Editor's spotlight: Startup Focus
From Hollywood to Harrods: High-end supplements offer a tasty take on US trends
Kate Prince, who developed a thirst for entrepreneurship in 2014 when she co-founded successful premium tea company Prince+Son, is now pouring herself into the health market with the brand Ancient+Brave.
The range includes Coffee + Collagen and Cacao + Collagen drinks as well as MCT oil and collagen powder to ease the hunger pangs of intermittent fasting while still helping consumers maintain ketosis.
“The worse thing that can happen during an intermittent fast is to get the sugar crash and then the panic and the hunger pangs kick in which leads to inflammation in the body.
“We say you can still feed your body during the fasting period but with the right stuff.”
“Many people can do a 12 hour fast but if you want to have a nourishing drink to push off the hunger pangs, suddenly you can quite easily get to a 14 or 16-hour fast.”
She adds that these products are like a less extreme way of bullet-proofing – a diet trend stirred up by the US.
“Bullet proofing is about adding medium chain fats to coffee to give your body a great source of easily accessible energy but still keep it in the ketosis state.
“In the US they might do it by adding NCT oil and two table spoons of butter to their coffee but I just found the idea of this disgusting.”
Kate co-founded the brand with former Hollywood stuntwoman Annelie Whitfield who regularly used the intermittent fasting technique to quickly get in shape for her different roles.
But a work injury led her to take time out and she ended up living in Costa Rica for five years, during which time she developed a passion for cacao, coffee and collagen.
The two met through one of Annelie’s health and wellness workshops and they decided to blend Kate’s flavour and business know-how with Annelie’s nutrition expertise to create their own venture.
Instant success
After launching the brand just one year ago, Kate says she hasn’t even had time to think about marketing as she has been approached by a huge number of retailers across Europe and the US.
“In the UK alone we are in Planet Organic, Ocado, Soho House, Selfridges, Harrods.
“We’ve just appointed a director based in Colorado to oversee the launch of the brand in America.
“So far it’s been quite a dream really. We haven’t had time to go to any trade shows or put together a real plan but we are now looking at putting together a strategy for Europe and expanding into the US.”
This performance has been helped by celebrity endorsements from Sophie Morgan, a TV presenter who has paralysis and is an advocate for the collagen products, as well as Susannah Constantine, the fashion celeb, who sings the praises of the products for their skin health benefits.
Green tea
The brand uses glass and card packaging wherever possible, no palm oil and ‘green’ technology, as opposed to chemical, to extract her MCT from coconut oil.
Wanting to show customers that she is running an environmentally-conscious brand, she is also in the process of applying to become a B-corp company.
The brand is also partnering the charity Carbon Footprint to ensure she can neutralise her company’s carbon footprint through tree planting.
But to make her range even more inclusive, Kate is also in the process of creating a vegan collagen which is as nutritionally similar to bovine collagen as possible.
“There are other vegan collagens on the market but many of these concentrate on the beauty element of collagen and so they’ll just look to match the vitamin C content by using a super berry blend.
“We want to offer the who range of benefits of collagen, including for mental, bone and muscle health.”
