Certifications?

I'm dead inside after years of crypto as well. LOL

Pricing is a difficult subject. You are correct that many of the top brands exist solely due to brand recognition, sponsorships, and influencers. You are also correct in saying that the pricing is more reflective of the brand hype than quality. However, I often find those types of companies are very cyclical. What's popular for a few years then drops off, and the next flashy brand pops up and takes over. It's certainly a business model that many brands use successfully. Many do it for one very specific reason, though: exiting. Lots of brands these days use a strategy of quick growth using marketing and sponsorships in the hope to grow big enough to sell off to a larger company. The people that start these brands aren't really passionate about the industry. They just want to build something that they can eventually sell their ownership in and move on. The past couple years has seen more consolidation in the supplement industry than you can imagine. Just Nestle alone bought up a bunch of supplement brands. Other venture capital companies have bought a bunch of others. Even in the lab industry has been consolidating. Eurofins and Mérieux are buying up most of the small analytical labs and integrating them into their operations. You mentioned Thorne in another comment. Well they are now owned by Kirin and Mitsui. Those are the massive companies behind Kirin and Sapporo beers, but they do a lot more than that. Kirin was involved in a price fixing scandal for lysine in the 90s through their Kyowa Hakko Kogyo company, since they controlled most of the world's supply of lysine. Misui does about $100 billion in revenue a year. Kirin does about $16 billion. They are very big. You also mentioned Momentous. They are venture capital backed as well, which is how they popped out of nowhere in 2017. Rob Dyrdek is actually part owner of Momentous. These companies don't just get sponsorships and placements because they charge more. They have LOTS of money behind them, and have connections that small companies just can't get. I'm just a dude that was passionate about supplements and chemistry, and wanted to see if I could make this industry a little bit better than it was.

So where does that leave us? Well I was not interested in building a brand just to sell it off. I certainly can't compete with some of the money and connections those other brands have. I wanted to build something that I controlled so that I could ensure things were done right, without outside influence. When you get investors involved you lose some of that control. It becomes more about the money and growth. Sometimes we have to lose money to make sure things are perfect, which gets difficult to justify to investors. I just wanted to build something slow and steady the way I wanted to see it. We don't have any investors. I just bootstrapped it all myself over the years. We have 80 employees here in Arizona, and everyone working for me is onboard with what I am trying to accomplish. I wanted to see if I could do things a bit differently than everyone else. Pricing things fairly is a big part of that. I appreciate when things are fair and consistent, so I wanted to echo that in our operations. I also am not interested in just selling things to someone then moving on to the next person. I want to build up a loyal customer base that trusts us and sticks with us over the years. When you price things fairly, ensure your products are made properly and lab tested, and operate openly and honestly, it's much easier to build that loyalty. I am happy that we have the following and support that we do, because I know what it has taken to build that trust over the years. People are also strapped for cash right now with inflation the way it has been, so keeping things reasonably priced helps to ensure people don't have to make the difficult decision of dropping products they like because they can't afford them. I would bet the more expensive brands are a lot more elastic during periods like this, as people try to make their budgets work.

That being said, we are going to be doing a bit more to try to show people how we are different. We have been doing our podcast for a while now, and we are going to be moving to video with it soon. We are doing more educational blogs to help people understand how certain things work. We are going to be doing those videos I was talking about above, along with shorter educational videos as well. So we will be doing more marketing. I just like to take it slow and steady, and make sure we don't get in over our heads on anything.