Elan Sudberg, CEO of Alkemist Labs, said that the company recently joined the Global Organization for EPA and DHA (GOED) and is excited to strategically expand its service offerings.
“Last year’s venture into the R&D side and label claim verification has been very successful and has allowed us to continue to reinvest into the company,” he said. “Our next stop will be in the Omega-3 sector of the DS industry as we are begged by our clientele to offer this testing. They simply like using Alkemist Labs.”
Sudberg was talking with NutraIngredients-USA following the announcement of its new name (changing from Alkemists Laboratories to Alkemist Labs) and its new logo, which was designed in collaboration with New York-based design firm MSLK.
“Lately I have been speaking and writing a lot on the so-called Identity Crisis and realized that an Identity Crisis also exists amongst the testing labs,” he said. “Our customers have a narrow choice of labs to choose from; some are so big it’s unclear what their strengths are, while others simply compete with their own clientele.”
Identity testing
Since its founding in 1997 Alkemist Labs has developed a reputation for identity testing, but it wasn’t until the release of the dietary supplement GMPs and an increase in enforcement that the lab really took off.
“The GMPS stressed heavily on the ID testing and Alkemist Labs was known for that and only that,” he said. “This panned out well for us and our growth was exponential and has been 20-30% year ever since. All the other labs quickly tried to catch up to our knowledge and capacity but we were a solid decade ahead of them on the ID side.
“All the other labs offered every other test except ID testing and if they did offer it they were mostly subbing it out to us or even doing a schlock job. Today there are a handful of labs out there. Some of them do sales in the billions and it’s tough to tell what it is that they specialize in. Some labs simply compete with their own clientele and have products for sale in each industry or sector they service. And then there are the labs that cheat. Enough has been said about them lately…
“Alkemist Labs is none of those. We are not a massive conglomerate of many labs stretched over the planet nor do we sell branded ingredients or finished products while at the same time offering testing services. We only test natural products and we do a terrific job at it.”
An Alkemist seal?
The new logo is designed to reflect this focus on natural products, he said. “While I am sad to see it go and really enjoyed the ornate design and herbal feel, the new logo is an extract of the original; its unique and simple yet bold enough to be recognized from a-far while at a trade show and eventually on a finished product and or literature.
“On that, it is a long term goal of Alkemist Labs to continue to and enhance the brand’s true meaning which is confidence that what is on the label is in the bottle.”