At the broadest level, all nutritional supplement companies are attempting to solve the same problem: how to help people maintain and improve their health and wellbeing. For these companies, this problem is tackled through the medium of nutrition, with the sale of food-based supplements – consisting predominantly of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fibres, and botanical ingredients – that are designed to support the diet and specific physiological functions.
For a long time, companies selling nutritional supplements (also known as ‘dietary’ or ‘food’ supplements) have been well-positioned to address the wellness-related needs of consumers. This was because, until recently, consumers defined wellness primarily in terms of physical health. But this is beginning to change. Over the last few years, we have seen big shifts in how wellness is defined. Nowadays, physical health is only one piece of a bigger, more holistic puzzle.
Nowhere are these shifts more apparent than within the consumer segment belonging to Generation Z. This generation (born between 1997 and 2012) is at the forefront of a new wellness movement that places physical health on equal footing with mental, social, and even spiritual wellbeing.
And, when defined in these terms, young people today are, well, not well. Anxiety and depression are ranked, by Gen Z, as two of the biggest problems their age group currently face. Research also indicates that they are lonelier and less hedonistic than previous generations of young people, placing more emphasis on attaining good grades than on enjoying rounded social lives. The Economist captured it best in the title of a 2019 article: Generation Z, they said, is “stressed, depressed and exam-obsessed”.
Helping young people improve their overall health and wellbeing is a fast-growing, multibillion-dollar global problem. For Zooma, it is a problem that we hope to address for young people living in the UK between the ages of 18 and 25. It is a problem that we will tackle, not only through a range of products, which support physical and mental wellbeing, but through a brand and a community that speak to changing, more holistic views of wellness.