Our most successful health and supplement sector clients have decided on their niche, have catchy business names, awesome suppliers and smooth, streamline online stores.
And, of course, they’ve thoroughly researched reliable shipping and packaging options that include unbeatable customer service because this is the service differential that will be the difference between succeeding and failing.
Diamond tends to work with businesses that are already dispatching hundreds of consignments per month. If you’re out putting less than 50 a week then click here for our blog on start up resources needed to help you scale.
Health supplement clients know that it can be a very lucrative business. The market size, measured by revenue, of the Vitamin & Supplement Manufacturing industry is £1.4bn in 2022.
Our CEO Kate, is not only a shopping guru, but particularly dedicated to looking after her long-term health, so happily tests our clients’ products. That includes trawling through their websites, making sure that their product descriptions are accurate, the online process is easy and that the product standards are excellent. You can say she highly recommends them all!
Health and supplement business scale ups
While supplement businesses can be started for relatively low investment, our clients aren’t amateurs. They have already scaled and have multiple product lines. Multiple product lines is important because once you’ve secured your initial clients you want to be able to cross sell them a variety of additional supplements. And if people are interested in omega-3 for example then it is very likely they’re going to be interested in the other top two vitamin supplements, vitamin D and Multi vitamins.
Luckily, in the UK, to sell supplements both offline and online you do not require a licence. However you do need to follow what is regulated under food law. This regulates the content labelling and production of products in the UK. In the UK many products described as food supplements do fall within food regulations and therefore subject to the Food Safety Act. Selling food supplements you must register as a Food Business Operator (FBO) with your local authority.
It’s important to not make outlandish claims about your supplements and if you do, make a nutrition or health claim such as it lowers cholesterol, then this claim must be authorised by the UK Nutrition and Health Claims Committee (UKNHCC).
Don’t forget that although vitamins and trace elements are an essential part of eight persons nutritional requirements they are not deemed food for VAT purposes so to keep HMRC sweet remember they are standard rated regardless of whether they are in pill, powder or liquid form.
There are three main health and supplement specialist fulfilment services that we provide. One is the simple pick pack and fulfilment of individual items. Second is the regular subscription boxes. And 3rd is the multi picks. Again, our successful supplement clients tend to have a mix of all three. The ad hoc user. The dedicated monthly fan. And the person responding to tailored promotions, i.e. the naked pharmacy hangover kit that Kate bought for Christmas!
Packaging and delivery for health supplements
Packaging and the unwrapping process with supplements is really important. All really successful supplement clients have, frankly, beautiful packaging which makes the unwrapping process at the consumer end really quite delicious so think about that quite carefully. A lot of our clients are really interested in sustainability as well, so they use environmentally friendly options.
And, really think about using your packaging process as an opportunity to market to the person receiving the initial consignment. Our most successful health and supplements clients always include a special offer or information of upcoming new ranges or invitations to online webinars to keep building that customer engagement and repeat purchases.
Reliability is, of course, really important. Although supplements can be delivered on the lower cost range (in terms of our carrier choice), often our clients will want to use a premier carrier option because the delivery emulates the value of the supplements to the consumers life. And another really cool thing about using Diamond is that, especially in the run ups to Christmas, whereby both Royal Mail and other carriers have been having challenges, our supplement clients have being able to switch happily throughout our carrier range to ensure continuity of service.
The most important thing is you have a fulfilment partner that is enthusiastic about your product and is determined to fulfil over and above its service level agreement.
Diamond can really happily advise you if you want to upscale your delivery and packaging in 2023. Give our team a call on 0333 567 5888, email us at sales@diamondlogistics.co.uk or complete our contact form below.
