Innovation Strategies for Beauty from Within Supplement Brand

Whether you're an aspiring supplement entrepreneur or an established brand looking to expand into the beauty category, this episode provides valuable guidance on turning your vision into a successful product line. 

Learn how VitaQuest's innovation team acts as strategic partners, helping brands differentiate in crowded markets through customized solutions and expert consultation.

For more information about partnering with VitaQuest International or to discuss your supplement project, contact them at info@vitaquest.com or visit VitaQuest.com to get started on your journey from concept to market.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Market Opportunities: Understanding the explosive growth in beauty supplements and why this category extends far beyond traditional topical products
• The Two Types of Supplement Entrepreneurs: Data-driven opportunists vs. passion-driven problem-solvers with personal experience
• Avoiding Failure to Launch: How VitaQuest helps entrepreneurs navigate the complex world of supplement development and manufacturing
• Innovation in Product Formats: From gummies to powders, effervescent tablets to stick packs - choosing the right delivery method for your target audience
• Day vs. Night Formulations: Strategic approaches to supplement timing and how to leverage your body's natural repair cycles
• Sensory Experience: The critical importance of taste, texture, and overall user experience in supplement success
• Regulatory Considerations: Navigating structure/function claims and staying compliant while telling your brand story
• Holistic Beauty Protocols: Combining internal supplements with topical products for maximum efficacy

If you're interested in working with me one-on-one to improve your supplement business. You can learn more at https://creativethirst.com 

After working with dozens of dietary supplement brands, I've uncovered the three critical funnels needed for success.

Click here to discover the 3 funnels that can help your health supplement business succeed.

If you're interested in working with me one-on-one to improve your supplement business. You can learn more at my website https://creativethirst.com

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If you're interested in working with me one-on-one to improve your supplement business. You can learn more at my website https://creativethirst.com

Getting people to your sales page or funnel is how you grow a direct-to-consumer supplement company.

But how do you get them there?

The quickest way to do that is through paid advertising.

Buying buyers with ad dollars to scale is how all the supplement businesses do it.

Now you can discover the strategies and tactics that work in supplement advertising.
For just $7.

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Transcript

Bobby Hewitt: 0:00

Hey, in today's episode, I sit down with the VP of Innovation from VitaQuest International. We're going to chat about opportunities in the marketplace and the two types of supplement entrepreneurs and how VitaQuest can help you get beyond the failure to launch and how to grow and thrive as a supplement entrepreneur. Stay tuned. Let's kick off the show. Welcome to Health Business Mastery, the Creative Thirst Podcast. I'm your host, Bobby Hewitt. I'm your host, Bobby Hewitt. So today's episode, I want to welcome Michael Antonovich to the show. Michael serves as the VP of Innovation at VitaQuest International. He is dedicated to expanding the supplement market footprint and ensuring customers gain a competitive advantage. Michael brings extensive expertise in developing new technology, championing innovation and growth for all areas of health and nutrition, as well as over 30 years experience in the skincare industry. product development. Michael is a seasoned skin biologist, research scientist, educator, and a member of the International Probiotics Association, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, and American Botanical Council, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists for the past six years. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:23

Thank you, Bobby. It's a pleasure to

Bobby Hewitt: 1:25

be here. Yeah, I think it's going to be a really deep, insightful episode from a really unique perspective. So VitaQuest International is a supplement manufacturer where if you want to start your supplement or looking for a competitive price quote, go to VitaQuest and they can set you up with all sorts of products and formulations. But in this episode, I thought we'd narrow down the topic and really talk about that beauty from within category. That category includes supplements for skin, hair, nails, and anti-aging. And that category is growing rapidly. It is expected to reach $4.23 billion by the year 2030. And it has a growing and compound annual growth rate of 5.5% from 2024 to 2030. So it is growing and moving places. We're also going to cover the two types of supplement entrepreneurs and how to avoid failure to launch and how to grow and thrive as a supplement entrepreneur and how VitaQuest can actually help in that aspect as well. So Mike, how are you doing?

Michael Anthonavage: 2:39

I'm doing fantastic, Bobby. This is a subject near and dear to my heart. As you've mentioned in my bio, I spent the majority of my career on the topical side of things. So this is kind of like a new renaissance for me to help consumers and to help product developers crack this market potential because there's still so much there to be had.

Bobby Hewitt: 3:05

Absolutely. And from a business perspective, right, the beauty from within category has a lot of opportunity, not only from a growth perspective, but also if you look at it as a sort of a complete protocol, right? From everything from a topical to a powder to even sleep and cognitive effect, right?

Michael Anthonavage: 3:28

Oh, certainly. Beauty from within is more than just skin deep at this point.

Bobby Hewitt: 3:34

Yeah, that's hence the name, right?

Michael Anthonavage: 3:36

Yeah, it's just, so I've, What was incredibly interesting to me about working on the topical side was that you had to deal with an organ that, A, everybody sees, including yourself. You're judged on it based on what your friends and your family and your colleagues and people who you know and don't know see about you. And in addition, it's one of the first indicators of your health. So if you're not looking too good, people notice. If you're looking good, people notice. How do I say it? It's your prerequisite before you open your mouth. So people have an opinion, right? Your first impressions are everything and a lot of how you carry yourself is a big part of that. So on the topical side, The organ itself, the skin and hair, they're designed to keep things out of the body. So as an industry who's looking to enhance beauty outside of cosmetics, right? So outside of paint, spackle, that's how I kind of call that. The biology of beauty is rather challenging because of this. barrier that your evolution has given your skin to keep harmful things out and primarily keeping water soluble things out, right? So your skin is primarily lipid in constitution. So things that are lipid based are ones that are generally favored in the topical arena. So right then and there for 30 some odd years that I've been playing in this category, I've had these limitations that have fostered incredible deep dives into research and how to circumvent these barriers and how to deliver efficacious formulations to the skin. So now I get to go underneath, right? You know, the whole taboo of being transdermal or transepidermal, which is a no-no in the cosmetic side of the world, now just, you know, I get the feast at a completely different table of And we can go into some of those as we get into the discussion, but it's super exciting. And for those people who are on the topical side, who think that the topical side is really the primary opportunity in the category, if you open up your horizons a little bit and take a look at what supplements can do for the skin, you'll be blown away by the activities that you can get and the results that you can get. supplementally.

Bobby Hewitt: 6:33

Yeah. And if you're looking good, people are noticing, like you mentioned, right? If they're commenting on that, that is a great intro to word of mouth, right? To the products for that additional sale. And there's nothing more powerful than word of mouth in marketing.

Michael Anthonavage: 6:46

Amen. I mean, I personally believe that, you know, obviously revenue generation is key and is a very big KPI for a lot of brands. But I also believe that if you marry that with loyalty, is that's really when you know you've kind of struck a chord or you're getting noticed because if you buy it again, chances are you're going to buy a third time and a fourth time. And then that creates a following. And then every time that you buy it again and people are commenting on how well it's working on you, the brand self-advertises at that point.

Bobby Hewitt: 7:24

Absolutely. Yeah. And for that second purchase, which is really key, for the back end of the business and the lifetime value and continuity and all of that, right? You need one, you need a product that works, that you can see the difference or feel the difference or other people are noticing and commenting on that difference, right? But there's also opportunities, I think, within the category to be more of a complete sort of holistic protocol for beauty. And I'd love your perspective on that.

Michael Anthonavage: 7:54

Yeah, yeah. And this is where I'm like a kid in a candy shop, right? Because it's just not about skin and hair anymore, which that's an entire encyclopedia of information right there. But it's also linking your microbiome, your skin microbiome, which is a separate subfield of microbiology or microbiome study now, to your gut. And that interplay is has just begun. I mean, I think from a scientific perspective, we're just tapping into the potential of these gut-skin axis, gut-brain axis. Women's health is especially taking advantage of the gut-vaginal link. There's a gut muscle link. There's all kinds of links, right? So when you learn your biology and your physiology in school, it's very reductionist, right? You know, the cell makes up the tissue, the tissue makes up the organ, the organ makes up the system, and the system makes up the organism, right? And that's where it stops. But there's so much more to that because these are not discrete independent systems. They're all relying on each other for success. right? And that's the evolutionary driver in health. So why would you just focus on one aspect of it when there's so much other supportive tissue and organs and systems in the body that contribute to your overall health, which is something that, like I said earlier, everybody gets to see. So sleep, cognitive health, monsters, subjects, right? Because if you are not feeling good about yourself, right? And maybe we're not talking about how you look now, right? We're talking about how you feel. So if you're not feeling good, you're not sleeping good. If you're not sleeping good, you're not looking good. And then if you don't get that feedback loop that you're not looking good, then that just compounds the problem, right? And then that might go off into you're not eating well, right? which then will compound your sleep pattern, which then will affect your cortisol levels. And for a long time on the topical side, I was always plugging inflammation, inflammation, inflammation, right? But where does the inflammation come from? Well, there's a lot of inflammation that comes from within, right? That inflammation term that we hear a lot about. That all comes from sun exposure, that comes from your diet, that comes from exercise, that comes from lack of sleep. Are you eating the colors of the rainbow, which are ultimately providing you with all the polyphenols and antioxidants that you need to quench your daily stress exposure, right? So I think holistically, and I think that's really the best word to describe beauty from within opportunity because as a marketer or as a scientist, you can pick one route or the other to then develop your differentiation path, right? You can be in a crowded category, but have a unique message that resonates with a certain sub population or demographic that you're going to focus primarily on, right? And then from there and about the loyalty piece to swing that back in, once you've got a brand that's actually kind of sprouting roots and germinating, now you have the opportunity for a multi-generational plan, right? So you build, you build, right? And successful brands always increment, at least incrementally innovate, right? Because they want to keep their customers engaged. They want, that engagement is critical to both the feedback to the brand as well as to the market getting the recognition that you're actually looking for, right? There's nothing better than to have your product show up on some Monday, you know, some morning news show saying, you know, this incredible product Herb from roses or polyphenol from roses has become the next generation of beauty care product. Look at the befores and afters. And now you're reaching millions of people with a couple before and after photographs. And people are like, wow, I want some of that. And they want to get like a three or four minute clip. But that's enough to tease, and that's enough for people to get on the internet and research it, or that's enough for them to go to the manufacturer's website and say, hey, I want to be that brand. How can I be that brand, but just a little bit different? I want a piece of that. That's what we're here to do at Vitaclass, right? We're just not your average run-of-the-mill contract manufacturer. Part of my role and the rest of the innovation team, which is vital to our success, is the ability to customize solutions for people. And that's, you know, I feel like I'm the conductor of an orchestra when a customer like that walks in the door because, you know, the regular customer will walk in and say, hey, I have a formula, can you build it? And that goes straight to PD, right? and they do they do a wonderful job we have excellent formulators here we have great flavorists they know how the ins and outs of the details about all formats that are anhydrous so it gets done well but i'm always looking for the customer that walks in and says hey you know i want to be in this today we'll talk about beauty from within i want to be in that beauty from within category It just seems crowded, but I have a good idea or I have a customer base that's really, that I've determined some white space. There's a knee gap that's not being met, whether it's from a sustainability perspective or a vegetarian or vegan perspective or marine versus terrestrial. I mean, there are so many ways to angle your product to nudge your way into a crowded market. And then success is how well you can stay there. The first order of success is, well, hang in there. Can you hang with the other brands? Are you taking market share? Are you getting the attention? Are you getting the hits on your social media? Do you have the right influencers? I mean, some brands, they spend a lot of money on the marketing end to get the endorsements of celebrities and sports figures and well-known people. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, how you get your message out is the art of marketing, right? And then you got the scientists, you know, I call them and I'm one of them, you know, one of the left brainers. They're in the lab, like, you know, scratching their head. How can I make that better? How can I make that bioavailable? How can I increase the stability? Is there manufacturing problems that cost us money? that we can find solutions for to lower our costs so our consumers can get into this format a little easier. So there's really, the sky's the limit as to the conversations that you can have. So it's really my job at VitaQuest here to just show people what the potential is, right? We can deliver it, right? If you could envision it, and I say this to all our customers, knowing what you want is, half a get in what you want. So paint me a picture, help me help you, right? And that always starts the meeting off on a good foot, right? Because then they know they got an ally in this and I'm on the same team as they are, right? Because the creativity part of it is really what people walk out of here, you know, with an ear to ear smile, right? They're like, wow, I had no idea you could do all that stuff. But... out of sight, out of mind, right? So it's my job to put it in front

Bobby Hewitt: 16:03

of them. Yeah, yeah. And so many health supplement entrepreneurs come from one or two places, right? One is more of the entrepreneur who's just looking for an opportunity in the market, looking at the data, looking where the trends are, right? But then there's another that's maybe even more common of like the entrepreneur that's scratching their own itch, the entrepreneur that has a vision, a purpose, a passion, right? for that specific morbid category or that specific problem, it's either them that have looked to have that condition, maybe it's a skin condition, maybe it's something else, maybe it's eczema, maybe it's acne, whatever the case may be, or someone in their family, right? There's usually an emotional side of that story. Do you see entrepreneurs coming to you that fit those two buckets or would you say there are any more buckets in there that are missing?

Michael Anthonavage: 16:59

The latter. I'll start with the latter, right? So the folks that come in with a personal experience or family members that have X, Y, and Z, this is their inspiration for putting a solution out in the market, right? So they feel altruistic in their endeavor to say, hey, I want to help people, right? And we get a lot of small brands that want to do that. So they don't have aspirations of... know mega success right they they feel as if i can help anybody with these these problems that they outline um that's that's that's success number one right they they kind of focus well the business will follow if if i got the right solution now Bobby, you touched on something that we have to be really careful about, and these are structure of function claims. So, you know, if you talk about dandruff or if you talk about acne, if you talk about any of these conditions, even on the topical side, these are monographed by the FDA, right? So you have to use specific ingredients if you're going to use those words. In the supplement business, it's even stricter. So we have to be more careful about how you approach that or how do you use that approach. So, yes, maybe my brother or my sisters or myself had a terrible acne problem when we were kids and that caused all kinds of emotional distress. And, you know, and I don't want anybody to go through that. Right. So I have a solution. Right. And but you can't really discuss the problem. medical piece of that. And I think that's really important. So it doesn't mean it's off limits. You just have to be creative with your terminology. So instead of saying acne, you can say clear skin or blemish free or healthy looking skin, right? It sounds like it's watered down a little bit, but at the same time, by doing that, you actually give yourself more options to play, right? Because if you were to say, let's just say, that the FDA said you could use the word acne, which you can't, then you'd be almost putting the guardrails in too tight. And that doesn't give you a lot of options for solutions, right? But when you say clear skin, you can now talk, and I'm making this up, but you can talk about linking your gut microbiome to your skin or fortifying how Maybe you would like to normalize your skin microbiome. What does that mean to the consumer? Like 10, 15 years ago, I was going to microbiome conferences for the first time, right? And I've been studying microbiology for 35 years. It's not that we didn't understand there were bugs on our skin. We just didn't understand the ecology of the microbiome. And what fascinates me about that is that you take the laws of cellular biology and you go up 15 rungs in complexity and you apply the laws of ecology to these microbes on how they behave on your real estate or on your landscape. So each part of your body has a different environment, just like in your house or on your property, right? You have those areas that get a lot of sun, you have those areas that don't get a lot of sun. Things grow differently in those two different places. So, That's an opportunity if you know how to play that. So when you talk about these marketeers that want to take a help the world approach, then you can leverage your science more, right? Because you can say, hey, listen, for those of you out there who have blemishes or model pigmentation or sun damage or or blotchy skin or anything along those lines of safe descriptions without sounding medical or making structure function violations, you can then back that up with these high level topics of biology without having to own the whole mechanism down to a pharmaceutical explanation. People get it. The customers are definitely more educated than they used to be. And with every market, whether you're talking cognition, gut health, women's health, brain health, all of it, exercise and sports, recovery, hydration, each of these categories is becoming a subspecialty to the supplement industry. So 50 years ago, when you went to your doctor, he or she was kind of the expert on everything, right? Now, if you go and you say, hey, doc, I have this thing on my shoulder, and they're like, ah, stop, I got a dermatologist, you should go see them, right? So now it's a specialty, right? Oh, yeah, it doesn't look normal, so let's take it to someone who knows more about that stuff. Because the GP... that can't actually assimilate all the information there is to cover your entire health anymore. And the supplement industry is doing the same. You peruse the aisle and it's an alphabet soup of all these cellular metabolism, inflammation inhibitors, longevity, ideas, like all of that from a cellular perspective would benefit the beauty from within category. So how do you help something grow in a certain direction that parallels your marketing story? It's all possible, right? It's all about telling a story and a story that's either substantiated by branded ingredients, which have clinical studies to support your claims, or you can be generic. and say, hey, listen, a good pile of antioxidants is gonna make you look good, right? And you can kind of leave it at that and then focus more on your backstory saying, hey, when I was a kid, things didn't look all that good for me. And now I did this and now take a look. And I've told this story to my friends and now they look good. And now everybody has access to this. So why not give it a try? I mean, it's this domino effect. It's never an A plus B equals C. It's a multi-generational story.

Bobby Hewitt: 23:33

Absolutely. And from a marketing perspective, from marketing supplements, I see the ingredients and even the product line as an extension of that story. Those are just tools in the toolbox to help tell that story better. So for example, we can get into the beauty within category of a supplement or ingredient, right? Where we can combine that with another topical product, right? To really create an entire story around how it's being used, that whole aspect of taking it on the inside and applying this on the outside and that whole dual approach, right? Not only that, but the whole sensory aspect, right? So all of that contributes to the experience of using the product, that second sale like we talked about because now you have a second product to sell and now you have a reason why they should buy the second product or a bundle together. What are your thoughts on that? I know with your background in sort of the beauty category and everything you've done on the lotions and cream side, I'd love to hear your perspective.

Michael Anthonavage: 24:49

yeah i i i had it always brings me back to to an experience when you know when i was when i was when i was in the lab full time you know where the only thing i had to worry about having clean was my lab coat um it was all about dig in understand publish patent you know produce data and and then bring it to a meeting for someone to say, hey, how can we do something with all this, right? So I finally get my chance to take off the lab coat and I get into one of my first marketing meetings and the marketing people go, so Mike, you got some exciting news to tell us, right? And I'm like, well, and I start getting into this whole mechanism of inflammation inhibition, right? And I'm like talking about prostaglandins and leukotrienes and blah, blah, blah. And my boss kind of leans over, he goes, Mike, he goes, just tell him it soothes the skin, right? Because I was so excited to tell the world about all the stuff that I knew that I forgot why I was there in the first place, right? So to your point, Bobby, Sensory is a huge, huge piece of the topical market, right? I would bet that eight to nine out of 10 customers who walk into like a Sephora or an Ulta or any aisle that's got rows and rows of moisturizers and hair products and whatnot, the first thing they do is crack it open, give it a sniff, maybe put a little on their skin and see how it feels. And that's how they make their purchase. Now they're reading the bottle saying, you'll get stronger hair, no split ends, more moisturized skin, less wrinkles, blah, blah, blah. But that's gonna take four to six weeks. So in that interim, the industry spent a lot of time, especially with aesthetics when it comes to tactical, how to invent words or utilize adjectives that resonate with customers like less tacky, playtime, silky, smooth, right? All these things are sexy, right? It causes you to have this relationship with your product. Supplements on the other hand, well, you chew them, you swallow them, you put them under your tongue, you mix them, right? However, The topical things don't have that the supplements do have is flavor and texture. And that's a big part of our product development here at VitaQuest because we know that that's a differentiation point. You could have the most effective combination or formulation of ingredients that could make your workout better, make your hair better, make your eyes brighter, make your skin glow. But if it tastes bad, I don't think people are going to stay with it. And you got to stay with it for at least four weeks, at least four weeks, because that's usually the turnover time of a lot of parts of your skin that people will notice. So here at VitaQuest, we've actually made investments behind the scenes where we can modify ingredients to have more texture. We utilize... technology in effervescence. We use technology in agglomeration and spray drying to have flavors adhere and have better blooming and more playtime in your mouth so your sensory and your brain are engaged. So every time I go back to that beauty from within supplement that tastes like amazing, right? That's another thing to talk about. Not only look at me and how good I look from taking this, but you know, you're going to like the taste of this too. And taste is very subjective. So you have to make more skews, right? I'm going to be very general here, but your vanilla, your chocolate, your strawberry, right? Well, those are your standard ice cream flavors, right? But then you get into other things that become popular, And just like in the topical industry, which used the Pantone color of the year as their marketeering color focus, which is derived from the runways of Paris in the early spring, there's the flavors of the year that our industry kind of focuses on. And where do they come from? Well, that comes from big surveys from big marketing companies that try to understand, well, in the hydration market, which is very important for skin health, what are the best flavors or what are the trending flavors for hydration that's going to keep you using your product until it starts to show an efficacy?

Bobby Hewitt: 29:45

What are some of the trends you're seeing there?

Michael Anthonavage: 29:48

Well, you know, we get into these exotic berries now. You know, companies, traditional hydration products were the lemon and limes, right? And then we get into the reds and the blues. Right. So what flavors are behind those like strawberries and cranberries? And then you get the cran grape. Right. You get these these these hybrids where, you know, I do a lot of cooking. I love to cook. I'm not a baker. I'm a cooker. Right. And the difference is that I can experiment ad infinitum. cooking because there's kind of no rules, right? Baking's very like, well, you got to measure it, you got to stir it just the right way or your souffle doesn't rise, right? Or your cake falls down. So I love to play, right? That's what attracted me to biology, right? You push a couple buttons over here and something changes over there and you're like, ah, look at that, right? Cause and effect. So when people... take their supplements, usually in a powder form or in a effervescent tablet or a slow melt or something that creates a little playtime in their mouth, particle size is important, right? How thick are these particles sprayed or incorporated with the flavor? Is that flavor actually a functional ingredient too, right? There's a whole... there's a whole arena of flavors that have multiple purposes, right? That kind of, you slide things in under the radar. That also starts to bring in like green technology and the sustainability technology and the social responsibility technology, right? We just heard the FDA not too long ago, start outlawing dyes and colors, right? So if your flavor is artificially colored, That's a problem, right, today. So if you don't have a plan B for that, natural flavors, you know, a natural flavor alternative, then you're going to kind of be stuck for a while. And the rest of the industry is going to lap you. It's going to pass you. So you always have to stay on top of what's going on. You really do. And you have to play chess and not checkers. And it's really a strategic white space evaluation all the time. Just because you think you have an angle, that angle is not going to last forever. And someone's going to see your success in that angle and one-up you. So you can do what a lot of companies do, and they try to protect themselves, right, through IP, right, and from market share by just protecting flooding the market with their technology, where then you have others that will say, hey, listen, I'm okay being a small fish for a while because I'm gonna get the attention of some bigger fish later. And then those might be a business opportunity for me in terms of an acquisition, which then will give me more capital, which will then boost this great research that I have already built a foundation around, right? There's a business model around that, right? And it's done in pharmaceuticals all the time. The small, you know, indie type of brand will spend four to six years developing itself, waiting for a parent company to say, hey, you're exactly what we wanna add to our portfolio. Why not, right? And as a business owner, I'm gonna say, well, the price is right, sure. And now I get to use this just big multinational companies resources to expand my product line. Now there's pros and cons to that too, right? The speed, the regulation, The bloat within the company kind of slows things down. You lose some of your decision-making power when that happens. But nevertheless, it's a successful model for people to really make their mark and elevate your brand, right? We've seen this happen multiple times in the industry where some small brand becomes kind of a monster and then a big multinational will come in and just kind of quietly say, you know, we own that now, but you keep doing what you're doing. And we're just going to make sure that we support you in the best way possible.

Bobby Hewitt: 34:08

I look at it from, it's almost like you're creating an experience, right? Because with the sensory aspect, you have the experience of putting the topical At the same time, you have the experience of that flavor in a chewable or an effervescent or a powder. And actually choosing that and that combo effect of the decision of going with a powder versus a tablet or a gummy to orchestrate that experience, to orchestrate that sensual and sensory input And you guys at VitaQuest are masters at the flavor combinations. So is there any other benefit to doing one form over another, like effervescence tablets, gummies, powders, capsules?

Michael Anthonavage: 35:03

Yeah. I mean, your format is kind of contingent on a few things. Listen, gummies... gummies were responsible for kind of introducing supplements to the masses, right? Well, all of a sudden, you know, we were able to put them in, and especially for kids. I think it all started with kids' vitamins, right? Your kids aren't taking their vitamins because they taste nasty or, you know, they chew and then they're like, I don't like that, right? So, now you make them like candy and they're like, oh, where's my vitamin, right? So, great right this this feeds the psyche this this does all the the the reward the reward complexes in your brain are all satisfied and and there's nothing wrong with it when you're an adult and you're looking for effects and you're looking for efficacy and you're looking for that experience um you have to ask yourself well how much stuff do i need to get that experience And gummies spend a lot of time on the gummy, right? So the capacity of a gummy is limited. So therefore you start to find yourself taking handfuls of gummies, right? And there are low calorie sweeteners and there are ways that, you know, you can get around the sweet tooth. Like, you know, don't tell your dentist that you're taking six of these a day.

Bobby Hewitt: 36:30

There's only so many gummies you can take before you get gummies.

Michael Anthonavage: 36:33

Yeah, yeah. And obviously, once you get into an older population, there's always underlying medical conditions. Like, well, people are trying to keep their weight down and they feel like they're eating a lot of sugar with this. But then, like I said before, there's no calorie sweeteners that you can substitute. So, chews are an alternative. And chews... allow you to put more ingredients in there because you're not spending the time on the matrix of the gummy, the gelatin, which takes up almost 50 to 60% of the product. But then you're talking about things like ingredients like collagens and keratins and proteins, which we all understand to be kind of like harder to assimilate as we get older. And as we get older, that's the population that wants the anti-aging benefits, right? So right then and there, the primary flagship solution to anti-aging for most body parts is get sufficient amount of protein in your body. And that's on the gram level. And that's really hard to do with a gummy or even a chew, right? Because I don't want to take a handful of chews either, right? Especially if I'm effervescing them, I put them in my mouth and it's like, you know, I'm foaming. So what you do is you go into powders and scoops and sachets and stick packs. And this gives you almost, you know, outside of some flow agents that are required from a manufacturing perspective, and you want a clean label if you can get there, on those types of ingredients. But now you can put gram quantities with milligram quantities all together into your story. And I particularly like a twice a day approach for beauty because I think there's certain things that happen at night versus certain things that happen during the day that you can leverage and differentiate yourself from. But the topical and supplemental approach is brilliant. What I see a lot of people make a mistake and do though, is that, and like how I started our conversation, the topical side is very lipid friendly. Like everything is lipophilic and because like dissolves like, you know, Mike's rule of chemistry and your skin is very, it has a lot of lipids and ceramides on it. So if you can have a lipid dissolve through the epidermis of your skin, then you're delivering it. So why would you take a lipid supplementally? right, unless you're really trying to stack some bioaccumulation or bioefficacy of that particular ingredient. But I think you're almost losing your opportunity to leverage the water soluble vitamins supplementally and then stick to your lipid soluble stuff topically, right? So your repertoire of actives you know, grows at least additionally or additively, if not synergistically, if you apply both approaches. Now, for those that don't know, you need a separate contract manufacturer for topical than you do for supplements, right? So there are different rules on both sides of that fence. But the companies that are doing both are finding great success in that.

Bobby Hewitt: 39:51

What do you mean by that? There's different... Well,

Michael Anthonavage: 39:54

there's different label requirements from a regulatory perspective from the topical side versus the supplemental side. There's differences in how ingredients get trademarked and recognized on label in both of those arenas. They're both CGMP operations. But it's really the regulatory side that kind of changes things. And many, I don't, and listen, I don't want to say that this doesn't exist, but I don't know of any contract manufacturers that do both in the same place, right? They might have a facility in point A that does their supplements and then a facility at point B that does their topicals. But I don't know many of them that do that because you, The way you bring ingredients in, that's all controlled, right? And again, there's differences between pharma, food, supplements, and cosmetics in terms of the manufacturing protocols.

Bobby Hewitt: 41:02

Is there a way to modify the components and the ingredients within a formulation to make it either a better sensory experience or... work better in combination with a nighttime regime versus a daytime regime or a powder alongside of a topical

Michael Anthonavage: 41:23

yeah yeah um again there's a lot of permutations of that um i believe you you have to know your consumer and there you know and i'm going to talk about north america u.s right if if you're a multinational company and if you're looking to to branch into asia or or Europe and the US are pretty similar, but once you start going outside the Europe and the US, there are different beauty protocols. I don't think any woman would say they're in the middle of their protocol before they're getting ready for bed. as it's studied, right, from a male perspective, right? I've been through a lot of these training sessions, you know, to say, hey, listen, how many steps does your average woman have, or the average person now, because it's not just women anymore. Men are a big part of the beauty category. You know, they don't stand up and shout it from the mountaintops yet, but you're starting to see more commercials, you're starting to see more advertising, you're starting to see more products being geared towards men, especially for corrective beauty or... corrective health, right? And then the younger generations are getting more involved in the preventative side. Like they know how their mom and dad aged and they don't want to follow that path, so to speak, right? Or they want to slow it down a little bit or they want to enhance it if their parents aged well. So each of those market endpoints, if you take them back to your product development strategy, creates an opportunity for you to maybe take the play that, listen, you're already washing your face, you're already putting on a moisturizer in the morning, you're already wearing makeup, and I'll just leave it at that for women, or for men, that's where it ends and bang, out the door you go. But I'm also taking my shaker bottle with me where I have two scoops of my daytime formula, which now I'm gonna nurse until lunchtime. A lot of people just do this through greens, reds, blues, because they feel like you're getting this panacea of wonderful stuff, which ultimately will work on your skin and your hair, especially if there's biotin and protein in it. But you're also... taking things now that our vendors who are essential for our toolbox here at VitaQuest, they do all the clinical studies. And there are some supplements out there now that can actually help reduce your ability to burn in the sun. They're not sunscreen. So let me just say that right up front. And the sunscreen market is very regulated in the topical side. However, there are ingredients that will reduce your ability to burn or help your sunscreens perform better, right? And obviously you want to take this during the day, right? Taking that at night and, you know, unless there's some really unusual circumstances you're in, it doesn't make any sense. The converse to that is at night, that's when your body repairs, right? So if you think about New York City or Chicago or any of these big cities, that have huge congestion problems and millions and millions of people, they still build skyscrapers while the city is operational. So how do they do that? Well, they ship in all the raw materials at night when traffic is low. You want to do the same thing with your body. You want to ship in the raw materials like the collagens and the peptides and the amino acids and the carotenoids and the biotins and all these things that are essential for building the scaffold, which is your skin and your hair and your organs and all your collagens and whatnot, while the construction crew is working. It doesn't mean it's not working during the day. It just means that the construction crew during the day is weather dependent now. So if you're exercising or if you're at work, there are limitations. If you're at the beach versus in a rainforest versus in an office, all these things have an effect on your skin. Your shower has an effect on your skin. The coolest thing about skin that I love to tell people is that it's the most evolved organ in your body because it's the one that interfaces with the environment the most. So it's ever-changing. So in order for it to function well, it has to be prepared. Prepared for what? Everything. Everything, right? Bug bites, sunburn, free radicals. You name it, pollution. Your soap, if it's not clean, and it's made from chemicals and has perfumes in it and all that kind of stuff, that affects your skin microbiome. So there's no domino that won't fall when you press a button somewhere on your skin. So day-night routines, these give you opportunities for different flavor packages, different sensory packages. You really don't want something that's going to be invigorating before you go to bed. So we've done things like Sleepy Time Beauty Cocoa powders, where you take advantage of that whole getting ready for bed, cozy, warm feeling while you're still getting all of these raw materials being pushed into your body while you sleep. So you wake up. You put on your topical, and remember too, the supplement strategy should be additive or synergistic to your topical strategy. It shouldn't be duplicative. I don't know if I'm saying that right. You shouldn't duplicate it. So as a formulator, looking to manage cost, which is something you're always managing for a customer in a contract manufacturing facility, you find that ingredients like ascorbic acid, vitamin C, very, very potent on the skin for pigmentation purposes, for collagen production, for free radical inhibition and sequestering. However, vitamin C is extremely unstable as a molecule. So it's a terrible ingredient topically, unless you modify it in a way to keep its stability in the tube for two years. Conversely, and by modifying vitamin C, which is a relatively cheap ingredient by a parent compound, you increase the cost logarithmically to do that. So why would you spend all your money on ingredients that don't have to be that expensive if you take them supplementally, right? So again, your strategy from a marketing perspective doesn't always have to be you're going to look great at the end of taking my stuff. You're going to look great, and it's cheaper to look great. Right, right. You know? So, again, depending on how you want to play your market message, right, or who it is that you're talking to, it makes all the difference on how your product design goes.

Bobby Hewitt: 48:58

So when someone comes to you, a supplement entrepreneur, they want to start a product, they want to create a product. Are they usually coming to you with a list of ingredients that they want? Or are they usually coming to you more with like what they're trying to accomplish?

Michael Anthonavage: 49:13

Yeah, I would say a little bit of both. Yeah, a little bit of both. A large part of my job here at VitaQuest is fostering the relationship with our vendors. Without them, we're dead in the water, right? Because otherwise we're just kind of like making generic decisions. packages, right? So three, four, sometimes five times a week, we're in front of vendors who have clinical studies that are just coming off the conveyor belt, or they have something that they've modified a very common ingredient to be more bioavailable. Berberine, for instance, with the GLP-1 story, right? Nobody thought in the beginning of that story that it would have anything to do with beauty from within. However, Now we're seeing people losing weight pretty fast. They're very effective GLP-1 inhibitors, first generation, second generation. However, there are a lot of side effects now. Sarcopenia is one of them, right? So you're not just losing fat, you're losing entire body mass, and that includes protein. So that loss of protein, which is called sarcopenia, now starts to give you that sallow, you almost look like you're sick. And that's not the intention, right? The intention, these drugs were intended for diabetics and pre-diabetics to manage their weight to keep their insulin resistance in check. And it turned out that, well, as a country, we're pretty obese and this isn't a bad idea to kind of thin people out. Well, there's side effects to that, right? There's nausea. There's the fact that you're not eating the way you used to eat, which is kind of a good thing. And that's the whole purpose of being on these GLP-1s is to modify the way you eat. So when you come off, you're eating healthier. But what happens when a lot of people come off, not everyone, but when a lot of people come off, they put the weight back on instead of it being the ratio that they lost it, let's just call it 50-50 protein fat, now it's a 95-5 fat regain. And it's like, whoa, wait a minute, now I'm in worse shape than I was when I started, right? So this, again, globally affects the beauty from within space on how you perceive yourself, how others perceive you, and how you understand your own wellness. And that's That's priceless to know that kind of stuff. So best intentions always have consequences. And those consequences create opportunities for other people. And certainly we have done numerous presentations in the beauty department around people who will come in and say, I want to focus on the GLP-1 customer. And you're starting to see these products on TV commercials now and whatnot. And this even goes for people who can't take the GLP once but want the same effect. That's a whole other opportunity from a beauty perspective. So, yeah, it's really endless. And I think you'll see the category growth rate in this particular market is going to explode even further once these startups these categories get stacked and people start to see, hey, listen, when you talk about menopause, that's a completely different beauty strategy than if you're talking about someone in their 30s and 40s, right? And there's a completely different taste profile for those women versus the population that's younger. And then you've got the 20 to 35, 20 to 45. Listen, when I was teaching menopause, herbal studies for a while, I would have women in their young 20s taking retinol products. There wasn't a blemish on their face, but yet they're using these high-powered carotenoids as if this is going to stop them from aging. But what you're doing is you're training your skin to be dependent on these things and you're not letting your natural processes work. And there's nothing better than your body's own natural way of doing things. There really isn't. And that's what supplements are supposed to do, right? They're supposed to supplement your body's natural processes. Once you go over the top and start making it quote unquote therapeutic, then that's a completely different conversation.

Bobby Hewitt: 53:37

Right, right. So the innovation in the space, from your perspective, one area could come from personalization through your supplement stack, right? And even though we have a very very informed market very informed buyer there's still more room to grow what I'm hearing on that information and education side from the buyer's perspective all of those are opportunities from the entrepreneur's perspective to provide that to the marketplace or tap into that existing belief in the marketplace and really propel it so This, it is daunting from a brand new sort of entrepreneur perspective who comes to you, wants to start a product. I can imagine many of them reach the point of like failure to launch. I have a great idea, but I can't get it off the ground. Is there anything that VitaQuest can do in that respect that's more of act like a personal advisory team or coach to help that entrepreneur?

Michael Anthonavage: 54:43

Yeah, for sure. I mean, one of the, Our innovation team reports to the executive vice president of sales. So it's designed to be at the tip of the spear. There's process improvement teams with InvitedQuest that focus on how we execute the ideas that we put in front of our customers. But our innovation team is really about creating an experience for our customer that walks in the door with this intention of being successful, right? I'll give you a few examples. There are these data miners of Amazon that have developed proprietary web crawling software, right? That this just tracks everything.

Bobby Hewitt: 55:39

Right, I just see what's selling.

Michael Anthonavage: 55:41

And then they go, okay, well, bourbon looks like it's the hottest thing going. I'm just kind of picking something out of the blue. And then, so I want to be in that, right? I want that market share. If we could make their product fast enough to capture that bubble, then we're popping corks and champagnes flowing, right? Pretty hard to do though, right? Because typically it's going to take about, three months to hit the market if everything goes really smooth. So did you miss the bubble? I don't know, right? It's kind of like chasing the stock market, right? There's definitely a lot of potential there if you can move fast. But the thing of it is, you know, I believe that you can't be a fly-by-night, you know, panacea solution for everything by that business model. I don't want to poo-poo it. It's just, it's not what I, it's not what I endorse, so to speak. But yet if the customer comes in and wants to do it, hell yeah, we'll do it for you, right? Because why not, right? This is your product. You believe in it. And I have no, I want to see you be successful. So we'll do everything we can to make you successful. The other client that comes in the door is that, you know, we talked about this one earlier. They have a personal experience that they never want to happen to someone else. So we talked about that. We also talked to people who know that they do their market research and their strategizing, their SWOT analysis, their risk analysis, and they have a particular propensity to want to be a brand that only uses marine sourced things, right? I'll give you a great example. Estee Lauder has a brand called La Mer, right? All their topical stuff comes from the ocean, right? Allergies, this, and kelp, and blah, blah, blah, and all these wonderful ingredients that come from the ocean. Well, someone like that could come in and say, hey, listen, I want to be completely vegan. How do I get collagen into people who are vegan, right? And that's one of the big building blocks for success from an ingredient standpoint. So our vendors give us enormous possibilities. I have, if you can imagine a mechanic shop, right? You walk in the door and you see these tall red cabinets with all the drawers. Mine's the size of like a giant stadium. I got the biggest toolbox that you could imagine. And it takes a lot of energy to manage that. and make sure that the right ingredients are put in front of the right customer. Now, a lot of times people will come in with caviar taste on a McDonald's budget. That's okay, but I gotta find that out in the conversation. So there's a lot of dialogue, there's a lot of iteration. VitaQuest tours very well. We have an excellent facility. We have excellent staff here. When people come in the door, they're usually smiling from ear to ear when they leave. And that's a good feeling because I know I'm supported behind me and I'm supported in front of me, right? So this plays through in the way we talk to customers. This plays through in the way they feel about VitaQuest. And let's face it, we're not for everybody, right? You know, we're a custom manufacturer. If you just want to do A to Z vitamins at the lowest possible price, at the we might be over-engineered for you, right? And there are cheaper solutions. I'm not going to lie. But at the same time, if you're looking to differentiate yourself, and if you're looking for a board of consultants, because that's what we are to our customers, we're here to embrace you. And we'll take your idea and... we'll expose the good, the bad, and the ugly about it, right? Transparency is really the key to success in a position like this because you don't want to mislead a customer down this false hope pathway. Now, we can't foresee every possible problem that happens, but we have a fantastic regulatory department. We have a fantastic product development department. We have fantastic packaging and labeling and oversight. So, If anything is going wrong along the way, we've got a team that has experience on how to handle it, how to correct it, or to give you options, right? You're only as good as your plan B. So we've got lots of plan Bs for customers when they hit a wall. So it's really being nimble. It's really being creative and empowering the customer to feel as if what we're giving them is, is additive and synergistic to their brand, right? We want to help. We don't want to be the, here's a checklist, make sure you check all this off before you show up, right? We're not like that, right? We'll tell you, hey, listen, we got a checklist a mile long here. We're going to check these things off as you approve them, right? We have customers come in and spend a day tasting one formula, 15 different ways, too sweet, aftertaste, masking tastes, watching it flow, watching it mix. A lot of people, when you get powdered bags of stuff, it all goes well into solution when the water's warm. A lot of people want a cold drink, so they'll use cold water out of their refrigerator, and they'll be stirring and stirring and stirring and stirring, and stuff doesn't go into solution. It stinks, right? But that's not how it was built. But if you tell me this should dissolve completely within 10 or 15 seconds, I'm making this up, in room temperature water or cooler, then we'll modify the ingredients to do that, even though they might inherently not do that. So that adds a layer of complexity. So again, knowing what you want, is half of getting what you want. And it's certainly important for us as VitaQuest to be your partner to know everything that you want so we can deliver at least the 80-20, right? I don't think, you know, I wouldn't feel comfortable anything less than that, right? Some things are just not feasible yet. But yet people ask, and I love those people, because they're getting me thinking, and then they're getting our PD people thinking, and then when our vendors show up, I get them thinking, say, hey, listen, you know this thing that you just showed me? I need it to dissolve in cold water. Can you do that? Oh, we didn't think of that. We'll get back to you. And then a couple phone calls later, they figured it out. Enzymes and probiotics and postbiotics, I mean, they're such an art thing. to this industry that there's so much tribal knowledge and so much possibilities that are yet untapped. So we feel really comfortable that we can offer people a point of differentiation no matter what road they come in on.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:03:12

Right, there's so many complexities and modifications needed that really you're there to kind of support the vision and really drive that forward. I mean, that's how innovation happens, like you described.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:03:23

Yeah. I mean, we're we stay powders. Right. So we're we're capsules, tablets, effervescence, you know, soft melts, sachets, stick packs, that kind of stuff, you know, scoopable stuff. Completely new science when it comes to liquids and completely new science when it comes to the beverage industry and whatnot, which does play into the beauty category. Well, because now you're drinking your stuff. And that's kind of where ours goes in some cases, right? Especially these ready-to-mix drinks. We're also seeing people use stick packs as food toppers, right? So you just kind of sprinkle this on top of your Cheerios in the morning or your eggs.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:04:05

Interesting.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:04:07

Eggs and bacon or whatever you're having.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:04:10

Interesting.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:04:11

You know, just like in pets, right? So there's... It's really endless. And as I mentioned before, your product can be into two to three or four different SKUs depending on the age group that's using it, right? So again, you can have the same product, which changes formats along that age transition, changes flavors along that age transition, changes dosage along those age transitions, but it's still your brand and it's still your hero products making the claims.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:04:44

Right. You're just moving along with every flavor of the market, really.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:04:50

You've got to listen to your customer. You've got to listen to your customer. I'll tell you the flip side of some customers that will walk in the door and they're like, hey, I want to be in the beauty from within space, Mike. I hear you know a lot about it. Tell me. And I'm like, well, who's your customer? Well, you know.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:05:09

Everybody.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:05:11

No, I don't know. Who's your customer? And I'll take that one step further and I'll say, envision your product being successful and walk it back to me. How did you land there? Why does it look like that? Why does it taste like that? Why does it go in in the morning and not at night. So why, why, why, why, why? So help. So then I understand the why, and then I can build the chassis, and then I could start putting the extras on there, pinstripes, sunroof, spoilers, and everything to make it snazzy and fast, car analogy. So Same thing if you're decorating your house or whatever analogy you want to use. I take it out of the science unless I'm talking to a scientist. If I'm talking to a marketer, then if they don't understand who their customer is, I got to ask myself, why do you call yourself marketing?

Bobby Hewitt: 1:06:12

It always comes back to the customer and the vision you want to build. A lot of those visions can get stalled because of the complexity, but it sounds like you guys are there to actually partner with with the entrepreneur help them think through all those aspects

Michael Anthonavage: 1:06:25

absolutely we we encourage it our doors are open anytime and and we don't expect it to be you know done in one shot either because we know that after our our first impression is is the most important one and and and we we members of the team that i'm on have come up with brilliant ideas i mean we literally have Tasting flights, like you would go to a brewery and try all their different microbrews or a whiskey house or a cider house or wine tasting, right? We'll put together like, you know, clear proteins flavored this way or effervescent tablets with different bloom rates, you know, to give this visual or something that's designed for oral health, right? Because beauty from within isn't just skin, hair and nails. Now it's eyes, it's teeth, right? You can be the most handsome or beautiful person on the planet, but if you've got dog breath, I don't think people are going to want to get too close, right? So oral health is important, right? Gum health, teeth whitening, right? I know those things kind of get into structure of functioning claims, but again, healthy oral cavity. It's just endless, right?

Bobby Hewitt: 1:07:42

Yeah, it really comes down to how you feel, right? If you feel great, you're going to look great.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:07:48

Yeah, and then it's going to come back to you, right? So it's positive reinforcement. There's not many things on the planet that are positively reinforced that are good.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:08:00

That's true. And supplements and VitaQuest are making that reality.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:08:06

Yeah, yeah. So we're super excited about what's out there. You know, the whole stress thing, which, you know, in industrial age, society right now, especially with how fast information flows and the fact that there's really no time delay anymore from actual events. This creates a baseline stress level that I think is significantly higher than it used to be before the age of information technology. And that ain't going to slow down anytime soon, right? Now we've got AI helping us out. So there's so much information to manage that AI, I have to use my AI assistant to get through the day. So if there's a reason why you're not sleeping, it's probably because you got blue screen tattooed on the back of your retina because you've been looking at that all day. So if you're not sleeping good, we start that story again on how you're not going to end up looking too good. And there are scientifically published papers about stress and the way your skin and hair grow for sure. I could talk to you for hours about that. But that's the skin, adrenal gland, brain axis, right? So now we're getting into these triangles of organ systems that matter. So ingredients like ashwagandha, which didn't have a play in skin five years ago, now have a play in skin and hair because women will lose hair faster when they're stressed out. There's an alopecia problem. syndrome associated with that. There's transepidermal water loss, which is a measure of how well your skin is moisturized, is perturbed in college students who are going through their final exams, couples who are getting married or divorced. All these daily stressors that we're exposed to on a daily basis have an effect. And like I said, your skin is the most evolved organ, so it's constantly And if you can give it the tools to be flexible and adaptive with your hair and everything else that you're treating, then you're just going to be you're going to your wellness is going to follow you into a ripe old age. And I think that's that's really the goal here. Right. It's not how long you live. It's the quality of life that takes you there. Right. And and that to me is. It's easy to sell that. Yeah, it's easy to sell that. I used to teach anatomy and physiology, and I got to tell you, it was the best topic to teach in science because who doesn't want to know how their body works? And as soon as you tell people that I can help you tweak the way you feel, or I can help tweak the way you look, or I can help your, you know, you gain a little more muscle mass or do a better workout at the gym or get through your day a little less stressed. Why not? Why not? Like, it sells itself. Yeah. It really does. It's an

Bobby Hewitt: 1:11:11

amazing industry. I'm just glad.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:11:14

So I act kind of like an orchestra, you know, a conductor or, you know, who's the guy in front of the parade, you know, with the big staff, you know.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:11:26

I know what you mean, but I don't know his name

Michael Anthonavage: 1:11:28

either. I don't know what it's called.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:11:30

Grand marshal, maybe? I don't know.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:11:32

Yeah, maybe a grand marshal. I think they usually float, you know, they stand on a float somewhere. But, you know, like the guy leading the parade, right? So I'm comfortable in that position. And I think once I get, I like, VitaQuest, in general is an engaging company, right? I'm merely a byproduct of its culture and I'm proud of it. And I think the people that I work with are proud of it. And that really plays through in our passion for helping people become successful.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:12:03

Yeah, it's more than just fulfilling an order.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:12:06

Yeah, yeah. Especially from where I sit, right?

Bobby Hewitt: 1:12:09

So how can people get in touch with VitaQuest if they're interested in help or looking for a couple?

Michael Anthonavage: 1:12:15

Yeah, well, it's as simple as going on our website, VitaQuest.com. If you have an idea, there's a form to fill out. You don't have to have all your ducks in a row to get a response. We have a fantastically... diverse sales team, our product development folks, we have subspecialties within product development. So if you're into proteins and want some really avant-garde types of sources and whatnot, we can get you where you need to go for sure. The only thing that kind of puts limits is the product form, right? So we're powders. If you're looking for beverages or gummies or... other things outside of an anhydrous format, we're not your guy. But we do, you know, we do work with lipids and beadlets and vegan capsules and capsules of all different sizes and effervescent technology. We have some R&D here that really works on clean label ingredients so we can help behind the scenes, things flow better, which means that you get your order on time the first time, which means that we don't use a lot of material because it's sticking and blowing all over the room, which causes us to clean longer, which causes your cost to go up because let's face it, you know, all this stuff has to get done from a GMP perspective. And VitaQuest has the highest level of quality I've ever seen. And I've used to run labs and chemistry labs and biology labs in the past. And I got to tell you, coming here, I'm really impressed by our internal capabilities to do any type of quality control, QA, QC. If there's a thousand milligrams of vitamin C in something, There's a thousand milligrams that test out of it two years later, right? Probiotics, all of it. We're experts in handling these types of things. So when we make your product, it's done right the first time. And that's a good feeling.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:14:28

That's super important.

Michael Anthonavage: 1:14:29

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time. Bobby, it's been a pleasure. And thank you for giving me the time to pontificate.

Bobby Hewitt: 1:14:38

No, it was a great conversation. Really enjoyed it. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Creative Thirst is a direct response digital agency. We work with dietary supplement companies who are struggling to maximize the profitability of their funnels so they can scale. We've optimized many dietary supplement businesses. And in that time, we've uncovered the three critical funnels for success. You can get that free report by going to creativethirst.com. Scroll down to the appropriate section and click on the blue Get Your Ebook button.