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Growing a Garden

Garden House, now part of Megalabs Group, poised to expand offerings in North America

Ignacio Bentancur, general manager for North America, for North America, Garden House Garden House Garden House has been the leader in providing natural-based products for the digestive market in Latin America and now in the United States for the past decade. In 2018, the company was acquired by Megalabs Group, a global pharmaceutical giant providing and distributing prescription and OTC products.

Megalabs’ experience and success in the pharmaceutical and OTC fields have created the foundation for new initiatives and plans to launch new product categories in the United States. Now, the company is poised to partner with retail and e-commerce channels to expand its offering and provide high-quality supplements for families across North America.

Here, Ignacio Bentancur, general manager for North America, explains how he’s aiming to scale-up Garden House’s presence in the northern hemisphere.

Drug Store News: What type of innovation does your company bring to the digestive category?

Ignacio Bentancur: Our main brand and household name, Prunelax, is an effective laxative made of natural senna extract, an active ingredient with several independent clinical studies confirming its safety and effectiveness. Our innovation lies in our expertise in formulating natural-based but highly effective products. For example, the first product launched was a prune jam with crushed senna leaves and pods. We are bringing products out of the medicine cabinet and to your table. The product now comes in several forms such as tablets, jam, syrup, tea and now great-tasting gummies.

While Megalabs’ portfolio has more than 1,800 products covering all therapeutic areas, our strategy in the U.S. focuses on launching and developing the best and most versatile solutions in the supplement and OTC field, where we have plans to expand our business by launching into new product categories.

DSN: What goals is your company working toward in 2022?

IB: For the past decade, we’ve provided naturalbased products for the digestive market in the U.S., developing close relationships with well-known and qualified leaders that align with our values of highperformance standards.

In this new, exciting stage, by being part of a global pharmaceutical company, we’ve developed a growth plan supported by Megalabs’ experience and success in this field, which includes increasing our marketing efforts, launching new products in the U.S., and now have entered the Canadian market this year.

We are leveraging our capabilities and market intelligence to launch and accelerate more brands into the U.S. market, while we continue being a reliable and valuable partner for our customers and promoting our mission of improving people’s health and quality of life with safe and proven solutions.

DSN: What else should our readers know about your company?

IB: The company has been present in the U.S. market since 2006 and has more than 30 years of experience manufacturing and commercializing OTC pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals based on extracts from medicinal plants and vitamins and minerals.

In 2018, Garden House was acquired by Megalabs Group, a leading branded specialty pharmaceutical company focused on innovation and therapeutic solutions for Latin American markets. Megalabs is present in more than 20 countries and has a network of 17 plants and seven R&D centers that combine cutting-edge technological development with high-quality industrial production.

Backed by a trustworthy framework and a strong reputation in the medical community, Megalabs has experienced exponential growth, emerging as the market share leader in its primary markets in Latin America.

Maintaining a focus on continuous business development and expansion, we are on a quest to conquer new markets, remaining focused on our mission of improving people’s lives with our healthcare products. dsn

A Strategic Partner

Eagle Labs is on a mission to make consumer products the public can trust

Michael Law, chief commercial officer, Eagle Labs Eagle Labs

"Our mission is to be an agile, strategic partner with a breadth of collaborative resources."

Eagle Labs is a fully NSF Certified contract manufacturer of dietary supplements and cosmetics. The company can handle a wide array of product forms and offers collaboration throughout the formulation and product development process. Recently, Michael Law, chief commercial officer, sat down with Drug Store News to talk about the company’s mission and what we can expect from the supplements and cosmetics market in the near future.

Drug Store News: What is your company’s history, and what do you see as its mission?

Michael Law: Eagle Labs is NSF Certified and FDA registered for dietary supplements, cosmetics and OTCs. We are also Certified Organic and registered with Health Canada. Eagle Labs meets the highest industry standards for manufacturing, testing and process control.

Eagle Labs has been a contract manufacturer for over 20 years. Our mission is to be an agile, strategic partner with a breadth of collaborative resources. We bring a strong and experienced management team to help in all areas from R&D and formulation, through packaging design, manufacturing and fulfillment.

DSN: Describe your company’s product offerings. What makes the products unique?

ML: We manufacture nutritional/dietary supplements (capsules, tablets, powders, gummies and liquids), as well as a wide array of cosmetic skin care products. Eagle Labs has low MOQs for the right strategic partners, so we can grow with them. We spend time to deeply understand the strategies and goals the customer is trying to achieve. Eagle brings leaders from all key functional areas to the earliest stages of a customer engagement to ensure the best solutions are being created. Often this means consulting on ingredient choices, formulations, packaging and claims.

Another thing that makes Eagle Labs unique is that we have large e-commerce DTC customers as well as clients with large traditional brick-and-mortar brands. Additionally, we have a strong own brand/private brand business for retail clients.

DSN: What are your thoughts on “what’s next” in supplements and in cosmetic products?

ML: There are three key themes: innovation, “natural or free from” and value. Innovation will always have a place for consumers seeking new solutions. This may be in ingredients, product forms, packaging or claims. Within supplements, we are seeing strong growth in powder stick packs and gummies. Traditional capsules and tablets remain strong, but a segment of consumers is looking for new ways to dose themselves to support their healthy lifestyle. Immunity products remain strong, and we expect consumers will continue to seek products that help them reduce the impact of aging and increase wellness. For cosmetics, there have been a lot of disruptive brands entering the category as barriers to entry have fallen. We expect that consumer spending on facial care and hand and body lotions will experience growth postCOVID. Additionally, consumers will continue to seek solutions to help them feel better and look better. Antiaging creams continue to be strong sellers as America ages.

DSN: Anything else you’d like our retail readers to know about your company?

ML: Eagle Labs can help identify key trends in e-commerce to help support traditional retail clients. Additionally, for e-commerce clients, we can provide support through our high-volume fulfillment center. With a broad array of product forms available and decades of experience on the management team, Eagle can be a strong strategic partner for both large and smaller brands, and also with private label/ own brands. dsn