🔒Vibrant Health sees major growth amid greater focus on wellness

Last year’s COVID-19 outbreak served as a wake-up call for millions of people to take better care of their health and wellness.

That also spurred demand for companies in the business of making people healthier, including Shelton-based nutritional supplement company Vibrant Health.

“We did pretty well, as did the whole industry,” said Ted Parker, who co-owns Vibrant Health with his wife Paige. “Anyone selling a product in this industry that supports general health and wellness did well, and anyone who made products for general health, as well as immunity, did extremely well.”

Vibrant Health recorded $31 million in revenue last year, a 21 percent spike from 2019.

That was due largely to overwhelming consumer demand for the company’s once-floundering immunity-support products.

“We didn’t anticipate the run on the market and the surge in demand,” he said. “To grow at that clip was unanticipated but welcomed because most companies did not fare as well [during the pandemic], especially Black-owned businesses, but we just happened to be at the right place at the right time.”

Like many companies, Paige Parker said COVID-19 blindsided Vibrant Health at first. However, the company took a proactive approach to deal with it.

“We were closely monitoring what was happening in the state of Connecticut and saw this coming and started preparing for this a month before,” the state was shut down last March, she said.

That included setting up Vibrant Health’s digital infrastructure and pivoting to a hybrid work schedule. It also switched to a new manufacturer to keep up with increasing demand.

“It was a perfect storm,” she said. “While other manufacturers and brands went out of stock because they were at the tail end of their inventory, we had just got to a tipping point of our inventory.”

Earned praise

Vibrant Health’s steady growth and resilience amid the pandemic earned the company praise from its peers.

The company ranked No. 81 on the Black Enterprise List of the nation’s largest Black-owned businesses and recently made the Forbes list of Black-owned businesses to support.

“They really showed that there are multiple paths to developing a successful minority-owned business,” said Peter Hurst, president and CEO of the Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council, which promotes economic inclusion and minority business development throughout New England.

“They didn’t start Vibrant Health, but they bought it several years ago, and they really made it into a very successful company, which is one of the things minority entrepreneurs need to pursue more often — growing their businesses organically one customer at a time,” Hurst said, adding that he is also a Vibrant Health customer.

For the past three decades, Vibrant Health has been an established brand in the nutrition industry, carrying various natural health and wellness products like its award-winning Green Vibrance superfood supplement, which contains vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents like Collagen.

After joining the company in 2002 as a national sales manager, Ted Parker helped the business triple its sales while Paige’s health food store, Mohegan Naturals, became one of its top retailers.

The couple bought the company from founder Mark Timon in 2007 and have spearheaded its growth from $7 million in sales to $31 million. The company now employs 50 people in Shelton and sells its products in more than 6,000 retail locations across 10 countries.

Since giving up meat, dairy, and eggs years ago, Hurst said he has made Green Vibrance part of his daily nutrition routine

“It really does work,” he said. “I’m very excited about their whole suite of products because their products are all designed to make you healthier, and I can certainly attest to the fact that they work.”

Becoming a household name

The Parkers said their long-term goal is to make Vibrant Health a “household name,” and they want to hit $50 million in annual revenue over the next five years.

“I want to make sure that anybody that is trying to achieve optimum health will know about Vibrant Health and have access to our products whether they shop in the fanciest of food stores or if they shop in Walmart,” Paige Parker said.

Part of that journey has already begun.

Vibrant Health recently teamed up with Farmacy for Life to counter the negative health trends in minority communities. The two Black-owned health and wellness businesses have partnered to market Vibrance, a new nutritional supplement developed by Vibrant Health.

The product provides probiotics, essential antioxidants, vitamins and minerals for less than $1.15 per serving. Vibrant Health has also partnered with Vitamin Angels, committing a dollar from the proceeds of every bottle sold to local communities to improve access to vital nutritional supplements.

“We thought if we could do a collaboration and get this product into the hands of folks that need it the most, we could help change the health of someone in a positive way and change their idea of health and eating habits,” said Paige Parker.

According to a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine, poor nutrition has surpassed tobacco use as the leading underlying cause of death in the United States. Studies have documented persistent or worsening nutrition disparities based on race or ethnicity, education and income level.

As a result, Black, Latinx and Native Americans not only experience higher rates of obesity and obesity-related chronic diseases they have also experienced disproportionate infections, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, according to reports.

“We believe that this is a solution for that space and that customer, and they just need their needs addressed, and that’s what we believe Vibrance will do,” said Ted Parker.