step guide of how to find your food supplement niche and how to differentiate.
BUILDING A FOOD SUPPLEMENT BRAND
PRODUCT RESEARCH
- Take a look at existing products on Amazon
- Make a new Facebook and Instagram account and start following food supplement brands
- Use a system to identify trending products
- Think about ways to improve the products by checking the reviews
- Identify their keywords and targeted market
YOUR FORMULA
- Formula needs to be allowed in the target market and have enough usable Unique Selling Propositions to be marketed efficiently
- Active ingredient and dosage research
- Suppliers for your ingredients, their certificates and the quality of their products
- Existing formula, new/novel formula, combined formula
- Make a list of NEARBY manufacturers for your end product
Labeling and branding
- exActive ingredients, dosages and health claims should be properly outlined according to the target market’s food and health laws
- Ideally you want to have a rough customer avatar made out of your research of competitor products or current trends
- Base your design of bad competitor reviews and the rough customer avatar, including the products’ name and check for the availability of your name.
- Design your label. Make at least 3 variations. Use Pinterest, Midjourney, 99 designs for ideas. Have someone with digital design experience bring them to life.
- Have someone that understands label compliance review your label AND branding before you notify any regulation authority.
Notification
- Identification of the right authorities in your target market country
- Prepare the files that are necessary to start the notification procedure
- This is the hardest step in the whole process besides actually marketing your product. Make sure you have the right guidance and/or information to complete this step. Doing this wrong can cost you a lot of money.
- Be flexible because you probably will need to adjust a few things on the label or branding
- Be aware of all the laws in your target market, for example: food contact materials and plastic policies.
Compliance
- Compliance is an ongoing process in every food supplement business
- Make sure to have every document ready to send at any moment when you are actually selling in said country
- Some countries will be impossible to gain market entry for with certain ingredients or active ingredients. You can tweak the formula but if it ruins the effectivity of your product, just go elsewhere. Your product is not for every country and that’s okay
- Triple check the Certificates of Analysis’ of your end product. A lot of manufacturers use the certificates of the ingredients they use and just add there on to each other. This will not hold in a market entry procedure. Have someone check these documents before you start producing because this is going to cost so much money.
- Be aware of all the laws in your target market, for example: food contact materials and plastic policies.
YOUR FORMULA
The formula of your food supplement can make or break the intended effect of your product and also its ability to be marketed. Some regulatory authorities in certain countries don’t want you to use ingredient X or Y and you will need to know the dosages that have the therapeutic effect you want to cause in your customers. You get the ingredients of the food supplement you want to build out of your product research. Product research will also give you a list with competitors. We will use these competitors information to differentiate your food supplement. This could but does not have to be formula wise. Here we will build a scientifically proven formulas with the literature that backs this up.
NOTIFYING YOUR FOOD SUPPLEMENT, LABELING AND BRANDING
When I first started out, this was giving me sleepless nights. I didn’t have anyone to turn to, and there was almost no information available on the internet, and no real experts to hire. This is the reason I started this company.
A food supplement/dietary supplement has to be notified at the regulatory authorities. Which is the exact reason why the labeling and the branding comes at this point in the “building a food supplement brand” sequence.
If the regulatory authorities refuse your food supplement, this means that you can not enter this market. If you try to enter with a completely finished product, it costs a lot of money to pivot to another market, or pivot the label and the branding and the formula to said countries needs.
So we notify the regulatory authorities first, and then build out the complete product. If you know the constraints you have to work with regarding health claims and marketing messaging, you can actually build a products that sells.
A typical list of what the regulatory authorities want to see when you send them your notification dossier:
- A COA of raw ingredients and a COA of the end product
- Instructions of use
- The source of the instructions of use
- Any other notification grant(s) from other countries
- Your packaging
- Health claims that you are planning to use
- Disclaimers
- GMP/FSC22000/HACCP certificates of the manufacturer partner
COMPLIANCE
Compliance is an ongoing process until you have the official permits and notifications needed to sell in your target market(s). In an ideal world, all of the aforementioned aspects need to be in order to start selling. Depending on risk management, it can be your decision to move forward without notification. There are some tricks we can use to at least check if all of these processes are worth it to go through before you start selling in the market. If you are the sweetest kid in class, and all your marketing messaging is very nuanced, you are doing everything by the rules. But if the bully doesn’t get checked by local authorities and makes false claims and ruins your market, you need to do something about it.
PRODUCTION
Finding a food supplement manufacturer is easy. Finding a good one, different story. Many production companies need a huge minimum order quantity(MOQ), and try to upsell you extra ingredients, or their contracts are full off liabilities.
Sidenote: if you have a contract manufacturer make you a supplement, you are the manufacturer. If you import an existing food supplement, you will be seen as the manufacturer.
So be careful before you sign anything and make sure your manufacturing partner has the appropriate certifications.
One of our partners in Europe has the approved certification and can produce small MOQ’s. So you can start out without having to buy 10.000’s of bottles. Now your resources can go to marketing, buying knowledge or partner up with a great advisor.
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Starting a supplement brand is hard.
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Profortis
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5705 CS Helmond
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KVK: 68863659
COMPLIANCE
Compliance is an ongoing process until you have the official permits and notifications needed to sell in your target market(s). In an ideal world, all of the aforementioned aspects need to be in order to start selling. Depending on risk management, it can be your decision to move forward without notification. There are some tricks we can use to at least check if all of these processes are worth it to go through before you start selling in the market. If you are the sweetest kid in class, and all your marketing messaging is very nuanced, you are doing everything by the rules. But if the bully doesn’t get checked by local authorities and makes false claims and ruins your market, you need to do something about it.