Elderly nutrition products ODM

The core value of cooperating with an ODM when making nutritional products for the elderly is never “finding a factory to label”, but helping you skip the three major hurdles of R&D, supply chain, and compliance. A product that meets regulatory requirements and adapts to the needs of elderly users can be launched in as quickly as 3 months. The investment cost is more than 80% lower than building a self-built factory.

To be honest, in the past two years, I accompanied Lao Zhou, who works for community group meals, to visit seven ODM factories for elderly nutrition products in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. He originally thought that OEM processing meant "taking a ready-made formula, changing the packaging and putting it on the shelf." However, after running around, he discovered that there are many more doorways than he thought.

Nowadays, the bosses of elderly nutrition products in the industry are actually divided into two groups on the use of ODM, and no one can convince the other. One group takes the fast-selling route and basically does not do customization. They only choose mature formulas from ODM factories that have passed blue hat registration and have been on the market for at least 2 years. They can change the packaging to suit the tonality of their own channels. The minimum order quantity is only 5,000 boxes, and even a small team can make it. Last year, several brands of camel milk calcium tablets exploded on Douyin. They all used a common formula from a factory in Hangzhou. The entire process from product selection to launch was completed in as fast as 28 days. The peak monthly sales exceeded 10 million. You can change products after making a quick profit, and the risk is small.

The other group wants to build a long-term brand, and basically binds it to ODM for in-depth customization. I know an owner of a travel platform for seniors. Their users are all energetic old people in their 60s and 70s who have just retired and love to go out and play. Ordinary glucosamine chondroitin cannot be sold at all. Later, we worked with an ODM factory in Suzhou to refine the formula for 3 months. Based on ordinary glucosamine chondroitin, Added with Haematococcus pluvialis and collagen peptides, it focuses on "joint protection + skin brightening and anti-aging". The price is 32% higher than similar products. 12,000 boxes were sold in the first month of launch. The repurchase rate is 17 points higher than the general model on the platform. Now it has become their self-operated hot product.

Don’t think that ODM is a guaranteed profit, as there are too many people who fall into this trap. Last year, a private sector boss I knew found a small factory to make Coenzyme Q10, and the price was 25% lower than that of the leading factory. As a result, a professional anti-counterfeiter complained about it just half a month after the sale. It was found that the actual content of Coenzyme Q10 was only 37% of the packaging claim. Not only were all the products removed from the platform, but they were also fined 200,000 yuan. Later I found out that the small factory had stolen the Coenzyme Q10 in the raw materials and replaced it with half of the starch in order to reduce costs. There was nowhere to find it. My general advice to my friends is, when discussing cooperation, don’t ask about order quantities and quotations. First, check the other party’s compliance and penalty records in the past three years. If there are any records of violations of efficacy claims or unqualified raw material sampling, don’t touch it, no matter how low the quotation is. If something goes wrong, the brand will bear much greater responsibility than the factory.

There is another point that is easily overlooked. Don’t just look at the recipe list. Be sure to try it with real elderly users. I once had a community group buying boss who bought a product with the same formula as a well-known calcium product at half the price. I thought it was going to explode, but after a week of selling it, the return rate jumped to 28%. When I asked, I found out that this product from the ODM factory is a large round tablet, and many of them are swallowed. An old man with dysphagia could not swallow, and some even got stuck in his throat and almost caused an accident. Later, he asked the factory to change the small oval tablet shape, replaced the sucrose with xylitol, and added a light orange flavor. The return rate dropped directly to 2.7%, and now he sells more than 20,000 boxes every month. You see, these details will not be written in the test report at all. Only by really touching the real needs of users can we step on them.

In fact, many people now have misunderstandings about ODM for elderly nutrition products. They either think that it is a "tool for small brands to gain popularity" or that "you can't go wrong as long as you find a big factory." This is not true. If you want to do short-term business and find mature formulas quickly, there will be no problem. If you want to build a long-term brand with users, you have to work hard with the ODM to figure out the details, from the shape and taste of the tablets to the traceability of raw materials and compliance verification. If you are lazy at any step, the market will give you feedback. After all, today's elderly are no longer the group that used to pay after just listening to a few advertisements. Whether the product is good or not, you can feel it with your body once you try it.