How Onboarding Works at MHS (and Why Discovery Is Now Self-Serve)

Starting with a contract manufacturer used to mean booking a discovery meeting and waiting for it. At MHS, that wait got too long. So we moved discovery out of the meeting room and into a free client portal you can open today.

Here is the short version. You fill in the discovery form (about three minutes, no obligation). Your portal opens with a set of short discovery videos covering how we work, what each service includes, and what it costs. When you've watched what's relevant to your product, you choose one of two ways forward: book a 30-minute onboarding call for anything the videos didn't answer, or skip the call and request a paid service straight from the portal.

Nothing in that sequence commits you to anything. This article walks through each step, what you'll see, and why we built it this way.

Why we changed it

Everything we do is a measured process, and discovery was no different. At the start of 2026 we ran eight one-hour discovery sessions a week, and the wait for one was about seven days. By October we were running twelve a week, and the wait had grown to more than 21 days.

That told us the process wasn't keeping up with demand. A fair share of sessions were also booked by people still doing market research, with no plan to start development in the next six to twelve months. That's not a criticism. But it held back founders who were ready to move.

So we recorded everything we used to cover face to face. Discovery is now self-serve. One-on-one onboarding calls are now 30 minutes instead of 60, we offer 24 of them a week, and they focus on one thing: the questions you still need answered before you start a paid service.

Onboarding at a glance

Step 1 — The discovery form

The form asks about your product, your business and where you are in the process. Answer it honestly. If you're not yet committed, or don't have budget for paid services right now, that's fine. Honest answers mean call times go to founders who are ready to move, and you still get the portal and every video.

Step 2 — Your portal

When you first log in, a few short set-up steps ask for your attention. The first covers your personal and business details: review them, update anything that's changed, and mark them correct. Brand positioning is optional; add it now or later.

Three resources sit at the top right of the portal at all times:

• Discovery content, so you can rewatch any video.
• The capabilities brief, the backbone of the intro video, including when to start each service, working back from your launch date.
• Our terms of service, which set out what each service includes, what it doesn't, and what it costs.

Step 3 — The discovery videos

The videos are short topics, so you watch what matters to your product and skip what doesn't. Start with the intro. It covers how we bill, the three ways to start, how samples work, and how pricing works. Then pick from formulation, samples, gummies, sachets, graphics, Shopify, rapid prototypes and 3PL fulfilment.

What each one covers is in what the MHS discovery videos cover.

Step 4 — Two ways forward

Book a 30-minute onboarding call with our account manager, if you're ready to move and still have questions the videos didn't cover.

Or request a service. If you already have what you need, the Request a service button opens our service catalogue. Choose a service, and a job card for it opens in your account. No meeting needed.

There are three ways to start working with us:

• Production Review & Pricing, if you already have a formulation. It needs to name the exact form of every material. An AI-generated or reverse-engineered ingredient list isn't a formulation yet.
• Formulation, Simple or Advanced, if you're starting from a concept. Advanced is required for any product aimed at children, the elderly, pregnant or breastfeeding women, or anyone with a clinical presentation.
• Custom gummy development, its own entry point, because the gummy format shapes the formulation.

Step 5 — Job cards

Every service you open gets a job card. It's where the whole team tracks your project and where we talk to you about it. Unlike email, nobody gets left off the thread: a message on a job card is seen by everyone working on your project. Status, deliverables, version history and feedback forms are all linked to it.

The forms matter more than they sound. Taste is subjective, so our sample feedback form asks, for each attribute, how the sample tastes to you now and where you want it to be. Sweetness at 1 out of 5, wanted at 3. Once the gap is measured, the difference between your palate and our food technologist's stops mattering, and each round of changes has a target.

What onboarding doesn't include

We don't offer free quotes or indicative pricing. That's a deliberate choice. Pricing a product properly takes real work on your formulation and its materials, and that work is a paid service. You pay only for the services you use, and your production orders are charged for your labour and materials, nothing else.

You also don't have to use every service. You're welcome to use outside providers for any part of development and come to us only for sampling and production.

Frequently asked questions

MHS manufactures food-type supplements under FSANZ food standards, not TGA-listed therapeutic goods.