On Developing 3D Printed Personalized Vitamins

Melissa Snover

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Published: April 17th, 2022

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Melissa Snover

Founder, Nourished

Founders

100

Employees

Nourished

get-nourished.com

from Birmingham, UK

started April 2019

Founders

100

Employees

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I’m Melissa Snover and I am the founder and CEO of Rem3dy Health and Nourished.

Nourished has developed patented 3D printing technology to create the world's first truly personalized nutrition product. Consumers can complete a short questionnaire at get-nourished.com, where a science-backed algorithm makes a recommendation of 7 vitamins, superfoods, and nutrients best suited to the user's lifestyle and goals.

This selection is then 3D printed using a vegan gummy encapsulation formula and made on-demand to ensure optimum efficacy. The bespoke blend of high-impact active ingredients is packaged in 100% plastic-free packaging and dispatched directly to the customer's door with less waste, hassle, and cost than purchasing all of the vitamins separately.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

I grew up in New York and after studying Business Management and Political Science at the University of Colorado Boulder I moved to the UK to finish my studies. I went to Lancaster University and fell in love with the UK, so I have been here ever since.

At 23 I started my entrepreneurial journey after co-founding a financial services company. I sold this in 2009 and then started a new business in the confectionery sector in 2010. Goody Good Stuff was the world’s first vegan, natural and allergen-free fruit gum. From there I turned my expertise to the tech industry and went onto launch Magic Candy Factory; the world’s first 3D food printer with FDA and FSA approval.

For over a decade I have been personally interested in nutrition and vitamins. Being an entrepreneur, I travelled all over the world with a bag full of different pills, tablets and supplements. After an encounter at airport control where I dropped my bag and all of my vitamins spilled over the floor, I knew that there had to be a better and easier way to consume all of your daily supplements, and the idea of Nourished was born.

Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.

Before we launched Nourished we carried out an intense R&D period of 18 months, conducted extensive market and competitor analysis and worked hard with third-party labs to ensure our product had the highest efficacy possible. When you are creating innovative technology it’s never straight forward as there is no guidebook to lead you, but I am extremely proud of what my team and I managed to achieve during this time.

We built the business from the very start to be self-sufficient. We produce and make all of our products in house and around 98% of our supply chain is from the UK. This not only helped during our launch but is still a rewarding decision that has enabled us to grow over the last two years, especially with supply chain delays caused by Brexit and the pandemic.

Describe the process of launching the business.

We officially launched Nourished in January 2020 and completed our Series A a few months later where I raised the highest amount of funds by a female founder in the UK. This funding allowed us to optimise our production, grow our team and develop our website into what it is today. As a D2C business it was vital that our website was easy to use and engaging, and it has gone through several optimisations over the last 2 years. Innovation is in our DNA at Nourished and we are constantly looking at ways to improve and develop our products, technologies and e-commerce to stay at the forefront of personalised nutrition.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Since we launched, we have been acutely focused on delivering a high standard of customer service and going above and beyond for our customers. Forming a positive relationship and rapport with our customers have been key to helping us to understand their needs and making a real impact in their lives. Our bespoke Nourished stacks make a significant and impactful difference on our customer’s health, and we have received extremely positive feedback as a result of this.

Our team understands that the best way to have satisfied customers is by rewarding them for their loyalty and dedication. To this end, we offer exclusive benefits like discounts on future purchases as well as gifts from time to time; which help to demonstrate our gratitude in a tangible form which leads us toward an ever-increasing number of people recommending us through word of mouth.

In addition, we have a very agile marketing strategy where we utilise many different channels such as Google, social media, advertorials, out-of-home advertising, and podcast placements to help spread our brand awareness and convert new customers from our specific target demographics.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Our business is growing at a rapid pace and we are so excited for our expansion plans going into 2022 with our new product lines, the launch of our personalised Nourished pets range and some exciting collaborations with world-leading corporations! We will continue to launch extensively researched active ingredients such as our recent editions to the Nourishment lineup Inositol and Soy Isoflavones that offer a variety of benefits and support for issues surrounding women health.

Success isn't just about what you do; it's also the people and organizations around us who help get things done-whether through their expertise or commitment.

We will also be moving into our 3rd manufacturing site in Birmingham in Q3 of 2022 which is a 33,000sqft food-safe space to enable our operations team to keep up with our growing customer demand.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

Having started this business just before the start of the pandemic, we came through the most challenging period very early on. We were only 4 months old when the first lockdown started and being a very small start-up, we were able to pivot quickly and adapt as the landscape began to change. Being able to adapt your business is one of the most important things you can learn as an entrepreneur.

In response to the outbreak of COVID 19, we refocused our marketing strategies from offline to online. We implemented heightened hygiene conditions for production team members and turned the R&D lab into a facility to produce free hand sanitisers as well PPE equipment for our local community and NHS frontline workers.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

We use a variety of different tools to run the day-to-day at Nourished. Our website is run through Shopify and the host of plugins and customisation it has to offer gives our business a lot of freedom to grow and constantly adapt. One of my favourite Shopify plugs is Recharge which has been instrumental in the way our business is run. As our core personalised vitamin product is run as a subscription, we needed an easy solution to deliver this to our customers.

Another fantastic tool we have recently started using is Jarvis, which is an AI-backed copywriting application that can be used as an aid in producing marketing copy, blog posts to even social media content.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Book - David and Goliath Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling by Malcolm Gladwell

This inspirational book will challenge the way you understand the world. Using examples from business, sport, culture and psychology; Gladwell showcases how the small can match up against the giant.

Podcast - All In by Chamath Palihapitiya & Jason Calacanis

I love this podcast so much. Chamath and Jason are two inspiring individuals and it is fascinating to hear their views and thoughts on economics, tech and politics.

Book - How to Win Friends and Influence People: The Principles by Dale Carnegie

Warren Buffet famously said that this book changed his life. This book teaches you a whole host of life skills that can be applied to winning new clients, becoming a better speaker, increasing your popularity and helping you make friends and relationships quicker. This is a must-read for anyone.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

I'm a perfectionist and I know first-hand how hard it is to loosen your control over something you have built from the ground up, but it is essential every entrepreneur learns how to do this if they want to scale their business. Success isn't just about what you do; it's also the people and organizations around us who help get things done-whether through their expertise or commitment. To build a solid foundation for our company’s future growth--and make myself more effective in my role as CEO - I found that delegating tasks to my superstar team was an absolute gamechanger! By surrounding yourself with a passionate, dedicated and resourceful team who share your vision and goals; you can achieve truly remarkable things.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We have grown so much as a workforce since we first started and we are always on the lookout for new, tilted individuals who share the same dream we do. We have just launched a recruitment page on our website so be sure to be on the lookout as we will be updating this frequently with new opportunities.

Where can we go to learn more?

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