What RUINS The Health Food Store?

There is probably no part of human existence more prone to the supply of false and misleading data than that related to "health."

Arrayed on one side is the vast panoply of the medical establishment, pharmaceutical companies, government, media and others who believe in "better living through chemistry."

A SHEFFIELD ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUP has won a two-and-a-half-year courtroom battle for the right to expose details of experiments on animals in a government-sanctioned laboratory.

Pressure group Uncaged Campaigns, of Bailey Street in the city centre, has revealed the nature of experiments conducted between 1994 and 2000. Documents show primates such as baboons were transported from the African savannahs to die in laboratory steel cages the size of toilet cubicles. Monkeys and baboons died after organs were transplanted into their bodies in a failed attempt to find a way to perfect animal-to-human organ transplants.

[Image on left is "Swiss drug giant Novartis obtained a gagging order on the small Sheffield campaign group to suppress the release of the files." source]

And,

WHEN your customers start building plants for you so you can make their products, you know you must be doing something right.

Especially when your customers are multinational pharmaceutical giants with plants all over the world and your plant is in suburban Boronia.

But while the world pharmaceutical industry has a good understanding of what Institute of Drug Technology does, it seems local investors do not, says chairman and managing director Graeme Blackman.

"We are not a biotech. We don't research products in our own right," said Dr Blackman.

"We are a drug development and outsourcing business, but it's been hard to get any understanding in the market, even with dividends and profits which continue to rise."

[Image on upper right is Dr Graeme Blackman and some of his scientists who have put Boronia on the world pharmaceutical map. They specialise in handling some of the most toxic substances in medicine. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones (source)

On the other side are the tiny "David's" who face Goliath, from a position of raw material producers who generally have no interest in the health value of what they produce to the "health food stores" which are usually owned by individuals dedicated to changing the very nature of health care.

The marvel of this struggle is that the many trillions of dollars of assets on one side are still not enough to squelch the tiny David's who suffer even from plenty of opportunism from within their own ranks.

(You have the would-be David's who would rather make and sell fake sling-shots than take good aim at the enemy of truth and health!

Vibrant Life sells honest, concentrated extract from the Taheebo Tree, with good result. Nature's Sunshine sells sawdust from that same tree -- sawdust, cellulose, cannot be digested or absorbed by the human. Nature's Sunshine sells a deceptive and fraudulent product. That is not rare in the vitamin world.)

It it is obvious that drug companies are moving as fast as they can to make drugs a consumer-choice item rather than a professional prescription item. Click here for several examples that SHOULD startle you to contemplate! A couple of these examples are below -- more data on them, and others, at the link.

Medi-Cell Laboratories' Age Lift Series anti-aging products part of company's Hydrox-C line

Drug & Cosmetic Industry,  September, 1998  

00-00-0000 The new Age Lift Series of anti-aging products, by Medi-Cell Laboratories, is part of their Hydrox-C line of advanced skin care. The Rapid Restoration Patch is a quick-release, non-adhesive, dermal transfer patch for the area around the eyes, upper lip and smile ...

Medi-Cell Laboratories, Inc. is the first  and only company to combine three different types of Vitamin C with Alpha Hydroxy Acid in non-irritating formulations. 

You also have so-called vitamin producers pushing into "drug substitutes." What is this world coming to?

VitaMan ® Give Me Strength!
A Drug-Free Alternative to Viagra ® by Pfizer

VitaMan ® has been fortified with several new ingredients and with greater strength to meet the needs of today's active man. Research into vitamin supplementation with certain vitamins and minerals has shown a direct benefit in helping to restore energy levels and eliminate any "Marginal Nutrient Deficiency" which may be affecting his ability to generate his maximum personal peak of performance in work, sports or sex.

Prozac and other similar harmful substances are allowed by the FDA despite the evidence of harm caused by them. The sales of this one psychiatric drug, world wide, are many times the sales of the entire US vitamin, supplement and mineral industry. So we have a battle going on? Who is David?

The guy who swallows one of our pills on the top of Prozac -- isn't it entirely likely he will NOT get good results from the vitamin but will come back to complain to US!

Is the guy who swallows our pills, on top of Prozac, responsible for the bad results from the vitamins? Certainly. Are we also? Certainly! He should know better than take Prozac and WE should know better than to think that our vitamins can help a druggie.

Can we handle all these responsibilities while we make a 10% profit margin on our sales?

Probably not!

What is a 10% margin? When the so-called "suggested retail price is $100" and you buy at a so-called "standard" health-food store discount of 40%, if you sell at $100 you have made a margin of 40% of your sales price, or a margin of 67% over your cost. When you feel you must "discount" your selling price to $80, for instance, your margin on the sale drops from 40% to 25% and your margin figured on your cost goes from 67% down to 33%.

Price discounting is the biggest problem in the vitamin, supplement and mineral industry -- my opinion.

I had already started thinking about one of the biggest problems I see in commerce on this planet -- price discounting.

I had already come to realize what it takes to be very successful with your marketing -- you must achieve "word of mouth" marketing and promotion. The image on the right tells this whole story -- but three is a much deeper significance of this concept in the integrity and quality of the management of any company that wishes to attain it. I run my business this way and now launch a much larger campaign to introduce this to others.

The biggest problem I see in much marketing is two fold:

1. Many, probably most, commercial firms do NOT have the best interests of their customers at heart. They are more than willing, often to increase sales by discounting prices -- bringing about an irrefutable trend toward poorer and poorer quality. Thus, as I reference above, "competition" leads to price discounts and that leads to firms trying to stay in business without adequate profits -- they then cheapen the product in order to stay alive.

There is hardly anything more stupid, in my opinion, than a person who actually believes in the sign that says "95% Discount!'

I have refused to do this, but when I thought about "MSM" (Methyl Sulfonyl Methane) which my friend produces in India, and which we sell in the US, I thought of MSM as a "bulk commodity" where every person's MSM is just as good as any other person's MSM.

There are many products like this - they tend to be sold on the basis of price only -- only a few very solid companies can afford to stay in such a business. Discount coupons at supermarkets? That is about the dumbest thing I've seen -- yet a large number of people are attracted to them.

2. The existence of anti-trust and price-fixing laws is almost universal across all boundaries of the planet. Even where these laws exist, even have teeth, much of business is often an effort to control prices so that discounts don't eat away at your survival.

I have long felt that the usual multi-level marketing company (MLM) manages to avoid the problems of discounting with their unusual business model. Every independent distributor buys at the same wholesale price -- whether big or small. There is very little profit to be had from buying at these wholesale prices and trying to sell at some artificiaL "suggested retail price" when almost every other distributor is willing to sell at his wholesale cost just to get a customer and build up volume, etc. I won't go into it all now, but the MLM business model avoids price competition and thus individual distributors succeed, or fail, without use of discounts, and depend on superior skill at recruiting and "non-price marketing." The image in the above left is "Amway India." Why do you suppose that most MLM companies have found it easiest to expand in non-US locations? That is worth finding an answer to also.

The "franchise business" is another business model that allows ONE SOURCE to control the retail selling price -- and avoid the terrible prospect of different "McDonald's stores" from competing with one another by price! Their competition is mostly by location and also by service.

I have found another way!

The margin on a sale is only measured in part by the above types of figures. If the product is exclusive to you, you may attract customers just to buy IT and who then see other stuff to buy.

If the product is SO GOOD that your customers tell their friends who then come to your place? Well, "word of mouth" advertising is the best there can be. Any time you get a customer bragging about YOUR store, you have a golden resource.

So, once we have established that we will produce only a "product" that fits the above definition and examples, how do we go about creating a margin of profit that allows us to serve our customers this well?

How big does that profit margin have to be if we are looking to survive with our business model into the world as it is changing over the next 20 years?

 

Exclusive Agency Offer

Vibrant Life with its partner in India, EBNL, is launching a new business model for marketing our products.

This business model allows for small or large retailers to become registered agents, having exclusive rights for any and all shipments of our listed products into that exclusive area. We will make a unilateral public announcement, posted on our web pages, that we refuse to sell to anyone at anything different from what ANY person could get in the way of terms who met the same criteria. We will not sell to anyone who resells at a discount. That is universal and unilateral.

We will accomplish that, legally, by signing up registered exclusive agents who will receive shipments from us ON CONSIGNMENT. A shipment on consignment remains the legal property of the shipper, not the person who takes physical possession. As the legal owner WE set the terms of sale, legally. Any person who agrees to one of our exclusive agency arrangements would be instantly dismissed from his position for one violation of selling at any price less than our posted and public prices.

We will not ship our products to any other firm within that area. Individual retail customers who purchase from our web site and who show a shipping address within the exclusive area will create a commission payable to the agent.

Furthermore, we will ship into all our registered representatives on a consignment basis only -- that means that when the goods arrive the ownership is still with us. The registered representative does NOT pay for them and there is no sale. In fact, he does not "owe" for them -- he is required to return them if he does not sell them within the terms of the agency agreement.

The goods continue to have legal ownership with Vibrant Life.

As the legal owner Vibrant Life can and does determine the terms of sale -- all prices and other terms offered by any registered exclusive representative may be only what is officially published on the public web sites maintained by Vibrant Life.

The exclusive representation is governed by the formal agency agreement.

Part of the requirement to become a registered exclusive agent for Vibrant Life products is a Company-funded educational program. All the agent's staff who have anything to do with informing the public about health matters are required to take Company-provided electronic, interactive courses on the web, and be certified.

The level of continuing education with these courses, and relative to the number of staff and others which the agent arranges to take these courses -- these will be part of the determination of the agency commission paid to the agent.

The area of exclusivity is generally a "zip code area" or some other type of geographical area that is easily identified in a public record. This new business model extends to areas outside the United States, subject to any further requirements of local laws and currency restrictions.

Terms of the agency representation, and other terms of this consignment arrangement are on other pages of this web site.

What IS the Health Food Industry?

This question is often answered with a lean this way or that way depending on who is the source of the data.

The most vital fact about the "health food industry" is the enormous amount of false data floating around concerning it.

There is certainly "data" enough, and from any one source it may often even seem consistent, but within any one source you can find the biases of the source and within NO source do you find total truth.

The sources referenced on these web pages are two that cover the industry in depth and broadly.

One of these is the FDA official 1999 report on the "Dietary Supplement" industry. That is presented in five Sections on these pages: Table of Contents, Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, Section 4 and Section 5. (The table of contents on this site has links to the applicable pages on this site.)

The industry, generally at odds with the FDA about these matters, wanted to have its own privately-created 1998 report and that is referenced HERE. This latter report is offered here in only the outline form. The full report originally sold for some $4,000. This outline includes definitive inserted comments by Karl Loren, often relating to the "WHY" some aspect of the industry might be the way it is, rather than try to present data only.