What the experts say
Experts wonder what will happen to the growth of care/personalization as it takes up more retail shelves.
"Offering non-personalized vitamins as an 'in' for brands is a good place to start," says Simon Wool, managing partner at Wool Ventures Growth Consulting, who has worked with DTC nutritional supplement brands like TheJellyBee. However, he added that this could be detrimental as they "lose some of their value/brand value because they are unable to offer the personalization that they are known for."
Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, said supplements and vitamins are a "growth area" in the DTC space "primarily because of strong underlying margins." He said many DTC brands are struggling with profitability due to rising digital ad spend, and "it makes a lot more sense if you have healthy margins to work with."
According to IBIS World, online sales of vitamins and supplements in the United States will grow at an average annual rate of 17.3% between 2018 and 2023.
Lipsman is also optimistic about the subscription model often used by DTC supplements. "If you can get consumers through this buying cycle automatically, the numbers... will make a lot more sense," especially when it comes to customer acquisition costs.
“A key reason for the success of many DTC brands is modernizing the brand experience for large retail segments that have either become obsolete or do not appeal to modern consumers. "If you think about the status quo of supplements and vitamins, they're terrible name-brand products on the shelves at Walgreens," Lipsman said. Care in providing branded, modern energy certainly fulfills this requirement.
And then
Care/Off has a plan to ensure that people who find the brand on physical shelves are responsive to their digital community.
"We think we can be more direct with consumers and retailers," Elbert said, adding that the Care/Off app can help with that. "Over the next three to six months, our post-in-app purchase experience will evolve significantly," he continued, adding that the team plans to add tools that provide a "feedback loop" for ongoing personalized recommendations.
The brand wants to get feedback from customers so they know what they are doing and can make changes if necessary. "These are things that don't come in bottles," he said. "These are things that are delivered through an experience, and the way for us to deliver that experience is an app."
"This is the next chapter of what we're building...really changing the way people think about skincare as a brand and as a product experience," said Elbert.