Trace for brands
Make what the market is already buying.
Brands come to us with a product idea and a deadline. We formulate it, check what it may lawfully say, and manufacture it at low minimum order. The compliance work is not the pitch. It is the reason the formulation is worth paying for.
3,000+
UK supplement brands
~80%
Using contract manufacture
Growing
Botanical market
From 500
Low minimum order
What a client range looks like to us
5 of 6 need reformulating to say more
Six products of the kind we already make. Every one is legal to sell exactly as it is. The question is only what the label may say, and whether a small formulation change lets it say more. Select one.
Glow Collagen Complex · sold as skin, hair and nails
2 claims submitted and refused
4 claims submitted and refused
What would unlock it
Adding any one of these at its qualifying dose makes skin, hair and nails claims legally available.
- “Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of blood vessels”
- “Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of bones”
- “Zinc contributes to the maintenance of normal hair”
- “Zinc contributes to the maintenance of normal nails”
- “Biotin contributes to the maintenance of normal hair”
- “Biotin contributes to the maintenance of normal skin”
The line we hold: this says which claims become legally available. It does not say the reformulated product works better, and we will not let a client imply that. A qualified reviewer signs the final formulation.
Why brands come to us rather than anyone else
Software
Suggestic
Sells personalisation software as an API at $2k–30k a month. No factory, so they can diagnose but never fix.
Manufacturing
Persona
Nestlé-owned, white-labels per-user formulation. Real manufacturing, but a client is buying from a competitor’s parent.
Distribution
Holland & Barrett
Retail scale and in-store advice. Retails other people’s products, so no formulation capability at all.
All three
Us
Claims engine, formulation science and low-MOQ manufacture. Diagnose the problem, design the fix, make it.
How this gets big
The consumer brand proves the engine and generates the outcome data. The platform is where the margin is: no acquisition cost, no churn, and a customer base Formulation Excellence already invoices.
Compliance audit
£2,400
per brand, annual
Their full range against the register, monitored as it changes. Sold on the ASA risk, which is rising.
Reformulation
£6,000
per product
Design the fix, evidence it, hand over the specification. Only worth buying from someone who can also make it.
Manufacture
£40k+
per product, annual
The reason the first two are cheap. Every audit is a manufacturing lead with the problem already diagnosed.
The arithmetic
200 brands on audit is £480k. A third taking one reformulation is £400k. A quarter of those moving manufacture across is £2.6m, at contract-manufacturing margins rather than consumer ones.
That is roughly 7% of the UK brands that exist, sold to a list Formulation Excellence already has, with no consumer acquisition cost and no churn problem. The consumer arm is what makes the platform credible. You cannot sell compliance and formulation to a brand unless you visibly do it yourself.
Pricing and the arithmetic are illustrative
What is real and what is not →The register data, the mute-ingredient counts and the reformulation logic are real and running. The prices are a model, not a rate card, and the brand counts need verifying against Companies House.
The rest of the argument
Commercial
Where customers come from
Paid social costs more than a customer is worth in this category. A partner who already owns the relationship costs a fraction of that, and the saving funds their share.
Where the unit sits
The same engine on a portrait screen in a gym reception. No account and no payment on the terminal, so card data stays off an unattended machine.
Whether it retains
Retention by acquisition channel, unit economics, and the step in the funnel that loses the most people. The comparison that decides whether this is a business.
Reformulation identifies which claims become legally available under the GB Nutrition and Health Claims Register. It does not constitute a claim that a product is more effective. Final formulations, doses and marketing copy require sign-off by a qualified nutrition professional and, where appropriate, regulatory counsel.
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