Why do you think you should win the Premier’s People’s Choice Award?

KidStar Nutrients® is a Canadian natural health company founded by Caitlyn Vanderhaeghe and Kyle Head and based in Vancouver, BC. KidStar® makes clean nutrients that are pure with nothing to hide. Our mission is to help families raise happy and healthy kids by providing clean, pure, and research-backed nutrients that parents can trust, and kids love. KidStar’s products contain no sugar, preservatives, soy, gluten, wheat, yeast, benzoates, or artificial colours and artificial flavours. We believe that a nutritional supplement should only contain ingredients you need for optimal health and nothing more. KidStar has formulated a range of clean nutrients for children and families—particularly the BioFe products, our flagship product line. Iron deficiency is the number one nutrient deficiency in Canada and worldwide—and BioFe is designed to address this deficiency. BioFe is available in unflavoured drops, tasty chewable, and liquid, so that anyone in the family can take their iron easily. Any parent with a picky eater will tell you that they worry constantly whether their child is getting enough essential vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients like healthy fats and protein. Iron deficiency is far from the only nutrient-related issue common in children. Our other products are designed to address these deficiencies, and we plan to extend our range further. All our products have been and will be formulated with these key ideas in mind: clean, healthy, and delicious. Giving back to the community is very important to KidStar. Recently, KidStar partnered with Mamas for Mamas, a national charitable organization that supports mothers and caregivers through poverty-related struggles. With regular product donations to Mamas for Mamas, KidStar is helping to ensure that struggling families can access the nutritional supplements they need to improve their health and wellbeing. Over the last three years we have reached more families who want what we offer—great quality products that taste awesome and work! Our products were made for everyone, from babies to seniors, with our primary focus on children. Parents love the ingredients and kids love taking the products. Reading reviews from parents on how much their kids like our products and, ultimately, how well their kids are after taking them, makes all the efforts of the last three years more than worth it. Supporting the health of our community is the greatest reward and motivation to keep doing what we do.

How have you optimized your e-commerce store to create a strong user experience for your community, (through content, education, reviews etc.) and what results have you achieved?

The KidStar Nutrients e-commerce website has been optimized to create a strong user experience for our consumers primarily through educational content, including informative articles with links to source research, covering topics that busy parents are most interested in: the importance of iron, how to recognize the symptoms of low iron and iron deficiency, tips to deal with picky eaters, what ingredients to avoid in supplements, and more. Product pages are also linked to information on the site, where consumers can learn more about why certain ingredients found in our supplements are supportive of good health, and why certain other ingredients will never be found in KidStar products. The website also includes previews of our Instagram posts and links to our social media channels, so consumers can follow us and explore more topics related to nutrition and health. The content we post to our social media strongly emphasizes education and information but is also fun and engaging. Our content is bright, colourful, eye-catching, and designed to reflect the look and feel of the e-commerce website for a cohesive user experience. Our content is created to resonate with our key target market of women between the ages of 25 and 45. Examples of our social media educational content include: o Educational posts on how nutrients are used in the body o Reels highlighting key statistics of the prevalence of nutrient deficiencies in Canada o Checklists of symptoms and risk factors for parents to help identify potential health issues o Posts presenting solutions and suggested actions if a parent suspects their child has a nutrient deficiency o Posts encouraging parents to look at supplement labels and identify which ingredients to avoid We also added a new popup to the website in the past year, so that first time visitors are offered 20% off their first purchase when they signup for our e-newsletter. This offer resulted in an average 10 new email signups per week. This unified strategy has resulted in growth both in marketing reach and in sales. Orders on our e-commerce website grew 42% year over year from 2021 to 2022. Our net sales were up 61%, the average order value was up 13%, and the average number of items per order increased 22% between 2021 and 2022. In addition, by the end of 2022, KidStar had more than 2,600 social media followers across Facebook and Instagram. We hope to sustain this growth into 2023 and beyond as we continue to provide the information, education, and experience to engage our customers best.

Why do you deserve to win the E-commerce Experience Award?

KidStar Nutrients is a great candidate to win the E-commerce Experience Award because of our ongoing work to educate parents and caregivers about the importance of nutritional supplements for the entire family, particularly iron for infants and growing children. One of KidStar’s central values is providing clean nutrients that kids love, and parents can trust. Clean nutrients—free of artificial colours, flavours, and fillers—are vitally important to reassure parents that children are getting the nutrients they need and nothing else. KidStar believes that education is the most important tool we have. Informed parents make informed decisions for their children. We try hard to support and educate consumers through our e-commerce website and social media channels. Our website, kidstarnutrients.com, contains useful information regarding ingredients commonly found in nutritional supplements, including information on which ones support good health and which do not. Consumers can also learn about the nutrients that kids and families need for optimal health by reading one of more than a dozen informational articles posted on the website. The articles cover a range of topics including the importance of iron, tips to deal with picky eaters, what to look for and what to avoid in kids’ multivitamins, nutrients that support and inhibit the immune system, and much more. The website also includes several delicious recipes that incorporate our vegan protein, to help satisfy even the pickiest of young eaters. In addition, KidStar’s social media channels also help consumers access timely information in an eye-catching and entertaining format. In a fast-paced, pandemic-restricted environment where short-form content has become the dominant form of media, KidStar’s message is delivered clearly and succinctly. We use social media content to help educate parents and caregivers about kids’ nutrition and nutritional supplements. We have posted Instagram Live sessions and reels; infographics, slides, and flat lays on Instagram and Facebook and even hosted webinars on Zoom for in-depth discussion of health topics. The variety of formats keeps the content engaging, interesting, and impactful while still being informative and educational. Together, the website and social media channels provide an opportunity for parents and caregivers to research and learn more about what risks and symptoms contribute to nutrient deficiencies and which nutrients help build strong, healthy children.