Supplement manufacturing can be a lucrative business, but, as with any business, it means that there are a lot of moving parts. It would help if you made sure that every step you take is one that leads to the next desired outcome. If you want to get into the business supplement manufacturing, you need to start looking at investing in your manufacturing infrastructure, or, if you don’t want to own and maintain this yourself, finding the right contract manufacturer to work with. On the other end, once you have a product, there’s also the concern with marketing. People won’t buy your product unless they know about it.
However, in between those two steps is a question of infrastructure. Even if you can make your supplements, and even if you have people that want to buy it, you must have a mechanism in place that gets your product to customers or vendors that want it. And that’s where establishing your supply chain for distribution comes in.
The supply chain is one of the less “sexy” aspects of the business that people tend to overlook between trying to make a product and trying to get people to want it. But without a good distribution arrangement in place, all your hard work in actual supplement manufacturing goes to waste. These are still physical products that come out of a manufacturing facility, and, somehow, have to end up in stores, or the storage facilities for vendors, so that they can be called upon to either be purchased at a store or mailed to a customer on request.
This means figuring out the arrangements for where your product is made and moving it in a smooth, continuous chain, from one destination to the next. It also means creating agreements with vendors, whether that is people in actual physical stores, or through larger online retailers, such as Amazon, that will work out agreements with you on how much product you are expected to provide, and where that product will go.
Without a reliable distribution network behind your supplement manufacturing, you will not be able to sell your product effectively. This requires a lot of knowledge, expertise, and negotiation if you mean to take all this up yourself.
The other alternative is to trust the experts. Some companies offer shipping services that allow manufacturers to provide more rudimentary, raw data about a product, and leave the complexities of the supply chain to more experienced hands. This leaves you to concentrate on marketing.
