From the Founders: Supplement Testing Update
Hi There,
Steve and Nick here with your June product update.
The first edition of our Tested series on Creatine had an incredible impact over the last few weeks. We wanted to share a few highlights from Wired Magazine and Men’s Fitness, and a sneak preview of our next testing edition.
The Big Response to Our Creatine Report
On June 11 we released our report on testing five popular creatine powders and six creatine gummies with an independent ISO 17025 lab.
Four out of the six creatine gummies failed, with virtually no creatine whatsoever. They had sold over 50k units on Amazon the previous month.
Here’s what happened next:
SuppCo’s creatine report was featured in an in-depth article by Wired Magazine.
SuppCo’s Fitness Expert and advisor Thomas DeLauer published a powerful video on the report that was then covered by Men’s Fitness.
We released an update to our product pages to clearly show when a product has failed testing.
SuppCo users have responded in a big way, asking us for more testing and leaving 60+ negative reviews on the two products still available on Amazon to let shoppers know that Happyummmm and Ecowise failed SuppCo’s testing.
What Are We Testing Next?
The second edition of SuppCo Tested will be published in mid-July, testing another incredibly prominent ingredient in many of our user stacks.
We’re not revealing the ingredient yet but our initial results have already come back, and unfortunately we are seeing a similar story yet again: 6 out of 10 supplements failed testing.
Five of the ingredients contained virtually no dose of the labeled ingredient and 1 failed with less than half of the labeled dose. We have sent all the failing products back for a second round of testing to confirm our results.
Stay tuned.
What’s Driving the Failures?
Along with the scientific reports we’ll publish each month, SuppCo will also begin investigating the major issues we see in manufacturing and e-commerce that are contributing to these failures.
Today, we wanted to give you a preview of one particular issue.
Below is a screenshot of the failing Vidabotan creatine gummy label on Amazon before it became unavailable for sale:
The contact information listed on Amazon for the Vidabotan brand that sold this creatine gummy and still sells other products is:
Business Name: Guangzhou Dongjia Dianzi Shangwu keji Youxian gong
Business Address: 大源南路36号 之二303房 广州市 白云区 广东省, 510515, CN
Next, here is a screenshot and link to the manufacturing listing where we suspect the Vidabotan Amazon seller may have sourced their failing gummy, from a co-manufacturer on Alibaba:
Notice any resemblance?
This is a preview of one of many quality issues we see in the supplement industry: international manufacturers are sometimes used to source cheap supplements online that may not be third-party tested by the brand buyer, and may not always match label claims. These products are then sold to unsuspecting US consumers
Over the coming months, as we publish our testing reports, we will follow up by surfacing any evidence we have of where failing products may be coming from.
Our mission at SuppCo is to make supplements work for you. One of the ways we will do that is by shining a light on the unexamined corners of the industry, while shining an equally bright light on quality brands and practices.
Be well,
Steve & Nick