Streamlining Success: Navigating Ingredient Commercialization (Ep. 4)

In this insightful episode, Jake sits down with Wade Jacobs from DT Solutions Consulting to explore the complexities of ingredient commercialization and supply chain management. Wade shares his expertise on streamlining processes from formulation to distribution, emphasizing the importance of validating claims, vetting suppliers, and building long-lasting relationships within the industry. Listeners will gain valuable insights into the typical lifecycle of product development, the critical role of operational readiness in marketing and sales, and effective strategies for managing samples and supplier relationships. Whether you're an ingredient supplier or involved in food commercialization, this episode is packed with practical advice to enhance your operations and drive success in your business.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Ingredient Marketing Podcast, the show for food and beverage ingredient suppliers and manufacturers focused on driving awareness, interest, and demand. Each episode, our host, Jake Oliver, talks with ingredient brands and industry experts about what's actually working in B2B ingredient marketing today. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Hello. Many of our listeners here are ingredient suppliers, but today's episode is really for anyone involved in getting ingredients commercialized and delivered reliably. Today I'm joined by Wade Jacobs from DT Solutions Consulting. Wade, welcome to the show. For anyone meeting meeting you for the first time, what is DT Solutions Consulting? Who are your customers? What services do you offer? Tell us a bit about you guys.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Well, thanks for having me. DT Solutions is a company that was built on the premise of helping supply chains streamline the process, whether it's through beginning formulation and commercialization, vetting out ingredients to qualify for those formulas, vetting out suppliers through the proper means of qualification, helping through operations and through logistics and distribution, and ultimately getting the product out the door for each of our brands to their customer, whether it's on the retail side or their other sales channels. So it's it was built to help streamline those processes.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

And it sounds like there's a lot of different pain points that you're solving depending on the place the formulators are at in the process. But if you can boil it into maybe the top two to three outcomes that someone is looking for when they were when they're hiring you, how would you put that?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

That's actually a really great question. And it comes down to the very beginning of formulation when you're vetting your claims. So a lot of formulations come in and they have whether it wants to be 100% organic or you want to have a certain active in the ingredient, with the materials that you're outsourcing, you need to validate those claims. And one of the things that we do with DT Solutions is we partner with industry leaders that already have those vetted out. So if your claim calls out for a sacramide or something to that effect, or even as easy as a um a protein content, we will already have those vendors in place. We will validate those claims on that ingredient and present those to our clients. So that work is streamlined. And the beginning part of the process from claims validation to supplier qualification and ultimately material qualification and sourcing, those are the big pain points for any manufacturer or any brand to put a product out. And in your commercialization phase, that takes a majority of the time. Once you get through that, then you have to go into sourcing, which adds its own complexities to it. So we're building, we're building out DT solutions to help those companies streamline that beginning process so you can get through operations and out to distribution and ultimately out to your customers in a more efficient manner.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

That's great. Can you walk us through a little bit? I think you already shared some of this just now, but what the typical life cycle looks like in the clients that you're working with in the early stages of your relationship through helping, helping them later on in the relationship, the different challenges that they face along the way.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Sure. Most commercialization starts some, some as long as 24 months out, others can be 18 months, 12 months, 9 months. It all depends on the formulation of what you're doing. So when a client reaches out to us and asks us to secure raw materials for formulation they have, that step starts with validation. And what we would do is we'd validate, we'd source the product. So we'd sort the material. We would have to validate that uh vendor. That val that vendor qualification is all their documents, make sure that they have everything from a GMP perspective. They have control over their processes. So we vet them out so we can take that package and provide it right to the client. They can onboard them and do their process in tangent with formulation being completed. So most steps with with brands is it starts out at formulation through commercialization. Once formulation is is put together to price to the price point that they want. Now they're going to go out and start looking for those vendors. They'll have the raw materials, but now they've got the vendors that they want to work with. So that is where they break down price. You want to knock a few cents off of your finished products, something like that. That's where they will go. We do all of that in the very beginning. So we negotiate based on theoretical volumes, and then we we uh tighten up based on actuals. So once the input level is put into the formulation, now we can tighten up that those volume requirements with those those vetted out suppliers, and we can provide pricing a little, a little more clearer. So those brands can now take it to their executive team and they can have a more accurate price once they go into final commercialization and on to operations.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Awesome. To talk differentiation for a second. So if somebody's comparing you to another consultant, another firm that does what you do, what would you say is the main reason you win, the main benefit in in working with you? Um is it what you just explained about the price and and the process? What what other differentiators come to mind for you?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

For me personally, it it is the relationships that I build within the industry. I've been in nutraceuticals for well over 20 years, and I know a lot of the suppliers, a lot of the sales force out there, and we build relationships, not just transactions. And and so I go to to these groups and I I work with them in how they need things structured as well as what I need structured on my end. So there's a mutual relationship, a mutual trust back and forth that I'm providing them with an opportunity, just like they're providing myself and my client with an opportunity. And so I separate or how I feel is the separation between me and someone else is that relationship. I value that business entity. I I come to people as might sound a little kooky, but I come to them as a symbiotic relationship. I need you, you need me for us to grow. And that's how I build it. I don't cultivate it on a few transactions here or there. I look at the bigger picture and I build out a very robust supplier network that helps me get materials, get data, get documents, get everything in a timely manner. So the clients that onboard us have their everything that they need so they can go to their executive team and not have any wasted time.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Awesome. I love that. Thanks for sharing. So being that this is, you know, primarily F and B ingredient marketing is what we talk a lot about on this podcast. I want to connect the dots. How does operational readiness, uh, so samples, docs, forecasting show up in marketing and sales outcomes?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Wow. That data is really relevant in the very, very beginning because it allows sales to understand where they need to be. So excuse me, where the uh formulation cost needs to be and what revenue. And it it's it's kind of a tricky dynamic here because you have to build out to a budget of what you want. Most some formulators, they really want everything and including the kitchen sink and their formula. They want it to be 100% organic, US made, no, no lead, any all the the major keywords that they want, but they want to maintain a certain price point. That's not that's not really uh doable in today's market. There's a lot of things that you have to do. So bringing all of that together and providing sales and marketing that information early in the process allows them to dictate what demand is going to look like. And so they'll have their price point, or at least an assumption, a real close price point of where they need to be on the final end that will allow them to go now do their work. So we're not battling two things where my price is is extremely high. So I I have a limited niche of niche of group that I'm going to, or is it relative to the market and competitive to where they can go? So it it intertwines in kind of a weed sort of way to where what we do at the very beginning to offset price and to make sure that price is as close as it can be to where the budget needs to be, allows the Salesforce to go out there and do their things. And that happens through, you know, the document control. So the RD team on the brand side can vet that on their end, raw material sampling that they can get through and do their quick pilots up to bench top and then scale up to to full scale production, finalized pricing that gets it through to the executive team so it's signed off and ready to go. Then you have you have the uh the manufacturer, the 3PM, that we we vet out and work with to get them in their timing to ultimately push that out. So there's a lot of that goes into the very beginning to help that sales force and marketing team at the end.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Wow. Okay. Awesome uh information there. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

I want to talk about samples for a minute. Uh again, with the ingredient suppliers, that's where deals really are getting won or lost. Um, so what does to you a clean sample process look like from request to shipment, feedback, next steps? What should that process look like?

SPEAKER_01 9:37

That should be within the within the overall scope of commercialization, that should really be about a four-week process. So once we vet out the the supplier and we find the supplier of the ingredient, we're immediately collecting documentation and a sample size. Usually it's between 50 grams and 250 grams. Again, it depends on the usage rate in that formula. And we get that shipped over to the brand. The brand works with that on their bench top, and then they give us final, okay, this is exactly what we need it to be. Then they're going to test that out to validate the claims that we've already done. So it's it's a third part, it's a it's a three-way check on how things go. So from sampling, once you request the ingredient, it goes over to RD. RD tests that out, and then they validate it through their claims. Should be about a four-week process. Typically, it's a little bit longer because there's there's just those intermediate steps. You don't want to do next day, you you have longer at the testing facility, you don't really know what the claims are going to be, or you're still negotiating on price. A lot of those things are immaterial in the very beginning because you need to get that sample to your RD so they can vet it out as quick as possible. We'll negotiate price at a later time. We'll do all of this stuff. Just having the bare MOQ is what you should be going with. And then uh working on working on better pricing or more bulk pricing once you find out where you sit in the formulation. That process with what we have is about uh, I would say a three to four week process in in total turnaround time.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

And if a company, if an ingredient supplier has nothing set up today, what's the first quick system that you would recommend implementing that maybe they can implement in one to two weeks very quickly?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

If a raw material supplier doesn't have samples or or material or what doesn't have a process set up really process set up. I actually again that's that's a very great question. And that's that's why I partner with with um a few other with an RN it's an RD team, so what I would do is I would have this team come in along with myself and we would audit their facility and we would see where where do you where's your current process and how can we implement these these new GMP processes into your into your process. I know using process a lot there. But uh to be very blunt, if if a material supplier does not have that sampling process in their in their workflow right now or their SOPs, it's kind of a red flag. So we I would yeah, I would kind of set those off to the side, maybe take that as an opportunity to to work with them to establish a robust SOP system that allows for for that as that process. But in terms of what we're talking about, that's what we would do is we would we'd go into their facility, audit, make sure that their SOPs are in place, and then we would incorporate a good uh GMP, uh solid standard process for sampling and um that sample, that sample process.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Yeah, that makes total sense and I really good insight for I think some companies out there to hear. So to talk about your own marketing and growth, what has DT Solutions done to this point to build up your client base? Have have you gotten to this point? Have you invested in any marketing strategies for yourself, whether that's traditional or or online marketing? Speak a little bit about your own growth.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yeah, so the growth is is has really been word of mouth. I've done a lot of LinkedIn positioning for DT Solutions where I'll drive, I'll drive communication or or drive responses into a specific ingredient or a product that we're launching or that I've helped launch. Just get some get some talking points going and and just let them know at the very end is hey, this is how DT Solutions can can help you. I'm not a a brute force salesperson, so I'm not gonna be in your face saying, I can do this, no problem. Everything that I push out, I want it to be informational and I want them, I want it to come to me. So platforms like LinkedIn, there's platforms like Up Work and others that I go out, I drive conversation, I look to see what is going on with with smaller companies and some mid-sized companies and and how we can position DT solutions to help them through growth. And so it's it's really old school, grind it out, walk it out, and and through that communication that I spoke of before, that relationship building, the best thing that you can have is recommendation. That's the best form of marketing and flattery. Is this person recommends you? Even if you spoke to them once or twice, they remember you and then they they put your name at the top of their list.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Yeah, absolutely. Businesses that have seen most of their growth from word of mouth definitely is a green flag. And a lot of the business we're talking to who are, you know, our agency who are just beginning to invest in marketing, and that's something we we love to see because it really tells us that there's a great business, a great team in place. So awesome. Wade, thanks again for coming. And uh to everyone listening, whether you're an ingredient supplier or a team that supports food commercialization, I hope you pulled a few practical moves so you can apply right away from today's episode, and we'll see you next episode. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

That's it for today's episode of the Ingredient Marketing Podcast. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe for more insights on marketing, food, and beverage ingredients. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.