Mission Statement
“Ancore is dedicated to producing high quality cutting edge, lifestyle nutrition solutions to improve health and fitness.”
Markets: Quality Management and Nutrition Software
Company Name: Ancore Limited
Period: 2008 - 2016
1,000’s of satisfied customers - more effective than WeightWatchers
JustSlim involved some of the UKs leading medical professionals, sports scientists from Loughborough University, fitness professionals and personal trainers, which lent credibility to the brand and positioned it as a healthy, sustainable weight loss solution.
Commercial Opportunity
“Dynamic Nutrition Technology” was developed as a result of years of research by Nicholas Alexander to provide a platform on which a wide range of discrete lifestyle nutrition products were developed.
Market
There was growing recognition of the importance of good nutrition within a fitness regime and an explosion in numbers of people with fitness gym membership.
In addition, globally, the rate of obesity was at an all time high, with two-thirds of people in this category attempting to follow a weight loss diet at some stage.
The trend towards cloud computing and use of mobile phone apps created the market opportunity to develop online nutrition solutions based on our extremely versatile software platform, Dynamic Nutrition Technology.
Ancore Limited
Ancore Limited was formed in 2008 as the vehicle for the development of Dynamic Nutrition Technology. The first commercially released product, plan:one, proved to be the launchpad for a large family of nutrition solutions, carefully tailored for specific end-user groups.
SMART Objectives
The main strategic objectives of the company were to:
Provide top quality nutrition software products
1.
Develop a suite of products for key target markets in the weight loss and fitness sectors
2.
Build a highly professional management team to position Dynamic Nutrition Technology as the global specialist platform for nutrition plans
3.
Management
A management team was assembled comprising business advisors with expertise in the business to consumer arena, brand building, software development and “the cloud”.
Each member of the team also operated their own business and had considerable experience, both in their own specific fields and more generally, in business and project management.
Management Systems
Business and quality management systems (QMS) were implemented in accordance with ISO 9001, ISO/IEC 20000 for IT service management and ISO/IEC 27000 for information technology and security.
Funding
Personal funds, private equity, several grants, including The Invest Growth Proof of Concept Fund, contributed to the funding package to establish the business and commercialise its first product: plan:one.
R&D
Nicholas Alexander, a biochemist, specialising in human metabolism both conceptualised and developed all aspects of the technology.
A small team comprising four Microsoft software developers was assembled to deliver the software based on the User Requirements Specification (USP).
Manufacture
Online hosting services were acquired to host the website, manage transactions, provide customer facing services, the SQL database and user interface (UI) required to deliver the tailored solution for each client.
Dynamic Nutrition Technology (DNT) was the technology behind plan:one Professional, plan:one Sport and JustSlim.
Success
1,000’s of satisfied customers experienced amazing weight loss results and JustSlim was proven to be more effective than the market leader, WeightWatchers.
The brand attracted significant coverage in national newspaper and magazine titles both in print and online in titles such as Daily Express, Daily Star, People, Marie Claire, Health & Fitness, Women’s Fitness, Bella, Love It and More.
The brand also attracted major sponsors from the sport and leisure industries including Ronhill, York Fitness, Montagne Jeunesse, Rubbersole and Trixter.