The supplement and nutraceutical industry is a fast-moving complex market; manufacturers need an experienced technology team to help them service the modern needs of consumers.
March 16th, 2022
The supplement and nutraceutical industry is a fast-moving complex market; manufacturers need an experienced technology team to help them service the modern needs of consumers.
Health-savvy customers are becoming increasingly focused on improving their lifestyle and fitness through vitamin and supplement use. The COVID-19 pandemic drove consumer interest in health and wellness to even higher levels. The global dietary supplements market size was valued at $140.3 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow 8.6% from 2021 to 2028. More companies are jumping into this market and they are turning to technology to provide a modern offering.
The supplement and nutraceutical industry is a fast-moving complex market; manufacturers need an experienced technology team to help them service the modern needs of consumers. The Sunrise Integration ecommerce development team has been servicing this industry for over seven years and understands the unique needs of supplements, bundle packs, fulfillment lots, and more. Let's look at what it takes to support this booming industry.
Technology is powered to disrupt the supplement industry at an unprecedented pace. Consumers are turning to the convenience of ecommerce and subscription services to keep their monthly supply arriving at their homes. For a new company to succeed, they must provide modern solutions to the age-old problems of product sales, package delivery, expiring stock, warehousing and more. We've had many customers approach our development team looking for a partner to design custom platforms to bridge the technology gap for these requirements. Each of these hurdles necessitates its own technology solution and third-party service. Let's break down each technology and how we used it to help our clients build their supplement and health companies.
The first step is finding the proper selling platform and ecommerce site for the unique needs of the business. It's very common for nutritional companies to offer direct selling programs where members earn revenue by reselling products and participating in affiliate services. These affiliate programs add a unique twist to the ecommerce experience, as the parent company now needs to track commissions and affiliate codes. So where does a company turn for ecommerce services? A good starting point is Shopify. Our Shopify integration team has configured robust and attractive solutions that have the capability to scale with external API connections. Often we find that as the supplement company grows, the customer requirements become more specific and we need to add more features to the solution.
For those companies who have a more customized approach and need a bespoke option for their direct selling requirements, we turn to a Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider like Exigo. Exigo provides customizable features like form creation, CRM services, commissions and more. We're able to build robust, end-to-end direct selling services while supporting affiliates. We've used the Exigo API to connect multiple platforms into a single ecosystem for taking orders, tracking affiliates while providing an intuitive user experience. But now that the frontend is in place, companies need to ensure that the backend services are equally as flexible.
Another critical issue for supplement companies is the controlled storage and expiration needs of their product. Nutritional products have special warehousing requirements where products cannot be safely stored in a dusty old back room. To provide a quality product to customers, companies need experienced fulfillment partners to warehouse products in controlled environments and manage expired products. Choosing the right logistics partner is an important decision as nutritional items come with specialized storage requirements.
Supplement and pills are typically manufactured in unique lots that are closely cataloged and stamped with expiration dates. Supplement companies need the ability to track these product-lots to manage the expiration dates. It's important to ensure that customers are getting the freshest product. Modern 3PL partners need to have logistic processes in place to track the dates, send automated expiration alerts and handle purchases. All of this data must be accessible via a robust API so development partners like Sunrise Integration can create a comprehensive product tracking system.
Supplements and dietary products are the perfect candidates for recurring subscription services. Consumers need to replenish their product as soon as it runs out. It's more convenient to set up an automatic service than having to manually reorder products every month. This is where we turn to subscription services like Recharge to provide recurring payment and invoicing. Product subscriptions yield more revenue and greater growth potential. Subscriptions also provide a great recurring revenue stream to help businesses better predict their monthly income. Developing this type of recurring service is often the first request from companies who approach us for integration services. Luckily, we're a development partner with Recharge and can offer solutions to common requests.
With so many different things happening on the backend, it's important to consider what data the customer service team needs to communicate with customers. Connecting all these separate platforms is a crucial step in developing a powerful ecosystem. This is also where Sunrise Integration excels. Our team has developed custom middleware services and API layers to ensure that information is instantly available across all of the third-party platforms. Our team knows the administration process is one of the most critical aspects of any development project so we work with clients to create solutions to empower their team to make changes and updates as needed. We've utilized our cloud-based options like Warehouse Connector and Sunrise Data Burst to provide custom UI/UX and API services.
If you're a supplement, dietary, nutritional or nutraceutical company seeking a technology partner, look no further than Sunrise Integration. We have the experience you need to propel your business into the future with the right decisions to help you grow.
