Melo Organics
If it doesn't exist, invent it!
Background:
Melo Organics was a CBD wellness brand created to offer high quality, lab-tested products. Its minimalist and sterile-like design approach aims to reinforce themes of scientific precision, unpretentiousness, no-nonsense transparency and therefore inspiring confidence and trust in the brand.
The Challenge:
So far, no competitors have attempted anything innovative outside of simple oil tinctures or balms.
In an email survey to customers, we discovered that customers preferred the idea of food products being added to Melo Organic's Offerings.
The problem is 2-fold:
1) White Label manufacturers can offer limited custom solutions - only for external label packaging. Furthermore, no manufacturers even have processes for food or gummies - and even if they did, the upfront costs and minimum volumes would eat into margins (pun intended).
2) It is a costly and lengthy process to rent out a facility with necessary Food and Safety production standards. This risk needs to be considered, especially before the product and business idea has been fully validated.
The Solution:
After consulting industry experts in Food and Technology and researching the production costs and challenges of several types of foods, it was concluded that gummies were the perfect candidate for the new product. This was due to its low moisture content and long shelf life, greatly reducing the chance of overproduction and deadstock inventory risk.
Title | Production Challenges | On Brand? | Yay or Nay? |
|---|---|---|---|
Infused Water | Sonometric emulsifier needed; very costly. Additional equipment needed for bottling | Yes, water emphasizes cleanliness, clarity, everyday use. | ✘ |
Chocolate Cookies | Sub par shelf stability, many ingredients needing proper storage, breakage during transport | No, too much connotation with stoner culture. | ✘ |
Gummies | Low number of components, low overhead, easy to iterate on new flavours and scale production | Kylie's health supplement gummies for hair says yes. | ✔ |
I collaborated with a design engineer to create 3D print files, and a local visual FX studio helped prototype branded Melo gummy molds. This eliminated the need to outsource expensive custom solutions and avoid issues with large MOQs.
I also partnered with a local co-packer with ISO22000 Food and Health Safety Standard Certifications to control production cost and take advantage of existing scalability processes and infrastructure. These partnerships kept costs low and minimized risk in the rapid prototyping phase.
Extensive focus groups of gummy taste testers were then conducted, narrowing down 12 initial gummy flavour combinations down to 1.
The Process:
Jelly mold render in Solidworks; 3D Printed Prototype, Food Safe Silicone Casting, Finished Product.
The Result:
The successful proof of concept proved that when possible, vertical integration is always preferable, and does not always need to be costly.
Melo Organics was launched around the city in dozens of local wellness stores, but this exploration into custom gummies created an additional future revenue stream for Melo Organics as a white label brand solution itself that could also handle packing and fulfillment at scale.