Nutrilite Products
From Kook Science
| Nutrilite | |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1934 (as California Vitamins Inc.) |
| Purpose/focus | Nutritional supplements |
| Founder | Carl Rehnborg |
| Key people | William S. Casselberry, Lee S. Mytinger |
| Parent org. | Alticor/Amway |
Nutrilite Products was a California-based nutritional supplement manufacturer, founded in 1934 by Carl Rehnborg (as California Vitamins). The company's sales managers, Lee S. Mytinger and William S. Casselberry (Mytiner & Casselberry Inc.), pioneered the type of distribution franchising and direct sales methods that inspired a host of similar companies, including: J. B. Jones's Abundavita; J. Earl Shoaff and Rich Schnackenberg's Nutri-Bio; William Penn Patrick's Holiday Magic; William E. Bailey's Bestline Products; Glenn W. Turner's Koscot Interplanetary; and Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos's Amway (American Way), the latter two beginning their careers as Nutrilite distributors, and whose company bought out Nutrilite, taking a controlling interest in 1972 before making an outright acquisition in 1994. Today the Nutrilite brand is manufactured by Access Business Group, a subsidiary of Alticor, and distributed exclusively through Amway (American Way).
The company's namesake product, Nutrilite, was described as "a multi-vitamin mineral dietary food supplement composed of an encapsulated concentrate of alfalfa, watress and parsley, to which synthetic vitamins have been added, and which is combined in a package with mineral tablets."[1]