After two years of strong ARR growth, the business had hit structural limits. The influencer pool in DACH and France was saturated — not because of spend efficiency, but because every reachable person had already been reached. LTV of €60 per customer looked healthy until you accounted for the 18-24 month realization window, which created a cash timing problem the unit economics alone couldn't solve.
Revenue was concentrated in a few top products and a few top influencers. That engine was decelerating.
I stress-tested every alternative before arriving at a new product recommendation: geographic expansion required a 12-18 month minimum runway before meaningful revenue; increased ad spend faced diminishing returns on a tapped audience; retention-only optimization is defensive, not a growth lever. A new product was the only lever that simultaneously created a new reason to buy, unlocked cross-sell, reached new audiences, and opened a new influencer category.
The core insight from the portfolio matrix: Omega-3 sat in the "Essentials" quadrant — high repeat, stable revenue, but low differentiation and low margin. The "Complex Heroes" quadrant (multi-ingredient, premium, high LTV) had clear vacancies.
"Omega-3 is not a product. It is an ingredient that follows a person through every stage of their life — pregnancy, postpartum recovery, childhood development. We were selling it as a one-size product to everyone and capturing none of that specificity."
The strategic repositioning was to treat Omega-3 — specifically algae-sourced DHA and EPA — as an ingredient platform that could anchor premium complex products at each major life stage. Algae-sourced DHA had two properties that made this viable: it eliminates the fishy taste barrier (the most cited reason for non-compliance), and it is inherently vegan, opening a meaningfully underserved segment.
Each new product uses algae DHA as the anchor ingredient, then adds clinically relevant co-ingredients for the specific life stage. The result is a product family a single customer can move through over 5+ years — at zero incremental CAC per transition.
The recommendation was built on three independent data sources that all pointed to the same gap, from three different angles. Any one data point can be dismissed as anecdotal. All three independently pointing to the same gap made the case much harder to argue against in a board setting.
Pregnancy-related search queries on-site in 12 months. Customers were actively looking for prenatal products the company did not carry.
Signals across email replies, reviews, and support tickets — 47 direct safety questions during pregnancy, 23 explicit requests for omega-3 in gummy format.
Monthly category sales on Amazon DE with 41% YoY growth in "gummy prenatal" searches. Only 2 premium vegan gummy competitors existed.
The churn data added urgency. Women aged 28-35 were churning at 34% above the average rate — not because of product dissatisfaction, but because pregnancy forced them to stop taking existing products and look elsewhere. The portfolio had no answer for that life-stage transition. Every churning customer in that demographic was a retention failure caused entirely by a product gap.
Designed as a connected ecosystem rather than standalone SKUs. Each one is a Complex Hero by positioning: multi-ingredient, life-stage specific, premium-priced, and anchored by the same algae DHA platform.
Eliminates fishy taste barrier. Vegan — opens a segment competitors don't serve. No direct competition at premium vegan gummy tier in DE market.
Addresses postpartum depletion — a gap the prenatal customer immediately needs filled. The cross-sell trigger is built into the life stage.
Follows the customer as the child grows. A 5-year relationship: Prenatal → Postnatal → Kids, at €0 incremental CAC after acquisition.
Cross-sell to existing Omega-3 and Hair Glow customers. No new acquisition needed for the first cohort.
Estimated for customers holding 2+ SKUs simultaneously, based on existing cohort data. LTV realization collapses from 18+ months to 3-6 months.
For a customer who moves Prenatal → Postnatal → Kids over a 5-year relationship vs. a single-SKU customer.
Three mechanisms drove this: churn conversion — the 34% above-average churn in 28-35 women is caused entirely by a product gap; LTV realization collapse — a cross-sold customer completes a second transaction immediately, compressing 18+ months to 3-6 months; and influencer pool expansion — pregnancy and parenting influencers are a completely untapped acquisition channel, breaking the existing concentration risk.