V&YOU is a premium lifestyle brand offering innovative active ingredients to customers looking to enhance their daily vibe. We interviewed Titus Wouda Kuipers, the CEO on plans to launch the brand and future expansion into new territories in this growing industry.

Q: Where did the idea for V&YOU come from? 

A: My co-founders Markus, Ged and I have observed over the years that companies have moved away from the core essence of their being: The consumers and their desires. 

We knew there was an opportunity to create accessible premium products using active ingredients from a credible business that offers consumers tangible benefits and choice. 

Our mission is to give people the freedom to experience how active ingredients can enhance their daily vibe. We are enhancing consumer’s moods or vibes with V&YOU. 

There is a lot of mistrust and confusion about active ingredients. We aim to be honest and transparent and uphold the highest standards so people know they can always trust our brands and products. 

V&YOU is a progressive lifestyle brand that produces a range of premium products using active ingredients that help people enhance their daily vibe and find joyful intensity in everything they do. V&YOU has a range of products that use active ingredients such as CBD and nicotine to enable people to enhance their daily vibe – be that calm, chill, focus or boost. 

Q: When it came to product development, how have you differentiated yourselves from others in the Nicotine & CBD space? 

A: The products are created around four vibes –calm, chill, focus and boost– so people have the freedom to choose their vibe, depending on how they feel that day. We are the only lifestyle brand offering different active ingredients and therefore choice for your personal vibe, starting with nicotine and CBD. 

Our pouches are our USP offering consumers discretion, longer-lasting flavours and the ability for people to feel their vibe anytime and anywhere. We are the only UK business to produce CBD in pouches. This format is popular across Europe and we want to bring this to the UK so that people can enjoy their CBD and nicotine in an easy to use, convenient and effective format. You can just slip it in your mouth, tuck it between your cheek and gum. 

All products are created to the highest quality levels with transparency across the product portfolio from ingredients to manufacturing and all information is available on our website. We have an independent advisory panel of industry-leading scientists and experts to ensure this superior quality for consumers, the efficacy of our product and the legitimacy of our industry. 

Q: As we know through working with you, there are a lot of restrictions on the acquisition front to drive traffic to the website digitally. In light of these restrictions, how have you planned to acquire new customers for the brand? 

A: You are right. For nicotine and also CBD, our opportunities to directly communicate with our consumers are limited. Nicotine is a highly addictive substance, so we have a special responsibility here. Having said that, it’s been proven that it is the tobacco in cigarettes and the way cigarettes are consumed that cause most health risks. We are very explicit that our audience focus for nicotine is not to convert new users, but to promote nicotine pouches as an alternative product to people who already smoke or vape with nicotine. At the same time, we believe our nicotine pouches are a safer and less intrusive way for smokers to consume nicotine, free from the health risks associated with tobacco. 

Finding ways that nicotine consumers hear about our product to have a real choice is vital for us. That’s why we have set up strong email marketing campaigns with an amazing welcome email flow, browse and cart abandonment flows, just to name a few. It is early days but we already can see them paying off. And to give you a little, well deserved praise here: You and your team at MagnetMonster have done an incredible job. 

Q: Why did you decide to choose Shopify as your e-commerce platform? 

A: Shopify is the golden standard for e-commerce. It is easy to handle and adaptable to our specific needs. As you can see from our site it is highly V&YOU-ed! Besides that, we can integrate it perfectly with customer acquisition and retention tools like Klaviyo, email marketing. 

Q: After launching in the UK, you’ve told me the brand has plans to launch across several territories. Which countries do you foresee strong future opportunities in? 

A: There is a rapidly increasing demand for CBD and alternative reduced-risk nicotine products. Therefore, we plan to make our products available across the EU in the very near future. As I mentioned, V&YOU launches with two products CBD and nicotine, but we have already now loads of exciting additional active ingredients in the pipeline which we eventually aim to sell globally.