more inclined to go straight to product discounts and promotions. Our products are premium products for a reason. It is because of cost of the ingredients and the quality that we put into them, and the care that goes into sourcing and finding those ingredients and ensuring that they are pure and potent. We do a lot of things like wild crafting, where we send people out into the woods to forage ingredients. They forage for cascara, ginger and other things by hand and that is an expensive endeavour. That is how Nature’s Sunshine does business, but it is not necessarily how these other companies are doing business. Again, the way we do business is why we are able to give you products that deliver results you can actually feel. You can discern the difference with products that actually have potency and purity behind them. We take extreme care in that, so we are not leaning heavily on that discounting arm; we are really just leaning more heavily on the fact that our brand offers the most powerful supplements on the planet. That really is meaningful to consumers, because they are not wasting their money. The manufacturing process is where all the magic happens. You can give somebody the formula and all the ingredients and everything that they need, but it will not work the same way. I am not a good cook – you can give me all the ingredients you want to, but they are not going to come out of the oven at the quality of what a Michelin Star chef is going to deliver! We have craftsmen who have been working with us for 25-30 years who really know the process and what they are doing; they are artisans. It really makes a difference when you have that, and it is at every stage of the manufacturing process from the mixing to the processing. Again, that is where our products deliver results. We also do more testing than other companies and will reject ingredients that other companies are perfectly happy to sell. That may be as simple as basic testing for the presence of ash in a product. Ash is dirt – that is where things like E. coli would reside, or salmonella, or heavy metals. It is a simple test that other companies do not use. We also do more sophisticated tests on the purity and potency of our products, and we have the equipment that will allow us to do that. Again, this is equipment that other companies just do not have. We are one of five companies in North America that have a particular machine that allows us to break down products and then discern what is actually in them and how potent they are. If you think about the 500 companies that are out there selling suplements in America alone, and the 30,000 products that are out there, that is how much difference there is between what Nature’s Sunshine does as one of those five companies and what the other 500 are doing. It is pretty thin air up here where we do business versus the other 495 companies that are out there. In addition to the extra efforts that you are taking to shore up your existing base of loyal customers, have you witnessed any other emerging trends in the nutrition sector at this time? People want to make sure that they are getting their basic nutrition – their fruits and vegetables, the importance of multivitamins, sleep and other things that help to reduce anxiety, just these basic bodily functions. There used to be a craze around things like CBD (which, when done right, is an excellent herbal healing aid), but we have seen a shift of people towards simply trying to take care of their basic health. We are focusing on the herbal side of that. Herbs and botanicals in particular are very popular. People want ingredients that are natural and to work with companies they can trust, and those things are very important today. “The care we take in building our products is important, but we also have 600 different products; we literally have something for everyone and for every ailment that someone might have.” CEO Today USA Awards 2022 - FEATURED WINNER - - 16 -
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