• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, Yesterday

When we last checked in with BelliWelli in 2022, the young company was marketing a line of probiotic snack bars predominantly online, and running a billboard campaign declaring that “Hot Girls Have IBS.”

Since then, BelliWelli has dropped the probiotic snack bars in favor of fiber supplements in gummy or powder form, the brand has 80% of its sales though major retailers, and its continuing billboards provide a countdown of “Hot Girls Who Pooped Today.”

Late last month, as BelliWelli launched a major sweepstakes campaign inside Walmart stores for the second straight year, Pharma & Health Insider caught up with co-founder and CEO Katie Wilson to find out what exactly has been going on in BelliWelli land. 

For starters, we asked why would anyone launch into a category (fiber) dominated by two entrenched legacy brands, namely Procter & Gamble’s Metamucil and Haleon’s  Benefiber. And where did the snack bars go?

“Two years after we launched the bars, we were studying the fiber category,” Wilson told me.  “Fiber was growing double digits, which is bizarre for a 100-year-old dietary supplement.”  

While other “supplements were launching right and left” and fiber is a $4.5 billion business in North America, “there were no emerging disruptive brands.”

“We said, ‘Let’s make a modern performance fiber that tastes so good that you’ll want to add it to your water bottle five times a day,’” she recalled. “And even better, it will become part of the wellness routine on the kitchen counter instead of hidden away in a dusty medicine cabinet.”

WelliBelli launched its fiber powders in an unlikely setting: some 1,000 Walmart stores.  The chain’s buyer, she says, told her,” “Good luck with this. This is a tough category.  Metamucil and Benefiber have a lot to spend on marketing.”

But, six weeks later, “the buyer called and said, ‘You guys have sold out almost overnight. Let’s go nationwide.’

Target and other retailers soon followed, and, as a result of the product’s success and potential for future growth, “we pivoted away from snack bars completely, and today we are focused on being the next big fiber brand.”

The latest wrinkle, fiber gummies, were added about six months ago.

I wondered what differentiates BelliWelli from its rivals.

Compared with Metamucil, Wilson said, BelliWelli has an extra gram of fiber, plus added probiotics, collage and electrolytes, “which work together to make fiber more effective,” as well as “clean ingredients, no artificial dyes, no artificial flavors, and only two grams of sugar.”

Benefiber, meanwhile, consists of wheat dextrin which “lots of people can’t tolerate.” It’s also non-flavored. BelliWelli “comes in nine different fruity flavors” so “it doesn’t feel like a chore, it feels like a treat.”

The current BelliWelli sweepstakes, being promoted via endcaps in 3,120 Walmart stores, is also a tie-in with jewelry brand 8 Other Reasons, which designed eight special charms --  including a gold toilet and a pink poop emoji -- with BelliWelli. One of the eight charms will be won by each of eight winners, who will also each get $8,000.

Last year’s BelliWelli Walmart sweepstakes involved buying a “mystery flavor” and guessing what it was for a potential $50,000 reward.

While BelliWelli likes to have fun with fiber, there is, of course, a serious side. 

Wilson notes that 95% of Americans don’t get enough fiber, with the Mayo Clinic pointing out that fiber not only helps prevent constipation, but also “can help you stay at a healthy weight and lower the risk of diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer.”

BelliWelli may well be part of the solution, Walmart shopping data shows that 77.6% of its shoppers last year had never bought fiber before.