Naturopathic Doctor Andrew Brandeis outlines the problems he saw with the supplement industry, and why he founded a new kind of company.

After a decade of treating patients in both clinical practice and frontline urgent care in San Francisco, I am convinced that quality supplements, when taken with regularity, have profound long-term health benefits. While working alongside incredibly talented MDs I saw, firsthand, the power and effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs in treating our patients, in the short term. But I also recognized that patients who came to us with a history of sustained supplement use demonstrated faster recovery times and stronger immune responses. Additionally, treatment regimens that paired both pharmaceutical drugs and the right, high-quality supplements had a demonstrably better chance of success. Of course, this evidence was anecdotal but it was also persuasive.

My years of research and exploration since I left San Francisco has only strengthened my belief in the effectiveness of quality supplements that are rooted in science; however, my research also highlighted fundamental problems inherent with them:

• How do consumers know which brands to trust for quality?
• How do consumers know what to take -- and when?
• How to promote compliance and regularity? Simply put, how do you design a supplement program that people will stick with?
• How do you make supplements affordable?

As I dug into each of these problems, the solutions became clear: personalization, design, and delivery. For over 40 years supplements have taken a “one-bottle-fits-all” approach. Consumers had no choice but to push their carts down the “supplement” section of their supermarkets, passing dozens of bottles with little to no idea which brands could be trusted. They bought what was available. And, more likely than not, it was a poor quality product that yielded a poor quality result -- or worse, no result at all.

OK Capsule was founded to solve these problems. My passion, and OK Capsule’s mission, is to redefine an industry in serious need of change by enabling any brand, at any scale, to deliver personalized, high-quality supplements directly to consumers.

Personalization is key. Today’s consumer, who is committed to achieving their optimal health and is armed with a world wide web of information, expects a health and wellness regimen to be their health and wellness regimen. Consumers will be loyal to a brand they feel sees them as an individual. Brands must be able to offer these consumers a supplement program that is safe, simple to understand, and designed specifically to meet their nutritional needs.

Design needs to be good for people & the planet. For years I had shelves in my kitchen and bathroom that were packed with random supplement bottles. It was cumbersome, ugly, and, I knew, unsustainable. I was determined to find a better way. We developed a compact product design that delivers a day’s worth of supplements in clean, modern, and fully compostable packets. It is a system that is simple to use, easy to understand, and, crucially, puts sustainability and environmental responsibility first.

Delivery ensures convenience & promotes compliance. Harnessing the power of technology to affect a change to an industry that has barely changed since the 1970s is the third, and final, solution. We needed to build a tech platform from the ground up: one that was streamlined and agile enough to facilitate fast brand integration, yet sophisticated enough to meet the challenge of scale, packaging, and custom formulation. Ultimately, our tech platform is in service to the end user, making their supplement program convenient and affordable.

Asking brands — and more widely, an industry — to imagine a better way to promote health and wellness was, to put it mildly, ambitious. Yet, a change was needed and the demand impossible to ignore. OK Capsule empowers businesses with a turnkey solution that enables them to offer not just a high margin, subscription item but the chance to bring real, long-term health benefits to more people than ever before. I began this letter stating my conviction that supplements work. I believe this deeply, and I believe OK Capsule delivers on that promise.