From a scale-up booth
to a 10× expansion.
How Excelsia Labs turned a modest New Exhibitor Pavilion stand at Vitafoods Europe 2026 into trajectory-changing clients, a new factory, and a 60 m² individual stand for 2027.
“If you are not exhibiting at Vitafoods Europe, you're not serious about your business. Every single conversation is a lottery ticket — it only takes one or two to change the course of your company.”
Excelsia Labs in 60 seconds
The company, the product, and the trajectory that turned a first-time exhibit into a category-leading presence.
Excelsia Labs — European gummy vitamin manufacturer, founded by a U.S. entrepreneur.
Hard-to-develop, stability-critical gummies — including a 1 g creatine + 500 mg collagen SKU.
European nutraceuticals, contract manufacturing, and premium consumer supplement brands.
Vitafoods Europe 2025, New Exhibitor Pavilion.
#1 fastest-growing gummy manufacturer in Europe, with a new factory now under construction.
10× footprint upgrade — from a 6 m² pavilion booth to a 60 m² individual stand.
An American playbook, rebuilt for Europe
Excelsia Labs is a European manufacturer of gummy vitamins, founded by a U.S. entrepreneur who saw a clear gap in the market. In the United States, gummies are now the number-one form of supplementation for consumers under 45 — yet in Europe, very few manufacturers were producing them at the quality and complexity the category demanded.
The company specialises in hard-to-develop formulations: products that other manufacturers either won't touch or can't stabilise. Its 2026 showcase — a gummy delivering 1 g of creatine and 500 mg of collagen in a single serving — is a category-leading example. Creatine is notoriously difficult to stabilise in a gummy matrix, and consumers are increasingly educated about purity, solubility and label authenticity.
The founding thesis was simple: build American-style quality and innovation for the European supplements market — and prove it with the hardest SKUs in the category.
In our industry, only the paranoid survive. It's chemistry — there are many ways things can go wrong and only a couple of ways things can go right.
Founder, Excelsia Labs
Breaking in where buyers buy experience
Nutraceuticals is a category where buyers are buying experience. Big brands and contract clients are cautious about placing volume orders with a young manufacturer, however good the product. For Excelsia Labs, the challenge before Vitafoods Europe was twofold: proving credibility as a serious, stable supplier, and earning visibility with the buyers, formulators and brand owners who actually shape category decisions.
Booking the first Vitafoods Europe stand was, in the founder's own words, "a last-minute decision" — and a nervous one. The investment was modest by industry standards but significant for a bootstrapped start-up.
As a start-up you're so focused in that insular world of products — you lose track of the fact that there are billion-dollar companies here. Vitafoods Europe is massive beyond comprehension.
Five reasons the show works for emerging brands
Excelsia Labs' evaluation of trade shows was pragmatic. As a bootstrapped manufacturer with a category-first SKU, they needed an event where the right buyers were already in the room — and where a small stand could punch far above its weight.
- 01
1. The audience is the audience
Every decision-maker in the industry is here. Buyers, formulators, ingredient partners and distributors are concentrated in one place for a few days — months of outbound compressed into a single event.
- 02
2. A stage built for innovation
What buyers come to Vitafoods Europe looking for is what's next — enhanced bioavailability, novel delivery, category-first SKUs. Exactly the story a hard-to-formulate gummy is built to tell.
- 03
3. Presence & association build credibility
Even a modest scale-up pavilion booth signals that a brand is serious, and standing next to billion-dollar players elevates a young company's profile while accelerating its learning curve. Absent brands lose the conversation by default — buyers are simply talking to someone else.
- 04
4. Serendipity is engineered here
Every conversation is a lottery ticket. One or two right meetings can rewrite a start-up's trajectory — financially and in confidence.
- 05
5. The ROI math works
A 10–20× return on the cost of exhibiting is realistic when the show is worked properly. That kind of ROI is almost impossible to replicate through digital ads or cold email.
A 2 × 3 m stand. One category-first gummy. A lot of qualified conversations.
Excelsia Labs' booth strategy mirrored the company's product philosophy: lead with the hard stuff, prove the difference, then go deep.
Product-in-hand, stability-first
Excelsia Labs exhibited from the New Exhibitor Pavilion with a 2 × 3 m stand built around its flagship 1 g creatine + 500 mg collagen gummy. The team led with product-in-hand demonstrations — stability data, label authenticity and the formulation rigour behind a category-first SKU.
That focus on "showing the work" turned curious passers-by into qualified technical conversations — and qualified conversations into pipeline.
"Last year we picked up clients that changed the trajectory of the whole business — financially, and in the confidence that we can become the biggest gummy manufacturer in Europe."
A 10× stand to match a 10× ambition
For 2027, Excelsia Labs is upgrading from a 6 m² pavilion stand to a 60 m² individual stand — a deliberate 10× signal to the market. Bigger buyers don't always feel comfortable placing volume orders with a starter-level booth.
The new footprint is designed to match the company's new factory, its growing chemistry team, and its ambition to be the category leader in European gummies.
"Sales cures everything. To match the ambition of the new factory, it was very important to show that ambition here at Vitafoods Europe. The best gummies in Europe deserve a stand that grows as fast as the business."
For first-time exhibitors
Start in the Scale-Up Pavilion
The investment is accessible and the visibility is real. It's the fastest way to earn credibility at the show.
Treat every conversation as a lottery ticket
One or two of them can change the trajectory of your business. Work the floor accordingly.
Lead with the hard stuff
Stability, data, formulation rigour. In nutraceuticals, only the paranoid survive — and buyers can tell.
Plan to come back
The compounding effect across editions is where the ROI really lands. Rebooking is the strategy.
For ambitious nutraceutical start-ups
If you're bringing a hard-to-formulate, category-first product to market, the hardest part is no longer the science — it's getting the right buyers to give you the time to understand it. Vitafoods Europe is where they do. Excelsia Labs walked in with a bootstrapped 6 m² booth and walked out with the clients, the credibility and the confidence to build a new factory.
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