Melaleuca Unveils New 371,000 Square Foot International Corporate Office

With No Debt and Rapid Growth, Melaleuca's New Facilities Signals Melaleuca's Expectation of a Bright Future

Melaleuca: The Wellness Company^®, a manufacturer of 350 health, household and wellness products, unveiled plans for a new 371,000-square-foot home office. The new facility will house all of Melaleuca’s international and domestic operations except for manufacturing and distribution. The new facility is the most recent facility to be added to Melaleuca’s 195-acre campus west of Exit 113 on St. John’s Road. The new facility will cover 43 acres of the 195-acre campus.

The company outgrew its current home office on 3910 South Yellowstone long ago.  Currently many of Melaleuca’s operations are located in various buildings in Idaho Falls. The company has outgrown all of those facilities. The new facility will allow Melaleuca to bring all of those operations into one facility.

The new facility will house all of Melaleuca’s international operations plus marketing, human resources, business development, IT development, data processing, web development, regional management, finance, accounting, administration, research and development, video production studios, an event center and a 500-person call center. Melaleuca expects the new building to be ready by Fall of 2014.

Employee benefits

The facility will also house Melaleuca’s employee services, including a day care center, employee workout gym, employee restaurant and an employee concierge service center.

Event center available for public use

The 17,000-square-foot event center will be Southeast Idaho's largest event facility. It will accommodate meetings for over 900 people and will be available for other companies to use for corporate events.

Change in direction

The new facility is a change in direction from Melaleuca’s building strategies over the last 27 years. Traditionally, Melaleuca has purchased and remodeled vacant facilities throughout the cities of Idaho Falls and Rexburg. Melaleuca has renovated a number of old, vacant, buildings, including:

• The old S&H Green Stamp Building on Broadway in Idaho Falls
• The old Penny’s Building in Idaho Falls
• The old Weyerhaeuser building in Idaho Falls
• The old Ziggy’s Hardware store in Idaho Falls
• The old city sewer and water building in Idaho Falls (was still in use and not vacant)
• The old Broulim’s grocery store in Rexburg
• The old Diet Center building in Rexburg

More to come

The new Corporate Office facility is only one of several new facilities to be built on Melaleuca’s 195-acre campus. Over the next several years, new manufacturing facilities will also be built on the campus.

Expanding sewer facilities

Melaleuca has donated over $2.3 million to the Eastern Idaho Regional Waste Water Authority Public Improvement Project, which facilitated the expansion of the Shelly sewer system that brought the sewer system from Shelley to Exit 113 and the surrounding area. Melaleuca expects a great deal of expansion in this area over the next several years.

No debt philosophy

Melaleuca will pay cash for the new facility. Melaleuca has always had a philosophy of not taking on debt.

“My father taught me to always stay out of debt,” Melaleuca CEO Frank VanderSloot said. “We don’t buy or build anything until we can afford to pay cash for it. As a company, we’ve been frugal in our business decisions. We’ve been fortunate to be able to operate without any debt. We own all of our facilities and manufacturing plants along with our equipment, computers and furniture. We feel that protects us from any financial problems in the future.”

VanderSloot jokes about having a $1 billion business operating out of an old hardware store. His only regret is that he will not be able to tell that story in the new facility.

Using local contractors

Melaleuca’s philosophy is to always buy locally when possible. Wherever possible, Melaleuca has awarded construction work to local companies, keeping the money in Southeast Idaho. This includes mechanical, electrical, plumbing, excavation, drywall, bricklayers, concrete development, steel formation and more. The general contractor is Bateman-Hall from Idaho Falls and the civil engineer is Harper-Leavitt Engineering from Idaho Falls. HKS Architects from Salt Lake City is the project architect.

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 cost-effective than grocery store brands.