Twenty Steps To Start Your Own Nutraceutical Business

Nutraceuticals are any supplements that come from food sources with additional health benefits. If you frequently use nutraceuticals and have an entrepreneurial spirit, consider starting your own nutraceutical business. This article will give you advice on how to start your own nutraceutical business and make it work for you in twenty simple steps.

1. Define Your Business

Nutraceutical businesses produce and sell their own supplements or use their platforms to sell for other businesses. Do you have a unique idea for your own supplement brand, or are you trying to curate a list of popular brands? Which one you choose will determine whether you need to worry about setting up a supply chain or whether you approach specific brands to sell their products.

2. Pick Your Product

Whatever business model you choose, there are many different pharmaceuticals, including ginseng, caffeine, and probiotics. Then there are also lots of different mediums you can use to take nutraceuticals, like liquids, solids, pills, creams, and even gummies. 

Picking the right products will have a big impact on your business success. If you partner with different brands, create a short list of products you want to sell before approaching them. If you are setting up your own products, ensure you think about the packaging of nutraceutical products and that your packaging represents your products correctly.

3. Choose The Best Ingredients

Find the most popular nutraceutical ingredients in 2023 and decide which ones you want to sell or integrate into your products. So far, 2023 has seen popularity in omega-3 fatty acids, proteins, and peptides. Try to look up emerging trends and see which ingredients will be popular in the future. Equally important is to review which ingredients aren’t on trend and try to omit these from your ingredient list.

4. Identify Your Audience

Who is your target demographic? Identifying what age groups are likely to buy from you can influence everything from your products to your branding. Use competitor research and social listening services like Sprout Social to investigate your audiences and see who you will need to be targeting. Once you have a website, keep on top of your metrics using sites like Google Analytics to see where your main audience is coming from.

5. Make Your Marketing Stand Out

The nutraceutical sector can often feel saturated, so it’s essential to make your brand and marketing stand out. Look at brands like Nourished that create tailor-made nutrient stacks from their nutraceuticals. How are you going to make your business stand out? Once you have decided what your USP will be, create consistent branding and a well-presented and user-friendly website.

6. Find The Right Manufacturer

Working with the right manufacturer will have a huge impact on your supply chain and your profit margins. Turnkey manufacturers will likely be the most cost-effective solution for your business, as they cover all elements of design, manufacturing and dispatch. Ensure your manufacturers can be clear on their costing per unit and have demonstrable case studies and reviews to support their claims.

7. Partner With The Right People

If you are partnering with different businesses and creating a nutraceutical eCommerce business, getting the right products are essential. But even more essential is ensuring you are partnering with the right people. Make sure these companies are ethical, compatible with your audience and have values that match your own. 

8. Prioritise Customer Care

How you treat your customers can make a huge difference in how successful your business will be. Create good socials and feedback mechanisms and ensure you respond to feedback as quickly as possible. Respond to both negative and positive feedback professionally and constructively. 

Also, you should invest in good order fulfilment to easily resolve customer complaints and provide good aftercare for customers. Prompt delivery will show your clients you have the infrastructure to support speedy delivery, ultimately boosting your reputation. 

9. Make Your Supply Chain Traceable

A traceable supply chain is signed off every step of the way. You should be able to identify where your raw materials have come from and every stop your products have arrived at throughout the supply chain. 

A blockchain supply chain is a great initiative that helps with tracking, as it creates a virtual barcode that travels with your product along its journey. This can also help resolve issues in the supply chain quickly and effectively.

10. Make Sure You Meet Local & International Regulatory Standards

Nutraceuticals are not subject to the same vetting as pharmaceuticals. However, they must meet all safety standards in the countries where you sell and manufacture your products. In the UK, your supplements must meet all UK food safety requirements. In the US, you’ll need to demonstrate your product is safe, even though it is not subject to FDA approval in the same way that drugs are.

11. Automate Workflows For Scalability

As an entrepreneur, you wear many hats, from creating your own marketing campaigns to partnering with new businesses. Wherever you can, automate your workflows so you can invest more time in business-critical tasks, like exploring new partnership opportunities. Examples of automation include services like an AI Chat Bot for your website or using marketing automation with tools like MailChimp.

12. Get Business Insurance

Make sure that your business has all the correct insurance and legal protections when you first start. Cover yourself for all eventualities. It might seem like an investment, but in the long run, it will be beneficial. In a recent YouGov survey, it was revealed that 43% of legal issues cost SMEs £5,000 or more. Avoid costly fees destroying your business by getting the necessary insurance.

13. Pay Yourself A Salary

As tempting as it might be to go all into your business and dispense with the day job, slow down. Ensure you have adequate financial backing or your own full or part-time job to pay the bills when you start your business. You’ll need to make sure you can keep the lights on while you launch your nutraceutical business. Maintaining a salary will also reduce the stress of any financial uncertainty and give you the inspiration you need to run your business.

14. Research Your Nutraceuticals

It’s essential that you have demonstrable knowledge of what your nutraceuticals can do for your customers. Research trustworthy medical journals or use sites like PubMed to provide background evidence for any claims you make about your product. Most importantly, read up on the efficacy of your supplements and be fully informed before you start selling anything online.

15. Explore Avenues For Funding

Before you consider investing large sums of money into your business, explore different avenues for funding. Check what government funding or local awards are available for startups. You might get preferential loan terms or even grant funds for your small business that you have never considered before.

16. Find Experts When You Need To

Whether you need advice on marketing, your taxes, or nutraceuticals themself, make sure you partner with experts where you need to. If there’s a particular area of the business you could improve, consider working with freelancers or even students to find experts with a preferential rate to help you launch and maintain your business.

17. Consider Franchising

If you want to start your own nutraceutical business but aren’t quite sure where to start, you might want to consider franchising. With a franchise, you benefit from the infrastructure, training and reputation of an already established business. Many franchises require you to pay a monthly franchise fee, but for that price, you may get your marketing, products and even customers included within the price.

18. Choose A Bank

When you start your nutraceutical business, you will want to set up a business account with a bank. Before you go to your nearest bank branch, find a business bank that can help you. You may need a merchant account to make card payments, for example, or find that the same bank also offers preferential business loan rates as a standard part of setting up your bank account.

19. Choose An eCommerce Platform

Before you set up an online eCommerce business, consider whether you want to use an existing eCommerce platform like WooCommerce or Shopify. Who you partner with depends on how you are building your website; you should use WooCommerce if you already have an established WordPress site set up, for example.

20. Have Fun

This sounds like an obvious one, but enjoy yourself when you start your own nutraceutical business. Working for yourself and harnessing that entrepreneurial spirit is a fantastic way to live life on your own terms, along with all the associated risks and rewards. Make sure that you have fun and enjoy the journey of starting your very own business.

Final Thoughts

Starting a nutraceutical business requires planning, from your products and partners to your business insurance and financial backing. With these twenty steps, you’ll be well on your way to becoming an entrepreneur and enjoying the challenge of starting your own business.