Is this for you at all
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Supplements have the best margins and the heaviest obligations of the categories in this catalog, and the obligations arrive from the first unit rather than at a size.
What the business is
You are manufacturing a product whose label makes a quantitative claim about what a person is ingesting. The blending is not difficult. Being able to prove the claim is the business.
Brands that do well here behave like small manufacturers with a quality system. Brands that struggle behave like people who mix powders.
The obligation with no threshold
21 CFR 111 has applied to all dietary supplement manufacturers regardless of size since June 2010. Written specifications, identity testing of components, production records, a quality unit, reserve samples.
There is no small-manufacturer exemption. That single fact should shape whether you start and how.
What you need to enjoy
Precision, because a serving is a number and a scoop is wrong by up to forty percent unless you do something about it.
Documentation, because the records are a large part of what compliance actually is.
And the discipline to launch narrow, because per-formula testing punishes a wide range harder than any other cost in this catalog.
Who should start elsewhere
Anyone unwilling to pay for testing. There is no honest version of this without identity testing at minimum, and potency testing for anything you claim.
Anyone who wants a six-product launch. Each formula carries its own testing and its own risk.
And anyone drawn to the claims rather than the manufacturing, because the claims are the most regulated part of the product and the gap between a permitted structure/function claim and an unapproved drug claim is one sentence wide.
If that reads as discouraging, the counterweight is that a single well-made, well-documented, honestly-labeled product in this category is a genuinely strong position, because many competitors are none of those things.