Supplements, Legalities, Death, Mo Money

My OP was pretty sloppy. I wasn't of good cognition when writing that.

Anyway, I will not be buying powder and filling pills by hand (slave work). I would be buying a 1-5kg bag of the powder and then dumping, say, 100g into bottles. (think creatine mono powder as an example).

What I have found is that you do not need FDA approval or GMO approval, and possibly nothing at all.

I have tons of supplements from various big companies (bodybuilding.com, vitacost.com, NOW sports, etc), and all of them are non GMO and non FDA approved.

It seems all you have to do is place a label on your package saying: *this statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to cure, treat, diagnose, or prevent any disease.

Basically the FDA doesnt give a shit until someone complains. And as long as you mention your product isnt evaluated, and isnt a cure for anything, then you are fine.

"but you may still be liable if someone has an allergic reaction or if they cause themselves harm by eating the whole bottle or some such foolishness. "

In regards to getting sued. Ya, this is where I am confused. It appears as if you are okay until someone decides to kill themselves with your supplements. And, I mean, it may be the same for all businesses really, except since supplements are ingestible, your are much more likely for this to happen.

For example, if I knit a glove and some kid decides to eat it and has an allergic reaction to the thread type -- I may be ****ed as well. That kind of seems whats its like here.

There are so many supplements that were under the spotlight for being great. Like driven sports won an award from bodybuilding.com. Only years later someone decided to kill themselves from taking it; and only then did someone run tests to find out it contained illegal substances like DNP. I also think the owner had another supplement with Drol in the name containing either illegal pro-hormones or a strain from a real illegal steroid. It seems like its the wild west out there until you get caught. However, I dont really have the funds to shield myself from this possibility as I imagine it would render the profitability of a small business pointless, with tests, legal aid, this and that. Maybe, maybe not, I have no idea tbh.

But I do know I am seeing various sites selling my supplement in generic silver bags with there fiverr looking logo sprawled out on all their products. I highly doubt they had the money to do any tests, extraneous legalities and whatnot.

Honestly, I don't know the extent of your business plan, but mine was going to be very ghetto-lemonade-stand-like.

I literally just found a product that has a good search volume and low competition. I was going to buy a bag of bulk powder, get a label made, get some generic black bottles, whip the product up.

Set up a small niche site on the product, seo it, then use it to funnel traffic.

The traffic would be sent to a branded domain that I would create solely for that product. Like CreatineZT.com or something like that (whatever product brandname is).

I'd make a hq sales page, get some good reviews, and then undercut my competition by a few $'s as well as rank 1# in google. Then just embed a paypal button on the bottom, linked to my premier account.

No business name, registration, or anything like that. Ship it in a plain envelope with my name attached to the sender address. And basically just try and make an extra 1k a month since I already have to ship things out anyway for an eccomerce site I have.

This is why I'm not really prepared to dabble with lawyer fees and whatnot. Plus I am seeing ebay sellers with thousands of reviews pushing this stuff worldwide. So I can only assume they haven't ran into any major trouble yet.

For borders I live in Canada. So supplements would have to cross into USA. I am assuming my bag will probably get opened a lot of times as supplements usually do. So, this is the part of what I am wondering about. If they would seize it or not.

So many substances are banned now from crossing the border. You cant even order some multi vitamins anymore, last time I checked b12 was banned as well.

Have you talked to a lawyer or gotten any more info? Also, if you dont mind me asking what manufacturer did you find? I am only planning to sell 1 product and I highly highly doubt they even have it as its quite obscure in nature -- so I wont be competing with you lol. I just wanna see if the kg price is equal to that of ebay.

I think the biggest risk is attaching your name to it. I can order steroids in the mail tomorrow from a dude thats been up and running for 6 years now. Of course he ships everything anonymously.

I may order from the ebay guy and see how he does it since it would have to cross the border as well.

There is a conundrum to saturated businesses. Case in point, big box retail. When I drive down the road I see big box after big box and I wonder "who is buying all the merchandise?" Considering the staggering unemployment and crippled real estate market in my area, how is it they are still building these places? Can there really be a demand for that much low quality general merchandise? It seems so. Saturated market, but it marches on and grows bigger each day.