Ken Brailsford

Does a man who launched three herbal companies count as a founder, or as a pattern? Start with the kitchen. In 1972 Gene Hughes had a stomach ulcer, had been told cayenne pepper would help, and could not keep the powder down. He and his wife Kristine began packing the pepper into gelatin capsules at home. Ken Brailsford, then 28, an Army veteran with a 1969 economics degree from Brigham Young University, went in with the Hughes family on the company that grew out of that idea. Nature's Sunshine became, by its own account, the first American company to put herbs in capsules, and the early business was the Hughes family driving the western states selling to health-food stores. Brailsford was president from 1972 to 1979. The company later listed on Nasdaq as NATR, moved its headquarters to Lehi, Utah, manufactures in Spanish Fork, and by the time Gene Hughes died on December 3, 2021, at 91, it sold in more than 40 countries. Its 2015 accounts show revenue of $324.7 million, net income of $13.7 million and 901 employees; in the last quarter of 2022 net sales fell 13 percent to $103 million.

Brailsford left in 1979 with a non-compete agreement. He worked briefly as a stockbroker, ran a publication called Herbalist Magazine and sold it in 1981, and waited for the clock to run out. Once it had, he went back to herbs.

Every Brailsford company sold the same way, so it is worth being precise about what the way is. Wikipedia's description of Nature's Sunshine applies to all of them: products go to the consumer through independent distributors, who earn commissions on what they sell themselves, sign-up bonuses, and commissions on the sales of distributors they recruit. That last piece is what makes it multi-level marketing rather than plain direct sales. The company gets a sales force it does not employ and a customer base that overlaps with the sales force. The distributor gets a business with almost no entry cost and, in most cases, small returns; the public record on Brailsford's companies does not include average distributor earnings, and this profile does not guess at them. Utah County has produced an unusual number of these firms, and Brailsford was in at the start of the trend.

• Distributors buy product at a discount and sell at retail, or consume it themselves
• Recruits are placed under the person who signed them, and commissions flow up the line
• The channel is legal in the United States when income comes mainly from product sales rather than recruitment fees

Nature's Labs, Inc. was incorporated in Utah on December 27, 1985 by Kenneth E. Brailsford, Linda Brailsford and David T. Lisonbee, and it followed the Nature's Sunshine playbook with the founder's name already known to every herb distributor in the state. The company was renamed The Enrich Corporation in 1987, and by November 1992 it was shipping between five and ten million capsules a month from a large former software-company building in Orem. On May 27, 1994 it was reorganised as Enrich International, Inc., with Brailsford as president, and a single product line called PerForm was already doing $100,000 a year in 1992 with sales expected to double the next year. The distributor count reached roughly 150,000 across North America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific islands, and sales for 1999 were estimated at $200 million. Brailsford retired in 1997, two years before the end: on November 4, 1999 Royal Numico N.V., a Dutch nutrition group, announced that it would complete its acquisition of Enrich in early 2000, keeping the existing management under chief executive Richard Bizzaro. Ernst & Young had named Brailsford its Entrepreneur of the Year in 1994, in the middle of the run. The purchase price was not disclosed in the sources this profile could reach, and Brailsford's own share of the proceeds is not public; anyone who tells you a number is guessing.

Zija International is the one company where even the founding year is contested. Wikipedia says Brailsford co-founded it in 2006, notes that Isagenix lists 2005, and adds that David A. Andrews conceived the idea in 2004 and brought it to Brailsford for money. Take the honest reading: Andrews had the idea, Brailsford had the capital and the distributor network, and the paperwork came later. Zija sold plant-based wellness products out of Lehi, Utah, was named the state's fastest-growing company in 2014, and on January 22, 2020 was acquired by Isagenix International of Arizona on undisclosed terms; Isagenix at the time claimed more than 500,000 members in 14 markets. Jim Coover, the Isagenix chairman, said the two firms "share common cultures and goals." Brailsford's name does not appear in the acquisition announcement.

Three companies, one channel, and a founding date nobody can agree on.

His Church service ran in parallel with the businesses. He has been a bishop, a stake clerk and a counselor in a stake presidency, and from 2005 to 2008, in the years Zija was getting started, he was president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Columbia South Carolina Mission, a full-time volunteer post that usually takes a man out of his business for three years. Utah Valley University gave him its Outstanding Alumni Award in 2015. His current vehicle is KEB Enterprises L.P., a private investment firm, and what it holds is not published. That is the pattern: a company, a channel, a quiet exit, and a partner who does not put his name on the press release.