How to Start a Protein Powder Company
If you are like most fitness and wellness entrepreneurs, you might think that the key to starting a protein powder business is finding the right formula for your customers. But that’s barely ten percent of the whole process!
Besides understanding how people use protein powders, what motivates them, and what they want from their protein powder, you also need to know how to chart your way from manufacturing to your ideal customer’s home. Also known as: making sales. This guide will help you learn just that!
At Aventive Studio, we create memorable brand identities to help wellness businesses make more product sales – including protein powder and supplements. View our full suite of branding, packaging design, & strategy services here.
Ask Yourself Why You Want to Sell Your Own Protein Powder
Before you start researching how to start a protein powder business, you need to ask yourself why the world needs your product. This is because there are already many players in the market.
If you want your protein powder brand to stand out, you need to have a strong purpose behind your business – one that your target audience can respect and get behind. If you can’t find a good enough reason, abort the mission!
Prepare Yourself For What You Are Getting Into
The health and wellness sector is extremely tricky because unlike, say, an apparel industry, you are actually responsible for people’s health and lives when you participate in this space. This means you need to know what you are up against if you want to dodge legal and legislative bullets.
From lab tests and FDA approvals to R&D and safe supply chains, you are responsible for everything minute detail that accompanies a food-related business. So, if you are not ready to handle all this and more, then the protein powder business may not be for you.
Perform an Audience & Competitor Analysis
Before you start a protein powder business, it is important to understand to whom you are selling your product. There are two main ways to go about this: You can either target a certain demographic or you can create a product that appeals to everyone.
No matter which customer group you target, whether a niche or the masses, you would need to find out what they are looking for in a protein powder. You can do this by performing audience research followed by competitive research.
Audience research involves finding out what potential customers want from products like yours and what they are getting at the moment. This is a key part of the brand strategy for your protein powder or supplement business.
The audience research should always be done first because it is the most crucial part of the process. You need to know who your target audience is and how they are going to benefit from buying your product.
You can find out who your target audience is by looking at demographic data such as age, gender, income level, and where they live.
You also need to know what types of products are available in the market today so that you can decide if making your own product is worth it or not. This is where competitive research comes in.
Competitive research involves identifying other companies that offer similar products as yours so that you can see what their strengths and weaknesses are so that you can improve on them accordingly.
Once you have all the information, you can come up with a market objective for your protein powder business. Looking for examples of effective supplement and protein powder branding? View our successful protein shake case studies to see how Aventive Studio’s designs have helped our clients make more product sales.
Determine Your Customer Acquisition Strategy
When you think about starting a protein powder business, you might already have an idea of the type of products that you would like to offer or how they would be marketed. But before you begin to build your product and protein marketing strategy, you ought to determine how your target market will find out about your product.
There are a variety of ways in which people can learn about new products and services, including word of mouth, social media ads, and press releases. In the case of dietary supplements (including protein powders), you could also sell your products to fitness coaches who can sell them to their clients a.k.a. your end customers.
Whatever your customer acquisition strategy will be, you need to map it out on paper, which will help you create the right marketing plan when you are ready to launch.
Decide How Much You Are Willing to Spend
Every time there’s a mention of a food and beverage business, Kevin O’Leary’s voice saying, “The food and beverage industry is brutal!” echoes in our heads. That’s because he’s right!
The margins in the food industry are criminally low, typically because there’s high wastage and this kind of business generally comes with its unfair set of inventory management challenges.
There’s also tremendous competition, so new brands have to spend more on protein marketing to get noticed than established brands.
Besides, this industry heavily relies on credibility. So, it is no surprise that most of the market share is already captured by the big fish. And again, due to the general skepticism among audiences toward new brands, new entrants end up spending big bucks in hopes to play catch-up.
All this means you might go overboard with your investment. Therefore, as a general rule of thumb, you should always be ready with a number that is a cap for you; your final limit for the expenditure.
Develop Your Protein Powder Formula With Experts
It is essential that all of the ingredients in your formula are safe and effective for your products to actually cut through the noise.
So, if you don’t have a complete idea about the ingredients, you should contact an expert who can help you develop the perfect formulation for your target audience’s specific needs. These experts can assess the market trends, determine an ingredient list and allow you to maintain quality standards during the formulation process.
Find a Safe and Reliable Manufacturing Partner
Once you have developed a winning formula, it is time to find a reliable manufacturer who can make your product at scale. There are many companies out there willing to manufacture your product but you would need to find a facility that complies with the laws governing the supplement industry.
You would need to work with a facility that not only has experience making products like yours but also understands what it takes to maintain consistency, safety, and quality control standards. All this at a price point that works for you!
Design a Fool-Proof Supply Chain
You will need to have several suppliers ready to deliver the raw materials you need, which means that you need to make sure that your suppliers are able to meet your demands in terms of time and quality during every transaction.
At the same time, you must ensure that your team of logistics is well-equipped to manage the flow of your goods from the factory to your customers’ homes seamlessly.
Visualize Your Brand Identity and Develop a Brand Strategy
A brand identity refers to how consumers identify with a company or product. It includes everything from colors, logos, and slogans to packaging design and advertising messages.
The key thing here is that the consumer should recognize your supplement brand name or logo as being associated with quality products. Only then can you call your branding a success.
Since this is a huge undertaking and you only get one chance to do it right, it is highly advised to work with a professional branding agency who can help you step into the market without hassles.
Contact Aventive Studio here to set up a call about our brand strategy & design services for wellness, protein powder and supplement businesses.
Determine Your Launch Plan
The best way to determine what approach would be most effective for you is by doing some research on different options available on the market. This also includes looking into how much money it will cost you to get the first batch out.
You can launch your product in two ways: soft launch or hard launch.
A soft launch allows you to control the exposure your product has to the market. In other words, you launch your first batch among a small set of customers to get initial feedback. If the reviews are good, you can continue to produce more units.
If they aren’t as positive as you had hoped them to be, you can relaunch a new batch with changes based on the initial feedback. This is a great way to test the market, validate your product and avoid large investments in the process.
A hard launch, on the other hand, is less forgiving. Because you are exposed to the entire market, your chance of doing damage control should anything go wrong reduces significantly. This is why hard launches are usually favored by large companies with a proven market presence.
In both cases, you need a team of professionals who have expertise in their area of work and therefore, know how to get things. And who better to help you scale your protein powder business than a branding agency that specializes in the health and wellness industry?
Aventive Studio houses a group of experts who can help you create an effective branding and marketing strategy to get your business out in the market as well as ensure your success. Get in touch with our branding specialists to learn more about how we can help you sell more products.