TechRound Trends: Experts Explore The Growing Vitamin and Supplements Industry

Vitamins and Supplements are fast becoming a huge sub-sector of the wellness industry, growing exponentially over the past year especially. In fact, the Vitamin market is set to be worth £500m this year.

We wanted to talk to some of the big players in the Vitamins and Supplements space, to hear about what inspired them to start their companies, talk about the growing sector and find out where they think it’s headed.
 

Our Panel of Experts:

• Sokratis Papafloratos, Founder and CEO of Numan
• Dan Murray Serter, Co-Founder at Heights
• Symone English, Co-Owner at the Vegan Supplement Store
• Markus Goess Saurau, Co-Founder at Sönd
• Melissa Snover, Founder & CEO at Nourished

For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.

Sokratis Papafloratos, Founder and CEO at Numan

 

 
“Coronavirus has encouraged many of us to take a greater interest in not only our health but our healthcare options. The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital healthcare as people have had the time to reflect on changes in their lives and how they can take better care of themselves; it has also shown us that it is no longer necessarily convenient for everyone to go to day time clinical practices or traditional retail pharmacies. Therefore, the pandemic has forced us to leap ahead which is why we had two mega trends of mobile and e-commerce accelerate massively over the last 12 months.

“This shift shows that technology is enabling the creation of new consumer experiences, new platforms and new ways of delivering care. In the industry, I am seeing a lot more focus on prevention and on a holistic approach to healthcare, not just the treatment of disease, but the promotion of general wellbeing. This signals that health and wellbeing are converging and through technological advancements, we are able to gain access to better data which will allow us to develop a more detailed understanding of a person through different aspects of their life such as their sleep pattern, nutrition and exercise.

“Better diagnostics allow us to have a better grasp of not just our biomarkers, but things like ageing as well. The reason I started Numan is because I noticed there was an opportunity in healthcare as it hadn’t been transformed by technology yet and I felt it was an industry where one could have the biggest impact. At Numan we are focused on creating a consumer health model that makes healthcare accessible for people that have particular needs and want to access medical advice in a different way.”
 

Dan Murray Serter, Co-Founder at Heights

 

 
“The argument around supplements has been confusing in recent years – do they work? Dont they? The truth lies in the details – most supplements are poor quality, exploiting a loophole that enables the manufacturers to put in far lower quantities than science says will make an impact – so they’ve degraded professional and public opinion on them! In truth, doctors, nutritionists and dietitians all tend to agree they work in the right quantities – which is why it’s so important to choose quality over price, like everything in life you get what you pay for!

“The latest announcement from Public Health England highlights an obvious statement that they work, recommending Vitamin D to 100% of the population for COVID19 (we have the recommended dosages in our smart supplement) but beyond that, people are waking up to the idea around wellness, that we are what we eat – and if eating some supplements will likely improve our mood, sleep, energy – like ours do – that’s a ‘risk’ worth taking – definitely a better choice than most we make each day.

“The future of the industry I hope is one with transparency and honesty to consumers about quality so they aren’t taken for a ride. We stand by having the highest quality product in the entire market because of the ethical choices we’ve made – after all if you’re going to feed your brain with fuel, you want it to be the best kind. I believe other companies will follow suit eventually, especially as consumers seek our more honest and ethical practices from the companies they purchase from.”
 

For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.

Symone English, Co-Owner at the Vegan Supplement Store

 

 
“We are a small, family-run start-up offering vegan vitamins and supplements. We started because we believe in the vegan movement and because the supplements that were available at the time were extremely unpalatable. So, we decided to develop our own.

“We think the industry is set to grow. Sadly, the majority of players in the market are big businesses selling vegan products alongside non-vegan products and therefore selling them for profit and not because they are fully backing the vegan movement. However, this does have the benefit of making the products more readily available, offering a wider choice and encouraging more people to take the ‘vegan plunge’, which can only be a good thing, regardless of the reasons for doing so.”
 

Markus Goess Saurau, Co-Founder at Sönd

 

 
“We got into the skincare supplements business as a natural progression from our main skincare range. We saw a gap in the market to enhance our product offering with a range of silica supplements to boost skin health from the inside out. This insight mainly came from customers, but also from our own data research and the further our lab explored ways to increase collagen production in order to boost skin health.

“Our supplement range contains no parabens, no mineral oils and we undertake no animal testing. I think there are other great supplement brands that have championed these values, but the industry is still lagging behind on these elements of quality control which are becoming increasingly important to customers. I would expect to see more supplement and nutrition brands adopting ethical and green practices and being a lot clearer in how they communicate this to the market in the coming years.”
 

For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.

Melissa Snover, Founder & CEO at Nourished

 

 
“I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 17, an avid consumer of vitamins and supplements for over a decade and have a real interest in all things nutrition. I wanted to create a way to simplify the way we take vitamins and to make the combinations 100% customised to the individual consumer – and with Nourished, I think we’ve done just that.

“There are so many options when it comes to choosing your vitamins and supplements, from capsules to coffees, nasal sprays to skin patches along with pills and powders of all kinds. At Nourished we only use the highest grade premium ingredients which are backed by strong scientific research and combine them into the world’s first truly personalized high impact gummy vitamin.

“The personalization of vitamins has been growing trend for some time. However, the “personalized” options available are often not true customisation. They are instead more often than not a variety of singular items which are packaged together. At Nourished, we 3D print every product fresh to order, using our proprietary algorithm to identify the active ingredients best suited to you and our patented hydrocolloid vegan gel encapsulation formula so we can include these seven active ingredients in one delicious daily gummy.

“The interest in Nourished, and in supplements in general, has increased of late as health is so front of mind. In the next few years, I think the UK vitamin and supplement market will only grow as we already see in the USA where over 60% of the population take vitamins every day.”

For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.