Melaleuca Reaches Milestone of $1 Billion in Annual Sales Revenue

Melaleuca faces stiff competition from Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Johnson and Johnson, Colgate-Palmolive, SC Johnson and Kimberly Clark, who control the majority of shelf space at the world’s largest retailers. But Melaleuca has developed a direct-to-consumer model that is proving to be more efficient than the mass marketers and allows Melaleuca to produce higher quality products at extremely competitive prices.

Despite the vast market potential for the company’s continued growth, Melaleuca CEO Frank VanderSloot points out that Melaleuca is still a tiny outfit compared to its competition.

Despite the worst economy that the world has seen in over half a century, Melaleuca continues to flourish. In nine of the last 10 years, the company has made steady, sizeable gains toward the $1 billion marker at a time when many of its competitors are sliding backwards or just struggling to maintain the status quo.

Strong consumer demand for effective, high-quality health products, particularly for its Vitality Pack multivitamins and minerals formulated by its proprietary Oligo process, led the way as a key driver of growth this year.

The company that began with eight employees and eight products has now grown into a worldwide organization with more than 3,200 employees, 800,000 customers and an independent sales force of nearly 300,000 people. While the majority of business growth continues from its U.S. and Canadian operations, sales from the 13 international countries accounted for 40 percent of the revenues.

“Companies that have exceeded the $1 billion mark consistently point out that the first $1 billion is always the most difficult,” said VanderSloot. “We suspect that will also be the case with Melaleuca. Clearly, we are just getting started and have only scratched the surface of our potential.”

According to VanderSloot, the secret to Melaleuca’s success has been the development of superior health-oriented products and the fact that when it comes to health and wellness products, people do not want to sacrifice quality. While competing organizations spend large budgets on retail outlets, advertising and middle men, Melaleuca has focused its operations on increasing product effectiveness as well as using only the best and highest-quality ingredients that, given their inefficient business models, the majority of competitors could not consider. Because of these reasons, Melaleuca has been rewarded with an ever-growing, loyal customer base.

“I think an exciting aspect about our current situation is that there appears to be no end in sight,” said VanderSloot. “Even when we are 20 times our current size, we will be around a $20 billion business and still only have 10 percent of the marketplace.”

About Melaleuca (melaleuca.com)

Melaleuca, The Wellness Company, enhances lives by developing, manufacturing and marketing more than 350 natural health and wellness products. These health, home cleaning, pharmaceutical and personal care products are designed to be safer and more effective than brands purchased at traditional drug and grocery stores.