Not all heroes wear capes. But some wear a smile even under stress. Enter Executive Vice President Steve Finnegan, who deals with the behind the scenes business of running a successful show at Makers Nutrition. Here’s what he had to say about why we are #YourSupplementSoluion:
1. One of the many tasks you tackle is ensuring that Makers Nutrition cuts the best deals with freight companies. Do we cut costs for clients in terms of freight and delivery?
Makers Nutrition seeks to be a one-stop shop for supplement companies. Our clients, many of them startups and small businesses, know everything about their brand, but don’t have the time to learn all there is to know about the logistics required to get a product to market. We know that the best hope for success for our clients is to do all we can to allow them to focus on their brand and marketing. Our success comes from that of our clients. Our business model was created to be everything but the marketing department for our client. We offer a full range of packaging options, have great designers on staff to help our clients with the perfect presentation, and offer full logistical support for every point in the process.
Our fulfillment centers are integrated with all of the top e-commerce platforms and we work with the biggest and best transportation companies in the country to provide our clients with the best-priced, fully-insured delivery options for everything from a single bottle to a truckload. We have negotiated the absolute best discounts with all of our carriers and we pass along the savings to our clients. Whether a simple warehouse delivery or white glove service, we can provide the right delivery at the best price for any client, fully insured.
2. What are some of the challenges associated with freight and how does Makers Nutrition prevail?
Commercial freight is a complicated matter for both LTL and full-load shippers. It is difficult, frankly, for a small business to get a decent deal on freight shipping or to know how to properly classify freight. Makers Nutrition’s clients benefit from our team’s 25 plus years of experience in freight scheduling and our enormous volume of package, LTL, and full load shipments annually. We work with the best companies in the business and offer significantly discounted rates and tracking capabilities to our clients. We can offer the proper delivery options for a client with all types of freight needs and we make sure there are no ugly surprises along the way.
3. How do we fully insure our freight and why is this feature so important?
One of the pitfalls of shipping freight is that it is rarely insured for its full value, especially in our industry. Most people fail to ask the right questions and assume that all freight is fully insured. The truth is that there is a cap on the insurance provided with full-load freight and that LTL freight is based on a fixed amount per pound. In our industry, a loss of freight can be disastrous as the product almost always requires expensive, additional insurance to cover the value of the shipment. Too many shippers find out the hard way that their freight is under-insured when they receive a reimbursement of pennies on the dollar for lost freight. Makers Nutrition has a master policy that covers all of our shipments for their full value. Such a policy might be impractical or unaffordable to an occasional, small-volume shipper and so they take a big risk with each shipment. As part of our one-stop shop concept, we offer freight scheduling to all of our clients, fully-insured, under our master policy.
4. I know that what sets Makers Nutrition apart from competition is the fact that we are FDA- and GMP certified. How does that affect the quality of service we provide?
The dietary supplement industry is often said to be “unregulated.” That could not be further from the truth. The FDA heavily regulates the industry to make sure that dietary supplements are safe to consume. The industry has extensive regulations for sourcing, handling, cross-contamination prevention, allergen control, packaging, labeling, and testing of raw materials and finished products. The FDA issues a full line of regulations known as Current Good Manufacturing Practices, or cGMP. The cGMP guidelines are issued to make sure that the industry follows procedures required to produce, store and ship safe products. While the FDA cannot inspect every company in the country regularly, the agency allows a third party to do so as a proxy. Makers Nutrition is an FDA-registered company and we voluntarily have a third party organization audit our operations twice annually to ensure that we are in full compliance with FDA regulations for our company. It would be much easier and much less expensive to ignore the cGMP regulations, I am sure, and certainly there are many companies in the industry that do not follow the regulations, but from our perspective, we want our clients to have the peace of mind knowing that we are FDA- cGMP-registered so they and their customers will know they are getting a quality product that is safe.
5. Why is Makers Nutrition the industry’s #1 choice provider?
Makers Nutrition is a company that allows its clients to focus on developing their brand and marketing. We serve as the manufacturing, design, compliance and logistics departments for each our clients. We are FDA-registered and GMP-compliant and offer the very best in quality and customer service. The question should be why would a client choose anything else?