鈥楾his time it鈥檚 personal.鈥�
The phrase made famous as the tagline of Jaws: The Revenge could equally be applied to Melissa Snover and her latest business Rem3dy Health.
The Birmingham HealthTech is behind customised nutrition brand Nourish3d and has patented 3D printing technology to create 100% personalised nutrient gummy 鈥榮tacks鈥� for the direct-to-consumer market. It is now rapidly expanding its B2B offer via partnerships with the likes of Boots and Holland & Barrett.
Yet it is the third business founded in the UK by American Melissa, who came to the UK to study at Lancaster University and never left.聽
When I meet her in Rem3dy鈥檚 boardroom for Founder Friday – following a tour of its Smethwick manufacturing facility – I ask her to start at the beginning.聽
鈥淚 started my first company by accident – it was part of a dissertation project and it ended up becoming a viable business,鈥� she answers. 鈥淚 realised pretty quickly afterwards that although I enjoyed the creation of a business idea to solve somebody’s issue, I didn’t actually love the business that I created.聽
鈥淪o I sold it to a competitor and used the money to start my first passion project.鈥�
Goody Good Stuff
Goody Good Stuff was the world’s first vegan, allergen-free gummy candy.聽 鈥淚 did it for myself, really: I’m a vegetarian, and I have been since way before there was a vegan aisle in the supermarket,鈥� Melissa continues.
鈥淭he only thing that I missed, when I gave up everything else, was gummy candy.鈥�
Her story takes me back to my own childhood, eight years of which I spent as a vegetarian. Strangely, the biggest yearning I had when I gave up meat was not for bacon or beefburgers – but Fry鈥檚 Turkish Delight.
鈥淚 started doing tests in my student accommodation and attending material science lectures. I developed a recipe which was very bouncy and realistic to a traditional gummy, but without gelatin. 鈥淎t that stage, I didn’t really know what I was doing! That probably worked in my favour, because I don’t think I would have done it had I known how difficult it was going to be.鈥�
She cold-called the biggest global manufacturers in the space and somehow convinced one to make it for her. 鈥淔or the next two and a half years I learned the art of making gummy from some of the biggest and most experienced people in the world,鈥� she says.
By this point she had moved from Lancashire to MediaCity in Salford – 鈥淟ancaster is a beautiful place, but it鈥檚 sleepy and very small鈥� – and grew the brand to nearly 40,000 stores within three years, with national listings in leading retailers across the UK, Europe, Middle East and America.
After selling Goody Good Stuff to Cloetta – a huge Swedish FMCG brand which owns Chewits in the UK – she became restless.
鈥淭hey were a really cool company and I enjoyed working with them. I learned a lot. But I realised pretty early on that – despite the fact that they paid me way more than I ever paid myself – it just doesn’t suit my personality, my soul, to be part of a huge organisation.
鈥淭he decision-making processes and the lack of autonomy need to be there – but it’s just not for me.鈥澛�
She adds: 鈥淭he last time I was actually employed by someone was when I had a waitressing job in university!鈥�
Entrepreneurship
One of the businesses that had tried to buy Goody Good Stuff was Katjes, a German family-owned business which makes Percy Pigs for M&S. 鈥淭hey reached out and asked whether they could partner with me for my next idea.
鈥淎nd the biggest thing I wanted to solve – after the experience of growing that business and working with huge factories – were the limitations of mainstream manufacturing [which in turn] inhibited growth.
鈥�99.9% of all manufacturing is done in a very similar way: you have to do humongous volumes of the same thing, with really long lead times. There are no opportunities to do seasonality profitably; and new product development takes two to three years.聽
鈥淚’m not even talking about really game-changing innovation, but a different-shaped or -coloured gummy鈥� really simple things.
鈥淭he customer then loses because innovation can’t make it to market as it’s too expensive. There was a gnawing in my head, saying, 鈥楾his can’t be the only way.鈥� And so I spent the next six months researching alternative manufacturing techniques.鈥�
The passion for learning which shines from Melissa was instilled in her at a young age.
鈥淢y parents taught me to never accept that I just didn’t know the answer,鈥� she recalls. 鈥淢y mom bought this huge Encyclopedia Britannica: they got rid of every other book in the living room and put all the volumes on display. This is before the internet. And every time we had a question, my mom would say: ‘I don’t know – let’s look it up.’聽
鈥淭hat taught me how to find information and to constantly seek the truth, and not accept that I just don’t know, or that a certain thing is 鈥榡ust the way it is鈥�. I think that’s a really important trait in an entrepreneur.鈥�
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3D printing
Now based in the Birmingham area, she found the solution to her manufacturing conundrum in an existing technology: 3D printing.
After buying 3D printers online, she took them apart, put them back together and taught herself G-code. Abbreviated from Geometric Code, this is the standard programming language for controlling Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine tools and 3D printers.
Her updated version of consulting the encyclopedia was to join groups of 3D printing enthusiasts, among them the legendary RichRap – real name Richard Horne – who was based in nearby Coventry. She says these makers were incredibly supportive and open to sharing information.
鈥淚n about six months, I had built and patented the world’s first FDA- and FSA-compliant 3D food printer,鈥� says Melissa. 鈥淚 called it The Magic Candy Factory as I was still focused on candy at that stage.鈥�
The birth of Nourish3d
Within 18 months, with the production agility afforded by 3D printing, she was selling in John Lewis as well as major retailers in the US, Asia and Middle East.
鈥淚t was super fun, and very high margin, but we realised that the technology was way more powerful than the use case that we were pointing it at. Personalisation is always delightful, but actually it can be meaningfully valuable if the right things are personalised,鈥� she explains.
It was then that fate intervened. 鈥淎t that time I was taking seven vitamin supplements – I’m a huge, huge, huge, huge health person – and was taking my laptop out at security in a German airport when the plastic bag got caught and they ricocheted all over the floor!
鈥淭hat was when the idea came to me for Nourish3d and for Rem3dy Health.鈥�
On the flight home she sketched out her idea on a napkin. 鈥淭he napkin was not free – I had to buy a coffee to get it!鈥� laughs Melissa.
鈥淭he next day, we had a standup meeting and I said 鈥榬ight, stop what you’re doing鈥� and told them the plan.鈥�
On that napkin was drawn Nourish3d鈥檚 Heptagonal gummy with seven layers of supplements, printed one above the other.
So why seven? 鈥淚 was taking seven vitamins at the time! Then when we surveyed 2,500 Americans and 2,000 people in the UK – all supplement users – we found they were taking between five and eight. So I was like, okay, seven is pretty good! Let’s just stick with that.鈥�
Launched in 2019, Melissa raised the highest ever sole female founder seed round in UK history at 拢2 million.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a horrible record, and I don’t want it. The amount of money I raised was not enough for the record. But sadly, there are very few sole female founders,鈥� she reflects.
鈥淚 mentor a lot of founders and so many of the females [among them] have asked: 鈥楧o you think I need to bring on a male co-founder?鈥� It would be crazy to do that just to get money! Bringing a co-founder on when you don’t really need one is totally nuts. I don’t understand why you would force a relationship.
鈥淗owever, it’s not all venture capital’s fault. There are not enough women asking for money. With projects like The Whole Point, Lifted and Tech Nation, we’re trying to get women thinking about entrepreneurship from a younger age as a potential future opportunity.鈥�
Key to Nourished鈥檚 offer is an online questionnaire which identifies the active ingredients which will most benefit the customer, based on their goals, lifestyle and preferences. Each individual order is then 3D printed on demand and their personalised supplement stacks are delivered each month.
Despite impressive growth, by 2023 Melissa realised there was an even bigger opportunity.
鈥淚 didn’t start the business intending to do B2B, but while doing D2C, with the diminishment of cookies, the unit economics of online marketing completely changed – and that made it more expensive to find new customers,鈥� she explains.聽
鈥淟uckily, we have a highly retained customer – a 90% annual retention rate – and that’s wonderful. But I started to realise that if we had to grow the business one customer at a time, we would need to put a lot more money into the marketing funnel – and I’m not a massive fan of never-ending marketing.
鈥淚 think you should always be present in marketing, and that you should always be communicating. But if your business needs you to spend that much money every month just to keep your growth up, then you’re really propping something up that’s not working underneath. And I think it鈥檚 disingenuous to trick yourself into thinking that’s success. So I try to stay away from that.
鈥淎nd at the same time, the number of people who were contacting us asking us for products for retail for huge distribution in other markets was so high that it was just something we could not ignore.鈥�
Co-branded partnerships
While the personalised stacks contain 60 billion or so combinations, co-branded partnerships – such as the Nourished Formulaic line launched exclusively with Boots in January – boil those down to specific SKUs which can be bought off the shelf and target certain areas such as hair, skin and nails; cognitive and psychological function; or bone, muscle and cardiovascular health.
Rem3dy Health has built large-scale production lines to print these products in the thousands and ship them out to almost 30,000 retail stores across Europe as well as via online channels. It is also about to launch in the US, MENA and India.
鈥淚t’s completely transformed the company – the trajectory for revenue, but also the number of people that can get access to our products,鈥� says Melissa.
How did they identify the products for this B2B range?
鈥淲e have an extremely rich consumer health database of 2.5m as well as 150,000 clinical trials. We then matched that up to the Boots consumer profile and aimed to cater for 90% of those people,鈥� she answers.
鈥淲hat we do is not magic. We get people to the right ingredients, at the right dosages, in a format that they enjoy – so they take it every day.聽
鈥淚t鈥檚 straightforward, but it’s what’s missing from the entire supplement market: you have people taking things they don’t need; in formats that they don’t enjoy, so they forget many times a week; or missing out on things that they do need.
鈥淭hose three things are not impossible to solve, but the mass production element of the traditional marketplace makes it very difficult to be able to hit them all.鈥�
She adds: 鈥淲e can change a product on the line in less than 30 minutes.鈥�
Melissa has now raised around 拢20m from investors all over the world – and medicine is next up for Rem3dy.
鈥淪cript3d is the brand that we use for customised curative health. We’ve already validated around 17 different pharmaceutical APIs for customisation, and we are working towards the pilot. That is going to change the world.鈥�
AI
Returning to the theme of learning, Melissa says: 鈥淚’m so jealous of new entrepreneurs today because they have like 20 years extra to enjoy incredible stuff like AI. You can almost instantaneously learn anything that you want. I find that magical!聽
鈥淚 had to go online; listen to podcasts; read blogs; find the book and read it; then make sure the book was still in date. It was tricky.聽
鈥淭hese days when I get an investor cold call – and I do, almost daily – in less than 30 seconds I’ve got my Claude Cowork checking on Crunchbase and Pitchbook whether they’re serious; whether they back female businesses; their reputation; how much dry powder they have. It’s unbelievable!
鈥淲e have built a totally custom ERP system to run our business. It has agentic models moving through our finance system; every machine downstairs; and automatic data feeds from every part of the business – our CRM, quality, regulatory, food safety, design, content creation, copy, marketing鈥� all of it. It’s so cool!聽
鈥淚’m in love with AI. I think it’s also the single biggest leveller ever: the power that it gives – at such a reasonable price – to everyone.鈥�
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