Comment · Sat, October 23, 2021 · ND Owner
Reddit AMA | In-House Lab Edition
Original post in this thread
NootropicsDepotGuru · 77 points
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We are very excited to announce that Nootropics Depot will be conducting its first-ever Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), which is a semi-live Q&A session, about our In-House Analytical Laboratory and we would love for you to join us! See below for full details and get your question(s) ready. We hope to see you there!
WHEN
STARTS: October 20th | 9am AZ MST
ENDS: October 22nd | 9am AZ M…
What they were answering
2020crsyngatheart · 1 points
curious question regarding lonvida,pomella and other patented extracts;
what is the nature of nootropic depots' relationship with these patented brands , is the production done in your lab using the patented methodology, or does ND simply do outsourcing for them or or is there another explanation altogether ?
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
So patented extracts can range wildly. The ones you mentioned, Longvida/Pomella, are both Verdure. Verdure is an interesting company in that they seem to go out and buy up patents/smaller companies to bring into their ecosystem. They do fund studies, but I think most of their ingredient expansion is not from in-house R&D, but acquisition. They do a much better job on analytical testing than most brands, though. They openly share full results and data with us, along with discussing the science of things in more detail. They don't make the extracts in-house, though. They contract that out to extraction partners. They do get everything in, test it, then sell it to us, though. We do our own quality control on the batches that come in, but Verdure almost never has any issues because of the good quality control they have. They generally have big batches of things in inventory, and they sell them to us in the volume we need.
Other patented products are done more in-house. Our partnership with Alesco is a bit more involved. They do not stock anything. They produce the magnesium and zinc we use on contract when we order. This requires more planning, as you have the lead times to consider when forecasting. They are also in Italy, which kind of screwed us when the pandemic hit. They had already made the batch of sucrosomial zinc for us, but the Italian government shut everything down before it could get out via freight. This is why we ran out of Microzinc at the start of the pandemic. Since they were doing the production themselves, Italy locking down put a halt to things.
Other patented ingredient relationships are even more complicated. Magtein is actually patented by a company called Magceutics. That's not who we work with, though. They license exclusive right to distribute Magtein to a company called AIDP. Magceutics is the one that developed the ingredient and owns the patents, but they farm out production and distribution to other companies. We purchase Magtein through AIDP, and it is made by completely different 3rd party contract labs. AIDP gets the batches in, tests them, sells them to vendors like us, then gives Magceutics their cut for running everything. The big problem I have with this is that I know Chinese companies are making generic magnesium L-threonate that they are selling to companies that are also selling Magtein. I've gotten confirmation from two separate Chinese labs that they buy generic magnesium L-threonate from them. It's illegal to sell generic magnesium L-threonate because of the patent, so why would these companies be buying it? Well they are cutting their Magtein they get from AIDP with the much cheaper generic stuff to reduce costs. Magtein from AIDP costs a lot, and our margins are thin on it. We have competitors selling Magtein for way too cheap to make the margins work... unless they are buffering the batch with a significant portion of cheaper magnesium L-threonate. So that's a whole thing we deal with all the time.
Then you have other ones like KSM-66. That is made by Ixoreal out of India. They produce and distribute KSM-66 themselves. However, they have two different versions: a traditional extract and one that doesn't use milk in the process. Both those extracts are sold as KSM-66, but the non-milk one feels different than the other one. It's one reason why some people report different effects between brand supposedly using the "same" patented ingredient. They are not always the same. We also have tighter heavy metals specs than the standard ones, so we have agreements in place that our patented ingredient partners will only send us batches that meet our more stringent specs. This is another way things can differ. Regardless of whether an ingredient is patented or not, we are the ones selling to consumers. This means we need to ensure things meet our specs, not bend our specs to meet what the manufacturer has decided.