Meg Ligot, Senior Product Development Manager at Lief Labs and Lief Raws, said that with innovation top of mind, it made sense for Lief to start its own raw material division.
“We support our customers heavily on the concept ideation formulation side, a lot of the ideas are collaboration when it comes with our brands that we work with. And so we're using a lot of materials and we have great relationships with other raw material suppliers and it's important for all of us to stay really innovative and kind of dive into our industry and stay up to date on what's happening–what's hot, and what's new, and it's a passion for a lot of us that work here," Ligot said.
"And so as we started to see some of the cool ingredients that were coming out, we thought, ‘hey, why don't we do this too?’ We Understand our customers, we understand our customers' customers, and so why not? We're here helping them collaboratively develop products and we're starting to see this is a cool space for us to grow and expand the market share and it really just made sense,” she said.
Ligot added that supply chain challenges initially sparked the idea. “We were starting to see that there were some lead time issues and so it was hindering us from servicing our customers and so we saw it as an opportunity. We have the team, we have good relationships, we know what our customers are looking form we have an in-house technical team as well. So why not? And so, we actually started our first material, an organic rice-based excipient, because there was actually only one really big supplier in our space that offered that. And so that was our first go at it. And so we did some trial and error and just like anything, it works and then it doesn't and you kind of reiterate and you make adjustments, you figure out what works and expand on that and it turned into a material that we had that had different variations.”
To hear more about the new Lief Raws nutraceutical ingredient supplier division, some of experiential technologies being used and how Lief Evolutions expanded on its format capabilities, listen to to the NutraCast.
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