What started out as a personal blog for Jessica Sepel during her studies in health and nutrition over 10 years ago, laid the foundations for what is now leading wellness and lifestyle brand JSHealth. The small but loyal community of followers Sepel built up over the years now stands at more than a million. “I’m very grateful for that because the community could see that I had a genuine desire to help. The product is an extension of that and it happened eight years after building th
ing that community,” Sepel told Inside FMCG.
Sepel, a clinical nutritionist by trade, launched JSHealth in 2018 alongside her husband Dean, as co-founder and CEO.
Today, the brand boasts 16 vitamin formulas and the JSHealth app, a subscription offer that includes a digital nutrition clinic, healthy recipes, daily meal planners, workouts, guided meditations and more.
Reinventing vitamins
Through her work as a nutritionist, Sepel learned about the benefits of therapeutic doses of vitamins and went on to develop a range of her own featuring the purest ingredients. The products have proven popular not only with consumers but with celebrities from J.Lo to the Kardashians. A JSHealth product sells somewhere in the world every 27 seconds.
JSHealth vitamins are quite different from others on the market, particularly around the packaging and marketing of the products, which lists two areas of concern that the formulation addresses, such as Hair + Energy and Detox + Debloat.
“JSHealth reinvented the space … There wasn’t much innovation in the vitamin sector, it’s quite a traditional market and it can be quite overwhelming. I wanted people to look at our product and know how it was going to help them straight away,” Sepel said.
“One formulation tackles two big concerns in one, so it’s very important that formulations are specific about the problems they solve. The whole premise of JSHealth is an achievable, sustainable, simplified approach to living a healthy life,” she said.
With more and more people conscious of looking after their health based on the events of the last year, the business is going from strength to strength. The online business grew by 800 per cent during the pandemic.
Taking health to the world
The vitamins business is sold direct-to-consumer online and through some boutique bricks and mortar retailers in Australia. Perhaps most impressive about the brand is that 70 per cent of its customers are returning.
The brand has also expanded into overseas markets with an online presence in the UK and US and is soon to sign with major retailers in both markets. Next up is Asia.
“We’ve only just launched into the UK six months ago so it’s a very new journey for us. But it’s on par with the Australian business in how fast it’s grown, it’s crazy.” said Sepel.
“The next step for us is the Asian market. We started that about two to three months ago but doing that really slowly and carefully.”
The global team, across Australia, UK, US and China, is now 30-strong.
Strength from setbacks
It hasn’t been an easy ride, however. Sepel said there were many failures along the way. But having to deal with challenging times in her personal life gave her the strength to push forward in business.
“[These personal issues] actually made me a stronger human being. I always say business is just constant issues, constant challenges, nothing about it is easy, but nothing surprises me any more. I don’t really react when something really horrible happens or stressful happens. Not much can reach out to me at this point, because I’ve had to really strengthen up.”
A passion for health and nutrition is what motivates her to continue to drive the business to new heights.
“I wake up and I’m so excited to help people live a healthy life. The business is an afterthought.”
This article was originally published in the July issue of Inside FMCG magazine.