Founded in 2013, ingredientsonline.com is an innovative online e-commerce platform providing nutritional raw materials for the dietary supplement, animal nutrition, cosmetic and food & beverage industries.
The platform had its soft launch in the spring of 2015, describing itself as Amazon for ingredients. Today, the platform offers over 1,000 ingredients coming from 225 factories in 17 different countries. The company also has over 5,000 registered and qualified members from large and small CPG companies, Jackson told us at the recent SupplySide West show in Las Vegas.
“We’ve made transparency and the online experience extremely efficient and easy for them [the users],” she said.
“We started with single ingredients and built the foundation of the company, but we recognized that there are so many valuable brands in the industry and people have invested in clinical research, intellectual property, and consumer research. So, they needed a way to differentiate themselves from the commodity or standard ingredients and so we have built a program now so they can tell their entire value proposition within their listing, all online.”
“We are not an alternative to the existing sales force,” added Jackson. “We are in addition to the channel. We are a new distribution channel for them that’s available 24-7, 365, and we have buyers online 24-7, 365.”
Like the standard, commodity ingredient listing, the branded ingredient listings provide complete transparency, said Jackson, with the factory of origin clearly listed, and factory-direct set pricing. Real-time inventory in the US is also displayed, and QC documents are available for download. All QC documents are audited by IngredientsOnline.
But in addition, the branded ingredient listings include clinical research data, which IngredientsOnline reviews, looking for original science and published research.
“There are six different buckets for assets, including clinical research, intellectual property and consumer research,” said Jackson.