THE GREAT CONVERGENCE
“With consumers today, you’re either a turnaround, or you’re a startup. You have to behave like you’re one of those two, or else you will be,” says Terrence Moorehead, CEO of Nature Sunshine, the nearly 50-year-old Utah-based manufacturer and marketer of dietary supplements. “If you don’t, you will be a turnaround eventually. Or you’ll be working someplace else, at a startup. Everything to me, and to us, starts with the consumer, and trying to understand what’s driving and motivating consumers today.”
“There was something about this company,” he says in reference to coming on board to lead Nature’s Sunshine in 2019. The company’s rich history and major capabilities drew Moorehead in, as did its dedication and passion to excellence in research and manufacturing. But the company needed a modern retrofit in terms of branding.
“Despite having all these incredible capabilities, they didn’t have as much recognition in the international market as they should have. Three years into the journey, we’ve transformed this company and given it more and more reach to share the healing power of nature with people every single day around the world. And we’re really building momentum; our last six quarters have been record-breaking historic results.”
So about that transformation?
Moorehead recalls that Nature’s Sunshine had been somewhat “frozen in time” for a decade or so before his arrival –even before the arrival of the COVID pandemic and the accompanying changes to the ways we work and shop.
“We had to take on a lot simultaneously. It was like drinking from a firehose,” he recalls. “There are three things that have impacted us completely and holistically – the shifts in demographics, industry dynamics, and technology.”
In other words, he tells us, there are more people out there with more choices and more information than at any point in the company’s history.
“You’ve got 80 million Baby Boomers, 45 million or so Gen Xers, and 90 million Millennials, all focused on their health in a way that they’ve never been focused on their health than ever before,” Moorehead says of the demographic shift. “So you’ve got the largest demographic ever focused on their health and intently looking to improve their health with new solutions every single day.”
Also in the mix in 2022: around 500 companies selling over 35,000 nutritional supplements on the marketplace, with 1000 new products being launched every year.
“There literally is something for everyone. Something for everyone’s moods, something for everyone’s attitude, whatever it might be. It goes beyond demographics, to psychographics,” he says. “And everyone has a supercomputer in their hand now with their smartphone. And so that combination of changes – which I call The Great Convergence – really has completely changed the landscape.”
Moorehead says a modern nutritional supplement company has to choose between strong messaging and personalization. Nature’s Sunshine has leaned towards the latter, producing products and solutions that address people’s individual and unique needs. It’s a space in which the CEO feels his company is uniquely qualified to compete.
The reason? Nature’s Sunshine is one of the few companies in the industry that manufactures its own products. In fact, 85% of the company’s competition relies on other companies to deliver their materials.
“They don’t have the R&D, they don’t have the sourcing capabilities, they don’t have the testing. We’re one of the few companies that do, and we’ve been doing this for 50 years. And we’re really good at it as evidenced by the unsurpassed level of industry accreditations and certifications that we have,” Moorehead says. “Nature’s Sunshine is a unique company. It was the first company to encapsulate herbs back before there was a wellness industry. Our founders, Gene and Kristine Hughes, were sitting around the kitchen table, filling capsules by hand. They were adventurous pioneers and became industry leaders. We’re keeping that magical history and that soulful sense of purpose alive.”
LIFE AT NATURE’S SUNSHINE
Nature’s Sunshine is certainly a diverse company, especially in terms of needs, wants, and aspirations. Moorehead says the unifying point for all employees is that strong sense of purpose.
“There’s a certain amount of passion that comes from that sense of purpose, and a certain amount of energy when you throw yourself at that fence.” he says. “And in this case, the purpose is sharing the healing power of nature with people around the world. If that doesn’t interest you, you’re not going to fit in anyway. But if you can really get swept up in that passion, if you’re truly interested in nutrition, then you have got to get down in it.”
That getting down in it involves the already-mentioned self-manufacturing of the company’s product, and its conducting of its own research.
“That unifying cry of sharing nature’s healing power with people really does bring us together. And it serves as a driving force to motivate people to do their best,” Moorehead says. “People want to be a part of something that’s meaningful. They want to be a part of something where they can go home at the end of the day and tell their wife or their husband or their kids or their grandchildren about what they’re working on with pride.”
Holding onto that culture of passion during growth is always an uncertain process, but Nature’s Sunshine seems to have an early line on figuring it out.
“What I’ve found is that doesn’t matter, whether it’s geography or age. When you build in that type of focus and get that type of buy-in for the organization from your employees, when people have real ownership in the task, they’re just able to kind of take on that heavy lifting burden,” he says, using the metaphor of one person trying to lift a car versus multiple people. “When one thousand people try and do it, it’s lighter than a feather. When people have a vested interest in that passion to do something, and to be a part of something, their capacity expands because their desire expands.”
Moorehead says the team, no matter how big, is focused on the task with organic passion and encouraged by frequent communication from the C-suite.
“The rule is that everybody needs to know what their role is. They either need to be working on one of our global strategies or directly supporting someone who is. And if they’re not working in one of those capacities, then they need to resolve that issue very quickly. Otherwise, we probably don’t need them,” he explains.
Moorehead reminds us of the axiom that strategies aren’t successful, people are. So the company spends a lot of effort making sure that they’re recognizing and developing people and putting them in positions where they can be successful.
“And if that’s your first of axiom, then your second one has to be that as leaders our job is to make sure that we’re making other people successful. The more people who we make successful, the more successful we’re going to be,” he says. “And everybody plays a leadership role in some way, shape, or form here. And that spreads out that load, and spreads out that burden. People are not only accountable to me, they’re accountable to their peers and their teams.”
PASSION AND PURPOSE
“This is a true American success story. This couple sitting around their kitchen table, filling capsules by hand, and fast forward almost fifty years later, and we’re a publicly traded company operating in 40 countries around the world,” Moorehead says with some pride. “It’s absolutely remarkable, and I believe this is the best time to be at Nature’s Sunshine, and that our best days lie ahead of us. And I don’t say that lightly, or because I’m the CEO. I say that because I can see what’s going on inside of the company, and the momentum that we’re building. It’s no coincidence that we’ve delivered six consecutive historic record-breaking quarters back to back.”
While this CEO knows there are bumps in the road to come, as with growth and reorganization at any company, that trademark fighting spirit is being created at Nature’s Sunshine, along with all those personalized nutritional supplements.
“For people who want to be a part of something great, and to be part of an exciting journey, then Nature’s Sunshine is the company for them. We are adventurous pioneers, and we intend to be industry leaders, and to do all the things that being a leader requires,” he says. “You don’t go from what I call our lost decade, with 20 years of declining sales in North America, to what we’ve seen recently with quarter after quarter of double-digit growth without passion and purpose and a formula for success. It really is infectious. I’ll put it that way.”
