May 29, 2021
Freshii Vitamins
Freshii is a leading advocator for providing healthy meals, accessible and affordable to all. Using a brand-focused business strategy has allowed Freshii to thrive in an incredibly competitive market. As part of a new digital direction, Freshii is branching out into the health and wellness space. With the recent launch of the apple cider gummy collection, customers are ecstatic about the amazing tasting gummies, coming from a beloved Canadian company. Diving deeper into the vitamin and supplement space could be a great addition to Freshii’s brand.
Competition
When considering the health and wellness space, there are both direct and indirect competitors that are critical to explore. Direct competitors include:
- Ritual
- Care/Of
- Persona
All these companies are composed of fully digital vitamin delivery services, offering monthly subscriptions, with a big focus on transparency, science, and inclusivity. Both Care/Of and Persona are highly customizable to fit individual needs, done through digital personalization quizzes. While Ritual has a female-focused mission, providing vitamins “made for women, by women” [Source: Ritual], catering to women’s needs including pregnancy and iron deficiency. All three services are based in the US, however, offer delivery to Canada. Although each company may have unique selling points, one common factor is that they are all fully digital!
When looking at in-direct and potential competition, we can investigate the following areas:
- Pharmacies
- Grocery Stores
- Supplement and Fitness Stores
Pharmacies are what customers know and trust, it has been their go-to destination for vitamins, and they may often disregard other options that may exist. Although pharmacies are not fully digital, many pharmacies are trending towards a digital trend. In Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Rexall, allow customers to automatically have their prescriptions refilled, and offer online ordering and delivery. If Pharmacies continued this trend and got into digital vitamin services, it would be direct competition, that already has the largest market share. One could not argue that the customization factor is missing at pharmacies, as a certified pharmacist could easily recommend vitamin options based on specific needs and conditions. Many may even consider this experience to be more accurate than asking the customer to input their own personal health and wellness data.
The Market
Both Care/Of and Ritual have organic monthly website visits of around 200,000 worldwide [Source: Semrush.com]. In 2019, Ritual raised a USD $25 million Series B funding [Source: TechCrunch], while Care/Of was valued at USD $250 million in 2020 [Source: Bloomberg]. Considering both these companies are very young, the growth has been incredible, meaning the market is strong and disruptive. With Freshii’s existing customer base, obtaining a share of the Canadian vitamin market can be highly expected.
The Approach
Freshii’s new venture into the vitamin space is a unique approach to its more traditional restaurant and fast-food competitors, which can work in Freshii’s favour when promoting an overall health and wellness lifestyle brand to its customers. Following a similar approach to existing services, taking a subscription route, offering the customer to have monthly vitamins automatically delivered, will ensure the most reliable user experience. Moving forward with a hybrid personalization model will ensure the customer is fully satisfied with the final outcomes.
- The customer completes a quick survey, addressing their health concerns, lifestyle habits, and dietary restrictions
- Freshii will recommend a list of vitamins to fit the customer’s individual needs. The customer will have a chance to review the recommendations, where detailed descriptions of the vitamins and their benefits will be clearly outlined
- The customer can choose to remove or add vitamins to their bundle. They will have the ability to save their bundles and have them delivered as part of the subscription service
- If the customer’s needs change, they will be able to make changes to their bundle and save multiple bundles as well
In addition, the physical products must be highly sustainable, inclusive, and innovative. From the great success of its vitamin-based competitors, we can take two factors into account for the digital direction of this new venture:
- The consumer is now informed and smart, Freshii must continue to share these common values
- There must be an additional focus, on top of providing well-made, convenient vitamins
Freshii already shares incredible values, in terms of sustainability and transparency. Freshii’s green movement is adored by its loyal customer base. These values along with others must be carried over and highly promoted through digital interfaces, during the vitamin marketing campaign! A few key areas that can be further targeted are science and education of the consumer, this will be comparable to the trusted healthcare professional product recommendation experience. There are many methods as to how Freshii could tackle this, while standing out from its direct competitors, below are two options to provide this digital experience:
Next, we must consider if there is another focus to target as part of the overall vision, whether it is customization or female empowerment, this will ensure to capture an overlooked market and help distinguish from existing competitors. Although this goal should be constantly tied back to Freshii’s overall strategic direction as a company, some possibilities include:
- Targeting individuals through health concerns (diabetes, asthma, acne, etc.)
- Daily vitamin reminder/alert feature
Limitations
In terms of technical constraints, privacy would be the biggest concern. If a customer’s personal details such as health conditions, allergies, and lifestyle behaviours are kept by Freshii, practicing secure privacy protocols will be critical. These measures must be up to industry standards, government privacy guidelines, and exceptional governance practices must be in place.
Success Criteria
Focusing on engagement, these metrics should be tracked as the new product is launched:
- How many months the customer stay signed up on the subscription service
- How many of the Freshii recommended vitamins are ordered by the user
- How many vitamins were manually added by the user to their order
- How many times the primary vitamin bundle is altered during an active subscription
Conclusions
Freshii is a beloved brand by many, that has done an amazing job at building a brand-focused company. With this strong trust with the consumer, the health and wellness space is a strategic, yet distinctive approach to take. Taking a strong digital direction in this new endeavour, while maintaining Freshii’s existing ethical values and reputation, will ensure Freshii thrives in this space while contributing to the company’s overall growth.
References
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/05/ritual-raises-25m-for-its-subscription-based-womens-daily-vitamin/
About Me
I am a business analyst at a major consulting firm. I come from a software engineering background, with a passion for client service and using technology to solve business problems.
If I can contribute to your growth, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn!
