“Our products have a higher quality of ingredients than most competitors.”

Klemans Groep has nearly twenty years of experience in the food supplement market, and most of their products are focused on sexual health. Since the very beginning of the millennium, the company has offered its products via the internet, and their range has grown considerably since the early days. Now, the company has entered the b2b market, operating under the Morningstarpharma name. Aad de Klerk tells us more about the company and its products, and he explains how the retail trade can benefit from the top-notch quality that is Morningstarpharma’s greatest strength.

Morningstar Pharma markets products from different categories such as sexuality, health, health 40+, weight loss, personal care, and fitness and energy. Before we go into more detail, could you give us an overview of the company?
Aad de Klerk: We are a company that focuses on the erotic industry and the 40 plus health care market. We serve our customers directly through our own one-product stores, and trough wholesale we deliver to countries in almost all of Europe. We have our own products that we have developed in various product categories. We are clearly distinctive and trend-setters rather than trend-followers, and we have been for almost 20 years.

Morningstar Pharma, or rather the company that was its predecessor, was founded in 2001. Can you tell us a bit about the company’s history?
We started in the telephone/internet dial-up business, and we discovered other markets we wanted to tackle. We started with a natural Viagra, one store with one product.I think the first one-product shop was started in 2001.

In a one-product store, you can tell a lot more about the product and convince the customer to buy it – the store is actually an advertising campaign in itself. We soon saw the effectiveness of this concept and we also started a Dutch affiliate programme, www.rushcommerce.com.

We started making more brands, with each brand having its own store. This also means that our product is usually known before it comes to wholesalers, therefore it sells more easily. All this was focused mostly on the Dutch market.

There was also demand for our products in wholesale, which is why we started a wholesale operation under the name Jobacompharma, and a new brand name was added last year with Morningstarpharma.com. Right now, Jobacom is more for the Dutch market while Morningstar has a more international focus.
Most products have multiple language versions so that we can deliver to almost all countries. The brand name Jobacom will be phased out in 2020. Both of these companies are part of Klemans Groep BV.

Morningstar offers supplements of many different types, but let’s focus on your sexual health products. What does your company have to offer in this category?
We have our own brands, around 80 different products. Most are aimed at men, but we also have brands for women, such as bigger breast and eromix products. We work together with the best food specialists to make the products better and better. That’s necessary because we also have to compete with companies whose products can be supplied on a doctor’s prescription.

We have succeeded in making an erection pill that can be used well with products that doctors prescribe. Erectahard or Libido Power are both erection products, but each has different ingredients.

Every person is different and reacts differently to ingredients in products – some reacts better to Libido Power and others to Erectahard.
At the moment, we are also developing a lust product line especially for women.

Is there a product you would describe as your flagship product?
An old product from ours is still a sales hit. It’s Libido7, one of the most powerful penis enlargers, not cheap, but high in demand.
However, I would now label Devils Candy as our flagship product. That is the future for Morningstar.

The sheer amount of arousal and similar products on the market can be overwhelming for consomers. Which aspects of a product are the most important to make it stand out?
We always make high-quality products, which is more expensive, but repeat customers are much more important for us when it comes to sales. There are enough products of poor quality out there, with little to no effect, and we don’t want that…

Our goal is to make many good products, as already mentioned, and also to stimulate repeat orders from customers. If the quality is right, the customer will come back to the store more often, say once every month, so there are more purchase possibilities for other products. It is therefore wise to include this type of product in your store.

It is not easy to make properly functioning products within the current legal framework. This requires professional competence and of course a good knowledge of food supplements.

“We always make high-quality products, which is more expensive, but repeat customers are much more important for us when it comes to sales.”

What sets your products apart from the products your competitors offer? For instance, what about the substances you use? Which tests do you conduct to ensure their quality?
Our products have a higher quality of ingredients than most competitors. It is very easy to make an ineffective product, but it is very difficult to make a product that really does something. It costs more, but afterwards we see the repeat sales that I keep referring to.
As I mentioned, we use high-quality ingredients, and every product / ingredient has its own herbal composition. Before the product is manufactured, quality tests are done. This is how we make sure that we always deliver good quality and safe products. We produce under the highest standards.

Morningstar Pharma also offers private label products. Would you explain the concept and tell us what kinds of products are available?
Private label is a possibility, of course. All products can be supplied as a private label. We understand that customers want their own brand and they often think that this will bring benefits.
We think that “shared” products and brands have more sales power – the customer sees the product more often, so it will be bought earlier. And building your own brand is not easy, so I would not immediately suggest it. But that’s just our opinion.
We see that the power of the product does not really unfold to its fullest this way. Another problem with having your own label is that the responsibility then shifts to the owner of the label.

Do private label customers choose from your existing portfolio or can they bring their own ideas to the table? To which degree are you willing to customise the products?
The customer’s input is very welcome, of course, and sometimes, we also come up with other ideas that we can use in other products.

Who should retailers turn to if they want to sell your products in their shops?
They can of course contact us on our wholesale website, morningstarpharma.com, but they can also order our products from other wholesalers that offer multiple brands, companies like EDC and Interslash.

At the last eroFame, we gained a lot of contacts for buyers in Europe, and they are going to add our products, so interested customers will probably be able to get our products from suppliers in their own country soon.

Europe is a continent of many countries with different laws regarding health products. Is this a problem for you? Can your supplements be sold everywhere in the EU?
We can sell our products in all countries in the EU. There is often confusion about supplying a nutritional supplement, but throughout the EU, it has actually become much simpler. It is important that the products are produced in the EU, so that the quality is guaranteed.

What can we expect from Morningstar Pharma in the future?
We will always come up with great new products that stand out from the crowd. We are now working on a new women’s Libido line since we noticed that there is a lot of demand for this type of product. We have done a lot of research so that we do not end up with a simple product like Spanish fly or something similar. We think that would be too easy – it’s simply not us.