Here's an industry secret: no South African regulation forces a supplement brand to tell you how much of each ingredient is in a blend. The "proprietary blend" exists because hiding the recipe is legal, margin-friendly, and almost universal. We chose the other path. This is why.
The economics of hiding
A proprietary blend lets a manufacturer front-load the cheap ingredient and fairy-dust the famous one — and the label looks identical either way. It also lets input costs quietly drive reformulation: when an ingredient's price spikes, the blend "adjusts" and no label change betrays it. The blend isn't a formulation philosophy. It's an accounting tool.
The 1996 lesson
This company started because a Gauteng family had a sick child and couldn't get a straight answer about what was actually in anything. Thirty years across shop counters taught the same lesson on repeat: the customer who understands what they're taking comes back; the customer who was dazzled doesn't. Exact-dose labelling isn't idealism — it's the longest-game customer-retention strategy there is.
What the standard means in practice
- Every active, exact milligrams, every label. If we co-formulate for absorption (piperine with curcumin, bromelain with quercetin), both numbers are printed.
- Elemental weights for minerals — the magnesium number is the magnesium, not the compound.
- Standardisation percentages for botanicals — "extract" without a percentage is a shrug, not a spec.
- Suppliers on the record — our sourcing page names the supplier and country for every ingredient. Few, if any, SA supplement brands make this the standard before us.
- Batch testing before release — identity, potency, heavy metals, microbial — at an ISO 17025-aligned SA lab.
What it costs us
Honestly: flexibility and margin. We can't quietly downgrade an input when prices move — the label is a promise. We pay for branded, standardised extracts when generic powder would look identical on the front of the bottle. We think it's the best money we spend.
Hold us to it: pick up any Vivid bottle and run the 60-second label check on us. That's the point of the standard — it survives the audit.