Industry | Health |
---|---|
Founded | 2013 [1] |
Founder | Eric Ryan, Brad Harrington |
Headquarters | |
Key people | Brad Harrington (CEO) |
Products | Vitamins, protein shakes |
Owner | Unilever (2019-present) |
Website | www |
Olly (stylized OLLY), also known as Olly Nutrition and Olly Public Benefit, is an American company and brand of vitamin supplements and other products.
In 2012, Olly founder Eric Ryan sold his Method company to Ecover. [2]
Olly was founded in 2013. Later, in 2014, Ryan worked with Target on a program that emphasized eco-friendly products. He had trouble selecting a brand for the health & wellness category. [2] Ryan stated that he "couldn't find a worse aisle than the nutritional supplement aisle," calling it "dated and filled with uninspiring brands and mediocre product." [3] Ryan and Harrington both recall being in a store in Boulder, Colorado, where "strangers would just come up to [them] and ask how many milligrams of zinc they should take." [2] [4] Afterwards, the two began brainstorming on an idea for a vitamin company with the aim to "simplify" them and make its focus on "end benefit versus the individual ingredients." [4] Additionally, the brand caters to the millennial cohort. [3] [4] [5]
After meeting with Target executives, Ryan and Olly co-founder Brad Harrington began work on the vitamin company. [2] In April 2015, Olly debuted their first 20 products in Target stores. [2] In its first year operating, the company broke even in its first year. [2] Olly products were sold at Target exclusively in its first year. [2] [4] Instead of focusing on their Olly.com website, the brand "enthusiastically embraced brick-and-mortar retailers as its main selling channel," and would come to be sold at other stores like GNC, CVS, and Albertson's, among others. [2] [4] Unilever acquired Olly in 2019. [6]
In 2021, Olly's headquarters in San Francisco won a San Francisco Design Week award in the Interior Design category. [7]
Since Olly is focused on providing "ostensible benefits" rather than ingredients, their products combine supplements instead of selling them individually. [3]
Ryan sought a brand that would be user-friendly for the consumers; rather than using "typical round jars" or pills, Ryan employed square containers and gummy vitamins. [2] [8] While most of the vitamins come in gummy form, some products are sold as softgels. [3] "Olly" was chosen as the name of the company as it was neither "pharma-sounding" or "folksy." [2] The packaging of the vitamins was also made to be bright and feature a smiley face on the O in Olly. [9] With focus set to a vitamin's benefits, Olly would emphasize "Restful Sleep" on its packaging, instead of labeling melatonin vitamins as such, for example. [9] Olly vitamins also include higher amounts sugar (up to 4 grams) than other vitamin brands, with Harrington stating, "It's kind of the price you have to pay to make people stay with it every day." [3] [4]
Olly's products are primarily made in Indiana, as well as at some Florida-based facilities. [4]
In 2016, Harrington stated that 80% of Olly's customers are women, with their women's multivitamin being the company's second-best-selling product. [4] Olly's sleep product is the company's best-selling, as well as Target's best-selling in that respective category. [4] By 2018, Olly was exceeding $100 million annual revenue. [10]
Celebrity hair stylist Christian Wood has mentioned Olly as a "popular option" for hair supplements. [11]
Ryan has been described as a "disruptor" of the vitamins market by media outlets. [2] [10] Harrington has concurred, stating "[Ryan] has spent a lot of time in mass merchants like Target, looking at different categories that might be ripe for disruption." [4]
Marmite ( MAR-myte) is a British savoury food spread based on yeast extract, invented by the German scientist Justus von Liebig. It is made from by-products of beer brewing (lees) and is produced by the British company Unilever. Marmite is a vegan source of B vitamins, including supplemental vitamin B12. A traditional method of use is to spread it very thinly on buttered toast.
A dietary supplement is a manufactured product intended to supplement a person's diet by taking a pill, capsule, tablet, powder, or liquid. A supplement can provide nutrients either extracted from food sources, or that are synthetic. The classes of nutrient compounds in supplements include vitamins, minerals, fiber, fatty acids, and amino acids. Dietary supplements can also contain substances that have not been confirmed as being essential to life, and so are not nutrients per se, but are marketed as having a beneficial biological effect, such as plant pigments or polyphenols. Animals can also be a source of supplement ingredients, such as collagen from chickens or fish for example. These are also sold individually and in combination, and may be combined with nutrient ingredients. The European Commission has also established harmonized rules to help insure that food supplements are safe and appropriately labeled.
Horlicks is a sweet malted milk hot drink powder developed by founders James and William Horlick. It was first sold as "Horlick's Infant and Invalids Food", soon adding "aged and travellers" to their label. In the early 20th century, it was sold as a powdered meal replacement drink mix.
A multivitamin is a preparation intended to serve as a dietary supplement with vitamins, dietary minerals, and other nutritional elements. Such preparations are available in the form of tablets, capsules, pastilles, powders, liquids, or injectable formulations. Other than injectable formulations, which are only available and administered under medical supervision, multivitamins are recognized by the Codex Alimentarius Commission as a category of food.
Nutraceutical is a marketing term used to imply a pharmaceutical effect from a compound or food product that has not been scientifically confirmed or approved to have clinical benefits. In the United States, nutraceuticals are unregulated, existing in the same category as dietary supplements and food additives by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), under the authority of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
SlimFast is an American company headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, that markets an eponymous brand of shakes, bars, snacks, packaged meals, and other dietary supplement foods sold in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Latin America, and the U.K. SlimFast promotes diets and weight loss plans featuring its food products.
Neutrogena Corporation, trading as Neutrogena, is an American company that produces cosmetics, skin care and hair care and owned by parent company Kenvue and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. According to product advertising at their website, Neutrogena products are distributed in more than 70 countries.
Airborne is an American brand of dietary supplement containing herbal extracts, amino acids, antioxidants, electrolytes, vitamins, and other ingredients originally marketed as preventing the common cold and improving immune function.
Alberto-Culver was an American corporation with international sales whose principal business was manufacturing hair and skin beauty care products under such brands as Alberto VO5, Andrew Collnge, St. Ives, TRESemmé, FDS, Consort, Nexxus, Toni, and White Rain. It was a manufacturer in the multicultural beauty care market with such brands as Soft & Beautiful, Just For Me, Motions, and TCB. It was purchased by Unilever in 2010.
Juice Plus is a branded line of dietary supplements. It is produced by Natural Alternatives International of San Marcos, California, for National Safety Associates. Introduced in 1993, the supplements are distributed by NSA via multi-level marketing. Juice Plus supplements contain fruit and vegetable juice extracts with added vitamins and nutrients.
Gummies, gummi candies, gummy candies, or jelly sweets are a broad category of gelatin-based chewable sweets. Gummy bears, Sour Patch Kids, and Jelly Babies are widely popular and are a well-known part of the sweets industry. Gummies are available in a wide variety of shapes, most commonly seen as colorful depictions of living things such as bears, babies, or worms. Various brands such as Bassett's, Haribo, Albanese, Betty Crocker, Hersheys, Disney and Kellogg's manufacture various forms of gummy snacks, often targeted at young children. The name "gummi" originated in Germany, with the term "jelly sweets" more common in the United Kingdom.
Pharmavite is an American vitamin and supplement company, based in West Hills, California and founded in 1971 by Barry Pressman and Henry Burdick. Its Nature Made vitamin brand was launched that same year. It was acquired by Otsuka Pharmaceutical in 1989.
Seven Seas Ltd. is a supplier of vitamins, minerals, and supplements in the United Kingdom and abroad. It began in 1935 when a group of trawler owners in Hull formed a co-operative venture called British Cod Liver Oil (BCLO) Producers to exploit one of the fishing industry's most valuable by-products. Kenneth MacLennan, previously of Lever Brothers, became General Manager of BCLO in 1936 to add relevant commercial experience to the then-board of trawler owners.
Glow & Lovely is a skin-lightening cosmetic product of Hindustan Unilever introduced to the market in India in 1975. Glow & Lovely is available in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Mauritius and other parts of Asia and is also exported to other parts of the world, such as the West, where it is sold in Asian supermarkets.
Marmite is a food spread produced in New Zealand by Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company and distributed in Australia and the Pacific. Marmite is made from yeast extract, a by-product of beer brewing. It is similar to the British Marmite, but the two products are made by different companies.
Schmidt's Deodorant Company, LLC is an American personal care company based in Portland, Oregon. A subsidiary of Unilever, Schmidt's Naturals manufactures and sells plant and mineral-based personal care products including natural deodorant, soap, and toothpaste.
Gummy supplements, are dietary supplements delivered as gummy-candy-like products, most commonly comprising vitamins. They are often used as a more palatable alternative to other supplement formulations.
New Chapter, Inc. is the American manufacturer of the New Chapter brand of vitamins and other organic dietary supplements. Based in Brattleboro, Vermont, the company is a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) subsidiary of Procter & Gamble. The company's products include herbal supplements, probiotics, superfood greens and mushrooms.
O Positiv, Inc. is a Los Angeles-based healthcare company specializing in dietary supplements designed for women to alleviate the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and support overall women's health during their menstrual cycle. The company owns the FLO brand.