GETTING STARTED IN SPORTS NUTRITION MANUFACTURING AND HOW TO SCALE UP.

‘Garage entrepreneurs’ entering the market for sports nutrition products are enjoying great success at a small scale – but how do you scale up business to cater for mass-market appeal? We discuss the things to consider when designing a manufacturing facility for mass-market sports nutrition products. The sports nutrition market Once the preserve of bodybuilders and professional athletes, recent research carried out by 'Mintel' found that as many as one in four Britons had consumed a sports nutrition product within the last 3 months. Of these, almost half (47%) said they consume sports nutrition products as a part of their everyday diet. In fact, an increasingly health- and body-conscious population has seen the demand for products like protein shakes, energy drinks, nutrition bars and performance supplements grow to accommodate an industry that in 2015 was worth over £66 million in the UK. Specialist vs. mass market sports nutrition ‘Garage entrepreneurs’ – small-scale start-ups that often, quite literally, start manufacturing in a garage or spare room – have enjoyed great success when getting started in sports nutrition manufacturing. However, once demand begins to grow, it can be a challenge for a small business to scale up its capacity. Specialist sports nutrition products, typically manufactured in small batches but with a wide diversity of niche products, certainly have greater profit potential per unit – customers find higher unit prices more acceptable if they are convinced that the product is specially tailored to their precise needs. However, with the appeal of sports nutrition products expanding to an ever widening demographic, the mass-market production of sports nutrition goods – characterised by large batch sizes, higher-volume sales, and fewer, more generalised recipes, should not be overlooked as something that only the biggest corporate manufacturers can achieve.

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