The concrete walls and roof decking are finished in Nature’s Herbs new 160,000 square foot production, warehouse and corporate offices in American Fork, UT, but the windows aren’t in place, leaving a magnificent view of the mountains outside Salt Lake City.

Scott Jenkins, director of plant operations, is giving one of his many site tours. He carefully steps around construction debris in what will be the new employee locker room—the labor force will shortly increase from 262 to over 300. Someone mentions that Nature’s Herbs’ parent company, Twinlab, is working on a new five year plan. Jenkins stops by one of the window openings. “Really?” he asks with a concerned glance at the open space around the plant. “Our five year plans tend to be completed in about three years.”

Which means his free space may be gone sooner than later because Twinlab is on a mission to become the top supplement manufacturer in the world. Step one was to expand or acquire its way into all four distribution channels—health stores, mass market, direct sale and mail order. Step two is international exposure. Twinlab believes that to be a player it needs a presence overseas. Step three is a massive push into the mass market. Right now, Twinlab has about a one percent market share in stores such as Rite-Aid and Target. There is plenty of room to grow share to 15 percent, a move that would put its products in up to 47,000 outlets.

Finally, step four is a $17 million capital expenditure program to boost production so that there are enough Twinlab products in every channel.

Twinlab needs the extra capacity. The Ronkonkoma plant runs 24 hours a day, often seven days a week. The American Fork facility is in the middle of its second expansion in four years, including a $13.4 million expansion which will add much-needed encapsulation rooms, capsule filling lines, a 50-foot high storage facility and the company’s first blister thermoforming line.

Demand will only increase. Twinlab has averaged 25 percent sales growth annually, adding 100 new products this year alone, including 51 new products from the introduction of TruHerbs® and a new line of supplements under the brand name Ironman Triathlon Nutrition consistent with the food bar sold under that name by PR Nutrition, also acquired by Twinlab. Without question, manufacturing at Twinlab will be stressed for years to come.

The manufacturing group is accustomed to dealing with fast growth. The plants are flexible enough to supply close to 1,000 products in more than 2,000 skus in distinct dosage forms—liquids, powders, capsules and tablets. And despite its size, the system is oriented around quality and the use of cutting edge technology. All in all, manufacturing has the tools to keep Twinlab a step ahead of sales projections.

The fast-paced supplement industry presents interesting challenges. When Warner-Lambert and Bayer rolled out herbal lines, Twinlab responded with its first entry in the herbal market, the 45-sku TruHerbs product line. Seven of the herbs are sustained release products in “pharmaceutical” blister packages even though Twinlab did not have blister lines at the time. That will change—the TruHerbs line is currently co-packed, but the new packaging area in American Fork has room for a first-of-its-kind blister thermoforming line from Klöckner Medipak, Clearwater, FL, which will be up and running in 1999.

It is this ability to adapt to changes in the market, along with impressive productivity and the confidence to set high standards that make Twinlab Nutritional Outlook’s 1998 Manufacturer of the Year. Twenty years ago, Twinlab was filling bottles in two rooms in Deer Park, NY. Today, it makes 400 million capsules a month. It’s a success story worth telling

Hours A Day
Twinlab’s workhorses are its plants in Ronkonkoma, NY and American Fork, UT. The plants are as different as night and day. The Ronkonkoma plant is old by industry standards, crowded and non-linear because capacity was added as needed over the years. American Fork is four years old, spacious, with computerized energy and environmental systems and linear product flow progressing from raw material to case packaging and palletizing. “There were days in Ronkonkoma when you would come in and a wall would be gone because we were adding on,” says Ross Blechman, president and CEO, Twinlab. “Utah is a monument to what we’ve learned.”

Ultimately, both facilities will be capable of producing every Twinlab product. “In the past, we made tea and botanicals in Utah and everything else in New York,” says Blechman. “But that’s changing. We adapt to demand. When the herb business went through the roof in the first quarter, we made herbs in New York and we did it on a weeks notice.”

Every manufacturing facility has a core philosophy. Twinlab adheres to many of the same good manufacturing practices and SOPs as a pharmaceutical company. “In this industry, the barriers to success are becoming higher,” says Blechman, “which is why we run manufacturing just like a drug company. We don’t want to be regulated like pharmaceuticals, at least as far as the products we sell, but our manufacturing is very close to their standards.”

The Ronkonkoma facility is Twinlab’s main manufacturing plant. During production, Ronkonkoma is a beehive of activity, with the packaging lines running all out in the front of the plant and all other functions—compounding, blending, tableting, encapsulating, tablet inspection, receiving, QC and the warehouse—spread out behind the packaging room.

The packaging floor is the heart of the plant. Ronkonkoma has 10 lines, eight for capsules, two for liquids and one for powder filling. Most handle amber glass bottles although some products such as Creatine for retail markets are packaged in plastic.

All four dosage forms are packaged although capsules and tablets make up the bulk of Twinlab’s products. The packaging lines were integrated by DT Lakso, a division of DT Industries, Springfield, MO. The lines are equipped with as much automatic technology as possible including automatic slat counters, cotton dispensers—no synthetic rayon for Twinlab—induction heat sealers, labelers, metal seal detectors, laser coders, full body shrink overwraps and checkweighers and automatic cartoners.

The process begins in the warehouse when capsules are released from quality control. Twinlab sells six capsule sizes, 000 to Number 4, and could change over a line up to four times a day. Capsules are placed in the first of three hoppers feeding the four-lane slat counter. Capsules feed into glass bottles at a rate of 100-125 bpm. Accuracy is assured with computer control.

Once filled with capsules, bottles progress down the line to a desiccant feeder. Two kinds of desiccants are used, one for odor, one for moisture, depending on the product. After the desiccant station, from one to seven inches of cotton are inserted into the bottles. Next comes labeling and capping. Each cap has a liner with a layer of aluminum and each bottle has a foil inner seal. The foil layer inside the cap adds an extra oxygen and moisture barrier. In addition, a metal detector on the line acts as an extra quality check by insuring the inner liner is present in the cap.

After capping and sealing, bottles receive a pressure-sensitive label on a labeler from New Jersey Machine/CLI Systems International, Lebanon, NH, and a clear full body PVC shrink wrap from PDC, Norwalk, CT. “We’re very particular about our labels,” says Blechman. “The seal is precisely positioned so that it is in the same place every time. Our logo appears at the top of every bottle. The shrink film protects the entire bottle and label and adds security. It adds almost nickel to the price of the package, but it’s worth it for the quality.”

Coding takes place on a Videojet Excel laser coder. The laser prints up to two lines anywhere on the bottle, an important consideration considering Twinlab’s inventory. “During any given day we can run any of our products and we have 10-15 different size caps and 20 different bottle sizes,” explains Blechman.

Once labeled and shrink wrapped, bottles move to a rotary accumulator and unscrambler from Omega Design, Exton, PA. Bottles are placed in cartons which are double bar coded to identify the product and lot number. Each product is placed in computer inventory. “We know where products are at all times,” says Blechman. “Sometimes we palletize 8,000 cases a day and each case is scanned into inventory as it is palletized.”

Label control is an important part of Twinlab’s quality control procedures. The “nerve center” is a large closed store room near the packaging floor. Every label for the 1,000 products and 2,000 skus are kept in neat rows in the room. “Documentation is the key to label control,” explains Blechman. “Everyone who comes in contact with a label signs off on a document. Every label is signed for at least twice, once by a supervisor. Left over labels are reconciled. Why? Because if regulators or inspectors came in, we could trace labels throughout the process.” As an added check, samples of each label are kept in a secure area for three years. Also, samples of actual finished product from every lot and every raw material used are kept up to four years, which ties into stability testing.

COMPANY PROFILE
Products:
• A complete line of vitamins, herbs and nutraceuticals, antioxidants, fish and marine oils and sports nutrition supplements through the Twinlab Division
• A full line of herbs and phytonutrients through the Natures Herb’s Division
• Herbal teas through the Alvita Tea Division
• Specially formulated nutritional supplements through the direct sales subsidiary, Changes International
• A line of vitamins, herbs, nutritional supplements, health and beauty aids through the Bronson mail-order catalog subsidiary
• Sports performance and nutritional products through the PR Nutrition Inc., subsidiary
• “All Natural Muscular Development,” a sports and fitness magazine, and health and fitness related books, audios, and newsletters through the publishing subsidiary, Advanced Research Press, Inc.

Financial Highlights
For the nine months ended September 30, 1998, net sales increased 60.5 percent to $253.4 million compared to $157.8 million for the same period in 1997.

Gross profit rose to $130.2 million from $70.6 million in the comparable period last year. Gross margins increased to 51.4 percent compared to 44.8 percent for the nine months of 1997.

Encapsulating
The encapsulating rooms are an example of how carefully quality is protected on the manufacturing floor. Some of the powders, like L-Carnitine, are sensitive and must be handled carefully. “Nothing is more hydroscopic than some of the ingredients we use in our products,” says Blechman. “Any extra moisture could affect shelf life.”

Twinlab takes great pride in quality. Operators in the encapsulator rooms check dosage weight and accuracy and also weigh a group of pills every ten minutes. They also keep a composite sample which is sent to the quality control lab for testing and analysis. And quality control inspectors double-check each encapsulator at random throughout shifts.

The sheer volume of capsules produced by the encapsulators demands close attention to detail. Twinlab has about 24 capsule fillers in Ronkonkoma and American Fork and will be adding more when packaging lines are moved out of Ronkonkoma to a new facility in Bohemia.

High-speed encapsulators are the key to producing 400 million capsules per month. Twinlab uses encapsulators from Bosch, TL Systems, Minneapolis, MN and Index Manufacturing, Northvale, NJ in Ronkonkoma at speeds ranging from 1,200 to 2,000 capsules per minute. Newer machines are capable of at least 2,000 cpm.

“Capsules are a point of differentiation for us,” explains Blechman. Companies often sell one or two capsule sizes. That’s fine until you get to microgram ingredients like CoQ10, B1, copper or manganese. Because of these limitations, most competitors are forced to use fillers. We pick the right size capsule for the product. I think we make more 00 and 000 capsules than anyone.”

Capsule Polishing
Every single capsule sold by Twinlab is inspected and polished. After encapsulation, capsules are sent to an enclosed room where inspectors sit at seven stations 16 hours per day (two shifts) and visually check capsules for cracks, empties, misfit ends or other imperfections. Capsules that pass inspection are fed to polishers from Key Industries, Englishtown, NJ. The polishers give capsules their characteristic sheen, then the capsules are stored until needed to fill orders.

Blending And Granulating
Before becoming capsules or tablets, dry ingredients are blended in one of five blenders from Patterson-Kelly, East Stroudsburg, PA. The three largest V-shaped blenders hold up to 1.5 tons of material. The stainless steel-lined vessels spin in a circle, eliminating corners where product can settle and avoid mixing. The mixers are expensive but necessary, says Blechman.

“Here’s another example of our concern for quality,” he explains. “Raw materials come from all over the world. The particles are different sizes, so they separate and stratify. To prevent this, we have five rooms with Fitzmills with 100 different screens. First we standardize the particles so they are all the same size. Then we send the powders to the compounding department for blending.”

The granulating room holds over $1,000,000 worth of equipment for preparing natural ingredients and micronutrients for tableting. A fluid bed dryer from Glatt, Ramsey, NJ, is on one end of the room and a Roto Granulator Dryer from Zanchetta (represented by Romaco, Morris Plains, NJ) on the other. The two units are necessary because of the nature of some powders, according to Blechman. “You just can’t take any powder and tablet it. Some ingredients like vitamin B12, calcium and some amino acids need to be granulated first. We grind, sheer, and add solution to the ingredients in the Zanchetta processor to change the nature of the material, then place it in the Glatt for drying. What comes out is a granular, readily compressible powder that makes a high-quality, functional tablet.”

A functional tablet is one that dissolves according to USP standards. Some tablets have difficulty meeting the standards. Disparate particle sizes are pressed with fillers which “cement” the tablet together.

Granulated powders are tableted on eight tablet presses from Stokes-Merrill, a division of DT Industries located in Bristol, PA. The presses are capable of producing 3,500 tablets per minute and Twinlab makes use of every second for its chewables and lozenges. As in the encapsulating rooms, operators do quality checks every ten minutes, confirming tablet hardness, thickness and other factors. Quality control supervisors also check tablets and take their own samples for in-depth analysis.

After pressing, tablets are coated in state-of-the-art coaters from Thomas Engineering, Hoffman Estates, IL. Coating is the process closest to an art form. Tablets are placed in a large drum which tumbles them past a series of four sprayers. An aqueous coating is applied to the surface of the tablets while at the same time a sophisticated air handling system dries them. “We are one of the few companies not to use solvents for coating in house. Everything is aqueous, and the operator has to be careful not to allow the coating to interact with the tablet,” he explains. “But when the tablets are finished, they’re beautiful.”

The new blister line can form up to 600 blister packs per minute. The TruHerbs line will soon be produced on a high-tech blister thermoforming line due for installation in 1999 in Nature’s Herbs new packaging area.

The line is typical of Twinlab’s policy to use state-of-the-art technology wherever it can. The line is capable of running 600 blister packs per minute and has an integrated intermittent-motion cartoner capable of filling 300 cartons per minute by feeding blisters in pairs. This technique give the cartoner twice the output of conventional machines. The intermittent-motion cartoner also permits the use of complex multi-packs should Nature’s Herbs of Twinlab introduce different configurations in the future.

The line also has details such as fiber-optic interface servos for reliable control of every form/fill/seal and cartoning function. The servos increase the accuracy of material index and dwell time and need less maintenance than other movement control systems.

The blister line, a Compacker 1200/Pacliner-3000, was supplied by Klöckner Medipak, Clearwater, FL. Other features include tool-less changeover in less than 30 minutes, movable carts for blister and lidding materials so that materials can be changed without stopping the machine, a sealed dosing area to protect product from contamination and a high-precision, laser-guided drawoff mechanism.

Batching and Storage
Twinlab stores valuable raw materials in a motorized fenced-in vertical carousel. Each row holds 1,000 pounds of material. To access materials, an operator enters three letters and pushes a button and the carousel rotates to the appropriate storage location.

Batching is performed in a self-contained room in a central location. Batches are made up one day before ingredients are needed in blending and tableting. Ten people weigh ingredients. A quality control person stays in the room during the process which begins when formula sheets are punched into the computer. Labels are generated. Raw materials—vitamins, minerals, amino acids and herbs—are weighed, bagged, checked, labeled and checked again. “The bags will be checked once more in compounding,” comments Blechman. “Everything is triple checked. As long as you have people, the possibility exists for mistakes. But the key is to have checks and balances in place so we find and fix any mistakes that occur.”

Quality Control
Quality control is of paramount importance to Twinlab. It’s impossible to walk through the Ronkonkoma plant without seeing people in blue coats checking products, packages and ingredients. “Every shift has a minimum of 16 quality control people,” says Blechman. “In addition, every department has a supervisor, an assistant supervisor and lead people responsible for quality. And the people in blue coats do random checks on everything from labels to documents.”

Twinlab reinforces its quality program with employee training. Each month, a segment of the work force spends a week learning GMP procedures. “It keeps employees up to date and reminds them how important quality is to the company,” comments Blechman.

Analytical quality control takes place in a modern, on-site laboratory equipped with all the toys, including moisture analyzers, Fourier transform analyzers (FTR), high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), dissolution testers, environmental cabinets for accelerated shelf life testing, and mass spectrometers. Samples of incoming raw materials are tested before ingredients are placed in inventory. Nothing moves out of storage until QC releases it. Finished packages also are tested to ensure quality standards are met. Nothing leaves the warehouse without a release from QC.

Shelf life testing is an important point of differentiation for Twinlab. Three years is the standard, although products are packaged to last longer. The company spends a tremendous amount of money on both short- and long-term stability tests for its products. “We do more stability than anyone.”

New Packaging Facility And Warehouse
The Ronkonkoma facility just received another facelift. In the summer of this year, Twinlab leased a 106,000 square foot building in Bohemia, NY. The tablet and capsule packaging lines are in the process of moving to make room for more encapsulators and tablet presses.

The new facility features a packaging area with room to stretch out the DT Industries capsule and tablet lines. Two new lines were installed in October for plastic bottles. Like the lines coming from Ronkonkoma, the packaging lines are loaded with automated machines including high speed labelers from NJM/CLI, Lakso Slat counters, Omega cartoners and others. Cases from the lines are stored in 35-foot tall storage bays with wire-guided lift trucks.

Twinlab does not believe in building facilities and then going out to find orders to support capacity. “Our schedule depends on our needs,” says Blechman. “Some products run for days, some for hours. Vitamin A may run four batches per year. Our goal isn’t to fill the warehouse. It’s to fill the orders we have. This way, we assure our customers of the freshest product possible.”

Because the production schedule is so closely tied to inventory, the engineering group works very closely with machine suppliers. “Over the years, we found a lot of little things that help us run better. We share these things with our suppliers because we like innovation and we don’t want them to spend time reinventing the wheel.”

American Fork
Compared to the Ronkonkoma facility, Twinlab’s Nature’s Herbs facility in American Fork, UT is virtually new. Like Ronkonkoma, the surge in demand for herbal products has transformed the plant. But unlike Ronkonkoma, the original plant is only four years old and has ample space for the equipment it needs.

The plant has the accoutrement of modern technology. “We’re lucky here,” says Grace Lyn Rich, director of marketing for Nature’s Herbs. “Every workspace has natural light and even interior office cubicles are located under sunlights. The air is filtered and we have carbon dioxide sensors that keep fresh oxygen in the air. It’s a pleasant place to work.”

The plant will be more idyllic after construction is completed in 1999. Building is underway on a 52,000 sq. ft. production and packaging area, a 19,830 sq. ft. order picking space and a 36,000 sq. ft. high bay storage facility.

Nature’s Herbs needs the additional capacity. “We handle everything but tablets,” says Scott Jenkins. “We do herbal products for Twinlabs’ brands—Bronson, Alvita Teas as well as some private label lines.”

The plant operates under the same “near-pharmaceutical” manufacturing principals as Ronkonkoma. Incoming raw materials are weighed, sampled and assigned a bar code and that follows the material throughout production. Nothing is used until released by QC. All materials are tracked by computers-supervisors can access computer terminals on the floor to check the progress of materials or finished products.

QC/QA is similar to Ronkonkoma although emphasis is more on herbals. The office checks raw materials for identity, purity and potency. Tests include HPLC, gas chromatography, moisture, dissolution, shelf life and others.

After QC/QA releases the raw materials, the herbs go to the pharmacy for blending. The plant has three blending rooms for different materials and microingredients. One room has a P-K blender for bulk ingredients, another a ribbon blender for batches up to 2,000 pounds and the third a paddle blender for small batches of 600-700 pounds. Each room has a computer for QC. Operators enter test samples and QC supervisors verify that the samples are accurate and within control limits.

The encapsulation rooms house 11 Bohanan encapsulators that can fill 13.8 million capsules in a 16 hour shift. One twist is a semi-automatic encapsulator for sticky or fluffy ingredients and short runs. The machine makes 144,000 capsules in an eight-hour shift. It comes in handy for production runs that would tie up the Bohanan units for an hour or two, an impractical option because encapsulators must be cleaned before and after every changeover, and cleaning would take longer than the production run. From the encapsulation rooms, capsules are taken to the inspection and polishing room and placed into storage to await bottling.

American Fork has four bottling lines from DT Industries. The lines are slightly more recent models of the lines in Ronkonkoma and feature the same automatic counters, cappers, foil/polymer inner seals, induction sealer, seal presence detector, labeler, full body shrink sleeves and cartoners.

The lines will change the labeler in the near future. New NJM/CLI Model 234’s have been purchased which are capable of applying pressure-sensitive labels at speeds up to 250 bottles per minute. The labelers also feature sophisticated CTC touch screen interfaces that show actual photos of the labeler for easy maintenance and troubleshooting.

Besides bottling, the plant packages tea for the Alvita brand. Two C45 Teabag Machines from IMA, Fairfield, CT, produce 1,200 boxes per hour. Loose tea feeds to cavities in a cylinder. The cylinder delivers tea to a web of teabag material. The web is heat sealed, cut by knives into individual bags and conveyed to an oversealing station which places bags in paper/foil laminate pouches. A dual-head ink jet coder adds lot information. Pouches are cartoned, and the cartons sealed in cases. Date and lot codes are added by a unit from Videojet.

Nature’s Herbs bottles with its FreshCare™ Packaging System featuring an Ageless oxygen absorber packet. FreshCare protects against product degradation from light and oxygen. Amber glass bottles made from 20 percent recycled glass block light. An oxygen absorber packet in each bottle removes unwanted oxygen while a foil laminate inner seal keeps oxygen and moisture from penetrating the cap seal. Finally, products, including capsules are formulated with natural antioxidants such as rosemary and mixed tocopherols.

Pallets of finished products are taken to one of the showcases of the American Fork plant, a 50-foot high rise warehouse with 2,000 bays and 30,000 square feet of storage space. The height allows the warehouse to occupy only 8,900 square feet of floor space.

The key is a wire-guided lift truck from Crown that lifts 3,000 pounds up to 40 feet high. The 16-ton truck requires a stable floor, so the warehouse was built with a floor leveled to 1/8-inches over a 10 ft. by 10 ft. area. The wire-guided truck follows a wire in floor and has features such as magnetic brakes that engage if the truck moves beyond certain fail-safe points in the aisles. The warehouse also has energy conservation systems including natural light from sunlights in the roof.

The $13.3 million expansion project underway at American Fork will raise the bar on innovation. When completed in 1999, American Fork will have another 50 foot high rise warehouse, 14 more encapsulators, and space for 12 packaging lines running at 200 bottles per minute compared to 120 bpm on existing lines.

All will be under the same GMPs as the existing facility. “We are an OTC plant,” says Jenkins. “The GMPs are demanding, but that’s good because when the FDA issues rules for dietary supplements, we’ll be ready. Fact is, we’re ahead of the game.”

Future Plans
As a company, Twinlab has an enviable growth rate of 25 percent per year. In the second quarter, sales to the mass market channel increased 432.4 percent and sales in the health food channel were up over 15 percent as compared to last year’s second quarter. In the first six months of 1998, after re-statement for addition of PR Nutrition, sales improved 55.8 percent, earnings per share improved 41 percent and gross margins improved to 51.2 percent as compared to 45.6 percent during the same period last year.

“I’m proud of our balance sheet,” says Blechman. “But we’re not about to rest on our laurels. What I’m most excited about is how the company has changed. We are very different from the company that first went public in November 1996. We will always keep the family ideals that brought us here, but we now have a more formal corporate environment.”

Down the road, Twinlab plans to strengthen its core business while building its international division and its mass retail sales. “We are a premium brand. Anyone taking a nutritional supplement, whether it’s in a mass market outlet or through the mail or in a health food store, one way or another you should be exposed to our high quality products. We want you to be exposed to Twinlab products wherever you go,” says Blechman.

“Core is the foundation of the company,” says Blechman. “We’re working to implement a whole team concept to help people merchandise our products better to the core so that we are competitive with anyone.”

“We’re in about 90 percent of all health foods stores, or about 10,000 outlets. But only 12 percent have our comprehensive product line, so there are growth opportunities for us,” explains Blechman.

Some industry experts see heavy competition from mass retail stores ahead for health food stores. Blechman feels health food stores will remain an important outlet. “Health food stores will always have an important role in dietary supplements despite the rise of mass retail,” he explains. “They will always have excellent service and expertise. Plus, the Walgreens, K-Marts and Targets of the world will only offer a limited selection of the products we have.”

Blechman also expects strong performance from overseas markets. “We have to go after the international market. Right now it’s 5.7 percent of the business. I think it should be 25 percent. It’s virtually untapped for us,” he says.

Health foods stores and the international markets are, the mass retail channel offers huge potential. “In mass retail, there are 47,000 outlets, and right now our market share is less than one percent. I think it should be 15 percent or $350 million when you consider total sales of $4 billion in the mass market, although I consider this to be a little on the low side. With our new mass market president, and our mass market sales team, we are going after them in a dedicated way,” says Blechman.

“I’m most excited about how we have positioned the company,” he says. “With the addition of Bronson, we are now in every major channel of distribution. Between our loyal distributor base in our core channels, with increased presence in chains like GNC and Whole Foods and Wild Oats, to our opportunities in the mass market Changes International, our direct selling and now Bronson mail order, we are in every channel of distribution,” says Blechman.

“We wanted to enter the mass with a home run, so we came out with two products, TruHerbs, and 38 standardized herbs. Twinlab is the first company to offer herbs in this form. One pill offers gradual sustained release over a 12 hour period. People are very comfortable with the benefits of pharmaceutical time release. Categories that are hot right now are sports nutrition and herbs.”

In terms of new products, Twinlab introduced over 100 items in 1998 including the TruHerbs line and Twinlab Ironman Triathlon® Nutrition. “These two new herb and sports nutrition product lines include 51 new products that will now be available to the mass market consumer. Initial retailer response has been favorable and we continue to view this channel as offering attractive economics for our business,” says Blechman.

Twinlab believes in differentiating products for specific market channels. For example, products for health food stores have different formulas and packaging than products for mass retail. “I don’t believe you can take exactly the same product in health food stores and retail and be successful in the mass,” says Blechman. “It’s important to tailor products for the needs of each channel.”

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