Canadian firm to debut PurEnergy-based energy chew via Bulu Box sampling deal

02-Aug-2015 - Last updated on 03-Aug-2015 at 16:10 GMT

“It’s not designed to have you jump your motorcycle across the Grand Canyon. It’s about awareness and alertness." - Glen Rehman, CEO of Neutrisci

Canadian company NeutriSci International will jump into the US market via a 50,000-unit -strong sampling program with Bulu Box for its NeuEnergy energy chew.

NeutriSci, based in Calgary, Alberta is the Canadian dietary supplement marketing company that bought the Bluscience supplement business from ChromaDex in early 2013. Bluscience is based on ChromaDex’s nature identical form of pterostilbene branded as pTeroPure.

The new product is based on another ChromaDex ingredient: PurEnergy, which is a pTeroPure formulated as a co-crystal with caffeine. The pairing offers antioxidant benefits while retarding the uptake of the caffeine, providing a smoother energy delivery, according to ChromaDex. The NeuErgeny product has been on the market in Canada since January.

Focused energy

Pterostilbene, a molecule that is related to resveratrol, is found in grapes, blueberries and other botanical sources. While ChormaDex has used images of blueberries in its marketing in the past, the ingredient is wholly synthetic, which according to the company makes it purer than a natural source and more cost effective, too, as pterostilbene is found at only very low levels in botanical sources.

The NeuEnergy product is unique is that it contains actual blueberry extract as its first ingredient, along with some free caffeine and the PurEnergy ingredient. It’s formulated for the more sophisticated energy product consumer, said Neutrisci CEO Glen Rehman.

“It’s not designed to have you jump your motorcycle across the Grand Canyon. It’s about awareness and alertness. It’s designed to make you feel almost as if you had just woken up from the best night of sleep you’ve ever had and you are ready for the day,” Rehman told NutraIngredients-USA.

Data plus retail support

The problem, Rehman said, was how best to introduce those targeted benefits to US customers. There is a lot of heavy artillery firing in the energy products advertising space, especially on television (got wings, anyone?), so NeutriSci was looking for another way to reach consumers with a targeted effort.

Bulu Box, based in Lincoln, NE, offered that alternative, Rehman said. The company has a rapidly-expanding sampling service in which for a set fee customers get boxes mailed to them with a number of supplement samples each month. Bulu Box gathers detailed information on those customers’ experiences with the products to help brands fine tune their offerings and their subsequent marketing strategies. And Bulu Box offers an online sales platform of its own as well.

“Bulu Box provides a very interesting demographic for us,” Rehman said. “It’s predominantly women and the age group is very specific. You can gather a lot of data and get a lot of feedback. It’s very focused, and people don’t get a whole bunch of products every month, they get four or five.

“And the have a retail component that allows our product to be sold directly on their site. We were intrigued by the high conversion performance they have shown from sampling to purchasing,” he said.