After 15 years with just one hero product, health supplement company AG1 is supercharging its growth by rolling out a bouquet of new form factors in quick succession.
“We’ve spent years building this foundation of the highest quality and most comprehensive supplement that millions of people are drinking,” AG1 CEO Kat Cole told Glossy. “We’re for the people who want the best and the highest quality, and that is now a range of products to meet more people where they are.”
As previously reported by Glossy, AG1 launched in 2010 with its signature Daily Foundational Nutrition drink mix before undergoing a rebrand in 2021. Cole took over as CEO in 2024 after three years as president and promptly rolled out a clinically-tested ‘next-gen reformulation’, entered retail with Ulta Beauty and Target, and launched a sleep-focused variation of its greens powder called AGZ.
Now, AG1 is leveraging its Daily Foundational mix as a base to launch new form factors meant to bring more consumers into the fold. In June, the company launched AG1 Pro, a variation stacked with extra nutrients like creatine, and it introduced Essential Gummy supplements last week.
AG1’s new gummies will compete with Grüns, the 3-year-old green gummy darling purchased by Unilever for $1.2 billion in June, plus a flurry of competitive products from brands like Lemme, Bloom and Plant People, among many others.
As a science-first company backed by clinicals and third-party validation through NSF Certified for Sport, Cole is the first to acknowledge that the gummy launch surprised many diehard fans. “They’re not for the same people,” she told Glossy. “We surveyed our customers, and we have a huge subscriber base, and they are very engaged so we get a lot of information. Less than 10% of our existing AG1 customers use gummies in any form in their routine.”
Instead, Cole thinks of gummies as an entry into a more casual wellness consumer base. “Some people say, ‘Look, I’m not going to stick with a routine unless I have it in a fun format like that’,” she said. “And I’m not going to look down my nose at those people, right? That’s 25% of the supplement market right now. If you want to ignore those people, you’re ignoring a big part of the market.”
Cole is also cognizant of the optics around being a science-backed company and launching a product with cane sugar, which is important for the taste and experience of a gummy. For example, Grüns has eight grams of sugar per serving and Lemme has four. AG1’s new gummies have 5 grams of cane sugar per serving, the same amount as a can of Poppi, the better-for-you soda darling purchased by PepsiCo for $1.95 billion last year.
“The criticism that some may have [is that] ‘gummies are candy’ or ‘cans are just sodas,’” Cole said. “They’re actually a platform of ingredients that make that form and that occasion appealing to some subset [of consumers].”
In a way, Cole is positioning AG1’s new and forthcoming launches as “good, better, best,” with “several launches a year” planned to keep up with market demand.
“The storytelling for us is really a job to be done about educating the consumer on what quality they deserve in every form factor, and being very honest about each of those form factors,” she said.
For example, nutrients like probiotics cannot survive in a gummy, so they were left out, Cole said. It’s a trade-off most consumers can accept for their form factor of choice, she added. This allows AG1’s marketing machine to ensure diehard fans that they’re getting the best nutrition while allowing those who can’t commit to a daily green drink an easy entry point to better nutrition.
That includes an AG1 +Energy powder mix launching in late August, made to appeal to those who down their beverage before a workout, plus a canned, ready-to-drink option coming out next year.
“The consumer is now looking for many moments to make healthy choices,” Cole said. “If a lot of customers are preferring a form factor, a retailer or an occasion, then we should honor that and bring our quality to them. They deserve more third-party rigor. They deserve our formulation experience. They deserve more efficiency.”
