Root’d, a newly founded company based in Manhattan Beach, CA, recently announced the release of its first line of products, exclusively made of multivitamin drink mixes, in a men’s, women’s and prenatal variety.
 
Root’d CEO Adams Chimera, whose prior expeirence includes five years in the vitamin industry with companies including Nutranext, joined the Root’d team in creating a business model centered around a few of the most pressing concerns surrounding multivitamins on the consumer front.
 
Those concerns include the need for transparency surrounding supply chain management, and demands for naturally-sourced ingredients, environmental sustainability, and the fact that sugar-free fizzy drink mixes are a relatively untapped delivery method in the supplement market at large and are sparsely (less than 1%, Chimera said) utilized for multivitamin supplements in particular.
 
“To get technical for a moment, the research isn’t fully developed on absorption rates, however, several indicators point towards higher and faster absorption rates when vitamins are taken in liquid form,” Chimera told NW. “On a more realistic note though, one of the reasons that brought us to research and make Root’d was the simple fact that for those of us who decided to take a step towards a healthier life by adding supplements to our daily routine, we were forced to make a choice. Choke down another pill, or chew on a sugar-coated ‘healthy’ gummy.”
 
To compete with the niche of other fizzy multivitamin drinks, Root’d plans to be more upfront about its quality and safety management, third-party testing, and all natural, non-GMO, and allergen-free formula. The company does so with the aim of quelling concerns that consumers, especially expectant mothers and people with vitamin deficiencies or health issues, might have about other formulas that may have a murkier process.
 
Most observers only expect consumer demand for transparency to increase, and, with the marketplace increasingly globalized, labels becoming cleaner across the board, and consumer exposure to brands widening, transparency is an asset not to be underestimated or limited.
 
“Again, getting technical, we use GMP certified manufacturing processes, and our finished products are tested by one of the larger labs in the industry, Siliker,” Chimera said.
 
That, however, is only the final step in a process which includes a vendor qualification (VQ) process for the sourced raw materials.
 
“This process ensures the materials meet the vendor’s specifications as well as our rigorous internal specifications, and when they do not, they are rejected,” Chimera said. “We utilize our in-house microbiology lab as well as an FTIR (Fourier Transform Infared Spectroscopy) on all incoming materials to show any sort of deviation from our approved control lots. Safety, sanitation, and GMP compliance are all a part of 21 CFR 111 and 110/117.”
 
The company’s non-GMO project verification is also done via a third party, Food Labs Sciences.
 
Additionally, consumers looking for a multivitamin with the most environmentally-friendly packaging possible will certainly find appeal in Root’d, which, in addition to setting a goal of reducing the plastic packaging content to zero, the company donates 1% of its proceeds to The Ocean Cleanup, and another 1% of its proceeds to One Tree Planted, two of the most prominent and buzzed-about environmental organizations working to offset problems directly impacted by consumer package production.
 
“We’ve been in the vitamin business for years, and right now in our local vitamin aisles, it’s a sea of plastic bottles,” Chimera said. “That’s actually something that you see across several different categories in our stores. We really think it’s unnecessary. A great example is Boxed Water. They did a phenomenal job of showing the world that while some plastic is needed for safety and sanitary reasons, the whole product doesn’t need to be made of plastic for it to work. That was really the inspiration to make Root’d with <5% plastic, and we hope to start a revolution of sorts in consumer package goods to move to <5% and eventually find an alternative that gets us to zero.”
 
Additionally, the company plans to continue its ongoing blog, to explain the research behind some beneficial ingredients used in its formula that aren’t considered boilerplate on the consumer end, such as selenium, chromium, xanthan gum, and more.