Arterra is the most advanced pet supplement ever brought to market. This isn’t marketing hype. It is factually true by an order of magnitude, and we will happily invite side-by-side comparisons with any competitor aiming to challenge this claim. It is also, as a consequence, the most expensive. Rather than try to whistle around this fact, I intend to explain directly why our products are expensive, and to articulate why, despite our price point, we offer the best value and efficacy of anything on the market.
When we set out to launch Arterra, I resolved to create a no-compromises line of supplements that delivered the absolute best that integrative medicine has to offer in a single, all-in-one product. Built on a formula I developed for my own dog (who lived to 16 ½ against a life expectancy of 10 years) and refined with input from leading integrative veterinarians, our dog supplements are the first designed to support whole body preventative wellness while extending healthspan (quality of life) and longevity. In short, we aim to help your dog live a happier, healthier, and longer life, giving you more quality years together.
This requires a breadth, quality, and potency of ingredients that conventional pet supplements don’t come close to offering.
Why Most Pet Supplements Fall Short
Virtually all innovation in pet supplements until now has centered around an approximately $30 retail price point. When accounting for retailer margins, this implies a cost of goods sold (the cost to actually manufacture the product) between $4-8 per unit.
While early brands have delivered beneficial condition-specific products at this price point, economic design constraints have created a market in which incumbent brands are releasing nearly identical products based on variations of the same simple commodity ingredients. There are only so many ways you can combine glucosamine, chondroitin, and hemp oil. So to compete and create the appearance of differentiation, they must rely on “pixie-dusting” of trivial amounts of exotic ingredients that sound good on a label, but aren’t present in amounts significant enough to add efficacy or value to consumers. The result is a stagnant landscape of incumbent brands with no headroom to meaningfully innovate within their current business model, who must instead rely on increasingly audacious marketing claims for their products which aren’t, in substance, much different from their competitors.
We’ve taken a radically different approach to our formulation. Working with our veterinary partners, we designed the most advanced, potent, and efficacious formula possible, and let that dictate what our price point needed to be. We placed a bet that as long as our product worked and delivered on its promises, there would be pet parents willing to invest in their dogs’ longterm health and quality of life, even at a comparatively higher cost.
Why Arterra is Different
Recognizing the deep bond between pet owners and their pets, Arterra addresses the need for potent, scientifically-formulated solutions that can tangibly improve pet longevity and quality of life. For discerning pet parents, unwilling to compromise on their pet's well-being, Arterra emerges not just as an alternative, but as the premier choice, grounding innovation in real science, not mere marketing differentiation.
We have developed a line of premium nutritional supplements for pets to address the unmet need in the pet supplement market for high-quality products backed by scientific research. Priced at $100-$200 and featuring 63 premium, vet-approved ingredients, our flagship product line consists of two products, our Adult and Senior formulas, which are the most advanced pet supplements ever brought to market by a literal order of magnitude.
While both formulas address the same functional areas, our Adult formula ($100) is preventative in nature and designed to slow down the clock in healthy adult dogs, while our Senior formula ($200) is regenerative in nature and designed to help turn back the clock in older dogs who are already experiencing symptoms of degenerative aging. Here's how:
While historic category innovation has focused on single condition-specific formulas (e.g. Hip & Joint, Gut Support, Allergy Support) our Adult and Senior Formulas take an all-in-one approach to deliver whole-body support in an easy, daily scoop that can be added to dogs' food (dogs love our natural bacon flavor!). The foundation of our formulas replaces an entire shelf of condition-specific formulas seen commonly on brick-and-mortar shelves, providing a radical upgrade from incumbent products for universal dog health needs: joint support, immune support, gut health, organ health, and stress support.
Each of these functional domains outperforms incumbent products in three ways:
- Greater Breadth: Each functional domain of our product (e.g. Hip & Joint, Gut, Stress) is addressed by a multimodal stack of ingredients that supports the relevant biological system through multiple science-backed ingredients, creating an entourage effect that is greater than the sum of its parts. Whereas a popular competitor's Hip & Joint supplement has only three functional ingredients, ours has eleven - to name just one example.
- Superior Quality and Form: The form of nutraceutical ingredients is critical to their efficacy. Most brands rely on consumer ignorance of this distinction to use the cheapest forms available. For example, the most widely used form of supplemental magnesium has poor bioavailability, and is more effective as an unintended laxative than a nutritional mineral source. The form of magnesium we use was developed by a team of MIT scientists including one Nobel Laureate and is licensed under patent for use in our product to deliver unique cognitive and neurological benefits not present in any other pet supplement.
- Higher Potency:Beyond breadth and form of ingredients, our formula contains significantly higher doses than competing brands. Many competitors rely on "pixie dusting" trivial amounts of premium ingredients that look good on a label, but are present in doses too small to actually move the needle on health outcomes. Arterra's supplements contain 2-8x the dosage of many ingredients found in competing brands.
Beyond this broad foundation that aims to replace and outperform most of today's pet supplement retail shelf in a single product, Arterra's flagship formulas are the first to tackle two distinct domains that are net new to the dog supplement landscape: Cognitive & Mood Support, and Epigenetic Anti-Aging.
- Cognitive & Mood Support: Dogs suffer from the same cognitive decline, dementia, and depression as humans in old age, yet these symptoms have been largely ignored by incumbent brands. Arterra's Adult and Senior formulas feature robust support for both the underlying neurological health of the brain, while boosting the availability of key neurotransmitters involved in positive mood, energy, and motivation.
- Epigenetic Anti-Aging: Our formula contains an industry-first combination of ingredients designed to favorably enhance expression of several key genetic pathways and related systems that regulate the aging process. Notably, it provides support for Sirtuin and AMPK activation, mitochonondrial health and biogenesis, reduction of Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs), and contains multiple senolytic agents to help eliminate senescent (old and dysfunctional) cells. The result is a slowing and even partial reversal of the biological clock.
Our Adult and Senior formulas aim to replace most of our competitors' entire product lines, while also introducing first-to-market support for two completely health new domains -- all in one convenient, daily product.
We can accomplish this partly by our higher price point, but also through a completely different business model than competing brands. Whereas virtually all incumbents have designed their products for brick-and-mortar retail distribution (at a 50% gross retail margin), we are exclusively direct-to-consumer by design and will stay that way for the foreseeable future; the 50% margin that other brands cede to retailers is fully reinvested into our product quality — giving traditional retailers' share of the value chain back to our customers. The result is a product line that costs between 10-20x as much as our competitors to produce, at a retail price of 3-7x.
Yes, our supplements cost more up front, but provide substantially more value for each of those dollars.
Dog Size Matters
An important point to highlight regarding our price is that because our serving size is based on your dog’s weight, the monthly cost is highly dependent on the size of your dog. One bottle of our Adult formula costs $99 on subscription. This will last a large breed dog like a Golden Retriever one month - a meaningful investment for most families. But it will last a medium sized dog like a Beagle or Cocker Spaniel two months (< $50 per month), and a small breed dog like a Chihuahua or Dachshund four months ( < $25 per month). So the smaller your dog, the more accessible Arterra’s price point becomes.
Value over Price
While our product is necessarily expensive, it costs up to 20x as much to produce as conventional pet supplements, while replacing multiple condition-specific products with one, and delivering novel added benefits not available anywhere else. We define value as benefit relative to price, and by this important measure believe Arterra’s flagship formulas represent the best and most compelling value in pet supplements today.
Jonathan Willbanks
Founder & CEO
