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The custom and specialty supplements make up over 38% of the total supplement market size. That means that nearly 65 million Americans use these types of supplements consistently. Having a business providing customized supplements will bring a lot of traffic because of the untapped potential for targeting a specific group of people and selling to them effectively. The idea of creating custom nutraceuticals is not unfounded. There are many common supplement types that stemmed from a specific need and requiring specific ingredients. In order to begin a business creating these customizable Nutra supplements, you will need to first create a way to take orders online. After that creating and packaging them should come easily. Nutraceutical credit card processing is the final step to a successful company but may take more work than you think.
What Actually is a ‘Nutraceutical’?
Nutraceutical supplements are commonly seen, but not commonly understood. Nearly every grocery or convenience store carries these types of products such as omega-3 capsules, ginseng pills, and cod liver oil. A nutraceutical, or Nutra for short, combines the words ‘nutrition’ and ‘pharmaceutical’ to create an easily accessible, medicinal product. These items are not regulated and tested like regular pharma drugs, but often make claims to providing the same medicinal value as them.
Depending on the mixture of ingredients, different benefits are associated with nutraceutical supplements. Adding more oils and garlic is said to reduce blood pressure while green tea claims to burn body fat. There is a multitude of ingredients that can be mixed and added to create a unique concoction for a targeted audience.
Common Nutra Supplement Types
- Vitamins
- Minerals
- Fats
- Probiotics
- Antioxidants
Any of these high-level categories can be customized for more curated products. With the purchasing power of consumers nowadays, being able to provide custom supplements for them can set you apart from the sea of other nutraceutical retailers.
Some people have sensitive stomachs and cannot handle ginger or garlic, so why not remove that from common supplements and offer them a mixture that they can handle? Many companies in this space do not have the ability to do this and therefore lose customers every day. The same goes for any of the other thousands of ingredients. Consumers may be allergic or unable to consume certain ingredients based on culture, religion, aversion, or health. Be one of the first to offer highly customized mixtures to accommodate your target audience and capitalize on their wants.
How to Sell Your Own Custom Supplements
So you have decided to start selling your nutraceutical supplements online, but now what?
Step 1: Find your customers
The first step to any good custom supplement business is figuring out who your audience is. Will you be leaning toward the weight management side, the heart health side, or something else? Figuring this out early on will make the following steps much easier. Once you have your audience, find out how they can be reached. Are they using social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram or something more grassroots like the daily paper? If this is difficult to determine, take a look at your competitors. Where are they finding their consumers?
Step 2: Make your products
Finding your supplier will be a bit of a struggle. Because you will be manufacturing customized products, you will need to find a place that can implement these changes. Once you have the manufacturer settled, you will want to create a few products that will sell online before taking custom orders. You want to have something on your site for your potential customers to look at and even use before creating their own versions of your products. With this, you will need to bottle, label, and brand your items.
With an effective logo, name, and catchy phrase, you will make your marketing job much easier once you begin to sell.
Step 3: Market your supplements
In order to do this step, you will need a website. Utilize your logo and name to create an eye-catching site to show your products. Include photos, ingredient lists, and proposed benefits of each existing product. Also, include a section where customers can create their own custom supplements. This aspect may require an infrastructure of communication between you and the customer before the order is placed. Be sure that however you end up structuring it, it should be easy and scalable so that you can use it while you grow.
Then go on social media and begin your online presence. The younger generation uses these platforms daily and often purchases products that way.
Step 4: Sell your nutra
The final step in your custom nutraceutical supplement business is to begin processing payments on your site. Your customers need an integrated and secure payment gateway to purchase their supplements. With online businesses, this convention is the norm. No longer will customers call to purchase or mail a check. In order to accommodate your customers, obtaining a merchant account is imperative. To do this, you will need to reach out to a payment processor that can lead you through the application process and get your business set up.
Nutraceuticals Are Hard to Place
It is never an easy thing to find merchant processing for custom nutraceuticals or any supplement for that matter. Acquiring banks and processors themselves find businesses like these to bring with them risk and the possibility for a loss. The biggest reasons for this boil down to the products being ingestible items, selling only online, as well as chargebacks.
Ingestible items are a hazard
Selling items that customers consume comes with much more risk than, let’s say, a traditional clothing store would assume. There is a greater possibility for things to go wrong and on a larger scale. Because of this, many banks never approve consumable businesses. This narrows down the list of banks considerably, but there are still a few.
Online businesses come with risk
Selling only through a website doesn’t allow a bank to see a tangible business. This leads to more cases of fraud. Many banks don’t appreciate the possibility of fraud living right under their nose. With few ways to detect fraud, you will need to find a bank that is comfortable with you being completely online.
Chargebacks are common
Because these items inherently come with an expected result from the customer, these businesses have more issues with refunds and chargebacks. Not all of these issues are avoidable, but they can be reduced using basic methods. With a bank that knows your business type, they give you more flexibility with the chargeback rates that they support. Many tier-one banks want to keep the chargeback rates under 1%, while high risk banks will support up to 3%.
Deciding which bank may seem daunting, but your best course of action is turning to a high risk provider. The high-risk merchant account that they will set you up with is backed by banks that understand your business type and have risk mitigation procedures.
Nutra and Supplements Merchant Account
Turn to a custom high risk nutraceutical and supplements merchant account for your payment processing needs. By doing so you will have the backing of a great bank and be able to grow without worry. Leave the tough stuff to your provider and continue expanding with your company.
