No matter whether you're a fitness coach with a small clientele or a healthy lifestyle influencer with thousands of followers on social media, starting your own supplement company can help you significantly boost your income. 

‍

Selling branded supplements will allow you to add an additional income stream to your existing business – be it in-person or online fitness classes, nutrition consultations, or something else. 

‍

Are you currently earning from partnership deals?

‍

Selling your own product can be a much more profitable way to use your social media influence. Instead of getting paid once – per post – a single post can sell hundreds of units of your product. 

And you get to keep all the profit.

Besides, starting your own supplement company is a way to sell something you stand for. That way, you can grow your audience's loyalty instead of becoming someone who promotes many, sometimes even conflicting, things at once.

After all, there's a reason why celebrities choose to launch their own product lines instead of promoting other brands' products despite being offered millions per campaign. Think Ryan Reynolds' Aviation American Gin, Rihanna's Savage Fenty lingerie brand, or Dr Dre's Beats by Dre headphones. They all chose to launch their own brands instead of promoting someone else's.

So, are you ready to start your own supplement company? Then let's get started!

‍

‍

Step 1: Create your Supliful account (it's free!)

Look – starting a supplement company doesn't mean you'll need to open a manufacturing center and make your own supplements. Supliful has an established network of certified supplement suppliers and will take care of everything, from sourcing the best products to shipping them to your customer.

All you need to do is sign up on Supliful. It takes seconds – just click Sign up on Supliful's homepage and fill out the requested fields.

Hit Register and you're in!

‍

‍

Step 2: Customize your product

Now that you've registered, you can choose and customize the supplement products you want to sell. Supliful allows you to customize things like:

• Product label design
• Product name and description
• Product pricing 

‍

Customize packaging design

Customization of product packaging is probably the most important step to starting your own supplements company – it's the basics of branding a product.

You can put your custom design and branding on more than 70 different products available in the Supliful catalog. 

Here's what you'll need:

1. Your custom label design
2. Product mockup image
3. Label print file

If you're familiar with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, you can design your label, customize product templates (create mockups), and generate print files with the help of these software. 

‍

🔗 Useful guides:

• How to customize your product label
• Label content requirements

‍

Not everyone, however, is familiar with these designing programs. In such a case, you still have plenty of options:

1. Hire a designer you know – a friend, family member, colleague, etc.
2. Use Supliful's design services (starting at $149)
3. Find a freelancer on sites like Fiverr, Upwork, 99designs, or others.

For example, Fiverr is a well-known, low-cost freelancer database where you can order almost any skill you may need. There are designers who specialize in label designs, people who can design mockups, as well as print files.

Source: Fiverr

Most designers can deliver everything you'll need– design, mockups, and print files – so you won't need to hire several freelancers to get the job done. All you need to do is send them the label design requirements and mockup templates.

Each product has its own mockup template. To access it, choose the product from the catalog and click Customize and sell. Then, scroll down to DIY label design and download the specific mockup templates.

When you have all the necessary design files, you can upload them at product customization:

• Click Upload image under the product photo to replace it with a mockup with your design
• Go to Add label image and upload your label's print file

‍

Customize your product name and description 

All products in the Supliful catalog have default product descriptions. If you like, you can leave them as they are. However, if you'd like to brush them up, make them sound more convincing, optimize for search engines, or simply infuse your brand voice, you're welcome to do it – right away or later.

To edit product descriptions, click on the text you want to edit and type away!

Set your product pricing

When you go to the product view, the price you'll see is the price Supliful charges for it. This includes the product itself, its customization with your label, packaging, etc.

So, this is the base pricing. On top of it, you need to put your profit. But how much?

To decide on your pricing, you should first estimate all the business-related costs that may occur, such as:

• Product base pricing
• Online tools (eg. Shopify) you need to pay for
• Online payment transaction fees
• Estimated monthly costs for paid promotions
• Other business maintenance costs

‍

Additionally, there are other things that may affect your final pricing:

• How price-sensitive is your audience?
• Will you be offering discounts?
• Are you going to offer free shipping or charge for shipping at the checkout?
• And most importantly – how much do you want to profit?

‍

💡 If you know all the costs, you can use this profit margin calculator that will help you determine selling prices for your products. 

‍

Source: Shopify

If at the moment you aren't able to estimate all the potential business costs, start with at least a 30% markup. In most cases, that will be enough to cover your business maintenance costs, allow you to offer discounts, and be profitable.

‍

‍

Step 3: Add your payment info to Supliful

The final thing you need to do on Supliful's end to start selling is to add your payment method. In other words, you need to add your credit card to Supliful.

Here's why:

Whenever a customer makes a purchase from you, Supliful will charge the particular product's base fee (fixed) and shipping fees (calculated based on order weight and destination country).
‍

To add your payment method to Supliful, go to your settings and add your credit card information.

Now, you're all set on the Supliful side. Let's move on to Shopify and connecting your store to Supliful!

‍

‍

Step 4: Connect your store

Currently there are two store integration options - Shopify or Supliful Storefront.

Shopify takes more time and skills to set up. However, it provides much more flexibility and options. It has become one of the most popular e-commerce platforms globally, currently hosting more than 2,297 million active websites. It is well-known for its user-friendliness, 5-star customer support, and app store that includes thousands of free and paid plugins to help you grow your business.

‍

To sum it up: Choose Hosted Storefront if you want a simple checkout flow for your customers available ASAP. Choose Shopify if you're going to build a stand-alone store with its own domain and a more sophisticated user interface.

‍

Let's dive into Shopify.

‍

Sign up to Shopify

To sign up, click Start free trial on Shopify's homepage. Enter your email address, password, and store name. 

💡  You can change your store name later or buy a custom domain name via Shopify.

‍

Connect Shopify to Supliful

Once you've created your Shopify account, you can connect it to Supliful. Here's how:

1. Go to your Supliful account
2. Click Stores → Connect new store
3. You'll be taken to the Supliful app on Shopify's app store
4. Click Add app
5. Confirm connecting your store
   

Done!

Publish your products

Now that your Shopify and Supliful accounts are connected, you can publish your products – ''push'' them from one platform to another with one click.

Here's how:

1. On Supliful, go to My products → Drafts
2. Select a product you've previously customized
3. Click on the pencil icon
4. Scroll down and click Publish

Back on Shopify, you'll be able to find all of your published products under Products.

Source: Shopify

‍

‍

Step 5: Set up your sales channels

Now, to start a supplement business you need a place where your products would be available for purchase.

There are several ways you can sell your Supliful products with Shopify. Let's take a look at the options.

Option 1 – create an online store with Shopify

The first option is to build a storefront with Shopify. It takes from a few hours to a few days to do so, depending on how extensively you want to customize your store.

Log into your Shopify account, then go to Online store (find it under Sales channels) → Themes. Here, you'll be offered to install a default theme, but you can also choose one of the free or paid themes from Shopify's library. Pick whichever you like at that moment – you can change it any time.

Once you've chosen your theme, you can customize it – add your brand logo and website copy, upload your own photos or use free stock images, add or remove sections, and much more. 

Shopify's website editor is drag and drop, which makes it easy to use even if you have zero coding skills and you've never done anything like this before.

Optionally, you can buy a custom domain name. 

By default, the URL of a website that's hosted on Shopify will end with ​​.myshopify.com/. This isn't anything bad, but if you want to get rid of it, you can do it by buying your own custom domain name.

‍

🔗 Useful resources:

• Generate your domain name
• How to buy a custom Shopify domain

‍

Option 2 – sell on an existing website with the Buy Button

If you already have a website, you can add the so-called Buy Button to it. This option allows you to sell your supplements on any website or blog.

To add a Buy Button to a website, go to Sales channels → Buy Button. There, create and customize your Buy Button.

Copy the code, open the HTML editor for the webpage and paste the code where you want this button to appear. Then save your changes.

‍

Option 3 – sell on Facebook & Instagram

Another option is to sell on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. This is in addition to having a Shopify storefront where payments would be made.

To set this option up, you will need:

• A Facebook page & Instagram account
• Facebook Business Manager (Create a Business Manager)
• Optional: Facebook Pixel (How to set up a Facebook Pixel)
• Facebook Commerce Account (if you don't have one, you can easily create it via Shopify)

🔗 Here's how to set up your Facebook and Instagram sales channels:

[Facebook Shop Shopify Tutorial | Complete Integration & Setup Step By Step 2021]

‍

‍

Step 6: Make money

Before you launch your store and make your own supplements available for purchase, there are two more things you need to take care of.

‍

1. Set up payments

Set up all the different ways your customers will be able to pay for your products. To do it, go to Settings → Payments.

The quickest way to start selling is to activate PayPal payments. 

All you have to do is click Activate PayPal Express Checkout, then log into your PayPal account. In a matter of seconds, your PayPal payments are activated.

If you want to offer other payment options, there are a bunch to choose from:

• Payment providers (eg., Stripe)
• Alternative payment methods (eg., Paysera or 2Checkout)
• Manual payment methods (eg., bank deposit, transfer)

Choose which option you want to add to your store, then follow the setup instructions. You'll need to create an account with the chosen platform. You might also be requested to verify your business's registered address, bank account, etc.

2. Add product shipping rates

To accurately charge your clients for shipping, it's recommended that you set up your shipping rates on Shopify. 

Supliful's shipping rates depend on order weight and the country of destination. You can fill in these rates into your Shopify account:

• Go to Settings → Shipping & delivery
• Create new shipping zones (US, EU, UK, Baltic States)
• To each of these zones, add custom rates – click Add rate → Add conditions. Then fill out the conditions and set the price based on the shipping rates charged by Supliful.

‍

‍

3. Select your Shopify pricing plan

After registration on Shopify, you'll be on a free trial for 14 days. At the end of the trial, you'll be required to choose your pricing plan to continue using the platform.

Shopify offers a number of pricing plans to meet your needs. If your online store will be hosted on Shopify or if you plan to sell on social media via Shopify, the plans start at $29/month. This plan is usually sufficient for beginners.

If you only plan to use the Buy Button, you can remove your online store (go to Settings → Plan → Choose plan → scroll down and click Remove online store). In this case, selling through Shopify will cost you $9/month.

Give it a try – start a supplements company now!

That's all – this is how you set up and start your own supplements company. As soon as you have your label design ready, launching an online store is really a matter of days (or even hours!)

Got questions? Need any help? Let us know. Your success is our success, so we'll be happy to help!