Just When You Found a Supplement… The Supplement Changes
Have you ever found a supplement you like, and almost immediately the supplement changes, gets reformulated, and you find it isn’t the same? I’ve been there, and I’ve been on the receiving end of customer complaints as well from my time in the industry. Why do brands fix something that isn’t broke? Well, there are several reasons for supplement changes (which I’m not justifying).
Let’s dive into the topic a little deeper.
You Found a Supplement and Now the Supplement Brand Makes Changes — How Frustrating!
Ah, the joy of finally discovering the perfect supplement—your holy grail of nutrition. You diligently researched, read reviews, and experimented until you found the one that truly worked for you. But just when you thought your supplement search was over, the dreaded moment arrives: the supplement brand decides to make changes. How frustrating and utterly exasperating it is to see a product you’ve come to rely on undergo alterations that leave you questioning, “Why mess with a good thing?” As a dedicated supplement consumer, the experience of having your go-to formula transformed is enough to evoke a sense of disappointment and annoyance. Let’s dive into the exasperating journey of discovering a supplement, only to have the rug pulled out from under you when changes are implemented.
Reasons for Supplement Changes
Below are several reasons why brands change supplements or even discontinue them.
1. Reduce costs and improve margins
Some brands (not all) come out with a product that is simply AWESOME. People are loving it. It’s the new craze. People are giving great reviews and building a lot of hype behind the product and brand. Then the brand realizes that they are hardly making any money because their margins are tight, shipping is expensive, and their raw material costs are too high. What do they do? Change the formula in order to improve all of the above (except shipping costs remain the same).
What this leaves you with is a (now) subpar product that doesn’t taste the same, doesn’t give you the same effects, and makes you feel like you’re wasting your money on the supplement. Sometimes you don’t even know they made supplement changes until you rebuy the product and notice something seems different. Of course, the brand isn’t going to come out with a new ad campaign saying, “We saved money, suckas!” Now you’re left looking for a new product. If the brand would have taken all of these factors into account before launch, you’d probably still be enjoying their product. Unfortunately, they rushed getting it to market and now after the reform will be losing customers and money.
2. Trying to be innovative
Let’s take a pre-workout and use it as an example here. We have all tried pre-workouts that knock our socks off. Then they reformulate the product either due to an ingredient getting banned, or some new ingredient hits the market and they want to jump on the bandwagon and toss it in the formula to “improve” it. Sometimes this can backfire.
If you are accustomed to using a certain supplement and it having a certain taste, it can easily change when new ingredients are introduced or removed. Caffeine for example (while not innovative) is a very difficult ingredient to mask in a supplement. It takes a flavor specialist some time to nail the flavor due to flavor profile changing when caffeine is added or removed. Innovation can help or hurt a product. Unfortunately, we are creatures of habit, and when something we have been using for any given amount of time changes, we aren’t willing to accept the changes or we simply no longer like the supplement due to lack of results (or taste) that we are getting.
The same thing happens when you add a new ingredient to a supplement formula and the supplement changes. It can take some manipulation to get the taste the same (which many times it isn’t) and if you were used to feeling one thing when using the product, you may not feel that same effect anymore.
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