Expo West 2015 NEXTY Awards winners
From safer, more sustainable seafood to nontoxic nail polish, these are the products and companies that represent what tomorrow's healthy living landscape will look like.
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Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez started their two-person operation in 2009 with the idea of growing gourmet mushrooms off of recycled coffee grounds. Today, Popular Vote runner-up Back to the Roots offers eight products centered around the mission of making food personal again and bridging the gap between growing and eating food. Their newest venture, a USDA Organic stoneground wheat cereal (and a line of cereal toppers to go with), combines simple ingredients and resourceful packaging to bring something truly new to the cereal aisle.
Here’s a staggering statistic: Over 95 percent of the seafood available in the Santa Barbara, California, area is imported, and at least 95 percent of the seafood caught locally is exported. Community Seafood is like a CSA but for fish—called a community supported fishery (CSF). The company recently launched a frozen artisanal fish business that will make fresh-frozen, traceable seafood available in retailers' freezers. Consumers can scan the QR code on the front of the package to be introduced to the Southern California fisherman responsible for their catch. Read more about Community Seafood in this Editors' Choice profile.
Fishpeople, makers of delicious, shelf-stable seafood-based products, is pioneering traceable fish, shellfish and mollusks, and the produce and spices in each pouch of chowder, bisque or sauce. Each package comes with a seven-digit tracking code that shoppers can enter into Fishpeople’s website to learn where their seafood was caught—and who caught it. Fishpeople wins an Editors' Choice NEXTY for scaling seafood transparency (and serving up a ridiculously tasty meal-in-a-pouch). Read more about Fishpeople in this Editors' Choice profile.
Safe Catch is a pioneering brand tackling several issues associated with seafood, most notably the issue of mercury contamination in wild tuna. Safe Catch developed the technology to test every tuna the company (sustainably) catches, and sets stringent standards that are stricter than the FDA’s safe mercury limit. But the brand does more than provide pure tuna. It's also focused on stemming the tide of industrial and consumer contaminants that caused high-mercury fish to proliferate in the first place. Read more about Safe Catch in this Editors' Choice profile.
A critical protein used to support healthy skin, hair, nails, joints and bones, collagen has been largely misunderstood and underutilized in the U.S. But with its innovative, research-backed line of collagen-based supplements, NeoCell is making the healthy-aging superstar ingredient relevant to American consumers. By investing in finished-product clinicals, new product development focused on more targeted products and palatable delivery systems, and education initiatives around how collagen really works and why we need it, NeoCell’s highly efficacious products are helping to redefine what healthy aging means.
So there’s more than just salt in the Great Salt Lake. TMR sources a range of trace minerals from close to the pristine shores in evaporative ponds, tests all ingredients and manufactures products in a certified GMP facility. And its new TMRFIT Clean Series meets athletes at all times in their competitive space. The line includes pre-workout, post-workout and liquid ZMA for recovery while sleeping. At their core, the three products contain non-GMO Project verified ConcenTrace trace minerals and have no artificial colors, flavors or sweeteners, is non-GMOP, gluten free and certified vegan.
Two recent standout product launches from the Santa Cruz-based supplement leader include Vegan True and Telomeron. Vegan True provides vegans with nutrients they either have difficulty getting in their typical diets or those generally hard to find in vegan forms. Telomeron takes aim at the burgeoning science around telomeres—the protective end caps of DNA strands (think of those plastic tips of shoelaces). Studies show telomere length can be maintained with nutrients. Longer telomeres correlate to longer life. Read more about Source Naturals in this Editors' Choice profile.
Toxic chemical sprays, begone! EarthKind's Stay Away products are the first pest prevention line to be made solely with EPA-certified essential oils and plant fiber—nothing else. Sound too good to be true, when poison has been the only option on the pest control market for so long? It works, and even comes with a money-back guarantee. CEO Kari Warberg Block spent eight years developing the precise formulas that make EarthKind’s products effective and safe. The scents target specific pests—including ants, moths, spiders, and rodents—by creating an environment that consistently drives them out, rather than simply killing them on contact. If Stay Away catches on, Block’s mission might work in a similar fashion: driving hazardous chemicals out of homes, and eventually, off of store shelves altogether.
lifestinks is on to something with its non-toxic deodorant powder. The powder comes in a refillable stainless steel canister, lasts for nine months and contains only three ingredients: aluminum-free sodium bicarbonate, tea tree oil and either lavender or cedarwood oil. For health and environmentally conscious deodorant consumers, lifestinks gets the job done. Founders Mary, Annie and Clare Duggan have found that, “Bringing lifestinks to the natural products marketplace has given us the greatest opportunity to not only work together as sisters—the fulfillment of a lifelong dream—but to deeply impact two areas of concern that we are passionate about: wellness and our imperiled planet.”
Marshall Dostal's habit of collecting depleted vegetable oil (what's left after frying foods) and refining it into biofuel for his automobiles left huge drums of glycerin in his garage—a byproduct of the distillation process. The solution? Purifying the glycerin to create artisan soaps, lotions and candles, which he then sold back to the restaurants he’d sourced the grease from. With the help of his wife Megan, who designed the packaging and developed Further’s gender-neutral scent—derived from bergamot, olives and grasses—the products became popular with customers and are now carried in restaurants, hotels and retailers nationwide. Zero waste with functional benefits ... this is true sustainability in action. Read more about Further Products in this Editors' Choice profile.
Long before a recent eyebrow-raising New York Times article equated nail polish with poison, Scotch Naturals was determined to stand up to the $8.5 billion U.S. nail salon industry. Embracing science and technology as an ally, Scotch launched a line of water-based polishes that came in striking colors and chic, salon-worthy packaging. The goal: to replace nail care products that are tainted with toxins (and even provide a better alternative to the “three-free” products that eliminate only the worst offending ingredients). Soon realizing women would want higher performance, a product that would not only look great but also last long, Scotch developed a trademarked plant-based lacquer technology called NaturaLaq (yes, we put it to the test). Investing in a solution not just a product? That’s what’s next in beauty. Read more about Scotch Naturals in this Editors' Choice profile.
Long before a recent eyebrow-raising New York Times article equated nail polish with poison, Scotch Naturals was determined to stand up to the $8.5 billion U.S. nail salon industry. Embracing science and technology as an ally, Scotch launched a line of water-based polishes that came in striking colors and chic, salon-worthy packaging. The goal: to replace nail care products that are tainted with toxins (and even provide a better alternative to the “three-free” products that eliminate only the worst offending ingredients). Soon realizing women would want higher performance, a product that would not only look great but also last long, Scotch developed a trademarked plant-based lacquer technology called NaturaLaq (yes, we put it to the test). Investing in a solution not just a product? That’s what’s next in beauty. Read more about Scotch Naturals in this Editors' Choice profile.
The votes are in, and the 2015 Natural Products Expo West NEXTY Award winners have been selected. These are the companies that voters and New Hope Network editors believe represent what tomorrow's healthy living landscape will look like.
The Popular Vote and Editors' Choice winners (featured in this gallery along with the Popular Vote runners-up) will be profiled in our 2016 NEXT Forecast report, which publishes in June, and recognized at an awards ceremony at Natural Products Expo East.
More than 8,800 votes were cast in the Popular Vote contest, and New Hope editors were challenged to pick just one Editors' Choice winner in each category. So challenged, in fact, that for two of the three categories, we selected more than one winner. In food and beverage, we selected three companies that are taking different approaches to a majorly important issue: safe, sustainable seafood. And in the beauty and natural living category, we picked one company in the beauty space and one in the natural living space.
Here's where you can learn more about the criteria used to select NEXTY nominees and winners.
To see all of this year's nominees, click through this gallery. Or browse past nominees and winners here.
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