Persona Nutrition CEO Brown Delivers Prescription For Success At SubSummit Conference
Persona Nutrition's five-minute Persona Vitamin assessment algorithm is based on 10 years of work by company doctors and nutritionists, millions of pages of scientific research and 850 analyzed potential prescription drug interactions. The personalized vitamin subscription service offers its customers five trillion combinations of supplements.
If the City of New Orleans shipped out a subscription box full of food, would it include gumbo, Crawfish Étouffée and beignets?
It would if Jason Brown, co-founder and CEO of Persona Nutrition was in charge of content curation. Those niche delectables are on his personal list this week "to devour" as he attends and speaks at the fourth annual Subscription Summit (SubSummit), at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, 2 Poydras St., from Wednesday, May 29 through Friday, May 31.
More than 1,200 attendees and nearly 100 speakers have convened at SubSummit to network and procure tips on how to start and scale successful subscription businesses. Today, at his afternoon session "Pull Up A Seat: How Technology Gives Consumers A Spot At The Innovation Table," Brown will talk about personalized products delivered to your door. He predicts the industry trend will continue to gain momentum as innovations in technology and artificial intelligence accelerate to keep up with the fast pace of customer demand.
"Whether you're in the beauty business, meal planning business or nutrition business, a common trend is convenience," said Brown about Persona Nutrition, a leading personalized vitamin and supplement subscription service based out of Washington. "Consumers want a highly-personalized experience, but with speed and convenience. The validation of the subscription model came from Amazon's acquisition of PillPack, an online pharmacy, for north of $700 million in 2018. In the personalized nutrition segment, it's difficult for a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer to capture a person's lifestyle, age, gender, health goals, stress levels, sleep patterns, dietary restrictions, medication use and a number of other factors during one visit. Through technology advances in artificial intelligence, today's vitamin-seeking consumer can take an online nutritional assessment from the privacy and comfort of their own home and get a customized daily pack of vitamins delivered directly to their doorstep every 28 days."
Brown co-founded and launched the Persona Nutrition brand just a few years ago as one of the first personalized nutrition subscription startups. It now boasts five trillion possible combinations of nutrition recommendations and, through an exclusive partnership, delivers leading probiotics brand Culturelle® as part of its subscription plan.
SubSummit was created and is managed by the Subscription Trade Association (SUBTA), and positions attendees to grow the subscription commerce industry with consumer-driven solutions.
"Now in its fourth year, SubSummit has become the event that we aspired to create serving as the centerpiece of the subscription commerce industry, its continued evolution as an industry and as a resource to all involved," said Paul Chambers, co-founder of SUBTA. "SubSummit serves as an annual opportunity to come together and chart a course on how our industry can be the best steward for our customers."
"Beyond The Box" is this year's SubSummit theme, and for Persona Nutrition's Brown that means personalizing nutrition for all consumers at every stage in their life.
"The supplement aisles are filled with cookie-cutter bottles of multivitamins that are made for the masses," he said. "There are no two people alike in the world, so why would you take the same multivitamin as your neighbor? The key here is personalization. Your stage in life can be a predictor to vitamin and supplement needs. For all populations, nutrients and nutrient levels shift throughout life's stages. For instance, if you're in your childbearing years, it is important to get enough Omega-3 fatty acids, specifically DHA, since it is a building block of the brain. In addition, Folic Acid (Vitamin B9) is crucial to support healthy neural tube development in the growing fetus. Persona Nutrition takes into account a person's stage in life to curate a very custom set of daily vitamins."
Persona Nutrition reps said their company is based on deep research from their team of nutritionists under the direction of their Medical Advisory Board and they provide the highest quality ingredients and service.
They said customers take a five-minute online assessment about their health, lifestyle and prescription medications and then get personalized, doctor-approved vitamin recommendations. The daily packs are then shipped and delivered for 30 percent less than other premium brands.
Serial entrepreneur Brown has been a founder of nine direct-to-consumer businesses in three countries and has 40 years of experience growing startups to maturity. He said Persona Nutrition markets an exclusive customer experience with its online assessment that captures a variety of health and wellness attributes that factor into a person's overall makeup to curate and fulfill a very personalized pack of daily vitamins.
"We take personalization even further by organizing the vitamins and supplements by the best time of day to take each nutrient," said Brown. "In addition, we have on-site nutritionists as our customer care representatives who are available by phone, email or web chat to answer any questions or provide further personalization. Health care practitioners, including medical doctors and registered dietitians, are using our online nutritional assessment to help create personalized vitamin recommendations for their patients.
"We stand out from other personalized nutrition companies in our ability to cross-reference more than 850 prescription medications," he said. "In a consumer survey, nearly 40 percent of vitamin consumers who were also taking prescription medications were unaware that vitamins and supplements can impact the effectiveness of medications. Persona's ability to cross-reference drug-nutrient interactions is imperative to avoid potentially risky nutrient depletions from prescription medications."
Persona Nutrition's mission also includes a culture of philanthropy as the company donates vitamins to those in need.
"One of the first initiatives we executed as a startup was aligning with the Vitamin Angels organization, which provides lifesaving vitamins to mothers and children at risk of malnutrition worldwide, including families living in the U.S.," said Brown. "As proud supporters of Vitamin Angels, every Persona vitamin pack order provides at least two children who are at risk of malnutrition a full year of vitamins. To date, we've helped more than 322,000 children receive essential vitamins through this program."
At SubSummit tonight, the CUBE Awards, the first awards celebration of its kind for the subscription box industry, will be presented. Persona Nutrition has been nominated as a finalist for the Best Health/ Wellness Box award and will compete with other subscription box companies to win "Best Of" awards in 14 categories including Best Men's Box, Best Women's Box, Best Start-Up Box and the Social Good Award.
The 2019 SubSummit also offers attendees an exhibit hall, a startup pitch competition, networking functions and a keynote address by Kim Dixon, executive vice president and chief operating officer of FedEx Office and Print Services, Inc., entitled "Going Beyond Delivery to Build Your Brand."
Co-founder and CEO of Persona Nutrition Jason Brown is a serial entrepreneur who has more than 40 years of executive experience as a direct-to-consumer retailer, entrepreneur, global business development advisor, and partner to many successful health, wellness and textile retail ventures.
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