A petition to keep powders

It's not about pandering to anyone. If nobody buys something, what are we even doing? I don't want to sell things people don't want. If people are buying less than 10 units of something a month, that's telling me that nobody wants it. The powders that are out of stock are because they are selling less than 10 units a month. Maybe all of that handful of people are on this thread right now, but how do I reconcile posts like this with single digit sales numbers a month? People come on hear and act like I am betraying them for not stocking something that doesn't sell, then I tell my production team to restock them anyway, and then the continue TO NOT SELL! Then my team looks at me like I am a moron for having them set up rooms and production time to sell 6 units of something. If less than 120 people in an entire year buy something, can you honestly expect us to keep stocking it?

Panax ginseng root powder is $15.99 for the 15 gram and $24.99 for the 30 gram. The last year we stocked it, it sold 52 units of the 15 gram and 59 units of the 30 gram THE ENTIRE YEAR! That's a total revenue of $2,216.14 for the whole year. That's $184 a month. The rent for our facility is $100,000 per month. Payroll is almost $500,000 per month. I have around 90 employees, and run a lab full of scientists. I spend over $100,000 per month just to run our lab. $184 a month on Panax ginseng root powder might as well be $0. People vote with their wallets. Those votes are saying people don't want our Panax ginseng powder. I have to listen to reality here.

We spend so much time, effort, and money every day to hold things to higher standards than anyone else in this industry. Every day I am fighting the fraud in this industry, breaking my back and the backs of my team to ensure everything is perfect. Our ultra concentrated reishi is out of stock because the batch we got in was 8.6% ganoderic acids, not 9%. Other brands would literally just approve it and move on. We've been going back and forth on the data, doing spike recovery analyses, running different standards, sharing methods and standards with our supplier to get them to match our chemistry... all for a 4.4% difference. It's been going on for 6 months now. This is the 3rd batch trying to get it back into stock. I could just change the spec to 8%. It's still higher than everyone else in the industry by a mile. However, we set the spec at 9%. It needs to meet that spec! Other people in this industry say that I am an insane person for doing this shit. Nobody else is. They ask why I am putting myself through hell to hold things to such a high standard. Because that's the promise I made years ago, and the only way I can sleep at night. Then I have have to come on here and have people accuse me of just following the money or pandering to TikTok... Do you know just how much more money I would make running this company like all my competitors run theirs? I just value different things than they do. I value the fact that when we say something contains X, it always contains X. This just introduces so much complexity and cost into the equation. Then customers decide to save $5 by going with a different brand... a brand that we likely have tested and show fails for label claims.

If everyone here knew even half of what is going on in this industry every day, you would all be livid! It's lies and deceit all the way down and up. Even big brands you thought you could trust, or could in the past, are going that way. Did you know that Thorne was sold to LVMH (Louis Vuitton-Moët-Hennessy), and that they have now fired their entire scientific and R&D teams? We had friends that worked for them for decades on the science side. All cut by LVMH. Then you have Nestle acquiring everyone. Now Nestle owns Solgar, Nature's Bounty, Puritan's Pride, Vital Proteins, Pure Encapsulations, Garden of Life, Douglas Labs, and Spring Valley. Unilever now owns ONNIT, Jarrow, Olly, Natrol, and Ultima. Private equity firms have bought out a ton of other brands like Zhou, Solaray, Double Wood, and Primal Harvest. This whole industry is consolidating and focusing on one thing, and one thing alone: profits. The way we run things is not just rare, it's unheard of. However, none of that matters if the products don't actually sell. I would love to provide everyone with all the freedom and modularity possible. I am a supplement enthusiast and biohacker at heart. I started out as a consumer in this space first, and built this organization because I want to actually change things. But I have to face reality sometimes. The average consumer doesn't value the same things I do. If people are voting with their wallets, telling me they don't want my product, I have to listen to them. People would rather pay less money for products not held to the same standards. It fucking sucks, and I hate the state of things, but reality is reality.

So we will continue to sell and stock anything that sells. If something sells more than 10 units a month, I will keep it going. It it sells less than 10 units a month, I have to accept reality. And let's be real here, 20 units a month is still absolutely nothing. If everyone here would buy more, then we wouldn't be in this position. However, I see people all the time saying they are just getting it somewhere else cheaper. That's fine. Everyone is free to make their own choices and buy from whomever they want. Just don't be surprised when companies shift their operations in response.