How Bonny is reimaging fiber powder as beautiful
This inspiring story is of a rising eCommerce startup called Bonny, started by Jessica, based out of the United States. Bonny wants more Americans to reach their daily fiber goals. As per Bonny, amazingly, 95% of Americans don’t get enough daily fiber, which is disappointing because fiber has been shown to have several health benefits like improving regularity, reducing bad cholesterol, balancing blood sugar, and boosting immunity, aiding with weight loss, and much more. Here is the story of Bonny in Jessica’s own words.
Introduce us to the idea of Bonny
Meet Bonny, a deliciously clean and sustainably packaged prebiotic fiber supplements brand that is naturally better. Thoughtfully formulated, with only natural and organic ingredients, Bonny’s powerhouse fiber blend is vegan, sugar-free, gluten-free, and contains an amazing 7+ grams of fiber serving (or 25%+ of your recommended daily intake.) Bonny’s packaging is plastic-free featuring forever recyclable steel tins and recycled labels made from 100% post-consumer waste.
Bonny is disrupting the multibillion prebiotic and fiber supplements markets. Fiber supplement leaders are out of touch with today’s consumers; their supplements are packaged in plastic tubs with artificial flavors, dyes, and added sugar. This isn’t very reassuring because fiber has several health benefits, from helping you feel fuller longer to promoting glowing skin, hair, and nails.
We offer consumers a fiber powder that they will want to take. Bonny means beautiful in Scottish and that is how we believe fiber should taste, look and feel. Sold exclusively at trybonny.com in three varieties: Chocolate Hazelnut Dream, Extremely Unflavored, and Vanilla Berry Bliss.
What’s your strategy story? What led you to start Bonny?
Once upon a time during COVID, I wanted to take my fitness to the next level. I became obsessed with nutrition and in turn, realized what I was eating was not ideal. I went down a research rabbit hole… reading everything I could and talking to every expert I could find. I thought I knew the basics, but (spoiler alert) I didn’t.
I also discovered that like 95% of Americans don’t consume enough fiber.
I did what everyone does and Googled “best fiber supplements.” That was a journey. Did your name have to end in ‘cil or ‘lax to be a fiber supplement? And why were the ingredients so bad? Artificial flavors and dyes like yellow #6? Oh, and why the plastic tubs?
What other choice did I have? I took the plunge and purchased a few options. Mistake. I should have known they would taste bad too.
That’s how Bonny was born. I decided to act and identified the best partners with industry expertise to work with.
What marketing, operation strategies are you adopting at Bonny?
We launched in December 2020 and are sold exclusively at www.trybonny.com. In terms of marketing, we are focused on paid marketing, organic social, partnering with influencers, and public relations to share the Bonny story.
We watch every penny we spend and are hyper-focused on finding a path towards profitability. This is the second business I have started from scratch, so I have experience running a business on a lean budget. At Bonny, we are always trying to find ways to reduce spend by learning new skills. For example, I learned how to code to build a beautiful, custom website that would best share the Bonny story. I saved tens of thousands of dollars building the website in-house.
Any strategy mistakes you have made and what did you learn?
We are focused on sustainability and eliminating plastics from our packaging. After going through the creative process of designing our packaging, we received samples to see how the material looked in real life. It didn’t live up to expectations given the properties of the sustainable materials.
We went back to the drawing board. Lesson learned: first start with the materials, especially unfamiliar ones, to fully understand and appreciate their strengths and weaknesses before designing.
Finally what advice do you have for your fellow entrepreneur readers?
Really listen to your customers. We encourage every customer to share their feedback with us. We take their advice to heart and value the opportunity to learn and grow as a result. Listening is also a great way to find out how our customers enjoy taking their Bonny fiber supplements.
Fail fast and often. We’ve had amazing ideas fall flat, and conversely, we have had off-the-wall ideas turn out to be home runs. We learned a lot from the detours and are better for it. Failing presents an opportunity to be more creative and scrappy. Fail fast, fix quicker.