How 3 Health-Focused Startups Built Devoted Communities and a National Retail Presence

Small business takeaway:

• In a saturated wellness category, health-focused startups Seed Health, BelliWelli, and Cocolab show that building community among consumers can function as a durable growth moat that precedes, and then amplifies, retail expansion. For these brands, early product demand validation (presales, campaigns, sampling) reduced merchandise risk and sharpened market positioning. Second, credibility grew through education and evidence, turning science and efficacy into brand trust. Third, retail became a stage for culture—with authentic moments and partner collaboration translating into product discovery and sell-through.

For startups in today’s crowded health and wellness market, growth depends on far more than a strong product or premium shelf placement. The most resilient brands are winning by building trusted, long-term relationships with their customers from the start, treating community engagement as a core growth strategy alongside product innovation. That investment is paying off. 

From becoming a top 10 product in Target’s vitamins, minerals, and supplements (VMS) category and outpacing established competitors, to achieving triple-digit revenue growth, to overtaking legacy brands, community-first brands are translating customer engagement and loyalty into measurable results. 

Founders from Seed Health, BelliWelli, and Cocolab shared with CO— how they’ve gone about establishing devoted consumer communities that have fueled credibility, customer retention, and expansion, sparking a widespread national retail presence.

Oral care startup Cocolab turns everyday oral care into a social experience 

When sisters Chrystle and Cat Cu launched their dental care company, they sought to challenge big brands and make flossing a fun self-care ritual.

The Cocolab founders started by building community on social media. They created a Photoshop mock-up of their envisioned final product and presold their sponge-like woven dental floss made from recycled polyester and coated with wax and coconut oil to Facebook friends. With its strawberry, coconut, mint, and orange flavors paired with bold packaging, the brand stood in sharp contrast to the conventional offerings on store shelves. Then fans began to see the floss as fashionable. 

“We sold the idea first,” said Chrystle, a dentist by trade. “We wanted to prove it was something people would put money behind.” They distributed early samples to friends, family, and colleagues to gather feedback, leaning on the community of Chrystle’s dental school classmates and her Wellesley College alumnae network, connecting with the latter through private Facebook groups. “This company was really built through Wellesley Facebook groups,” she said. “Wellesley alumnae were among our earliest adopters.”

To unite would-be flossers, the sisters launched a 21-day flossing challenge on Facebook. It was essential in gathering data on customer needs around flossing that shaped their final product. As the business expanded, growth for the first four years came largely from the community connections they’d forged and from word of mouth. The sisters personally delivered Cocofloss samples to dental offices, where dentists then began recommending the product to their patients.

Their followers also came together through a successful campaign on Instagram early on. The brand’s Instagram #JetSetCocofloss campaign encouraged customers to share their flossing-on-the-go experiences, helping normalize and celebrate healthy habits.

The brand’s focus on community has paid off. Its products have appeared on retailer sites new to oral care items, including Free People and Anthropologie. CVS called in 2023, and Cocolab’s expanded line features a dozen floss flavors and other oral care products that are now sold in around two-thirds of CVS stores. Products are also sold on Target.com, and the company made the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies of 2025, with 177% growth over three years.

Cultivating a strong, loyal community is essential, reiterated Chrystle, but it only works if the product itself truly delivers. Customers have to love it first before they’ll rally behind it. “Cocofloss grew organically because the product really does feel different, and it speaks for itself,” she said. “You have to put the time into great, thoughtful products.”

[Read more: How Fast-Growing Oral Care Startup Cocolab Landed Big Retail]

Seed Health: Tapping Instagram to educate and build trust among consumers seeking gut health supplements—and making a splash in big retail

For Ara Katz and Raja Dhir, Co-founders of Venice, California–based probiotics company Seed Health, taking an educational approach to creating a community of consumers seeking a supplement to promote gut health proved pivotal to their success strategy.

The brand’s flagship DS-01 Daily Synbiotic combines probiotics (live beneficial bacteria) with prebiotics (plant-based compounds that feed the bacteria). Katz and Dhir’s goal when they founded the company in 2016 was to upend the probiotics market with a science-first approach.

Seed Health carefully cultivates its Instagram platforms for its some 7 million followers with content that strives to translate science into accessible language and spotlights environmental storytelling. Its scientists on the forefront of microbiome research strive to simply explain new findings. 

“People feel aligned and they participate,” added Katz. “We believe science isn’t finished until it’s communicated. You need to have a brand that resonates and that stands for more than you just selling something.” 

Establishing trust has been central to strengthening community. The brand’s products are informed by peer-reviewed scientific research with ingredients chosen based on clinical trial results. To earn consumers’ confidence in its products’ efficacy and safety, the company invests heavily in preclinical and clinical trials. In most countries, including in the United States, probiotic makers aren’t required to conduct clinical trials before selling products as long as they’re marketed as dietary supplements.

The brand’s approach has helped it differentiate and make a big splash in mass retail. After launching direct-to-consumer, its products are now sold on Amazon and in Target stores across the United States. The brand launched on Amazon in February 2024, and its DS-01 product broke into the top five probiotics on Amazon within a year. 

Target approached Seed Health about selling its products. After the retailer introduced more than 1,000 new wellness-related products, including hundreds exclusive to the brand, from gummy supplements to protein-forward foods to vitamins, Seed Health launched its probiotic products in all Target stores across the United States and on Target.com in September 2024. Offerings include a Target exclusive, a new probiotic called DS-01 14 Day Gut Reset.

“Target has had success with categories like ours,” Katz said, “and they’re so collaborative.” 

Within three months, DS-01 became a top 10 product in Target’s VMS category. Seed Health also recently launched nationwide in Sprouts Farmers Market. The company is turning a profit, with revenue growth of over 500% in the past three years.

Katz attributes the company’s success first and foremost to creating a distinctive, high-performing product that meets clear demand. From there, she said, strong brand awareness follows, driven by sustained engagement and trust with the community around the brand.

To be successful, entrepreneurs need confidence in what they’re creating and the discipline not to “boil the ocean,” Katz added—meaning they shouldn’t try to do everything at once but instead focus on serving and growing a loyal audience over time.

[Read more: How Startup Seed Health Became Target’s Fastest-Growing Probiotics Brand and Turned a Profit]

BelliWelli: Leveraging TikTok to broadcast interactions to the world, with retailer Walmart as a key partner

Katie Wilson of BelliWelli approaches community-building by connecting directly with her customers seeking digestive products, then sharing the interactions with the world. Her quirky and culturally resonant TikTok videos speaking with customers and celebrities about her products has helped BelliWelli drive a huge revenue jump two years after launch. Products are carried in some 8,000 retail stores nationwide.

The digestive health brand makes cookie bars—which went national after Sprouts began carrying them— as well as fiber powders in flavors like strawberry lemonade and peach mango, and fiber gummies. Wilson’s tactic took shape after she stopped by her local Walmart one day to see how her daily fiber supplement powder was placed on shelves. That’s when she spotted an elderly man who told her he was browsing fiber products for his wife. With his permission, she pulled out her phone and began recording.

“This is my brand; I just launched in Walmart. I’ll buy you one,” Wilson told him in the Foothill Ranch Walmart in Los Angeles. The man explained he was on a “honey-do mission,” and Wilson asked if she could share the video of their conversation about fiber supplements and her BelliWelli powder on TikTok.

He said yes, and the clip went viral. By the next day, her products had sold out at Walmart. “It was free, authentic marketing—and I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” Wilson said. “One viral video wasn’t enough. I wanted that feeling every day.”

That initial customer interaction blossomed into a creative, winning social media marketing campaign on TikTok that’s based on celebrity and customer interactions. In nine months, BelliWelli’s content racked up more than a billion views—outpacing a Super Bowl ad—and helped to fuel a 405% jump in its revenue from 2023 to 2024, only a few years after the brand’s 2021 launch.

“The single greatest superpower a founder has at this stage is getting to watch real people interact with their product,” Wilson said. “It’s such a good use of my time.”

After BelliWelli’s first viral video, Wilson called her Walmart contact to ask if she could film customer videos in the store every day for two months. The answer was a resounding yes. Wilson went to Walmart from 7 to 11 p.m. nightly, watched people shop for her fiber products, interviewed customers, and filmed funny product-related skits.

“I was really able to create this viral moment day in and day out, and we could only do this because Walmart leaned in so hard,” Wilson said. She racked up 120 million views weekly across the brand’s social channels, helping to build her community of customers.

Next, she took her marketing tactics to the streets of Los Angeles. She “Belli Bombed” celebrities by adding a scoop of her product to their drink and filming it for social media. She’s filmed influencer and model Haley Kalil, influencer Brooke Monk, blogger Perez Hilton, and singer and dancer JoJo Siwa. Part of the allure of the videos, Wilson said, is people wondering whether the moments were real or orchestrated. Celebrity meetings are arranged ahead of time, but she does a single take. “Everyone has had so much fun with it,” Wilson said.

The secret to going viral and building a community of loyal fans is to create compelling content that’s authentic to your specific brand, added Wilson. 

“The North Star is, how can we create a cultural moment?” Wilson said. “If you have a great campaign, it has an impact, and then sales follow.” And so does your devoted community.

[Read more: How BelliWelli Broke Through the Crowded Gut Health Market to Amass a Devoted Following]

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