Team Name: IMA Blends

Concept: Healthy snack that provides key nutrition for pregnant and nursing women, supporting moms at each stage of motherhood. Only snack in the market with no sugar added, dairy-free, organic, and with clean ingredients.

Challenge: Before, during, and after becoming a mother, women have specific nutritional needs and face uncomfortable symptoms or ailments. Now more than ever, mothers feel pressure to breastfeed given the proven health and developmental benefits of breastfeeding for newborns. 8 out of 10 moms begin breastfeeding, but only 2 out of 10 continue after a few weeks due to milk supply issues

Modern, busy moms don’t have much time to meal prep to satisfy all their nutrition needs. Pregnant women suffer from nausea and food aversion, and nursing women struggle with keeping up with their baby’s appetite. There are snacks in the market that solve these issues, but all of them are high in sugar and not healthy (mostly cookies). IMA is a convenient, healthy, and crave-able solution.

Solution: Snacks on the market are traditionally high-carb, high sugar. Also, the pre and postnatal vitamins or teas are not crave-able, or enjoyed when consumed. IMA blends is healthy, organic, convenient, with no sugar added (sweetened with stevia). It has few, clean ingredients that are proven to help at each motherhood stage, and packaging appeals to the mom consumer (disposable and convenient). Product can serve as either a snack or a meal (potentially breakfast). The product has enough protein, carbs, and healthy fats that can serve a balanced meal or snack.

Market:
Total Market: $3 Billion
Serviceable market $422 million

There are approximately 3.6 million babies born each year in the United States, each with a mother with the potential to breastfeed. Approximately 83.9% of infants have ever been breastfed, so that leaves us with 3.02 million mothers. Approximately 46.4% of Americans have a household income of $50,000 or more per year, bringing the total number of nursing mothers in that segment to 1.4 million. We estimate that 5% of this population will have an allergy to eggs or almonds, key ingredients in our blend, which means that 1.33 million women are in our segment and able to consume our product. Approximately 60% of consumers buy direct-to-consumer products like IMA Blends, bringing our target segment to 799,000 nursing mothers. Lastly, approximately 63% of consumers care about their food being made with “clean” ingredients, bringing our target segment to 503,000 women each year who could potentially be the core consumers of our product.

If we assume that these women consume lactation products for 210 days in a year, spending $3.99 per day in the subscription, we are anticipating a serviceable addressable market of $422 million.

Competition: IMA is the only organic snack especially formulated for mothers that has no sugar added! Most competitors offer cookies, shakes, teas, or pills (supplements). IMA Blends offers a variety of options including microwavable mug cakes and bars that offer nutrition with healthy ingredients in a crave-able, convenient way.

Value Creation: Product is comprised of clean ingredients, using environmentally friendly cardboard packaging.

Team: [All UCLA Anderson MBA students]

Alejandra Perez: CPG (Food and Beverage) Marketing and Sales Experience, The Wonderful Company, Chemical Engineer
Jessica Rodriguez: Strategy experience, Consulting at BCG, University of California, Berkeley
Ashley Huang: Operations experience, Bain & Company
Jesse Meza: Market Research and Branding, Procter and Gamble
Nick DeSantiago: CPA, Finance and Strategy expert, University of Arizona

VOTE FOR TEAM IMA BLENDS HERE