CEO Fred Cooper says this Utah company is growing beyond its niche boundaries to become a recognized industry leader
Written by Gabe Perna and Produced by Todd WonkkaUSANA Health Sciences, Inc. President and CEO, Fred Cooper knows the company’s best recruiting tool – a trip to company headquarters. One visit to the international distributor of science based health products would make any potential employee gush.
Basketball court? Check. Fully equipped fitness center? Check. Volleyball? Beach volleyball? Check, check. A rapidly-growing company with potential upward mobility? You’d better believe check.
“Our best recruitment is to have people come see the facility. It’s one thing for me to talk about it, but when you come and you see the personal space in your office, or where you meet, and you have a basketball court and a gym, you get a sense of USANA’s personality and our own disposition. I think that’s our best recruiting tool,” says Cooper, an 11-year veteran at USANA with a PhD from the University of Utah.
Products and Marketing
There are a number of reasons why USANA has been able to spruce up its facilities and become an industry leader. Foremost is the fact its product line in nutrients and pharmaceuticals is of the highest quality. Another is the company’s innovative marketing distribution program that has contributed to six straight years of record growth. In 1997 the firm was doing $100 million in sales; last year it did a record $420 million.
Niche-driven USANA has grown beyond founder Dr. Myron Wentz’s wildest dreams. Cooper says the company has been able to stick with what they do well and improve on it. In this regard it has kept focus on the nutritional supplement industry and related products. The company offers the essentials, optimizers, various minerals and vitamins. It also has a skin care line.
Quality products attracting a niche audience is one thing. A superior marketing strategy is another. The company recruits distributors to sell the products as their own, independent business. The entrepreneur willing to take on the business puts a deposit down and can quickly earn the money back
in sales.
Cooper explains the advantage of the company’s marketing strategy, “It’s a home-based business, start-up costs are low and you are promoting and selling a product that is the finest in industry. Most of the work is done for you in terms of business operations. We make the supplement, we ship and generate and collect sales. Your job is promotion only. It makes it an enticing opportunity compared to other business ventures. This can be done part time, or full time, without you having to mortgage your house.”
Sustainability and Technology
USANA stands out in the areas of sustainability and technological advancements. Sustainability initiatives include re-designing the entire landscape of its facility for the preservation of water. At the end of the project, Cooper says the company ended up saving millions in gallons of water every year. Another area of sustainability has been implementing a paperless environment.
“We’ve created the attitude that passing out paper is not a good thing. We’ve made it clear you’re not pleasing execs by having big reports on paper. We’ve created a negative stigma towards that practice. So now it’s very common do it in presentation format. Over the last couple of years it has cut 40 percent of paper demand,” explains Cooper.
In technology, USANA has made significant investments into IT systems. By working with Oracle, the company set up a large database where reports and systems interact with each other. Furthermore, it was able to accomplish data-to-data replication, with a system in Japan and one in the US. This means there are two mirror databases and if something happens to one, the second would be used as a backup.
Continuous Improvement
As with any successful enterprise, USANA is always on the lookout for ways to improve its processes. Cooper says the company has several aspects and components of continuous improvement. Perhaps the most prominent is its investment into human resource, management and training. This type of training is leadership based, focuses on self-improvement and generally increases efficiencies.
Another area of improvement involves employee and associate feedback. “We dedicate the time and ask all of our associates to make a list of the 10 dumbest, most inefficient things the company does. Then take the list and have each manager responsible for a complete follow through. Give them feedback, why we do it, why we can’t do it, or simply make changes. We are all about employee involvement – we get feedback on what we can do in a work environment to make this a better place,” says Cooper.
At USANA, continuous improvement is a global phenomenon as each country’s office is benchmarked against universal metrics implemented by the company. By running comparisons against other countries and offices, markets learn from each other. Because of continuous improvement and constant focus on facility management, the firm has achieved GMP pharmaceutical grade for its operations center.
Lastly, there is company focus on the elimination of waste and inefficiencies by identifying useless items, products and systems. “We have an entire department dedicated towards best practices, finding large waste and inefficient parts, identifying issues in a dollar amount, providing solutions and oversight in implementation in improvements,” says Cooper.
Making a difference
Through all of its improvements USANA has stayed firm to its mission of delivering the highest quality science based products through its unique marketing distribution technique. The results have spoken for themselves. Along with the aforementioned revenue increase, the company has won a number of industry awards. This includes Utah Business Magazine’s best company to work for three years running.
“When you have a philosophy for continuous improvement and self improvement, it can’t help but extend over the company in general. Waste is not tolerated, incompetence is not tolerated. Employees know their job is to offer solutions to problems and implement them. People really love to work at USANA, they feel they make a difference, from the CEO to the mail clerk,” concludes Cooper.