Exclusive Interview: Serene Cha, Co-Founder of Nature's Superfoods, Reveals Lucrative Business Strategies of Singapore's Premier Health Food Store.
Established in 2011, the Singapore-based Nature’s Superfoods has kept growing through the COVID-19 pandemic by garnering a revenue of US$1.32 million in 2020, up 107% year-on-year, making this leading organic superfoods brand on the list of the Financial Times’ Top 500 High- Growth Companies in Asia Pacific and the Straits Times’ Top 100 Fastest-Growing Firm in Singapore.
Keep it Simple and Clean
“When we started Nature’s Superfoods in 2011, it was just a very small business with a limited product mix, within which quinoa and chia seeds were still new to consumers that were hard to find in the Singaporean market. Fortunately, as we continued to educate our consumers through organizing cooking classes, food tasting events, and social media promotions, more and more became acquainted with superfoods and our business began to take off from 2015 onwards.”
Currently, Nature’s Superfoods offers a wide range of organic foods, from breakfast cereals, grains, seeds, spices, dried fruit snacks, protein powders to powder blends. Most of their raw ingredients originate from certified organic superfood sources from Peru, where a wide variety of superfoods, such as quinoa, chia seeds, yacon root, sacha inchi seeds, raw cacao, purple corn, ginger, turmeric are grown.
“One of our core values is to select and provide the best free-from (free from gluten, GMO, preservatives, additives, refined sugars), low-in (salt, GI), and plant-based superfoods that would enhance benefits to consumers’ health. There are quite a lot of ‘trendy’ superfoods out there in the market, but we just want to keep our product portfolio simple and clean- with superfoods for daily consumption that will benefit consumers in the long run,” says Serene.
“There are quite a lot of ‘trendy’ superfoods out there in the market, but we just want to keep our product portfolio simple and clean-with superfoods for daily consumption that will benefit consumers in the long run.”
Pure Online from the Start
The outbreak and prevalence of the COVID-19 has spurred online shopping. In Singapore alone, according to Accenture, the coronavirus pandemic crisis caused a shift in consumers’ behavior and thus gave a boost to Singapore’s digital economy which earned an additional US$500 million last year, and some businesses even saw a record growth up to three times more than their normal rate.
COVID-19 has induced businesses around the world to rethink their business models and accelerate their online presence. Thankfully, Nature’s Superfoods has embraced ecommerce since day one at the start of the business, building a foundation for the brand to monetise more business in the midst of the pandemic.
Miracles Don’t Happen Overnight
“We embarked on e-commerce right from the very beginning of our business, selling our products through our own website. Sales was overall satisfactory, and the market was receptive to our type of products. However, it was not until 2015 we started selling our products on other leading online platforms, like RedMart, Shopee and Lazada, that helped shoot up our revenues by 25-50% and our customer base began to grow. Our experience in running an online business equipped us well to cope with the surging and sudden consumer demand during the pandemic, where more consumers were forced to shop online,” says Serene.
To date, direct-to-consumers online business contributes approximately 50% of Nature’s Superfoods’ sales.
According to eMarketer, the cyber economy in six largest Southeast Asian markets with a total population of 570 million surpassed US$100 billion in 2019. While the Internet economy in most countries was growing at 20 per cent to 30 per cent annually, Indonesia and Vietnam grew at over 40 per cent a year.
Despite the venture's success in online business, Nature’s Superfoods still thinks physical shopping is vital in the retail sector.
“We do feel that we cannot underestimate the value of offline channels, where sales will not become less significant. The need for human-to-human contact and relationships underscores the importance of physical experiences and touch points, and attention must still be drawn to the physical roles when it comes to the consumer journey.”
Since 2015, Nature’s Superfoods has diversified its sales channels and has been selling its products in supermarket chains like FairPrice Finest as well as in specialty health food stores, healthcare pharmacies, and restaurants in Singapore.
Asian Taste
Let’s face it: there are likely some good-for-you superfoods that you don’t find super-tasty. Nature’s Superfoods knows it well and has created hundreds of recipes that help make superfoods consumption a palatable and convenient experience. The brand’s Superfoods Breakfast Cereal Mixes range is an example of that aim – combining various superfoods ingredients to create a tasty, clean and nutrient-dense breakfast experience. At the same time, Nature’s Superfoods hopes to cater to different target groups such as vegetarians, diabetic patients, the elderly, kids and working adults.
“Superfoods don’t really taste that bad, it is just that there exists a perception that anything healthy does not taste good. Our superfoods are natural and minimally processed, and it’s really up to the individual’s creativity to consume them in varied ways. There are some people that just take them raw! But for those that prioritize taste in their consumption, superfoods can be used as ingredients in recipes. I have come across many posts on social media that demonstrate such creativity in the simplest ways! We learn the recipes from many of our consumers, and we create and try them out ourselves as well. From personal experience, superfoods recipes can be tasty!” says Serene.
Motivated by a strong desire to share how superfoods can be super for us, Nature’s Superfoods’ seeks to offer everyone the alternative: the most nutritious foods that can look amazing, taste great and help people live better and healthier in the long term.
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