| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Wellness, Personal care, Multi-level marketing |
| Founded | 1956 |
| Founder(s) | Dr. Forrest C. Shaklee |
| Headquarters | Pleasanton, California |
| Key people | Roger Barnett, Chairman & CEO |
| Products | Nutrition, Weight management, Beauty, Household |
| Revenue | USD$148.7 million (2007).[1] |
| Website | www.shaklee.com |
Shaklee Corporation is a privately held manufacturer and distributor of nutritional supplements, weight-management products, beauty products, and household products. The company is based in Pleasanton, California with operations in Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Taiwan and China. The company sells its products through a multi-level marketing network and claims a combined base of 750,000 "members" (customers) and distributors.[2]
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Dr. Forrest C. Shaklee, a San Francisco chiropractor, created "Shaklee's Vitalized Minerals" in 1915 before the concept of vitamins was fully understood. In 1956, Dr. Shaklee founded the Shaklee Corporation with his two sons to manufacture nutritional supplements.[3] Shaklee chose the relatively unknown multi-level marketing business model to market his product.[4] Starting in 1960, Dr. Shaklee began marketing organic, biodegradable cleaning products. He continually emphasized "natural" and "environmentally friendly" in his marketing messages, ideas which were not common at the time.[5]
Shaklee Corporation was a publicly traded company in the late 1970s and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The corporation began to diversify in November 1986 when it purchased the Bear Creek Corporation, a direct marketing company best known for its Harry and David Fruit-of-the-Month Club operation, from RJR Nabisco for $123 million.[6] In February 1989 Shaklee sold its 78 percent interest in Shaklee Japan to the Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Company for $350 million, while maintaining its licensing agreement and continuing to collect royalty payments from the Japanese operations.[7] Then in March 1989, Shaklee Corporation received an unsolicited acquisition proposal from a group led by Irwin L. Jacobs, the Minneapolis financier known also by his nickname "Irv the Liquidator". Analysts placed the leveraged buyout value of Shaklee at $35 a share. The Jacobs group had been aggressively accumulating Shaklee shares, and disclosed it currently held a 14.98 percent stake in the San Francisco-based company. Shaklee immediately declared a special dividend of $20 a share, seen as a poison pill—a way to discourage takeover interest in Shaklee, though the company disputed that view. Shaklee's anti-takeover provisions come into play when an investor reaches 15 percent.[8] After a few tense weeks, during which time Jacobs increased his stake in Shaklee,[9] Shaklee Corporation announced it was being acquired by Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical for $28 a share in cash, or about $395 million. Yamanouchi's partnership with Shaklee in Japan helped make the transaction possible, and cast Yamanouchi as a "white knight" in helping Shaklee fend off the hostile takeover bid by Jacobs.[10] Jacobs announced he would not challenge the Yamanouchi bid[11] and the deal with Yamanouchi was quickly finalized.[12] Shaklee became a privately held company.
In April 2004, Yamanouchi sold Shaklee Corporation to American billionaire Roger Barnett, managing partner of Activated Holdings LLC, for $310 million. Bear Creek and the Harry and David line was sold to Wasserstein Perella & Co. for $260 million.[13] Barnett became the new CEO and Chairman of the Board of Shaklee Corporation. "Shaklee is the crown jewel of the network marketing industry," Barnett stated. "My dream is to build Shaklee into the number one company in the world in our field." Barnett went on to predict Shaklee would become the leading nutrition and natural personal care company in the world, generating $5 billion in annual revenues.[14]
In 2008, CEO & Chairman of the Board Roger Barnett announced a new president of Shaklee International, Bradford Richardson.[15]
Shaklee is committed to being green and is the first company in the world to obtain Climate Neutral™ certification to totally offset their CO2 emissions, resulting in a net zero impact on the environment (http://www.shaklee.com/company_home.shtml).
Shaklee's Scientifically Advanced Vita-Lea Iron Formula multivitamin was tested by ConsumerLab.com in their Multivitamin and Multimineral Supplements Review of 38 of the leading multivitamin/multimineral products sold in the U.S. and Canada. The multivitamin passed ConsumerLab's test,[16] which included testing of selected index elements, their ability to disintegrate in solution per United States Pharmacopeia guidelines, lead contamination threshold set in California Proposition 65, and meeting U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) labeling requirements.[17]
A landmark nutrition study published in the peer-reviewed Nutrition Journal (October 24, 2007) led by a Nobel Laureate in Nutrition compared users of Shaklee vitamins and supplements with users of leading multivitamins and people who took no vitamins or supplements over a 20 year period. The study showed Shaklee users "to have markedly better health as measured by higher blood levels of key nutrients, more optimal levels of key health biomarkers, and lower prevalence of diabetes and elevated blood pressure." As a group the Shaklee users "were 73% less likely to have diabetes and 39% less likely to have elevated blood pressure than non-users. Also, this group was less likely to have suboptimal blood nutrient concentrations, and more likely to have favorable levels of key biomarkers including serum homocysteine, C-reactive protein, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides than either non-users or multivitamin/mineral users." (http://www.shaklee.com/NewsRelease07_102907.shtml ... http://www.nutritionj.com/content/6/1/30)
From 1988-2000 Shaklee was the title sponsor of an American based UCI professional cycling team managed by Frank Scioscia. In its final year of existence (2000) Team Shaklee was the top-ranked UCI tier III team in the world and included United States Olympic Team members Jamie Carney, Jonas Carney, Adam Laurent, and Kent Bostick.
Beginning in 1993, Shaklee started providing NASA with a customized rehydration beverage for use by Shuttle astronauts[18] and its use continues today.
Some of the athletes that use Shaklee products are: Craig Blanchette, Laurie Brandt, Kent Bostick, Eli Bremer, Sandra Gal, Bill Demong, Kris Freeman, Zach Krych, Adam Moore, Reilley Rankin, Jennifer Rodriguez, Carl Rundell, Roz Savage, Darin Shapiro, and Ashley Wagner.[19]