Masterclass: Evan Hayes, Factors Group

It’s not every day you get a 1:1 with one of Australia’s most successful natural product developers and a genuine gentleman to boot.

In this exclusive Take Friday Off Masterclass, we sit down (read: get him on Zoom while he was driving to his next appointment) with Evan Hayes (find him on LinkedIn) and chat about his background in the industry, how he got his start, product development at Blackmores and BioCeuticals, starting four brands in under two years and a whole lot more.

Factors Group Australia is the Australian branch of Canada’s leading natural products groups Natural Factors, specialising in the research and development, manufacturing, and distribution of high-quality nutritional supplements.

Transcript follows:

- Hello, how are you both? - I am good, thank you. - [Dane] Well, thank you.

- Evan, you're in the car, we'll introduce you in a second, but I might just let you turn off your phone camera now that everyone's seen your beautiful face.

- Thanks, Gabe, that's less points for me then. Yeah, I mean--

- Exactly. Actually, there's a story in there.

- Yeah, there is, but we won't chat about that. Let me just turn the video off, and apologies if the driving comes through on it. Just tell me to pull over if it's not working and I'll come back on.

- Okay, thanks. This is the moment for us, and I want to call this a Masterclass, actually.

- Okay.

- Because it's very rare that you're gonna get someone like Evan to kind of chat about his experience with product development, and I think we work in a competitive industry, right, so its below that surface competition, there's actually a level of collegiality that maybe people don't know about, and I think also because it's such a small industry, we've all worked with each other, or as we said earlier, we've all run into each other at some point or the other. So, this conversation, as I was saying to Evan when we were preparing for it, is meant to be kind of free-form, but, you know, if there's a couple of buckets that we can kind of touch upon, I think that'll be great.

So, let me do Evan's one for him 'cause I know he probably won't do it. I won't do it properly anyway. So, Evan was Technical Director at BioCeuticals when I was at Blackmores, and we did that acquisition of that business, gosh, how long ago was that, Evan?

- [Evan] Oh, it's like eight or nine years ago now, I think.

- Yeah, so quite a while ago.

- Maybe a little bit less.

- BioCeuticals at that stage was the market leader, or very close to maybe a one or two player in the practitioner channel in Australia, and I think a lot of that success was due to the quality of the formulation work that Evan and his team were doing inside BioCeuticals over a number of years. And so, Evan was then, with the acquisition, came across to Blackmores, and then played a really critical role in Blackmores' product development and procurement strategy. So, he served, I think, as Director of Sourcing at that point and, you know, did a number of different, major global tenders for Blackmores, you know, saved countless millions of dollars on raw material costs and costs of goods and everything else, and then also had the responsibility for procurement across 14 or 15 different markets, as well as product development, I should say. So, super, super, super experienced, and I think that doesn't even really touch on what he's been doing for the last two years now, is that right?

- [Evan] Two years in April, yeah. Yeah, so just over two years. - Where he's gone on to become the Managing Director of Factors Group Australia, so, launching, I think, three brands in two years.

- [Evan] Yeah, bespoke brands into each market, so a practitioner brand, a grocery brand, a health food brand, and about to launch a weight-loss brand as well. So, yeah, so, four in market brands plus contract manufacturer for other brands.

- Yeah, so, you know, he doesn't do a lot, you know.

- Yeah, but what were you at before, up at four o'clock this morning, busy on a--

- That's 'cause it's a Canadian, it's a Canadian manufacturer. The plus side is kind of 80 years of experience in manufacturing, the negative side is that a 4:00 a.m. start isn't unusual if you want to have a meeting with a bunch of people.

- [Dane] Yeah. - These time zones have been killers actually, haven't they?

- [Evan] Yeah, and it's the same, you work Saturday, you lose Monday because of time zones and days' differences as well, but it's very collaborative. So, occasionally, they might be up at 10 o'clock at night so that they can go on our time zone too. It's quite collaborative.

- So, Evan, I wanted to first thank you very much for coming and coming on this call with us, and secondly, thank you for your time. You know--

- Thank you for asking me.

- You are someone that people can't employ anymore, basically. You're in, effectively, your own business. You're the captain of your own destiny, but I think it'll be still great to touch on your experience, particularly in a few areas. So, one is, as you said earlier, you know, Factors is an incredible group out of Canada, but one of their strengths, I guess, has been really getting to grips with vertical integration. So, not in the classic sense of, you know, do your own manufacturing or buy your own raw materials, but even all the way back to the farm.

- Yeah. - So, I thought we can perhaps start with that, and feel free to use any blatant, self-promotional techniques that you choose.

- [Evan] I have none. This is as much self-promotion as I like. Yeah, that's right, Factors, as you know, Gabe, one owner, a guy called Roland Gahler, who, over the course of the last 50 years, has been really growing what started off as a family, a small family business in complementary medicine to probably, or definitely, the number one complementary medicine business in North America, or in Canada, but top five in the whole of North America, and it's house brands. So, various brands people would recognize, like Weber, are Natural Factors itself, and then other brands like Calista, which is a cosmetic brand that's widely known, it mightn't be known that it's a Factors' brand as well.

- [Gabriel] Right.

- [Evan] And so, Roland basically had a distribution business and had difficulty getting product, so set up a manufacturing business, and then had difficulty, like, growing, manufacturing without bringing out his own branded business, and then had difficulty seeing that raw materials had the providence that he wanted and the testing he wanted, so grew into raw material sourcing and testing, and then, sort of, as that grew, really couldn't get the raw materials that he wanted to, and so, went into production of raw materials and farming of natural products as well so that he could get the full supply chain. So, Factors has its own organic farms and produces, I think, 70 organic ingredients on those farms, has its own herbal extraction facilities, which basically produces its own ethanol for herbal extraction and has its own Alaskan Fishery as well, which isn't widely known.

- I actually didn't know that, that's amazing.

- Yeah. So, we're probably the only organization in the world that has complete catch to batch, as we used to say, MSC certification, so we basically control the whole supply chain on Alaskan fish oil so that we know what goes into the products. So, he's put a lot of time and effort into ensuring providence on the raw materials just so that he knows what goes into it, and he's been doing this 20, 30 years before anybody else. It's really extraordinary, actually.

- It's either visionary or some combination of luck and vision, I think, isn't it?

- [Evan] Yeah, it's fantastic working, like, in an organization like that, where the values that you have, and you'd noticed too, that we searched the world when we were sourcing and doing product development for Blackmores. We searched the world for raw materials that would have the requirements that we wanted. So, it's actually, it's amazing to not have to search the world, to have all that availability at your fingertips. It's really cool.

- So, I think that sounds incredible, and I know, from sort of working with you on different things, that it is true to label in the sense that, you know, it really is an organic echinacea farm on this, you know, beautifully scenic piece of land in Canada.

- Yeah. - But is the other side of that coin perhaps this, you know, one, growth margin kind of dilution from having all of this overhead, and two, just complexity across the business that perhaps, you know, a pure marketing and sales company doesn't have?

- [Evan] Yeah, I agree. You can't produce everything, so there's 7,000 raw materials across the company that are utilized for ourselves and for others. And so, there's an extraordinary effort not just coming to producing our own, but in sourcing the best that there is to be had elsewhere as well. So, there's a huge procurement and strategic sourcing team that had tons of endless assurance and tons of paperwork and knowledge and certification in gluten, extraordinary amounts of in-house testing, and then, independent testing too. So, it's quite complex, and it's not easy, and you can weigh up the pros and cons of whether to do that or outsource the lot of it and just become a sales and marketing team, but there's always that bit in the back of your mind when you outsource, because, again, as you know, not every company that I've worked in in this space manufactured its own products.

- Yeah.

- [Evan] There's always that bit in the back of your mind, is it just a rubber stamp, or is it just, like, paper-based? And it's uneasy, when you're basically selling health, and you're selling your values, and you're selling a belief system in organic, or the need for it, then actually, you have to go that extra mile. So, it's complex, but it's getting to a point where I think that our customers and our practitioners actually, it's not a nice-to-have, it's a basic requirement. I remember when we were looking at WWF for krill years ago, and we basically went to the South Pole to source the raw material, and Wes, the guy that was working in procurement, went, and we were quite proud of that. And then we talked to a lot of practitioners, and they were almost, what are you patting yourself on the back for, we expect that, you're a natural health company, you say you do these things, we expect that you do them. And so, actually, more and more, as complex as it gets, and it doesn't get easier, it's actually, if you want to be in this space and are prepared to be innovative, you actually need to do the work, you need to be able to stand behind the ingredients that you state, and that means helping the planet while you're doing it as well. So, it's hard, but, yeah, I wouldn't go backwards, I think we should push for more, which is why we push for B Corp status as well most recently, because it was good enough that we were doing it, and then that stopped being good enough, and it became more about, other people should hold us accountable, we should be able to not just say we can do and show we can do it, but be measured as well. So, B Corp gives us that. I think you have to it.

- And I think you were the first in the Factors Group with your division in Australia to achieve B Corp, right? - [Evan] Yeah, we were the first in Australia in this space and the first in Factors to be able to do it. Again, we were quite lucky in the sense that we set up a brand new facility in Australia, and we were getting TGA, FDA, CFDA licensing at the time, so it actually wasn't that hard to write the procedures and have the audits and validations with B Corp in mind too. It's actually quite difficult if you're set up already to actually be able to supply the information that they need. So, we were able to design all our processes with full transparency in mind, actually, so we were quite lucky in that sense. - I think, as well, Evan, when you're saying, you know, for example, you just launched four, or even if you launched three different brands, you're about to do a fourth, and they're all bespoke formulas, you know, quite a lot of people might not realize that it can be difficult when you want to use these novel ingredients, and if a particular manufacturer doesn't have access to them, there's a lot of steps and it can get quite complex. So, what you guys are doing is amazing, but there's a lot of extra, you know, factors that need to be included obviously. You know, you're ahead of the game in forward thinking in terms of trying to close that loop, but it's--

- [Evan] Thanks. Like we'd said at the start, it's very collegiate, this industry. Everybody's known each other for years, and actually, like, even when you move roles, generally people stay in this industry because you're passionate about what you do, and you like what you do, and you believe in what you do and the people around you as well. So, actually, I haven't seen another industry like this, and you can go wider than Australia, and it's a global industry, where people really know each other, or know of each other as well. And so, when we set up Factors in Australia, there was people that we wanted to work with and people that wanted to work with us, and so, actually, we were able to, yourselves included actually, we were able to keep in contact with the people that we wanted to, even if they were working in competitor companies, because we had, like, an aligned but bigger vision. And, actually, it gets easier to be able to do the hard things because you're not really starting from scratch, you've got a lot of experienced people with their own idea, it's a fantastic team with their own ideas and opinions in where they want to bring the company, so you kinda hit the ground running with all of that enthusiasm and knowledge. You don't have to sort of, like, instill it in people. - Yeah.

- And so, but it's not easy. In , the brand that we've just launched into health food, in one of the formulas, there's 97 ingredients, and we launched it in Australia. 70 of those ingredients are from our own farms, and so, the Canadian GMP requirements versus the Australian GMP requirements were very different, so we basically had to rebuild the specifications and increase the testing for each one of those ingredients. It's not even permissible to basically do a premix of all of them and just call it, you know, Premix X. We had to go and retest, rewrite a specification for all of them, and for some, there's only one milligram of an ingredient in there, and it was about, you know, three weeks to a month's worth of work for each of the ingredients, but again, if you're trying to push the limits of what everybody else should be doing, somebody has to have the first go.

- Yeah.

- I do kind of wish we didn't do ones with 80 ingredients first. I think maybe one or two ingredients might've been an easier approach. From a launch perspective, we thought it would take three months, and it took a year and a half to be able to get the formulas ready, but, like, that was totally worth it. I think they're probably the most, what's the best way to say it without sort of being discourteous to others?

- Most comprehensive. Most comprehensive.

- [Evan] Yeah, most comprehensive formulas on the market. From a compliance and from a regulatory, technical and evidence perspective as well, I think they're fantastic.

- So, I'm gonna be a bit controversial. So, we've made a decision with Take Friday Off that we won't work with brands who want to do the old one core ingredient to drive the claim and the rest of the formulation is pixie dust.

- [Evan] Yeah. - And I know you share that philosophy. - [Evan] Yeah.

- How do we, how does one reconcile that philosophy with, you know, big box retail pressure in terms of margin, these product, whether, you know, we believe they're medicines, but a lot of people treat them like consumer goods, any other consumer goods, so very price-sensitive?

- Yeah. - How do you reconcile that balance, like, how do you get decent cost to goods, and particularly in a startup context, where you've got no scale economies, how does one do it?

- [Evan] Yeah, I completely agree with you, it's not even a balance. Actually, yes, I think you can put an ingredient in at a small level because it works from a formulation perspective and there may not be evidence for it, but I don't think you can then utilize that from an evidence basis. I think the consumer is much more advanced now than some people give them credit for. And so, I think you can microdose, but it's flourish, it's kind of more like a painter's canvas than it is actually like an evidence-based approach. I've also never managed to audit a pixie's facility. So, I don't have much credence in pixie dust, but what that means is basically, also, there's been a long-held view as well that there's a lot of margin in this industry and that there's a lot of profit to be made. - Inefficiencies, yeah.

- [Evan] Yeah, and if you're doing it right, there really isn't because natural ingredients are expensive, they have shelf lives, they have harvests. They require more and more testing, the consumer is more demanding. So, the tests of five years ago, like, there's tests that we do now, we do mass spec on raw materials, we do DNA testing on probiotics that people wouldn't have done five years ago, but like I was saying earlier, now expect it. So, you have to put an awful lot of time and effort into it, and if you're doing it right, and you're right, as a startup, there is, you also have to market it, you have to explain it. Our products are difficult, and there aren't too many products that we just launch that are the same as everybody else's because there are good versions of those products out there. I'll happily recommend other brands' products for a really good CoQ10 rather than bring out one ourself and just compete on price. So, our products are difficult, and so, they need a lot of education. They need a lot of time on market for people to be able to accept what we're saying is true, to use it in clinic, and to be able to see that it works and to talk about it. So, really, margin is a bit of a, yes, you're not starting something like this to profit from it. - Yeah. - [Evan] And similarly, there is a lot of brands on the market that do that. There is a lot of brands in Australia that their endpoint is basically export into China, and it's all about low dosing and high margins so that they can market that too, but again, they're becoming, they don't last that long, really. They have a year or two probably of shelf life in Australia, and the brands with longevity are the brands that are putting the effort in and are focused on the Australian consumer and the export market because they have something that they believe everybody should be using. It is really hard to kind of go, well, you need to fund everything that you want to do, so you need to be able to pay for that, the consumer has a price perception that they can't go beyond, and there's the squeeze in the middle. In previous iterations of personalities, you take that squeeze from the manufacturer or the raw material supplier, but they've got requirements, they've got mortgages to pay, they've got people in those companies that are passionate too. There's nobody anywhere along the supply chain that I've met that is doing this basically for profit alone, they're doing it for love and belief as well. - And personal reasons, that's right. - Yeah, exactly, and with that comes that sort of margin squeeze. And you can benefit, there's other ways that you can benefit then if you're not pulling it from the consumer or pulling it from the quality and efficacy of the product. This is my point of view, guys, then. The cost of product development is really high. You need a lot of people to multitask quality, regulations, formulation, project management, get something out on time to be able to liaise and negotiate with manufacturers. There's a very, very high cost in that, and there's very few people, at least that I've met, that's able to do more than three of those activities at any one point in time. So, outsourcing, outsourcing some of your activities is the norm in most industries. I'm not too sure why this industry has developed like a master-of-all type of mentality when it comes to product development. It's basically since this industry is so collegiate, you have, I think, in many cases for formulas that I've put together, or we've put together, like, as teams, the raw material supplier and the manufacturer was very much a part of that formulation and very much part of the whole process. And so, outsourcing a function is a really good way to get current, viable solutions at a better cost than basically self-funding by having a very large team. - Yeah, and I think, because there is no, typically, no patent protection or exclusivity on raw materials in most cases, right, there are definitely exceptions to that rule, it's really, first move for advantage and then making the most of that first move for advantage in the channel that you choose that gives you the advantage commercially, right? So, I think-- - No, you're dead right. - I think that that's possibly the reason why people think they've got to hold everything, you know, inside the business, you know, keep it as confidential as possible, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. - [Evan] I completely agree with you. I used to take pride in being first. I still do. I can't count how many products or concepts that we've launched before everybody else, and sometimes I kinda think, that was great, you know, pat yourself on the back. Some of the best products, I think, I've ever worked on are on shelves for other people because we picked the wrong ones because we were focused on first, and sometimes first is just another word for too early. - [Gabriel] Yeah. - [Evan] Or we didn't market them effectively and they became more effective for other people. So, we got the focus wrong, we put a lot of time and effort into being first, and actually second or third learnt from our mistakes and made better products out of it. - [Gabriel] Yeah. - [Evan] So, when there's no IP, yeah, it is a constant problem about whether it's first, but I think you're dead right, like, being at the Z case of it, being there. So, this industry loves new as well, which is fantastic, which is another reason why I love it, so being current all the time is very difficult. It's kind of like, you know, there's a point in time where whatever music you loved in your 20s you kinda love for the rest of time, and you don't know what's going on. - Yes, I know! - And product development-- - They call my playlist Dad Rock now, it's disgusting. - Oh, hilarious! You know, that question, that silly question, what keeps you up at night? - Yeah. - [Evan] And for me a lot of it is actually like waking up one day to realize that I'm not relevant anymore, that we didn't spark the trend, we didn't pay attention to it, we didn't listen to the practitioner or the customer, and actually we became a little bit jaded or arrogant in what we're doing. So, actually, any support that you can get, and you know yourself, product development is a team effort, it's not one person, it's not pyramidical, it's not really one person saying this is the future. - No. - And so, the more people that you can collaborate with and the more people that you can listen to in a way that's open, that all ideas are, you know, that all ideas are good ones, I think, is perfect. Holding it together and, like, not communicating, it's why something like this is very easy to do because it doesn't matter who hears it, it doesn't matter kind of what you say. Like, the constant talking about information is what makes us relevant, rather than holding it together and holding it tight. - Yeah. So, let's say, let's say you're mentoring a young person coming into the industry, and I know you've done this in real life, and they're coming in perhaps as a naturopath or a nutritionist or a herbalist, or whatever, and they want to make a start in product development or technical development, and this is a question for you as well, Dane, what would you tell them? What would you tell them to focus on? - Man, I think the approach, and jumping in as well, my whole approach would be just trying to let him see a bit of a bird's-eye view of what's actually involved, and it comes back to what you were saying before, Evan, where there's so many different factors involved. You've got these raw materials that come from all over the world. They all need to land in the one manufacturing facility. They need expertise to be able to combine them into the dosage form, they need expertise to test 'em, to make sure that everything's exactly as it's meant to be. You know, then they need to have good operations, logistics, project management to get 'em from there to where you want 'em to go, good sales and marketing to get 'em out into the industry, and then good feedback loops to see, well, what did we do well, what can we do better next time, how can we improve? So, it's really trying to think about, well, what goes on from an idea in your head to a product out on the shelf, and then all the way back to the feedback, and really trying to give 'em a bit of exposure to that, and then start to look at a couple of products that they like. I mean, generally, when I'm educating people, I'll say, well, tell me what's your interest, is there any conditions or any ailments that you have currently or in the family that you'd like to learn a bit more about, and at least then there's a bit of engagement. And we can go, oh, you've got somebody with hypothyroidism in the family, well, let's have a look at the types of ingredients that are useful for that and why they work for that application, and then let's have a look at some of the products that either claim to or do address that situation, and let's try to unpack it a little bit. - [Evan] I think that's a great answer. The opportunity to do what you love is quite high in this industry, again, which is really cool, and it's not for everybody, but there really is, it's still, what amount of years later, there still is so much to learn and so much to do. So, it's kind of that thing of follow your passions. If you like the raw material sourcing part, not everybody does, not everybody's idea of a good time is going to a fish oil processing facility, it is mine. That means I've got 20 of them. I love it. If that's what you're into, there's a space for you. If you like compliance, and if you like being in an industry that has actually gone from the wild west to semi-professional, to actually, like, ruthlessly professional and world-leading, this is the industry for you. And if you like talking to people, if you like clinical trials, if you like negotiating, actually if you like working with people that are passionate about something, that don't hold back opinions, but are respectful of yours, this is the industry for you. So, we're in it, and people are gravitating towards it. I started in a quality control function in this industry. - That was the question I wanted to ask you actually, Evan, how did you handle the different turning points or the different crossroads? You've obviously worked some, you know, exceptional roles and had some massive impact in a range of different positions, like, a range of different brands. What was the journey you took from, you know, when you were a lot younger to where you are now and some of those key milestones that changed your path along the way? - Yeah, it's a long story. It's a long story, and it's very people-based and conversations that I had that actually made me take different directions that I wouldn't normally have. It is a long story, but reasonably entertaining. So, but maybe for another time. - You can go on. - Ah, dude. - [Evan] Ultimately, and Gabe's in the story too actually. We worked head-to-head against each other for almost, probably a year, where we were working on various sides of other negotiations, or we were working on similar projects in different companies. And so, like, Gabe's name kept popping up, but we'd never actually, even when we were working together, we'd never actually sat next to each other until we were on a plane to the U.S. about a year and a half after we'd started. We were always face-to-face in different conversations, but actually never sat down. And we sat across or next to each other and basically just started chatting, okay, well, tell me about you. So, they're defining moments, when you actually then kind of realize that, okay, I made some right choices, which got me here, I made some wrong choices which I'm auto-correcting and stuff. But, yeah, it was a traditional route basically. I worked in product development before I came into this industry in Ireland, the U.S. and North America, and then came into quality because, for various reasons, I felt quality was lacking in this space, and there were new regulations around stability, and I'd had a few conversations, which made me think, okay, well, I can probably make an impact. Then I worked on clinical trials because I felt the same thing, but there wasn't much evidence behind some of the stuff that we were talking about, so it kind of made that a little bit easier to sort of recompense, basically, my putting evidence behind products. That led into product development and innovation, and as we were growing, it naturally led into procurement and sourcing because that was kind of the next step for growth, kind of looking backwards into the supply chain. And then, finally into, with basically some amazing colleagues that are working in or running other companies in this space, and also, right, that I could rely on and learn from. So, yes, again, because it's so collegiate, you learn a lot. You learn what bits you like, what bits you want to make better, and then kind of realize, okay, well, while I wanted to do something, I wanted to move beyond running a function to running something larger. I also felt that I'd been backend for most of my career doing research and development and sourcing and procurement, and I wanted to actually feel the anxiety that comes with front of house, and basically, like, owning a decision that has an impact on sales then too. So, basically I wanted, you know, I wanted the full-roundedness as well. It's a longer story, more entertaining than I made it there, but people find their way into this through all sorts of things. It's very, very non-traditional, people think that they start this as a natural pattern and kind of end up in this, but I think, Gabe, you're a lawyer. - Yeah. - [Evan] There's people, half of the procurement teams that I worked with in previous roles had business degrees and worked in economics, were accountants. In product development, accountancy is really important as well, you would think. So, people come from everywhere, and so you get a great mix, and obviously naturopaths as well and practitioners. - I think that's an amazing summary, and we need to do the longer one over a couple of beers at some point, but the critical missing ingredient, Dane, I think, and everyone listening, is, like, just a brutal kind of focused work ethic that I've seen from Evan, you know, consistently over probably the 10-odd years that we've known each other, and just a sort of a relenting focus on getting the right information as well and the most accurate information. And I think, yeah, you can have all the opportunities, kind of, the doors of opportunity open for you, but if you don't have some of those elements as well, it's very unlikely you'll have the sort of success that he's enjoyed. - Yeah, I think-- - [Evan] I think that's a really good point, it's a lot of hard work actually to do. - A lot of hard work. - Yeah, for everybody. - You're quite, you know, quite progressed through your career, Evan, but even through our conversation today, it seems like you're still very open and keen to learn off everybody and, you know, there's a willingness to take on new knowledge, which I think is important. - [Evan] It's super fun, like Gabe alluded to, right, that he works crazy hours, I know that, I'm sure you do yourself, and I think that nonsense that people say, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life, I really think that's rubbish because if you love what you do, all you do is work. You're just doing it all the time. Everything you see, everything you do, you're thinking about how does that work, how does that benefit the consumer, how does that benefit the practitioner's practice, can I make it better, why didn't that work? And so, actually, like, it's a lot of fun doing that. And so, if you stop, if you stop that curiosity, again, you're dead in the water, in my view. What can you offer somebody else other than experience that they could find in Wikipedia if you're not constantly learning and not constantly refining your skills so that you can give them the best of you? - Yeah. - Yeah. - So, that's a good segue way. Where does innovation come from for you, Evan? I just saw you guys launch for Bioclinic the Scobiotic range, which is super cool and something that hasn't-- - Do you like them? - Yeah, really cool, and it hasn't, I mean, you're first to market with that. I've seen some of the academic stuff in the States about that, but, I mean, I'm a bit of a nerd and a weird guy. I don't think the majority of people on the planet have seen that stuff yet. So, where did that come from, for example? - [Evan] Collaboration is probably the short answer, and again, we spent a lot of time together over the years and we've worked on various probiotic products for the Asian market as well, and before that, I'd worked on probiotics for Australia. Again, I'd worked on probiotics in university, the first one in the world actually. The Australian consumer was one of the first to adopt probiotics. At one point in time, probably within Blackmores, when we were all there, 90 to 99% of the time of all probiotics developed in Australia were developed by the people working in one team. Basically people had come together from various companies. So, probiotics was very Fringe at the start, and basic technologies needed to happen, and research needed to happen before you could do other stuff. You needed to get products that were viable during manufacturing, then you needed to get them viable on shelves, so shelf-stable after refrigerated. Then you needed multi-strain and interactions, so there's all these steps. Asia was hardy, you needed-- - The ability as well. - You needed to make them stable in its Zone IVb stability, and heat and humidity played a factor, so we did a lot of work on packaging. And then, as you progress, you kind of go, with probiotics, you're doing all this work to get back to something that the body developed billions of years ago, and the body really developed homeostasis and community rather than single strain organisms. And also, the way products are marketed, it became an arms race on CFU and it became an arms race, and cost gets prohibitive, so formulations change, it gets stronger and weaker, but the body doesn't work like that. It's not about which strains you utilize all the time, it's about what they do in interaction with other organisms within the body or what they produce that then stimulate a response within the body too. So, basic conversation is, we've always felt that as we were refining and developing, and, like, we've made some serious leaps in Australia in the practitioner space and complementary medicine companies in probiotics. BioCeuticals did the first gut:brain axis clinical trial in the world. Metagenics basically brought probiotics to the consumer. Every practitioner brand has had a role to play in developing that. Blackmores brought, in my view, the first, true shelf-stable range to market while BioCeuticals were focusing on a higher dose and refrigerated, for various different reasons, both of them worked at the same time. The consumer knew about immunity and the practitioner knew about the microbiome and multi-strain, so there was a lot of confusion about what was right, and it's basically because there is no right answer on this. - Yeah. - [Evan] Everybody's right about it. So, innovation came, a few of us came together when we started working in Factors and basically saying, I don't think the story is complete, and I had a view, and actually, like, I had a strong view, rather, of where it should go. And actually, it was with talking to some people inside, Nicky in particular in technical and marketing, and Harvey was actually a little bit different, and the way we talked about it, it actually was seeing the same thing from different sides of a lens, and actually, we ended up throwing out the concept that I was working on, and essentially the concept that she was working on too, and then created a new concept from the culmination of the two pieces of work. I think that maybe answers it, that there is no sort of one solution to innovation, there isn't. You know, sometimes, somebody did it somewhere else, and it's an incremental innovation in the marketplace. Sometimes, it's truly new, where it's just observation or reading the research, or hearing people talk, or spotting the trends in the marketplace, but you have to be open to all of those. We launched a product in Factors recently that we could've never done in another company, and it was a concept, ultimately, that I was talking about with you, Gabe, maybe six, seven years ago, and for various reasons, it would've never worked in Australia, and so, the time was wrong. And that's one of our strongest selling products now, actually, because the time is right. The concept was found at the time, like the ideas, you know, the ideas and the reason to believe were there. The consumer just hadn't caught up with it. So, again, innovation is also remembering the stuff that you talked about on a plane or something, or with people, and then, when the time is right, jumping on it. Yeah, so, yeah, I don't know where it comes from. I think, what I really like is other people's stuff, other brands, where you just kind of go, yeah, that's a great idea, I wish I'd thought of that. - Yeah. - [Evan] That's actually the curve, that one. I love looking at other people's stuff and kinda going, I could almost picture the conversation about how that one happened actually, so I quite like that then too, and then that just fuels you to do more yourself as well and to be more innovative as well. Again, it's that collegiate thing, we all strive to do better. - I think that's something that you and Dane do quite well. So, Dane, as you know, was heading up product development at Orthoplex, which is a big job on its own, for BioCeuticals, of course, and I think, one range, Dane, of yours that I really liked was when you went back to sort of clinical first principles in terms of what a person suffering from the condition would need, and you almost built out, like, a range of six or seven products, particularly around gut. - Yeah, I think, it's the same. I enjoy looking at other formulas too, Evan, and trying to understand the thought process and the conversations that went in, went into developing that formula, but really, I think it's all about trying to help people at the end of the line, like what's the problems they're facing, how can you provide a solution that actually addresses that problem? It's not about, you know, back to your conversation before, how can we bring out another CoQ10 and have a race to the bottom, it's like, well, how can we address this problem that's currently not being addressed as effectively as it could, what are the different options that we can, you know, use to address that problem, and then, can we push it further and start getting some good traceable ingredients, some good organic quality ingredients? You know, if there are herbal medicines in there, they've got the right constituents, they're picked at the right time of the year, they're stored in the right environments, they're dried under premium conditions, like really taking it to that extra level to maintain the integrity of everything and make sure it's at a dose that's gonna get results. - [Evan] Yeah, I think you're dead right, you know, the consumer need, it's so vital and, you know, bringing them into the conversation as well, they'll tell you what they need. In most cases, if somebody's not well, they'll have done a lot of the research beforehand, and they just need a form to be able to communicate, and it is our kind of duty to bring those products out as well. Yeah, I think you're right, I think Orthoplex has been very successful in actually focusing on that patient need aspect as well. In particular as well, the extemporaneous ones as well, where the need is slightly different. So, I think it's been quite, yeah, quite successful with that. - I want to be respectful of your time, guys. I know we're just coming up to about 53 minutes. Evan, thank you. It feels like chapter one of maybe a few chapters to this conversation. - [Evan] I don't ramble that much about this sort of stuff, it's interesting when you talk about it, isn't it, when you frame it and you kind of, it does make you very reflective of, like, all the people that you've worked with and the stuff that you've done actually. Yeah, yeah, thank you for the opportunity. - Absolute pleasure, well, we'll have to schedule a round two at some point in the future. - [Evan] Yeah. So, thank you, it was great chatting to both of you. I'll talk to you soon. - Thanks, guys. - Thanks, Evan. - [Evan] Take care, thanks, guys.