Behind an innocuous blue door on a Birmingham side street lies a company trying to elbow its way into a multibillion-pound market.
Despite being dominated by the likes of Boots and Holland & Barrett, Nourished hopes it can secure a seat at the top table with what it claims is a world-first offering.
Officially launching today from a small base in Digbeth, it uses state-of-the-art 3D printing technology to create 'stacked', multi-vitamin gummy tablets which are bespoke to each customer.
The tablets contain a mix of seven different vitamins and nutrients picked from a choice of 28, offering the kind of vast combination of elements only a maths student would get excited about contemplating.
The customer journey starts by them filling in a lifestyle survey so Nourished can gather information about key issues such as sleeping patterns, diet, exercise habits and goals before producing a recommended product.
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Founder and owner Melissa Snover, who once pitched another of her companies on BBC show Dragons' Den, told BusinessLive she was inspired to come up with the concept after an embarrassing incident at an airport.
"I was in Düsseldorf carrying a bag full of vitamins and it just burst and they went all over the floor," she said.
"I was in the security line on my hands and knees picking them up and thinking there had to be a better way of doing this. I had a food printing company at that time so thought maybe I could do something.
"There is no such thing as a personalised vitamin in the market right now, we are the only ones in the world to have developed a machine and manufacturing technique that allows you to combine seven different materials into one daily chewable.
"In the future, we plan to link to DNA tests with the customer questionnaire to give us even more access to data profiles."
Ms Snover says the lifestyle survey should ideally be carried out every three months so the orders change along with people's lifestyles throughout the year which can be affected by daylight hours, changing weather and the always excessive Christmas party season.
Nourished comes from good business stock.
Ms Snover, who hails from New York and studied business at Lancaster University, made her name as founder and managing director of Lancashire-based Goody Good Stuff, a range of natural, vegetarian gummy sweets which were sold to Chewits owner Cloetta in 2013.
She moved to Birmingham because three local universities run 3D printing degree courses, giving her access to more potential staff, a rare state affairs the like of which Ms Snover says she could not find anywhere else in Europe.
She also previously ran Magic Candy Factory from the same 20,000 sq ft base in Digbeth which specialised in novelty and customisable treats.
Ms Snover admits she only sleeps for a few hours a night and travels for more than half of the year and says her programme of vitamins and supplements enables her to lead that lifestyle "without losing my mind and health".
Now employing 27 staff, Nourished's model is simple - all orders are placed online and then dispatched directly to customers at a cost of £39.99 per month on a rolling subscription.
In keeping with this modern world, the products are vegan and sugar and allergen free and even the individually wrapped tablets come in packaging which is made by a Solihull company and biodegrades in under nine months.
The company designs and builds its own 3D printers on site and has 15 machines producing the final products.
Ms Snover added: "3D printing is cool technology but it's being applied to things it doesn't add value to, in my opinion, as mainstream manufacturing is better than 3D printing in many ways.
"When I did Magic Candy Factory, I learned that people loved creating something but the company was a novelty.
"For example, we could put Will Smith's face onto candy but is it something you need everyday? Certainly not.
"What I did about 14 months ago was to look at the ways we could use that intellectual property from Magic Candy Factory to create serious value in markets that were actually missing something that was needed.
"We started to develop Nourished and another business called Scripted, which is 3D printing of medicine and now part of our group Remedy Health.
"What we learned from our market research is there is a large number of people who will want customised but there's still many who will not be comfortable with it.
"Our next step after we launch into the UK market is to expand into the United States and will be setting up operations there in the middle of 2020."
