It’s been a little over a year since Evolva officially announced the rebranding of its resveratrol, previously marketed as Eve, to its new name Veri-te.
The company’s hope at the time was that the rebranding will help boost awareness of an ingredient that was ‘hard launched’ at the SupplySide West trade show in Las Vegas in late 2014 but still lagged in sales. It had acquired the brand when it bought the Fluxome business out of bankruptcy in 2012. Fluxome had previously obtained GRAS status on the ingredient, which is made via fermentation.
‘We’ve seen our business double last year’
According to Sally Aaron, senior vice president of health ingredients and marketing at Evolva, the last year has been “really great” for the business.
“We’ve seen our business double in the last year, so we’re getting a lot of response and traction in the industry,” she told NutraIngredients-USA. “We’ve brought on some larger customers in the last year which has been really exciting for us.”
She thinks it’s the excitement around a rebranding process that helped Evolve ramp up sales for its resveratrol, one of the most studied nutrients currently available today.
“Launching a new brand, there tends to be a lot of excitement and support within the company, it is not something you do lightly as a company—to invest the time and money to change a brand and focus on it,” she added.
New water dispersible resveratrol
At SupplySide East, Evolva debuted a new ingredient called Reveratrol CWD 90, designed using LipiSperse technology by Pharmako Biotechnologies.
“This is an ingredient system designed to help our customers who are interested in having a beverage product,” she said.
“One of the things about resveratrol is that it is not soluble in water. It doesn’t go in solution very well, it gets chunky. In order to address that we came up with our 90% water dispersible product,” she added.
Focusing on new studies, delivery formats
Studies on resveratrol have linked it to many health benefits—from cardiovascular health to blood sugar management. It was first researched for its purported ability to mimic the effects of calorie restriction on cellular aging markers. Marketers of the ingredient tend to position it with the catchall ‘healthy aging.’
“There is such a foundation of strong science behind it,” Aaron said, estimating that there are around 200 studies on resveratrol.
As a company, Evolva helps fund research as well as supply capsules of resveratrol to researchers. Most recently it announced a study done in collaboration with Northumbria University on resveratrol’s effects on the cerebral blood flow, inflammation, and gut biota (results expected by the end of 2018).
Beyond helping with scientific research, Aaron added that Evolva wants to be known as a supplier-partner that can help customers innovate new delivery formats, “beyond tablets and capsules.”
“We have customers who are doing really innovative things. One customer, Reserol, they have this unique cheek film. You put the film on your cheek and it delivers a highly bioavailable resveratrol,” she said. “It’s a really neat technology.”