Renovatio, a Sydney-headquartered company that processes around one million kilograms of Australian apples annually to extract antioxidants for its health supplements and skincare products, has launched its US spin-off Vincent in partnership with a Chicago investor at a valuation of US$10 million ($15.9 million).
Both companies draw on the research of founder Dr Vincent Candrawinata's PhD at the University of Newcastle investigating how to utilise "activated phenolic" antioxidants from apples in health products.
Building on its Australian footprint including Coles and Woolworths as well as sales in Asia, Renovatio has formed the company Vincent Holdings in a joint partnership with Charlie Stone of marketing agency SRW, which helped launch such successful brands as Simple Mills and Vital Protein.
Candrawinata tells Business News Australia that Vincent immediately secured its first three retail stores in California after setting up a distribution channel in February, and has gained another nine following its exhibitor presence at industry trade fair Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim with more in the pipeline.
With four staff working for the incipient US business, compared to seven here in Australia for Renovatio, the formation of Vincent is the fruit of a lengthy regulatory process for patent protection in the US and a fortuitous pitch from Candrawinata at last year's Expo West.
Related story: Antioxidant supplements scale-up Renovatio bags $5m Coles deal
The founder says the company was granted a full utility patent in March 2024 by the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), having changed from an innovation patent application in order to have full-scale, longer-term protection.
"That had proven to be quite a task," says Candrawinata, who has twice been a finalist in the Sydney Young Entrepreneur Awards.
The patent breakthrough spurred Renovatio to make its first appearance at the USA's largest trade fair soon after, not exhibiting but "walking the floor". The company expressed its interest in the event to the NSW Government, which through Investment NSW sent a trade advisor to assist Renovatio and others.
Candrawinata attended two pitch slams at the event and connected with investors and retailers alike, who he claims liked the concept of Renovatio's offering.
"They know that inflammation accounts for 80 per cent of disease of the human race, they know that they need to tackle inflammation, and our value proposition is a natural compound that has the highest potency to reduce inflammation.
"We know consumers across America will fall in love with the results they achieve through using our apple skin care and supplement products.
"Apples are 30 times more bioactive than standard antioxidants. Ultra Antioxidants deliver maximum potency, meaning our products can infiltrate the skin and repair at a cellular level, rejuvenating faster and more effectively."
Fortunately, Stone was in attendance at one of Candrawinata's pitches, and invited him to a Zoom meeting from Chicago two weeks later.
"I didn't know back then, but that was basically my audition for him. I apparently performed well, which basically was just telling the journey, the research, the science behind it, as well as the proven track record in terms of retail sales and commercial outreach," he says.
"In August we started the commercial discussion because he didn’t want to be merely a distributor. He wants skin in the game, he wants to be part of founding a company in the US, so that part of the conversation culminated in October.
"He and his team came and visited us in Sydney for due diligence, but also to sign contracts for an agreement partnership in terms of forming a new company in the US called Vincent Holdings."
The choice of Vincent as the brand name came from Stone, seeing value in the story behind the products and the founder's vision to "make people happier and healthier". Stone was also impressed by the way Candrawinata has integrated his podcast Ask Dr Vincent together with Renovatio's consumer products.
"They don’t see it very often in the US, and frankly, here too. And I do believe that it helps our consumer loyalty rate," he says.
"In Woolworths our vitamin has 9.5/10 and our skincare has 8.2/10 which is really amazing especially for skincare because we know in Australia 50 per cent of people who buy their first product of skincare don’t even end up finishing it before they move to the next one. So the fact that we have repeat purchase was really incredible to them."
The initial plan was to launch just three products into the US market initially with the company's face cleanser, face serum and face cream, but after a relative of Stone saw encouraging results from the "Apple a Day" tablets for treating cardiovascular disease, he made the call to introduce them as well.
Compared to the Australian market where there are two leading supermarket retailers, Candrawinata highlights a more complicated industry structure in the USA which requires more investment. It is still early days for the business Vincent, but the founder is positive about its set-up for business-to-business (B2B) sales on the west coast and a business-to-consumer (B2C) approach nationwide, supported by an Amazon warehouse to fulfil online orders.
Candrawinata is grateful to the Australian apple growers who assisted him in his research early in his career, and says that despite not having a commercial agreement with them he has a commitment to always use Australian apples.
Even if tariffs were to transpire against Australian products in the US, he believes there is bandwidth to still use the extracts from Australian apples but still manufacture and pack the final product in the US for Vincent Holdings' sale, which "heavily changes the tariff value determination for our products".
"For us, I’m more concerned about consumers’ perspective and sentiment towards Australian product more than the tariff, because they are going to pay for more," he says.
"The other thing at the moment that’s helping us is the exchange rate value between the Australian dollar and an American dollar.
"I was really happy that our government is not doing retaliatory tariffs, because it would reflect really badly on Australia and products in Australia. What I could tell from when we were there is Australian-made products, and the fact we're made with Australian apples, are actually of value."
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