Does ND have plans to sell its supplements in physical stores?

We tried that with Natrium when we first launched it. We quickly learned that the whole system is a big scam. You can't really work directly with stores. You have to go through distributors. They control what gets into stores. They also want 50% margins, minimum, just to be the middle man with the stores. They also want kickbacks to even consider putting you into stores in the first place. You have to schmooze them. Then the stores themselves want margins, and they also get kickback from brands for better placement of their product on the shelves. So if you want your products at face level on the shelves, or on the end cap, you have to pay the stores to put you there. Some brands even pay the stores and distributors to keep certain other brands out. It happens a lot in the beer industry AB Inbev will pay certain grocery stores to keep a specific competitor's beer out, or to put them in a harder to see space in the store. Many stores also require brands to buy back any unsold bottles after a specific amount of time, so you get the worst of all worlds. You have to make cheaper products with less expensive ingredients, so that you have the margins available to give to the distributors and stores, and you have to cut your own margins to make it work. Then if things don't sell you have to buy everything back anyway, even if they were not selling because a larger brand paid the store to put your shit on the bottom shelf. There is also limited shelf space, so you have to be very selective about which products you even try to get into stores. There's no way we would get our whole catalog in a store.

Brands also pay people to go into stores and ask for their products to make the stores think there is a bunch of hype. We tried to get Alcohol Defense in gas stations around Arizona State University. Everyone that actually tried our product said it worked better than anything else out there. However, there was a hangover shot company that was paying all the gas stations to have their stuff at the counter, and they were giving kickbacks to the local fraternities and sororities at ASU to promote it and give away samples at all the parties. This made the gas stations think there was this massive demand for this stupid shot, so they didn't want any other ones in there. They also literally paid models in skimpy clothing to go in to these gas stations and convince them to sell this handover shot. Well that lasted all of like a year, and now I don't see those shitty shots anymore, and there is some new BS product there. Does the gas station owner give one single shit if the product actually works? Hell no! Whatever he can make the most money off of is what he is going to sell. This means products that are cheap to make, with higher margins for the stores, win out every time. It's just not our business model. We prefer to work directly with customers, and put the money that would be going to stores and distributors into the quality of the ingredients. We just could not make any of the numbers work without cheapening out on the formulations or ingredients. Most bigger stores are also doing their own white labeled brands these days, so they have little incentive to allow shelf space for other brands instead.