DOUBLE DIGIT GROWTH (2002-2004)

In 2002, I had two contract sales people working with me and boy did we push to bring on more Distributors. The same year, we expanded our product line from 15 to 45 and brought in our first sea shipment from India. I have vivid memories of this year as we were all crammed in a 1000 square foot office having to weave through pallets of inventory to get to the back. This also marked the first year where we transacted large, private label sales with Distributors. In less than 5 days we sold about $25 thousand worth of stock that needed to be private labeled. By this time, Suruchi was done her course and traveled to India to oversee the private labeling process. We brought the shipments in just in time for Christmas. 2002 was a whirlwind of a year, many highs, some lows, too much stress.

Heading into 2003, I realized that we made some errors in judgement and were in a cash crunch. My father stepped in and provided interim financing so that we could continue pushing forward. This same year, we added more products, 26, bringing the line up to 71. At the same time, we began discussions with Mike Prince, the Founder of Shangers, Ltd. and formed a strategic alliance which is still in place. 2003 marked further growth as we moved out of our 1000 square feet location one full year ahead of schedule to a 3000 square foot facility that enabled us to warehouse three 20 foot containers at a time. To ramp up customer service, we hired more staff and kept pushing forward. A highlight of 2003 is the Master Distributor conference which resulted in the closure of our first Master Distributor. The role of the Master Distributor during this period was pivotal because it enabled us to continue servicing our growing number of Distributors in the United States as we faced continued challenges with new Homeland Security Measures.

In 2004, we added two more Master Distributors, many more Distributors, and continued to push forward. Our product line expanded tremendously as we added 138 more products. Indeed, this was a very exciting period as we realized that we now could compete with other large importers and wholesalers in the United States.

Volumes continued to grow, but we did realize that there were some critical problems in our model. The lack of personal training. It was growing increasingly more difficult to train our Distributors. Personal training, we realized is becoming an issue and became the focus of the company for the next two years.

Click Here to read REFLECTION & TURMOIL (2005-2006)