How Can I Create My Own Private Label Collagen Powder?

Collagen is a protein that keeps your skin elastic, your bones strong, your hair shiny and your joints flexible. Its natural production slows as we age, leading to a massive amount of people using collagen supplements, often in the form of collagen powder. 

Though collagen powder isn’t the fountain of youth, it can help slow the signs of aging by repairing the skin’s elasticity and can help the body produce more collagen in the long term. Some people claim it can reverse the effects of aging. In this article, we’ll go over how you can boost your profits by creating a white-labeled collagen powder the right way without breaking the bank or the law.

What is a Private Label Collagen Powder?

Private-label or white-labeled collagen powder is a collagen supplement that has been modified or reformulated in bulk for a wholesaler or retailer. With a collagen powder that is white labeled, the seller doesn’t need to pay royalties to a brand-name retailer or distributor to sell the product. With no middleman collecting royalties, a producer can sell directly to third-party resellers that can brand the collagen powder with their own logo and trademarks.

Advantages of Launching a Private-Label Collagen Powder Brand

The advantages of starting a private-label collagen powder brand include:

• No royalties to pay on sales of your collagen powder, which can save you money
• The ability to leverage your existing brand into an already successful product category
• Sell directly to consumers, allowing you to drive down your overall costs and increase your profit margins
• Full control of your production, from the ingredients to the process in which they are made, gives you more control over the quality and cost of your product
• Tailor your product to your customers’ needs
• A new way to expand your fitness business

How to Launch Private-Label Collagen Powder

Now that you know why you should start your private-label collagen powder business, let’s get into how you can create your private-label collagen powder.

Identify Your Target Market

Just as with any other business venture, you need to know who your target market is. If this is your first foray into the supplements category, it’s important that you know who is looking for the type of collagen powder you are formulating. 

Are you selling to people who are just looking to de-age or reverse the effects of aging and are new to collagen? All of your messaging should be geared toward explaining and convincing potential customers of the benefits and features of collagen powder. If your target market already understands the collagen market, you need to give them a better value with the same or better results as their more expensive collagen powder. 

If you’re banking on your own personal brand, figure out what segment of your captive audience is interested in skin care products and fold it into your existing product line with a free sample. You can also find segments to your collagen powder audience through competitors that are already in your market and carry products similar to collagen, such as facial serums, and figure out what did or didn’t work for them.

Whatever market share you’re after, ensure that production choices from ingredients to packaging resonate with your target consumer.

Create a Compelling Collagen Powder Brand

Once you’ve identified your target market, figure out how a collagen powder brand fits in your brand story. If this is the beginning of your brand, you need a reason for someone to pick your collagen powder over all the others on the market. Once you’ve figured out your niche, or your improvement, build a brand story around that — consumers in the health and wellness sector are often seduced by implied results, but long-lasting brands are based on trust, results and authenticity. Your packaging, messaging, logo and color story should all be thought of through the eyes of your target consumer.  

Work with an FDA-approved Manufacturer

It’s important to verify that you’re working with a fully Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved manufacturing facility. It’s also important to ensure your partner has a working regulatory compliance audit program to make sure they are implementing best practices in accordance with all federal and state regulations.

If you’re unsure where to start, consider working with Print Bind Ship – an FDA-approved manufacturing partner with extensive experience creating and promoting supplement and private-label nutrition brands. Learn more here.

Fine Tune Your Formula

So far, 28 types of collagen have been identified, but five types have become the most sought-after formulations. The benefits you want to boast to your customers depend on the type of collagen you choose. The five most-popular collagen types and their potential benefits are:

• Collagen Type I: Major structural protein used throughout the body, densely packed in skin, muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons and other connective tissues
• Collagen Type II: Minor structural protein used throughout the body, less dense than Type I, found in cartilage, blood vessels, ligaments, bone marrow and tendons
• Collagen Type III: Used for protein synthesis and energy production and is found in organs
• Collagen Type IV: Helps regulate wound healing and cell movement found in the layers of your skin
• Collagen Type V: Normally found in anti-aging collagen supplements, helps maintain the elasticity of the skin and is typically found in the Bowman’s membrane of the eye’s cornea and in the tissue of the placenta 

Though you can go beyond these five types of collagen to promote specific niches of repair and beauty benefits, the type of collagen you choose, and its formulation, should be in line with your target consumer.

Obtain the Necessary Certification and Registration

Just like all supplements, collagen powder is not FDA regulated because it is not technically a drug. But a handful of organizations like United States Pharmacopeia (USP) have standards for creating pharmaceutical compounds for manufacturing. Verify that whatever collagen powder you are creating falls under a topical supplement so that you don’t need FDA compliance or U.S. Department of Agriculture approval. 

Differentiate Your Private Label Collagen Powder

A wealth of branded collagen powder products are on the market that will compete with your products. Though making bold claims with visual results is a great way to acquire customers, every company is going to do that. When the secret sauce of your product is legally required to be printed on your packaging, you need to make quality, efficacy, safety and customer service the backbone of your brand. 

Consider Your Distribution Strategy

Though most product designers want to see their brands flying off the shelves of a big box retailer, that’s not the correct route for every product or brand. Securing shelf space is expensive and can eat up your inventory, only to have it returned or sold at a drastic discount. The best way to reach your target market is via your own website, health and wellness websites and specialty stores that curate products in your like category.   

Market Your Protein Powder Private Label

You can market your private-label collagen protein powder in many ways. There are tried and true digital marketing standards like SEO, Google AdWords campaigns, targeted social media campaigns on platforms your audience uses, email newsletters and other paid pay-per-click (PPC) opportunities. Other creative options that you can use to help your growing collagen powder brand include time-lapsed photographs of users who have been in a trial campaign, targeted direct mailers with Print Bind Ship’s Mail Genius and in-person activations. Whatever marketing strategy you decide to use, make sure you have your target audience in mind. You can market to places you’re unsure how an audience will convert, but it’s always smarter to go where you know your audience is rather than guessing where they might be.

Set Up Your Store

As mentioned before, the best way to maximize your profits is to control where your audience finds you and how customers can get your products. The easiest way to do this is by having your own online store. With your own website you can easily start selling your private-label collagen powder and, depending on your content management system (CMS), use a variety of payment processors, marketing tools, subscription services and shipping services. Print Bind Ship works with the most popular e-commerce CMSes so that your shipments can go out within 24 hours of processing.

Create an Ageless Collagen Business

 With over 60 years in the printing business, Print Bind Ship can help you establish, define and design your brand and create custom packaging that meets all of your criteria. With our expansion as a third-party logistics (3PL) company, we can also be your dropshipping partner — we can link to your e-commerce store and ship your warehoused orders as soon as they are processed. We can also pair you with some of the most reputable labs and compilers for your collagen products.

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