Contact with biohacking community led supplement firm down rebranding road
The parent company, called Organic 3, has rebranded its consumer facing aspect as Smidge supplements. The tagline is: âSmall batch supplements.â
The company launched more than 10 years ago around a probiotic offering. Founder Daniel Corrigan said that original product, which was one of the first multi strain probiotic supplements on the market at the time, was labeled as GutPro.
The original idea, Corrigan said, was to offer the probiotics to consumers in a formula of nothing but the probiotics themselves. The purpose was to appeal to discerning (and in some cases desperate) consumers with sensitivities to many substances that might be common excipients in the supplements trade.
âIt was unique in the sense that it didnât have any fillers or other excipients. It was a pure probiotics powder,ââ Corrigan said.
The issue with formulating a probiotics finished good in that way, Corrigan said, is the probiotics themselves take up almost no space. So a monthâs supply, more or less the industry standard for a SKU on the shelf, didnât go well into standard delivery formats.
âWe werenât adding in a prebiotic or any other fillers. So we started out with these tiny bottles that wouldnât go through any sort of machine. So does that qualify as a âsmall batchâ?â âCorrigan said.
Biohacking conference got rebranding ball rolling
Corrigan said as the online brand started to expand its product line and consumer base, the products came to the attention of the nascent biohacking community. For several years running, the brand was invited to exhibit at the Bulletproof Biohacking Conference (the annual event has since dropped âBulletproofâ from the name).
Corrigan said that communityâs tight focus on ingredient lists and product attributes led him to conclude that there was more value within the companyâs formulation strategy and brand presence than was conveyed using the fairly innocuous name of Organic3. Â In addition, the biohackers were well aware of the implications of the gut/brain connection.
âThat really opened our eyes,â âCorrigan said. âThey were really focused on clean, premium, high quality products.ââ
So âSmidgeâ was born, with the idea that the products contained just what was needed and nothing that wasnât.
Corrigan said another differentiator is that the company only uses who food ingredients for its vitamin content. For example, the companyâs vitamin A offering is supplied by beef liver, and a vitamin C product comes in teh forms of Kakadu Plum. The natural variability of these whole food sources as fits into the small batch model, Corrigan maintained.
âEach batch would have a slightly different amount,ââ Corrigan said. âWe donât offer these as standardized or fortified in any way.ââ