How I Created A $30K/Month Greens Superfood Powder Supplement
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hi, my name is Adam Wright and I am the founder of SuperGreen TONIK. We develop a greens powder that contains 38 superfood nutrients, adaptogenic herbs, vitamins, and minerals.
We aimed to develop a supplement that provides ingredients to improve both body and mind, and that tasted good enough to drink with just water!
We only sell one supplement in a 30-day tub serving in single and up to 6-tub bundles. Recently we launched our branded shakers too that we offer as upsells. These are going well as they make mixing and carrying our greens really easy and convenient for customers.
When I launched the brand in August 2019 sales were slow for the first few months but we managed to turn over $250k in our first year. We are just a few months into our second year, and we’re seeing significant growth thanks to customers loving the brand and re-ordering!
Our target is 7-figures for our 2nd year, which we believe is very achievable.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
As a teenager, I was a competitive runner and Triathlete until I overtrained and got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). The condition completely changed my life from a very active lifestyle to one where I was exhausted and struggled with energy for a “normal” day.
The result was a change in career from heading into Sports Physiology and more towards learning how to earn money by working online.
I ended up working as a freelance web developer, programmer, digital marketer, eCommerce brand owner for over 20 years.
In 2016 my family and I relocated to Malaysia with my family from the UK. Shortly after I sold my share in a UK-based online business and enjoyed a 12-month mini-retirement break.
Out of boredom and a desire to learn more about self-improvement in my personal and business life I started a blog in mid-2018 called Lifehackerguy.com. Realizing my nutritional needs were not being met each day I decided to try a greens powder but found it difficult to source a product that ticked all my boxes.
Then I thought, what if I had a blank canvas and could develop a supplement with EXACTLY the ingredients I wanted inside?
The result was SuperGreen TONIK. A supplement that can help combat the fatigue and brain fog I regularly suffer from, whilst supporting my immune system.
I felt energized every day when working on growing the business and was able to maintain focus on the goal I had set out for myself.
Which helped me grow it to where it is today.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
I thought it would be useful to document the development of my brand and so over the course of 12-weeks I wrote content for my blog about the process I was going through.
Making a list of the top 60 brands on the market, I noted the most commonly used ingredients, product cost, and per serving cost, money-back guarantees, shipping costs, and branding they used.
I spotted a few trends, the first one being the lack of transparency when it came to their ingredient list and used proprietary blends in their formulations. This coupled with the fact that most of the ingredients appeared to be underdosed when checking health resources for the individual ingredients.
I was really keen to have a brand that I would take each day and have a benefit, and so it was clear what I needed to do.
My focus was on fewer ingredients in the right dosages.
I spent a lot of time researching the most popular superfood ingredients and delved into the data to see what minimum dosages were needed to have a health benefit.
Once I had my “wish list” of greens and herbs I worked with a US-based manufacturer on the formula. We soon discovered that some ingredients wouldn’t work as they either wouldn’t mix well or would negatively affect the taste.
The next stage was working out the flavoring.
If you have ever tried a greens powder you’ll know that most of them taste disgusting.
I tried lots of different flavors from chocolate, lemon, berries, orange soda, and mint. The best tasting was the berries and mint. Gathering a group of friends together we settled on mint.
Mixing with cool water we found the Green TONIK was refreshing with some people comparing it to a cool mint tea.
Once we had the formula and flavoring sorted we moved onto the branding.
I was keen to stand out from the traditional greens brands in white tubs with pictures of vegetables on the label. Instead, I wanted a brand that had a premium look and exuded performance.
The first idea I came up with we had to abandon after realizing that could be a potential trademark issue. The logo designs could have also caused issues with a particular superhero company ;)
It was my dad that came up with the idea of using “Tonic” as a way of illustrating its rejuvenating daily drink. To make trademarking easier and to give it some individuality I amended the spelling to be “Tonik”.
I started a design competition using 99Designs to come up with a range of logo ideas and used these to get a designer from Upwork to produce the final label.
We then passed the designs to the manufacturer who checked everything conformed to US regulations and then printed the label, we were ready to go!
Describe the process of launching the business.
At the start, I leveraged organic traffic from my personal blog to get the initial customers. The feedback was great and I even had visitors who were following my story and were waiting to give my supplement a try.
We have grown by establishing partnerships with affiliates who have reviewed our brand and written content about us on their sites.
I reached out to a few friends and other bloggers who had health and fitness related blogs to see if they would try and review my product. I soon had a few ambassadors who featured it on their site too and this gave us the first bunch of sales.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Transparency has really helped my business. When customers see that you're the founder and take your own product it goes a long way to give confidence in your brand.
I still do the majority of customer support as I was keen to understand queries and the experience of customers.
This has helped me to connect with some customers who have turned into long-term customers who re-order each month.
From the outset, I wanted to instill confidence in the brand and so I gave a one-year money-back guarantee. Although I got pushback from family and friends on this it’s worked very well and we have super low refund rates of 1-2%.
Ultimately what has kept customers coming back are the benefits they have experienced taking our greens supplement.
Receiving feedback from improved sleep, better focus, and concentration, and more energy throughout the day, means we have customers re-ordering each month!
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
My initial investment was $60k that mostly went into stock and I spent 6-months full time getting the brand off the ground. It helped that I could do most of the web development and setting up the eCommerce side of things, so this saved money and in some ways time.
We have grown by establishing partnerships with affiliates who have reviewed our brand and written content about us on their sites.
We will be focusing more on paid traffic as the way to scale going forward though. Organic traffic is nice and provides a good base, but we need to reach more people.
Amazon reached out to us to encourage us to set up on their platform but I have held off for the time being as I wish to grow organically and via our own paid channels.
Our medium to the longer-term goal is to grow traffic via paid channels and also explore using influencers.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Having stock can be challenging as it’s not easy to forecast exactly your requirements. With production timescales never what you think they will be, we have needed to have a 4-month production schedule.
We have been fortunate that with the challenges of 2020 we have not been affected too much. The stock has been delayed by 1-2 weeks and customer deliveries on a few occasions took longer than expected.
I will be looking to hire in 2021 to manage parts of the business, for example, customer support and writing content.
In the past, I really downplayed the power of email. I underestimated the effectiveness of clean, well-timed emails to convert visitors. We see great results with abandoned carts and our replenishment flows.
What really helps with elevating a brand is having amazing product imagery. Only recently have we got professional lifestyle shots that really show-off the product.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
I tested out several eCommerce platforms, from Ontraport, Clickfunnels, and even Shopify, but none of them gave the flexibility of Woocommerce.
Shopify was the only other contender but unfortunately, my merchant processor wasn’t supported, leaving me with only Woocommerce.
I was okay with Woocommerce as I was familiar with the platform and could develop the site and integrate the other tools that we use myself.
Our 3PL Fulfilment company could also integrate directly with WooCommerce which means once orders are received they are automatically sent to them for processing.
- Woocommerce (eCommerce)
- Zendesk
- Cloudways Hosting
- Cloudflare
- Klaviyo (email marketing)
- Sendgrid (email routing)
- JustUno (pop-up)
- FOMO (customer purchase notification)
- Tailwind (social media management)
Receiving feedback from improved sleep, better focus and concentration, and more energy throughout the day mean we have customers re-ordering each month!
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
The first book I read about working online and encouraged me to develop my first online business. In fact, I read this book shortly after finishing University and I wanted to travel and be one of the original digital nomads.
Ecommerce Evolved: The Essential Playbook to Build, Grow & Scale a Successful Ecommerce Business.
Great sections on using a data-driven approach in competitive analysis and working on your customer avatar.
The Art Of The Click: How To Harness The Power Of Direct-Response Copywriting And Make More Sales
I have also struggled with writing copy and this book helps to focus on writing customer-based content that addresses the benefits, and the “what's in it for them”. I still struggle but at least I know why now!
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting?
I have really enjoyed setting up SuperGreen TONIK. It’s been challenging and has taken time with plenty of ups and downs, but I still enjoy being involved every day.
I drink my greens every day, it was originally developed for me. This means the product needs to be good and importantly, to work.
Early on I took the view that this business was to be enjoyed and not a get rich scheme and not going to be just about profit. Of course, it’s a business and so money is a focus but it’s not the primary focus.
My previous businesses were very much focused on just getting the sale, whether it was a programming job or someone purchasing a product from an eCommerce website.
The eureka moment for me was realizing the power of having repeat customers and what was needed to keep customers coming back.
Check out my blog I go through in much more detail the steps I took in getting my brand off the ground. This is particularly useful if you’re starting in the supplement space. I also review and compare many of the tools I have tried and use in my business.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I would like to expand the team and would be looking for an eCommerce manager who can handle the day-to-day operations. This position could be part-time or full-time and ideally would be someone based in the US.
If this is a position that interests you, then please let me know by reaching out via the SuperGreen TONIK website.
Of course, we are always on the lookout for brand ambassadors who have a suitable audience and place importance on adding value. This could be anyone from bloggers to Instagram influencers who promote health and wellness.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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