People are increasingly becoming more concerned about their health and getting balanced nutrition. Although Chinese people have long had a habit of taking nourishing food with ingredients like cordyceps sinensis and bird’s nest, there are now many Western science-based health supplements on the market. One of the more popular health supplement brands sold in Hong Kong is Life Nutrition.
Rebranding and repackaging Bryant Shu, CEO of Life Nutrition, brought the brand to Hong Kong from the USA in 2009 and rebranded, repackaged and reformulated its products for the local market. “We want people to be able to achieve their natural best and we set up the company to try to spread this message,” he said. In today’s fast-paced society, people often rush meals and eat processed food. Even if they have a proper diet, they still cannot get sufficient nutrition because many vegetables and fruits have lost some of their nutritional potency due to years of intensive farming that have robbed the soil of essential nutrients. “Dietary supplements are efficient sources of nutrients so that instead of drinking 500 glasses of wine to get antioxidant benefits, for example, you can just take one serving of our product,” said Shu. For many Chinese people, the stereotypical image of health supplements is that of medicine, which is hard to change. Getting people to realize that these supplements are “efficient food” is essential. Repackaging is the main method that Shu uses to let people understand this. “We changed our packaging to look less medicinal so our supplements are no longer in white plastic bottles with a label, but in recyclable aluminum bottles.” Shu also added that aluminum is 100% recyclable, so using it reduces CO2 and energy usage. Since the company has switched to using recyclable aluminum, they have saved approximately 490,439 kwh of energy.
Quality control Because the main point of taking health supplements is for people to stay healthy, ensuring product quality is the company’s first priority. Shu said they use CGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) plants and the most respected manufacturers in the industry to produce their supplements. More importantly, they source all of their ingredients from reputable brand companies and choose ingredients that have been clinically researched. Getting certified is the biggest assurance of product quality. “We are working on getting more certifications for our ingredients to increase transparency for our customers. For example, our fish oils are processed in Norway and have Friend of the Sea certification,” said Shu. There is a lot of market competition with health supplement products and many brands advertise to try and gain more exposure. However, like many SMEs, Life Nutrition does not have the resources to do so. As a result, they put a lot of resources into producing quality products and providing consultation services in stores. More importantly, they focus a lot on educating customers. “We have in-house dieticians and nutritionists that work on our training material, our health talks and overall promotion of healthy living lifestyles for our consumers,” said Shu, who also stressed that they also rely on word of mouth from their customers.
Market expansion While Life Nutrition is now mainly sold in Watsons, expanding sales channels is a must for growing the business. The company has just launched an online shopping system on their website. “We recognize that e-commerce is a growing trend, and we’ve shipped to over 40 countries from our online store,” said Shu. He also emphasized that their online shopping system targets overseas customers, especially the Mainland market. “Our primary focus is in China as we just opened up a new office to focus on cross-border business. We have been working on listing on JD HK and Tmall HK,” said Shu. In addition, the company has expanded distribution in Europe, the U.S. and Africa.
Innovation Keeping a business sustainable is important and Shu said the trick is to keep creating new products, new packaging and new marketing tactics. This year they are introducing at least five new products, and have a plan to expand into more categories. As the boss of an SME, he considers his staff teammates. “As an SME, we are all in the same boat. We have an open door policy where ideas can come from anybody, as that is the only way we can all learn and our company can continue to grow,” said Shu.
Company: Life Nutrition International Co Ltd 公司名稱：生命營養國際有限公司 HKGCC Membership No. 總商會會員編號: HKL0554 Established 創辦年份: 2009 Website 網站: www.lifenutrition.com/hk