Schulick, along with his wife Barbi Schulick, had founded the iconic brand more than 35 years ago. The couple sold the business to P&G in 2012 for an undisclosed sum. They continued to work on the brand under the P&G umbrella for more than six years before stepping away in mid 2018. At the time, the couple said “financial pressures to accelerate profits” had dimmed the vision they had for the brand.
Foray into the skin microbiome
In the meantime, Schulick had founded the brand For the Biome with the intent to launch a line of topicals that would seek to work in concert with and enhance the various microbial communities on the skin. The company has a line of powders and appliances on the market that features microbial ingredients along with mushroom components that have been treated with a proprietary process the company brands as ‘Artisanal Fermentation.’
Now Schulick is lining up a new set of dietary supplements that are aiming for market entry sometime in the fall. The timing was informed partly by the noncompete agreement he signed when selling New Chapter to P&G that prevented him from launching new ingestible products for a period of time. That stricture expires this summer, Schulick said.
Schulick said the timing of the supplements launch also will be informed by the as yet unknown roadblocks that will be bound to pop up. He had intended to launch the topical line a while back, but the website only went live a couple of weeks ago.
“When you’re launching something for the first time you have to leave openings for things you really don’t know,” Schulick told NutraIngredients-USA. “It took me forever to come out with the Wholemega product I developed for New Chapter. I was thinking I was going to launch the For The Biome topical products a few months ago.”
Topicals development will feed into new supplements
The development of the topical line was part of a learning curve that will go into the new dietary supplements, Schulick said. He said he was deliberately holding the precise nature of the new product lines close to the vest.
“In the past when I have launched things I have been copied. We are facilitating the communication between the body and the microbiome with the For The Biome topical products. My goal is to do that with the new products as well. They will use new technologies that have not been used before. I’d rather not be more specific about what agents we’ll use, but you could say I’m expecting to take fermentation to another level,” he said.
Evolving retail strategy
At the moment For The Biome products are for sale on the company’s own website. Schulick said ecommerce will be a key part of the company’s strategy going forward. But he also intends to tap the many relationships he’s built up over the years.
“I would love to engage with the high end brick and mortar natural products retailers. That would be one of my core goals. We were able to build the New Chapter legacy with those relationships. We speak that language.
“The new language of the Internet is one I’m not familiar with but I have hired a team that can speak that language. Every day I hear a new word or learn about a new app I haven’t heard of before. We need to be able to speak both languages to communicate with our customers,” he said.
