New Brand Savy Wellness Cuts Through Supplement Confusion With A Single Product

Victoria Otamiri and Sara Gamay, co-founders of the new brand Savy Wellness, want to make it easy for consumers to squeeze a supplement into their busy lives.

“We really tried to solve a couple of problems we saw in the supplement space. One was that the supplement space can be really overwhelming,” says Gamay. “You feel like you have to buy all these products. You don’t know what the right dose is, and you don’t know what you should be taking.”

With Savy Wellness, consumers don’t have to buy all these products. The London-based brand has narrowed supplement choices down to one: Daily Hero, a once-a-day açaí berry drink priced at $61 individually or $51.85 on subscription for a box containing 21 sachets. Gamay says, “The industry tells you to buy many products, buy many things. We’re saying buy one product, get multiple benefits.” 

Savy Wellness launched Daily Hero in September 2022. Otamiri and Gamay developed the supplement drink to boost energy, skin health, sleep quality, immunity, mood and more. They packed it with 21 natural ingredients such as ashwagandha, folate, zinc, selenium, rhodiola and marine collagen, and compare a single .4-oz. dose to 20 ordinary pills on the market. 

Three-quarters of Americans take supplements, and consumer demand for supplements with beauty benefits appears to be substantial (pharmacy chain Boots recently reported its customers’ online searches for beauty vitamins have skyrocketed 2,170%), but studies show supplements largely don’t justify their claims. Otamiri pinpoints the body’s ability to absorb supplement formulas as a major challenge in the supplement space. Liquid formulas can improve absorption, a factor in Savy Wellness’s decision to make Daily Hero a liquid option.  

Savy Wellness has launched with a single supplement drink: Daily Hero, which has 21 natural ingredients and is priced at $61 for a box containing 21 sachets. The box is available on subscription for $51.85.

Otamiri mentions the exact blend of ingredients is important, too. “That means the things that need to work together,” she says. “For example, collagen needs lysine and vitamin C to work together. B12 needs folic acid, and all that is stuff we consider.”

Savy Wellness teamed up with Claudia Gravaghi, a nutritionist, pharmacist and formulation scientist with a doctorate in experimental and clinical nutrition, to strike the correct balance with the ingredients in Daily Hero. In a statement, Gravaghi says, “Daily Hero works through a multi-mechanism approach, meaning that it targets many different biological pathways in one step. We hope that by offering women a smarter way to take their vitamins, they can live healthier lives.”

Gamay had exposure to the drink industry prior to Savy Wellness. She was previously general counsel at food and beverage company DreamPak and head of international at coconut water brand Vita Coco, among several stops in her career. A longtime friend of Gamay’s, Otamiri, who has a professional background in the pharmaceutical and healthcare arenas, is steeped in business strategy. Outside of Savy Wellness, she’s managing director at Opsion, a consultancy providing support to CEOs of small companies.

At Savy Wellness, Gamay and Otamiri’s goal isn’t to enter brick-and-mortar retail immediately. Instead, they’re currently focused on direct-to-consumer distribution. Gamay says, “It is really important to us that we stay close to our customer base and learn and continuously improve our products based on customer feedback.” 

Still, they’re already dabbling in the retail landscape. Otamiri and Gamay pitched Savy Wellness late last year to the department store Selfridges at The Wellness Exchange, an online event for wellness entrepreneurs. Gamay says, “When it comes to retail, we plan to be very strategic and limit ourselves to outlets where people want to buy trusted supplements from specialty pharmacies, etc. Savy’s Daily Hero is a nutritionist-grade product with strong peer-reviewed science behind it, so it’s important to keep that alignment when we go to retail.” 

“The industry tells you to buy many products, buy many things. We’re saying buy one product, get multiple benefits.” 

Savy Wellness didn’t divulge a sales projection for this year. In the very early stage of the brand, it’s seeing a promising customer response. Gamay says, “Our customers basically within a few days of taking the product feel an increase in energy and focus because of the ingredients that we’ve put in there…We’re really pleased with our repeat purchase rate, and people converting to subscribers.”

Savy Wellness’s next step is expanding its assortment. It has a vegan version of Daily Hero in its pipeline that incorporates a protein that mimics collagen without the use of an animal source. Otamiri says products following the vegan version of Daily Hero will address “specific moments in life that where a supplement can help.”

Gamay chimes in, “Every product we do will have that ethos, which is one product that delivers basically multiple products in one in the optimal dosage. We’ll never be a company that has a hundred of [products]. That’s exactly what we’re trying to simplify.”

Otamiri adds, “I’m pretty sure, if you speak to us 12 months down the line, the picture will look completely different. We’ve done great R&D, we’ve tested it, we have proof points, and we have enough customers to know there’s repeat business coming through. We’ve done some of our first events, and we’ve pitched the retailers, so there’s traction. We’re in that phase where it’s about to take off.”

Otamiri and Gamay have ambitions for Savy Wellness to take off as a global brand. “I would love for the sourcing and the price point to come down a bit, but we also know that getting good-quality ingredients cost money,” says Otamiri. “I would love for Savy to be accessible to as many women as possible.”