In the continuation of our “Thinkers & Tinkers” series looking at pioneering and intrepid entrepreneurs in the sport, we sit down 2007 Ironman Canada winner Jasper Blake to talk about the company he helped found – Aspire Sports Supplements, makers of 7Systems vitamins. Like many professional triathletes, Jasper juggles many roles – coach and mentor to both age-group and pro athletes; husband and father of one, but with a second one on the way; and competitive racer, with the impressive statistic of never having finished outside of the top-5 at any regular season Ironman. But in what is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon, he is also small business owner. And like many triathletes who own their own businesses, the company Jasper is a part of is also a part of the sport of he loves. Aspire Sports Supplements set out to help athletes (all of the founders are current or former triathletes) simplify the process of giving the body what it needs to stay healthy during hard training. As much as everyone – myself included – would love to do that through diet alone, that presents a significant – and occasionally insurmountable – challenge. The goal of Aspire is to help athletes fill these needs the way that many, if not all of us, seem to – by supplementation.
7Systems is currently Aspire Sports Supplements only product. It is a multi-vitamin designed to meet the real needs of endurance athletes, as opposing to fulfilling the FDAs minimum guidelines about what the “average” person needs to maintain basic health. The name comes from what Aspire calls the seven systems of the body – Muscular, Immune, Respiratory, Digestive, Nervous, Skeletal, and Cardiovascular. Their unofficial motto is “You do more. You need more. We’ve got more.” And that’s idea that has the support of numerous athletes, including three Olympic gold medalists, including triathlete Simon Whitfield, who rely on the product themselves.
As I wrote in the first piece of the series, the idea behind this article is not to try and evaluate 7System, though I have tried it and at the very least am still around to write this article. I set out with the goal of evaluation, but I just didn't feel confident writing an article praising or skewering something based off my own "N=1" experiences. Instead, I thought it would be more interesting to talk with Jasper about what it was that led him to start Aspire and to take responsibility for not only his own training and racing from the traditional fitness standpoint, but also for supplying the products that would keep him healthy and keep him performing well. There was certainly a level of risk associated with this, and I wanted to know why he was willing - and seemingly eager - to shoulder this risk.
After reading this, I hope you might be interested enough do some research on the 7Systems and decide for yourself whether you think it is - or is not - worth trying.
Slowtwitch: What made you decide to start a vitamin company? Did you want to start a company and this just seemed like the best area? Did you perceive a void in the products that were/are out there? What was the genesis of 7Systems?
Jasper Blake: Early in 2005 several training buddies were sitting in one of the guys' kitchens and we noticed that he had 10 different bottles of various supplement products on the counter. We started talking about how most of us had the same mess of bottles in our kitchens or bathrooms and how frustrating it was to figure out which supplements were actually beneficial to use, how to manage taking them all, and how best to travel with 10 bottles of pills. We also discussed the dangers of contaminated supplements and whether the benefit of taking supplements was worth that risk.
That night we discussed the possibility starting a business to create a product to deal with all those issues: a product that was convenient, cost effective, safe (i.e. contaminant free) and very high quality. We figured if we wanted it, other people in the same situation would too. We decided to do some research to see if this was a viable idea. We quickly realized that there was indeed a void in the current market and that legally we could make the product we wanted so we started brainstorming and Aspire Sports Supplements was born (although we had not yet thought of that name).
We made some key decisions during those first few weeks, the main one being that we promised to adhere to those guidelines we established that evening in the kitchen. The key principles were : 1. to stick to our values no matter what adversity we faced; 2. to create a product that we wanted to use ourselves that followed what we dubbed our 5 "C's - convenient, cost effective, compliant, capable and complete; 3. to use a portion of the profits to give back to the amateur sports community which had given so much to each of us once we actually started making some money on the product; 4. to be as environmentally friendly as possible; and 5. to develop a product that helped the whole body in ways that were easy to explain and understand.
Once we had those basics down, we then started to think about what we wanted the supplement to do. We decided to take a different approach to this and focused on determining what ingredients would help people engaged in endurance sports improve their performance and recovery on a whole body and a system specific level (it was then that we chose our product name - 7SYSTEMS). We started to plot out our ideas and hired a team of consultants that specialized in this area (including doctors, nutritionists, a naturopath, a biochemist and a Health Canada regulatory expert) to help us create a list of optimal ingredients for the product. We also began the process of sourcing out a manufacturer that would meet our quality standards and be able to create a product that met the 5 Cs.
Fortunately, finding the manufacturer was fairly quick and easy. Douglas Laboratories was recommended to us and after we did our due diligence on them we found that they exceeded all of our criteria. They have state of the art research and manufacturing facilities, produce some of the highest quality products in the industry, were willing to give us a guarantee that there would be no banned substances contaminating our product and were keen to provide input into the development process.
Working with Douglas Labs and our team of consultants, we spent almost a year and a half developing and testing products until we settled on the current Endurance Sports Supplement formulation as the best one to meet the 5Cs. Once it was finalized, we applied for government approval through the Natural Health Product Directorate (a division of Health Canada).
At the same time, we had to do some of the basic 'business start up things' like incorporate a company, get investors, pick a name, figure out the brand, design some brand elements, etc. It was a busy time with a lot of things going on, and a lot of learning for all of us.
Slowtwitch: You aren't a biochemist, but you do have a good sense of your own body. Talk about the role you play(ed) in the development and testing of products?
Jasper Blake: I am indeed not a biochemist. As mentioned above, our development team included a variety of specialists like naturopaths and scientists as well as the experts at Douglas Laboratories who helped us come up with this great formulation. My role in the development was to generate ideas for what the product should do based on my knowledge of the stresses that endurance sports put on the body. I have consulted with nutritionists and naturopaths throughout my own career and have always tried to eat and supplement my diet in the best way possible to keep me healthy during stressful training blocks so naturally that is where I started developing my ideas. I was also one of the guinea pigs we used for testing different formulations. I continued training as per normal, but I stopped taking all other supplements and would fill out a questionnaire daily that listed what I ate (in addition to the supplement I was testing) and responded to several questions where I had to rate my performance and recovery in different ways. I was one of several people doing this. In fact, our final formulation (the one we ended up using) was tested by almost 50 high performing endurance athletes.
One of the key decisions during this process was to keep the product as several separate pills to ensure a high level of absorbability rather than combining into one single pill which would reduce absorbability. I worked on the best way to achieve that while keeping 7SYSTEMS convenient to use. After testing a few different packaging methods we decided to sell the product in a daily easy to use pack that takes up hardly any pocket/counter space and is easy to travel with. If you go away for seven days you grab seven packs that collectively take up less space than a tube of toothpaste.
One of the other areas I was also adamant about was that our product not contain any banned substances through contamination (this happens when a manufacturing facility also makes products that do contain banned substances and traces of the banned substances are transferred from the manufacturing equipment when your product is made). During our development phase we were approached by several manufacturers that had heard we were looking to create a new product, but no others could make the guarantee that Douglas Labs did, let alone provide as high a quality product. Douglas Labs have guaranteed to us that not only is our product free of banned substances but that their entire facility in which 7SYSTEMS is produced handles no raw materials on the banned list which means there is absolutely no possibility of cross contamination.
The last area I worked on was the adherence to the idea of cost effectiveness. We quickly realized that it is hard to create a cheap high quality product. I worked on ways to get high quality ingredients in the dosages that would be useful to performance and recovery in the most cost effective manner. Although 7SYSTEMS is a relatively expensive product, it is very cost effective when compared to buying the ingredients individually.
Slowtwitch: Talk about how the product went from concept to product.
Jasper Blake: It took two years to go from an idea to an actual physical product that we could sell and it was a heck of a process. As part of the process of going from concept to saleable product we also had to go through the requirement of having our product scrutinized, reviewed and approved by the supplement regulatory agency in Canada, the NHPD, which is one of the most stringent in the world. This process alone can take months or even years and if your formula is rejected you have to resubmit so it’s important to get it right the first time. Although, obtaining NHPD approval requires a substantial investment of both time and money, the good thing about getting it is that it means your product has been so well vetted that you are most likely able to sell it anywhere in the world. This is not the case with most other jurisdictions, which is why some supplement products made in the U.S. are not legal for sale in Canada. In some cases these products would not pass the NHPD tests for ingredient safety (dosage, source, etc) or in other cases they would be allowed under NHPD labelling requirements (because of false claims, improper warnings, not indicating sources of ingredients, etc). Consumers should feel confident buying a Canadian approved supplement – they are safe.
Aside from actually creating a formula we thought would work and was approvable by the government we had to determine how to sell the product to the public and then implement that. We launched our website, www.7systems.ca, in June of 2007 selling the product directly to the public and one year later, in June 2008, we started selling through our first Canadian retailer, Frontrunners in Victoria, B.C. We continue to sell online on our website and are now in 14 different retailers in Canada and working to add more. We have focused so far on establishing ourselves in the Canadian market, but the product has been available for Americans to purchase directly through the website. However, we are now starting to direct our energy towards the U.S. as we look to increase our presence down south. We are currently in talks with a large, well-known west coast tri-store to become our first U.S. retailer and we are also speaking with a U.S. based distributor to set up a system so that online orders will be shipped from the U.S. to avoid crossing the border.
So, as you can see, we have had to learn the ins and outs of all the things required to do this; This has been a big eye-opener for me. I’ve realized that the learning process never stops when you own and operate your own small business. There are so many things to consider. Some things we have definitely learned the hard way and I have no doubt there are things in the future we will learn the hard way but it’s been a great process to be part of.
Slowtwitch: Who else makes up the 7Systems team?
I am a Vice-President of the company, Aspire Sport Supplements, that creates 7SYSTEMS, and there are two other people involved at the executive level, another Vice-President and a President, with several other people/organizations contracted as consultants or service providers. Each of the three original founders have expertise in our own areas that are fundamental to the success of the company and we all contribute to the process in ways that are invaluable. Amazingly, after 5 years we still work incredibly well together and remain close friends.
Slowtwitch: Do you have plans for any new products in the future? Is the goal for 7Systems to exist as a single product - the multivitamin - and to just sustain itself on that? Or do you plan to invest yourself in it more fully in the future, developing new products - supplements or something else?
Jasper Blake: We definitely are looking to introduce new products to our brand in the near future…in fact we started developing a new supplement product a while ago and hope to launch it in 2010. We are excited by the opportunity to provide the public with another high quality product that meets a need in the marketplace. We have received a lot of positive feedback from high performance athletes, weekend warriors and coaches about the product since we launched in 2007 about how it has helped them or their athletes stay healthy and that has been really gratifying to me. Although we have an amazing group of top athletes that use the product and love it (including Simon Whitfield, Adam VanKoerverden, Malcolm Howard, Erinne Wilock, Kyle Jones, Lauren Groves, Megan Brown, Adam Campbell, Mike Neill and Ray Zahab), I get just as much or more satisfaction knowing we are helping the middle to back of the pack person that juggles full-time work, family and training.
We are motivated to expand our brand so that more people have high quality supplement options to choose from rather than a lot of the crap that is out there. People are wasting their money on supplements that provide little to no benefit. I think that anyone that buys any sort of nutritional supplement should check out Lyle MacWilliam's Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements. It is an independent study that ranks 1600+ nutritional supplements. Although the study has its detractors (who make some reasonable points), it certainly can give you a good basic idea of what products are not even worth considering. I am a firm believer, that if you are going to do something, you should do it right; and that goes for buying supplements.
Slowtwitch: Where do you see 7Systems going? And how do you see your role growing/changing with regards to that.
Jasper Blake: You learn a great deal when you develop something from the ground up and I think that the idea of introducing new products makes sense for us because we have learned how to make the process much tighter, streamlined and efficient. We also hopefully will be able to improve on our process and resource allocation this time, while capitalizing on the high quality reputation we have developed and the customer base and sales channels we have already put in place. As I have learned, it is basic economics that having these efficiencies and economies of scale make sense to the bottom line.
At the moment we are all working pretty hard playing all kinds of roles from creating newsletter content to dealing with legal issues and marketing strategies. We have all invested significant amounts of time and money into the business and I think for the near future it will be more of the same. Ultimately, I think we would love it if we got to a point where we could afford to put in place a team that managed all the sales and we could focus on ways to market the products and create new products. Ideally down the road we have several high quality products that have wide distribution in Canada and the US and this allows us to stay involved with a sport that we are all passionate about.
For more on Aspire Sports Supplements and 7Systems, or if you'd like to place an order, visit their website at 7Systems.ca.
