United for Change: The Impact of DSHEA and the Future of the Natural Products Industry

Tina SmithCo-host
00:06
Okay, well, we’ll go ahead and get started. Welcome to the United for Change 30 Years of Dachet webinar brought to you by CENPA and Natural Products Marketer. I’m Tina Smith, with Natural Products Marketer, and I am honored to have the opportunity to lead this discussion. We’re so excited to have you as we celebrate 30 years of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, or DSHEA. Now, a lot of you know what DSHEA is and some of you are afraid of it and some of you are excited about it, but we are here to explore its long-term impact on the natural products industry. Over the next hour or so, we’re going to dive into the origins of Deshaies, hearing directly from the pioneers who played pivotal roles in its creation. We’ll explore the key moments that shaped this legislation and discuss how it continues to influence our industry today and into the future.
01:01
We have this webinar scheduled for about an hour and a half, but we want to leave a big part of it open for audience questions. So here’s what you can expect. For at least the first hour, we’re going to give a brief background on Dachet, what it is and even how it came to be. Two, we’re going to have a panel discussion, and we are joined by distinguished panelists Cheryl Hughes of the Whole Weedery Store and Restaurant, s Upton, the CEO of Planetary Herbals, deborah Short, executive Director of SendPuff, peter Broadhead, former co-owner of Brighter Day Natural Foods Market, and Bruce Cohen of Nutrition World and Palm Beach Gardens, florida. They’re going to share their firsthand experiences and insights from the early days of Dachet. Then after that, we’re going to walk right into a Q&A session. So we’re going to have that led by our emerging leaders in the industry, including Katie Coleman from Nutrition World in Chattanooga, amanda Ballard of the Natural Products Marketer and board member of CINPA, brian Mosser, also board member of CINPA, director of business development of Get Healthy, and Ryan Simpson-Brenner, head of marketing for Enzymedica.
02:14
Now we want your interaction during this webinar. So please, all along the way, you can submit questions in our chat feature. You’ll notice at the bottom there’s a Q&A section and a chat section. If you’ll just stick to that chat section, we’ll be able to gather everyone’s questions from one place. And just a quick reminder before we begin the webinar the Soho Expo is almost here. It’s September 12th through the 15th in Orlando and there is still room for you to join. So head to CINPAorg and get registered, because we would love to meet you in person, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to network and to continue this conversation on Deshaies and connect with panelists and other industry professionals. So, without further ado, let’s get started. Debra, I’m going to start with you. I would love to have a brief overview of what in the world Deshaies is anyway, and I’m asking to unmute you.
Debra ShortGuest
03:18
Hey, hey, hey, everyone, thank you all for being here. I appreciate it. Santa is wanting to make sure that we all have our voices heard, so I’ll kind of go through just a little bit of what we know about the SHEA. The Dietary Supplement, health and Education Act of 1994 is a US federal law that defines and regulates dietary supplements. This act was intended to exempt dietary supplements from industry from most FDA drug regulations, but it also established standards for the supplements and prohibited manufacturers from making false claims. So by enacting this law, deshaies, it defines a dietary supplement as a category of food and it establishes standards for them, including safety and labeling requirements. So those naysayers that are out there who think our industry is unregulated, well, deshaies took care of that.
04:12
So this year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of Deshaies, resounding the voice and history of how our industry included our retailers and how our retailers sent messages to consumers by using the official Blackout Day campaign across the nation on August the 13th 1994, which was just a few days ago. This campaign made an impact on our elected officials on the Hill. The industry effort went on to the passage of Deshaies and we all worked together for the common cause of defending all our health freedoms and the effort led to the second largest letter writing campaign that Congress ever experienced, next to the Vietnam War. You guys have probably heard that a million times. Well, we have a story to tell and we have an industry to unite and I think, using this call and with the people and the veterans and the new emerging leaders that we have on this call, we’re going to be able to accomplish just that. I look forward to your questions and, tina, back to you.
Tina SmithCo-host
05:09
Thanks so much, deborah. That’s interesting. I know you say there were a few things that we’ve all heard a thousand times, but every time you talk about the Shea I feel like I learned something more, even if you’ve said it a hundred times. So keep saying it. Peter, I’m going to move over to you now and talk. I know you were a lobbyist during the formation of Deshaies, so I’m curious what is the background Like? What was going on in the industry around that time?
Peter BroadheadGuest
05:36
Yeah, there was so much uncertainty at that time that was going on because we you would hear things and you’d know didn’t know what the FDA might be doing next. So one of the first sort of galvanizing moments happened on a raid on a famous natural medical doctor. Dr Jonathan Wright, who is very, very well known, had a clinic out in Tacoma, washington, wrote for Prevention Magazine at that time, was just very well known he was. They went in and ransacked his clinic and shut it down because he was using preservative free nutrients that he would get from Germany doing IV treatments and so this was a whole thing of just kind of like an FDA acting at their will doing things. So it galvanized that and I also had a second incident that I want to talk about that really was very relevant to that.
06:36
We had a very popular product that was made by Terry Lemeran, enzymatic Therapy. At that time he made a product called Thymic Fractions, thymic Extract, and we actually had a local medical doctor who used it and had extremely good results in helping him with hepatitis B supporting it. It became very, very popular in our town and word got out nationally. Well, the FDA just randomly went in and stopped enzymatic therapy from marketing that product, pulled it off the shelves no real reason that we knew of, and changed everything around on it, and so we were at a point where just tremendous uncertainty you didn’t know what they were going to do next. There was just a randomness to their actions that we felt, and we felt very vulnerable to what was going on at that time.
Tina SmithCo-host
07:29
That does sound really scary. If you owned a retail store, roy, first I realized that I got your introduction wrong, so tell people who you are and also give us a little bit of information about your role in helping develop the Dachet legislation.
Roy UptonGuest
07:51
So my position is American Herbal Pharmacopeia. I’m the president of the American Herbal Pharmacopeia but I’m also the director of Planetary Herbals, which is a division of Threshold, and Threshold Enterprises is a California-based distributor and we were central in organizing the National Blackout Day. In the first case, deshaies was actually prompted in a great manner because of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, because of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act which was passed in like 1999 to 2000. And when the FDA wrote the regulations of how that law would be administered and that law was meant to provide manufacturers with an ability to make health claims on food products fiber and heart disease, fiber and cancer, b6 and folic acid for birth defects, calcium, osteoporosis, things like that.
08:51
But when they wrote the regulations they had very specific targeted nutrients that they said anything above 150 percent of anDA, which is ridiculously low from a nutritional perspective, shall be regulated as a drug. And then the one sentence that got me was that any herb whose only use is for medicinal purposes shall be regulated as a drug. So that meant that most of the herbs would come off the market because nobody was going to pay the $231 million to go through the drug approval process. That turned me from a folkloric or a local herbalist into a political activist. That never stopped. So then, I think we’re going to talk about Blackout Day a little later, is that true?
Tina SmithCo-host
09:41
Well, I was going to actually say you brought it up. So tell us what in the world is blackout day, because I had actually never heard that before. Debra talked about it recently.
Roy UptonGuest
09:51
Yeah. So when the NLEA regulations said that many of the nutrients and the potencies and the herbal products that we always had access to, they were always part of the public domain, just like foods are part of the public domain, just like foods are part of the public domain we saw that nothing was safe. And actually the idea original idea came from Daniel Gagnon who had a retail store called Herbs Etc in Santa Fe, new Mexico, and Daniel, on his own, he did his own blackout day, just individually, where he draped his shelves and when customers came in looking for something he’s like sorry, I can’t give it to you because FDA is going to take it off the shelf pretty soon and he turned his store into a political action center. Then Nature’s Way contacted him and said hey, we want to do this nationally. And then I got wind of it and with Threshold Enterprises we had distribution throughout the entire country, 80% penetration into the retail market. So for the next year we wrote petitions, political action letters on how they could make their retail store a political action center, how to contact their senators, their congresspeople, how to lobby locally, the phone numbers to call. We gave every hand-fed, every retailer and every natural healthcare practitioner almost in the country a script for how to defend their right to use the herbs and the nutrients that they used to for their healthcare needs. And again with Cheryl Hughes as well. Cheryl and I did a lot of work together and organizing. Cheryl had shopping bags and badges that retailers could wear. She printed them at her own cost. We printed all the material and sent them out into every order. If we had 300 orders going out the door every day, there were 300 political action packs going into every order and that’s what stimulated a great deal of the consumer interest in defending our rights and in leading to the passage of Deshaies.
12:12
The one other thing I will say is that every store did something a little bit different.
12:18
Wild Oats in New Mexico had a health fair outside in front of their store. They didn’t stop selling the herbs, but they made sure that every customer knew they had a statue of liberty that was put outside like a woman dressed as a statue of liberty, you know, saying we have to defend our health freedom. The herb room here we in Santa Cruz, we blocked off three out of four of the aisles. It’s a very small store and said in a year, unless you sign this right now and we would put in the envelope, put a stamp on it and unless you call these two numbers, our Congress people and our senators right now, you’re not going to have access to these in a year. And that’s what really. And everybody did their own thing. You know, some people did radio podcasts or video shows, public TV, different types of events at their store. We even did events all over the country for acupuncturists, naturopaths, consumers. It was pretty amazing of how we could mobilize our consumer base.
Tina SmithCo-host
13:29
That’s so interesting, Roy. It sounds like everyone from the industry just started coming together and working toward this cause together. Bruce, I’d love to talk to you. You were a retailer during this time. I’m sure you had some of these campaigns going on at your store, but before Blackout Day, how were you feeling? It feels like there was a lot of uncertainty.
Bruce CohenGuest
13:55
Well, we had been involved with the industry since the late 1960s and we had at the time six stores and we organized a campaign to meet every congressperson within our districts. Plus, we organized further south in southern Florida to meet other congressmen, senators from the state in Florida to push them to co-sponsor the Shea legislation and it was very successful. I mean meeting with Congressman Alcee Hastings, which is outside my district but very close to our district, to listen to his stories and stuff and then him making phone calls for us as a congressman to his other friends who were congressmen to get them to support the bill. Was really powerful to us.
14:53
We in our stores blacked out we had coffins in the store, we had funeral homes, bring hearses to each store, had funeral homes, bring hearses to each store, and we really, you know, did the letter writing campaigns, we faxed anything we can do, as Roy was saying, the phone calls. We did it all and it was amazing how the reaction, you know, when you spoke to a congressman or their aides, they knew all about this by the time we got to them and it was just getting them on board as co-sponsors of the bill and they told us they’ve never seen anything like what our industry was doing. It was a really great time. I mean it was scary, but it was great, and customers got involved. It was very exciting.
Tina SmithCo-host
15:48
Yeah, cheryl, same for you. Tell us more about how you were feeling and what tactics. We already put some things up on the screen that were going on at your store, but what kind of tactics were you putting in place and how are you feeling before and during this?
Cheryl HughesGuest
16:02
Well, I think the most important thing to note is that there were so many organizations that jumped in on this. They, I think the most important thing to note is that there were so many organizations that jumped in on this. They were all over the country. Mpa, which was in an FAA, had branches all over the country. It was very easy to communicate to each other and everybody got involved in this. As we said, we had so many people to pull at and to learn how to communicate with our congressmen and our senators. Some of us got to testify before Congress. We got to talk to our local schools and newspapers. We got to put out press releases. We were coached on how to speak. There were groups that were organized to go before each congressperson and senator on lobby day. That was really an incredible opportunity for all of us to learn how to get your voice heard. People thought that your voice didn’t matter. Well, we proved them all wrong by telling them how important it was to matter.
16:55
And when they walked into a store and saw what they couldn’t buy any longer, it was very clear, because a picture is worth a thousand words and you can tell customers oh, you weren’t going to get this, because they’re talking about seed oils. They’re talking about enzymes, amino acids. They’re talking about orotates. They’re talking about antioxidants, herb tinctures. All this stuff was going to be removed. We heard about Jonathan Wright. We heard about the guns being drawn by the FDA. We heard about the raids on various stores. Everybody was nervous. The stores that were doing a really good job in monitoring the companies that had truth and labeling and had efficacious products were not as scared as some of the other people that we were up against, which was there are groups of people that can make all kinds of claims out there in the public and that did nothing to help our credibility with FDA. We had to overcome that. There had been a bias from FDA since the 1938.
17:53
The NLEA was constantly being challenged. The Proxmire Amendment went in and saved us for a little while. The NLEA moratorium allowed us the time to go back to Congress and tell them what we really needed for an act to protect consumer access to dietary supplements, to allow people to have the freedom to choose, and I think when I first got involved, I had no idea that these battles had been raging for as long as they had. So to find out that this opportunity for us to protect and preserve the businesses that we had, but, more importantly, consumers’ access to choose what kind of healthcare they wanted was fascinating, and so that’s why I got involved and that’s why we were able to get the retailers and all of our various fractions of NPA to work closely to develop this blackout kit, to get everybody involved. Even GNC, who couldn’t black out their stores because corporate laws were very different than independent laws, were there. Handing out the information, telling consumers, getting them involved, faxing and phoning, letter writing all of that. Today it would be so much easier to communicate with customers.
19:07
But every single person got something in the hands of every consumer that came in that store, and I feel like we did such an incredible job of uniting all the different fractions in our industry. Jerry Kessler from Natural Health Alliance he was amazing. There were people that didn’t speak to each other initially. They all got together behind this issue. There was a division between the food and the supplement industry. A lot of that got healed, because we sell both components to wellness, and that’s food and nutritional supplements, and if we can’t talk about one then we’re going to hurt the other. So there was this amazing coming together of all the fractions of our industry and it was exciting to witness.
Tina SmithCo-host
19:48
Yeah, excuse me. Yes, and Deborah, I see you raising your hand and I’m wondering two things. One is this is these are some photos that you sent over, so this is from your store.
Debra ShortGuest
20:02
And no, that’s not. It’s not from my store. No, this is one of the ones here at the office, but that is very similar.
Tina SmithCo-host
20:09
So you did this blackout campaign too, but you were telling me about doing this faxing campaign and I thought there’s going to be a lot of people on this webinar who don’t even know what a fax is. That is true. It was a very different way of going about communicating.
Debra ShortGuest
20:26
Right and you know there’s there’s still retailers that I’m in contact with on the daily that that say you know, whenever we’re ready, we’re ready.
20:33
We did the faxing and it worked really well. Well, I don’t think that that works as well right now, but I do know and I want to kind of contribute to what Cheryl was saying. Kind of contribute to what Cheryl was saying being able to be a part of this whole campaign moving forward not only brought awareness to the industry but it brought out for our business, the House of Health in Shawnee, oklahoma. What it did is it brought awareness for our customers, our community, that understand that we were fighting for their freedom to be able to purchase product in our store. And so that’s the one thing that we built that integrity with our community, and they understood and they were behind 100 percent everything that we did, and I’m sure all the retailers that are here with us today have experienced that as well. There’s nothing more than building integrity with your customer whenever you need them to be a voice for you on the Hill or on any kind of matter that is going to help and affect your business.
Tina SmithCo-host
21:31
Yeah, and Roy, I see your hand raised. You were talking about this earlier. For sure that you guys got consumers involved with this, writing letters, faxing, coming up on the Hill. So tell us more.
Roy UptonGuest
21:43
Well, the interesting thing I wanted to mention is regarding the faxes. The faxes were actually one of the most successful parts of the campaign, for the simple reason that they were receiving so many faxes through their machine that they couldn’t do anything else in their office and that they were processing so many single letters. So, right now, if we do an email blast, they’re not going to read a single one. What they’re going to do is they’re going to count the numbers of how many communications they got, but when they’re getting faxes and their fax machine is running out of paper and they need to hire temps in order to open up the letters in order to know whether it’s something they need to respond like a real congressional request or something. That’s actually a big part of what made this successful.
22:38
We had Congress. I had Congress people calling me in my district saying, roy, will you tell these people to stop? We got the message. We understand the need. I’m like, I’m sorry, but this is like you’re taking our ability, our choice, away. So I just wanted to say that about facts and letters relative to how we would communicate today and whether or not that would be equally as effective.
Tina SmithCo-host
23:09
Yeah, it’s really kind of marketing 101. You have to be above the noise and get attention, and sometimes you have to do that by using some of the resources so that they have to get to the bottom of what’s happening exactly. Peter, I want to go back to you because I want to hear more about other lobbying efforts. Who did you?
Peter BroadheadGuest
23:37
enroll to help make the industry look big. And maybe who did we have on our side at that time? Well, we did have, as Roy said we had. Congressman Richardson was one who was our congressman in Iowa, who was also a big ally of ours at that time. I don’t remember Tom Harkin, DC and worked for, I believe it was, an entire year on helping with this legislation. He was incredible, probably one of the most outstanding people in our industry to do that, and it was incredible what he did Amazing, you know. So anyway, they were all involved.
24:19
And then again, just to reiterate, you know the letter writing campaigns that we did, the sort of the shock that would hit the customers when they realized they couldn’t purchase a product and how angry they got of having their choices, of being limited, really spearheaded a big effort on that.
24:37
And then we had the National Lobbyist Day, which Cheryl was also very involved with doing that. That was an incredible day. We were most of us were in Expo East at that time, so we were already in the DC area and we all took an extra day and we went down on foot all the retailers, down to the halls of our congressional offices and knocked on doors, and so we went to like I had my own congressman, who was a freshman Republican congressman at that time, went to his office but visited all the offices of all the congresspersons in Georgia, since that’s where I’m from, and talked to their aides about the issue. It was an amazing you know personal lobbying experience that we had, and so we had hundreds of retailers, you know, spanning all over, going through all the office buildings in Washington DC doing that. It was an amazing, amazing event and a really powerful experience on the workings of democracy.
Tina SmithCo-host
25:41
Yeah, Peter, I love this and everyone’s sort of bringing this up over and over again. It was retailers, manufacturers, all the trades people were coming together, and even consumers and obviously and I want to hear a little bit about Mel Gibson from someone but, Roy, I would love to hear from you again why do you think it happened so well that the entire industry came together on this?
Roy UptonGuest
26:10
I think it’s because the threat was very real. And actually one of the things I think that I brought to the table, which was very effective throughout the whole campaign, was FDA was telling everybody in Congress we’re not really doing that, they’re lying, they’re exaggerating, we have no intention to take these products off the market. But what I did, I took the NLEA regulations and I cut and pasted every specific sentence where they said they were going to restrict access to vitamin C or anything over 150% of RDAs, that herbs are going to be regulated as drugs, that the amino acids, the orotates, all these different forms that were on our shelves, that were public access, were going to disappear. And I just line them up, cut and pasted them all at that time, where you know typing and retyping the Federal Register. And I walked into Waxman’s office on this lobbying day that Peter was talking about, and Waxman’s, who is our strongest opponent, said I had FDA in here last week. They said they’re not doing any of this and I’m like, okay, here’s what the Federal Register says this. And I’m like, okay, here’s what the federal register says.
27:30
And he read that and his eyes opened and he was visibly disturbed. Not that he became a supporter of supplements. He never did. But he was upset that FDA out and out lied to them, that representatives of our federal government out and out misrepresented what they were doing. And here was the language right in front of him saying different.
27:53
And that to me was one of the most effective things, because we can stand back and say they’re going to do this to us, but when we show the words that they actually published and their intent, that’s a whole different story. We have to take it out of our narrative and we have to put it in a manner that says look, this is what they’re saying. I consider that one of the most effective things that I brought to this conversation of actually pulling out that language, because the threat was very real and unless we had some legislative fix that these were going to, the natural supplements were going to go by the wayside in a big way. So I think that’s what catalyzed a lot of our fear is that the threat was very real.
Tina SmithCo-host
28:49
And then, okay, someone tell me the Mel Gibson story. Who’s got it? Anyone?
Roy UptonGuest
29:00
uh roy, you’re muted again lauren israel said, knows the real backstory of how that came to be and the the organizers. Well, mel gibson’s dad in australia was known as vitamin gibson, so they were raised as natural health advocates and, through connections and networking in Hollywood and and people that produced videos, somebody got to Mel Gibson and said hey, can you, can you do this video for us? And I think we have a link that we could share with people. But essentially it was you see a SWAT team coming out of an armored car with rifles, bust into a house in the middle of the night or in the early morning, dark morning, and they come into the kitchen and this guy’s leaning over his, you know, in a cabinet and they go freeze, freeze, you know, hands up, hands up, and Mel Gibson holds up a bottle of vitamin C. He’s like hey guys, it’s a vitamin C, vitamin C. He’s like, hey guys, it’s a vitamin C. And as they put the handcuffs on, you know it says, if we don’t act, this can happen. And then they haul Mel Gibson away and he says you know, vitamin C, like an oranges. And it was classic and this went.
30:33
This went viral as much as it could go viral at the time discussion of exactly what FDA was doing and why they were going to take or why we needed to protect access to the health care that we wanted. Whoopi Goldberg, I remember her saying you know how pissed off Jewish mothers are going to be that you’re really trying to take away chicken soup. Really, you know, because remember what they were saying. Any claim that was for prevention or treatment of disease was a drug. It didn’t matter if it’s chicken soup or broccoli or garlic. If you make a disease prevention or treatment claim, it’s a drug. So that was the mindset at the time and it’s still the mindset now. But that was the Mel Gibson video. If you haven’t seen it, everybody should watch it.
Tina SmithCo-host
31:29
So we posted the link in the chat for anyone who wants to grab it, and we’ll also have it in the show notes. We’re going to have this available as a replay. But, cheryl, I want to ask you, why do you think it was so easy for the entire industry to come together and some of these boundaries to be crossed?
Cheryl HughesGuest
31:48
Well, first of all, you get to somebody’s freedom to choose and their pocketbooks. Those are two huge things. And I think, secondly, we were passionate about our industry and our products. We were proud of the products that were made. We saw people spending their money out of pocket. They weren’t getting reimbursed by insurance companies.
32:07
Retailers have always been a gatekeeper. We’ve always been the link from the manufacturer to the consumer and all we did was step into those boots and arm ourselves with enough information and the same consistent message. When we went to lobby day, we all had packets, we all knew what we were going to say and we were schooled and trained and we were well-versed in what was going to happen. We were in those lobby days. We were well-versed on how to handle consumer questions in those lobby days, we were well-versed on how to handle consumer questions.
32:44
I think when FDA has this inherent bias of our industry and they claim that we’re unregulated, it just makes people think twice about really. Why would people spend this kind of money to take care of their health and have the freedom to choose that? If FDA, who had the power all along to take off bad products and bad players, they could have done this, but they chose to make this claim out there. So this inherent bias just kept bubbling to the surface, and I think people were tired of it, and so we have been so fortunate, for three decades, to have lived under Deshaies.
Tina SmithCo-host
33:19
Yeah, Bruce, you have your hand up.
Bruce CohenGuest
33:23
Yeah, and we also had a lot of data, you know, on the issues with drugs. People were taking Tylenol even and stuff, the interactions and where the supplements that we were selling herbs etc didn’t have any bad effects on people and we were able to show that and it was really important for the congressmen, senators, to see that and hear that from us.
Tina SmithCo-host
33:55
So it sounds like there’s this both situation happening, where you’re promoting the freedom to choose and that these things are great for you, but also, hey, you guys are allowing things to be sold that are not even as healthy for you. So, roy, you have your hand up.
Roy UptonGuest
34:16
It was just one more thing. Go to your question of why it was successful is that we literally tied in everybody, so the entire manufacturing community, the entire retailer community. But we also had, for example, the National Organization of Women in California first, and then the National National Organization of Women supporting the legislation. This became an indigenous rights issue Native Americans, hispanic people that depend on herbs as their primary form of healthcare, every natural healthcare practitioner Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, orthomolecular, nutritionists so we had an American Association of Chiropractic Care. We had almost every natural healthcare practitioner and user supporting the need for Dachet. So it cross-platformed. It wasn’t just for those who could afford it, it wasn’t just for those who are making money in industry or in retail, it is. This is our right, this is our human right.
35:24
And I’ll just mention one thing Cheryl was able to get a meeting with Mike Taylor, who was the deputy director of FDA, and she went to the organizations and said, hey, I just called them, I just called the secretary, I set up a meeting and nobody would touch it. None of the organizations would touch it. They’re saying Cheryl, don’t go. She calls me, almost in tears, saying, roy, I got this meeting both with FDA and with Center for Science in the Public Interest. We’re also against this and I’m like let’s go.
35:57
And we were able to get our message across that this is not just the business thing, and I think that’s to me the most important thing for us to recognize, because FDA and those who are opposing dietary supplements and natural health care, they think it was just because of business. They think Orin Hatch supported us just because there were a lot of herb companies in Utah, which is partly true, but he’s also Mormon and the Mormons strongly believe, as did Bill Richardson’s community and Leon Pianetta, who is the co-signer of Deshaies. He was my representative and eventually became chief of staff on the Clinton. These are strong communities that demand and want access to natural, to alternatives, natural healthcare therapeutics and not just follow the status quo. So that’s why it was so successful. We crossed through virtually every demographic in the country.
Tina SmithCo-host
37:02
Yeah, what I keep hearing from you guys is we just tried, we reached out, we tried, we connected, we networked and we built relationships, which I think is a beautiful thing, and it’s another reason to come to Soho so you can create some of those relationships for yourself.
Cheryl HughesGuest
37:26
Cheryl, I saw your hand was raised so I was going to just dovetail on that financial piece of it, because consumers were aware not only their freedoms were being impacted, but if these things were labeled as drugs, you couldn’t go and buy vitamin C over the RDA without going to your physician.
37:39
Now that’s a huge increase in cost, not counting the inconvenience. So it was a really easy conversation to have, as Roy pointed out with every segment, and people were just learning that they could. I mean Michael Taylor and Bruce Silverplay that was just no big deal. You just call them up, they had to listen to us, I mean, and they did, but people were not aware that we could do that. No big deal. You just call them up. They had to listen to us, I mean, and they did, but people were not aware that we could do that. We don’t know the power that we have until we were given the opportunity to exercise that, and I think that was a huge lesson for everybody that participated in this. Our voices do matter and, however we reach people that are in that position, we have their ear and they are obligated to listen to us in that position we have their ear and they are obligated to listen to us.
Tina SmithCo-host
38:22
Yeah, that’s amazing, and I’m just thinking of the Shea seems scary sometimes when people talk about it. I hear a lot from retailers and manufacturers like, oh, it’s so limiting and we have to figure out how to get around the Shea or stay compliant with it. Are we being compliant? And it sounds to me like it was really protective whenever you guys first helped develop this legislation, and I’d love to hear more around where you think this is going in the future, peter, lessons that we’re learning from this. Will the Shea hold up? What does that look like for our future? Uh-oh, peter, I’m sorry you’re muted, so I’m going to there you go, yeah.
Peter BroadheadGuest
39:16
I mean it really in providing a framework of the way that it works, so it allows us to really keep our eye on developments in the future and a way that we can work on maintaining this. You know, labeling, health, I know, are going to continue to come up as technologies and things like that, and information availability makes it, you know, more challenging. I mean, we’ve got AI as one example, which I’m still, you know, in the dark about really personally on that. So we’ve got to use it as sort of like set the tracks for us and keeping an eye on any kind of changes that would be coming up in the future, and we’ve got a track record of something that can do that. I mean, I do remember in the past when the manufacturers first were able to put a structure function claim on a label, and what a celebration that was for us and we actually had products which had statements on them about, you know, body systems that you know they were supporting, and it was an amazing, amazing thing for us to have that. We really felt like we had really garnered a whole new level of education and freedom for the consumer, garnered a whole new level of education and freedom for the consumer. So it’s using that and having our eyes and ears open.
40:49
I mean Daniel Fabricant with the Natural Products Association, if people aren’t familiar with a lot of the work that he’s done on the regulation issues and he has at times been a champion for coming out and continuing to know, continuing to protect our industry when these issues come up. We had, we all had, the scare a couple of years ago about N-acetylcysteine as a product that you know FDA was looking at and that was a that was another sort of big moment coming, coming at us that we had to. You know, we were nervous about and having to work for to keep those gates open for us.
Tina SmithCo-host
41:22
Yep, I am a huge fan of NIC and I was very nervous about that. Cheryl, you have your hand up.
Cheryl HughesGuest
41:29
Well, I think most of us in the retail industry have a position of trust in our communities.
41:35
We have built those relationships by being honest with our customers, by selling efficacious products, by communicating things that we know to be truthful and non-misleading. And we have a little training doll whatever you want to call it. She’s called Vitamindy and she tells our new staff that’s in the supplement department what they can and can’t say, based on Deshae laws, and it’s a great training tool because it’s very easy to get carried away. You know, if you or I discover something that we love, we’re kind of a convert and we want to tell everybody and sometimes we tell too much and sometimes we cross the line maybe as being practitioners, when we’re not, and that’s where you can alienate the medical side of your community. So, if you are training your staff properly, if you are continuously building that trust with your consumer, all it does is make you a better retailer and a better part of your community, and I think that’s part of what the Deshaies law allowed us to do and why it’s important for us to say ever vigilant.
Tina SmithCo-host
42:38
Yeah, and Debra part of this too. This has lasted for 30 years and there’s a reason for that. So why do you think that it stood for 30 years? Very well for the industry, and what does that look like for the future?
Debra ShortGuest
42:54
You know, I think that there has been times when there’s always rocky roads, there’s always naysayers that are out there. We get bad press all the time, but I think that industry has stuck together and, as we have done that, with all the trades that are out there and all the as Roy spoke to the nutritional professionals that bind together to be one united voice, I think it helped to develop our strength. Now, we did have an amendment, as you guys know, in 2007 of the adverse event reporting system that did amend DSHEA, and the reason why we did that is because we didn’t really have a whole lot of adverse events that went about, and so what we did was we tried to put our big hat on and say this is where we are, and so it has decreased or decreased it has not.
43:49
It has not caused any major problems, but it did give a reporting system and we give a lot of kudos for that to be able to come forward. Now, what I do think that might be a little bit different. Moving forward and this is for the emerging leaders that are part of this panel discussion is that the shade does have some archaic language in there. I mean, there’s the structure, function, claims. There’s so much different avenues that people can go and get communication nowadays all of our Facebook and you know, tiktok and all these different platforms that are out there that is going to have to have some kind of big lasso that’s going to pull it in, and I think Michael McGuffin was the one.
44:33
Maybe, roy, you can tell me he was the one that said that is. The one thing that probably does need to be looked at is the communication part that we have, because everything was pretty rigid whenever they wrote the law. We kind of knew where to place the books that were not going to be put next to the supplements that made any kind of claims. It just kind of evolved from there. So I think, once you get into the emerging leader side of this webinar, they’ll be asking the questions well, what about this and what about that? So to me, that’s the one thing that probably will be opened up.
Tina SmithCo-host
45:08
Yeah, perfect, and I think that leads us straight over to you, amanda. We do have emerging leaders that have joined us today from the industry and they are going to ask the panelists questions that they have, and this is another time. I’m just going to invite you again to post up your questions in the chat so that we can also ask the panelists questions for you, and if we run out of time, we will still ask our panelists these questions and get answers back for you and send them your way via email. Post them up on the channels where we’re going to have this live stream available for your replay.
Amanda BallardCo-host
45:48
Yeah, thank you, tina, and thank you to all of you panelists. This has been just really informative so far and I’m excited to just continue the conversation with our emerging leaders. So I wanted to kick it off with Katie. So, katie, you’re a second generation owner. Your dad lived through this the passing of the shade, the blackout days, all of that. Did this conversation kind of strike up anything that you wanted to ask of the panel, as well as any experiences that you would like to share from your dad living through that period of time?
Cady KuhlmanGuest
46:21
Yeah, absolutely. When all the veteran panelists were speaking I was actually thinking of a lot of stories that my dad had told me over my childhood and over my youth. I was actually four years old when Deshaies passed and I don’t have a ton of memories from being four but I honestly think I can remember the location where our store was which is not the location now but I remember that a yellow notepad and my dad was constantly getting everybody to sign and we were just burning through yellow notepads because we were just on fire to get that sent in the fax over to legislature. And you know he still speaks so fondly to this day of Deshaies and what it’s done for our industry and so it’s so cool that something has lasted us 30 years. He said at the time as well, our business was a good business but it wasn’t as big as it was now.
47:12
So he pulled like all of his money together to buy the Mel Gibson commercial that we were speaking about, to put it on all of our local TV stations, and that was about all the profits for like six months of time that he had coming in from the store. So he got that all around the local Chattanooga area and we were watching that actually commercial the other day together and just kind of talking about the fond memories, because now we’re here and so I’m able to take over the store one day and continue on this leadership and I truly believe a lot of that is due to the Deshaies Act, absolutely.
Amanda BallardCo-host
47:46
Awesome. Thank you, katie. Brian, I know you had a question for the panel about the state of the industry. I’ll turn it over to you. Thank you, hi. Yes, you’re muted now, Brian.
Brian MosserGuest
48:01
Hi, no, I first want to thank all of the veteran panelists because you know, we wouldn’t be running the stores that we’re running and we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing without all the work you guys did. So hats off to you. But I did have a question. I guess more for Roy. I guess more for Roy. You know we’re talking about Deshaies today, but you know where we are at currently with our industry, with politics, the way they are, with the state of online sales. What do you think?
Roy UptonGuest
48:35
something that’s around the corner that retailers and a younger generation should be concerned about. Going forward, I think our greatest deficiency has been that we’ve never been able to change the public perspective. And in the early 2000s a journalist named Anna Tufeksis wrote a Time Magazine cover piece on the power of nutritional supplements and she went into writing that article from a completely negative perspective that this is snake oil, old wives, teals and quackery, because that was her perception and once she, because she was a journalist, she went to true nutrition experts at Tufts, at California, Berkeley, different universities, talking to real experts in nutrition and she completely changed and created one of the most positive articles ever written on the potential benefits of supplements. But what she told us we have to take to heart. She said in the eyes of the media, journalists, that the health food industry’s reputation was only one, rung up from the tobacco industry, and that’s horrible and that’s predominantly because of the majority of conventional medical practitioners that continue to repeat the mantra that we’re unregulated, that they’re potentially unsafe, that their efficacy is not proven, and this mantra has existed for longer than Deshaies has existed and we as an industry today have not changed that narrative that much and I believe that’s the greatest challenge for the younger generation.
50:22
We have to tell our story. We have to tell people the experiences that we have. Think about it. If you look at almost every survey of a natural products user, whether it’s a health food consumer, a retail consumer or whether it’s a patient of a natural health practitioner their demographics they’re described as being highly educated, self-motivated in healthcare and they have a high level of satisfaction with the supplements and with the natural care they’re given through practitioners. So how can we have this narrative, this true narrative that we know because we’re actually interfacing with these people, and then have this other narrative in the media? So I think that’s the emerging leaders challenge Tell the story. Find a way to tell the story that gets that truth out.
Amanda BallardCo-host
51:24
I love that. I know, Ryan, you have your hand up. I know you’re a big advocate of storytelling, so I’m interested to hear your thoughts on that.
Ryan SensenbrennerGuest
51:33
Yeah, yeah, you know, absolutely. And again, you know, thank you to the veteran. You know team members, you know, on this call, and again, thank you to the veteran team members on this call. Like Katie, I grew up in this industry but I was six when Deshaies was first put into action. But my youth was actually running around enzymatic therapy in the mid-90s. My dad led the marketing team there and you know he tells the story recently of going to his doctor and his doctor was recommending CoQ10 to him and he thought that was the most amazing thing because he played a role with Dr Mike Murray of helping to make CoQ10 mainstream, you know, under Enzymatic and, of course, other brands at that time.
52:15
So I think the industry has made progress at that time. So I think the industry has made progress. But what I also think, as you alluded to, amanda, you know, storytelling is my world and so often when I talk to independent retailers, they have a lot of beliefs, they have a lot of passions, they have a lot of values. I think we’ve heard some of that today, but you know we don’t always get that out to consumers and I’d be curious of the panelists. You know truly, truly, you know what was the consumer response within the store and the day to day, you know, during this time, and how do you think that would be different today, you know? Will consumers interface with the store in a different way than they did back then?
Amanda BallardCo-host
53:03
Bruce, what do you have to say about that?
Bruce CohenGuest
53:06
You know, back then it was really easy because customers did not have the ability to buy online and so they really listened to. What we had to say is, like Cheryl was saying you know the trusted value of being partners with. You know your store. We had that in six locations and you know customers really were concerned. Today I think it’d be a little different, because there’s so many avenues and people are so mistrusting of everything. To get them to maybe do as broad a letter writing or type program that we did in the 1990s, it would be concerning to me.
Amanda BallardCo-host
53:58
Cheryl.
Cheryl HughesGuest
54:01
Well, I think that education, which was the cornerstone to all of our businesses, was certainly the cornerstone to the passage of Deshaies, is still our cornerstone today, and so educating consumers oftentimes will have customers come in and they’re talking about the products they’ve bought in various places, including online, et cetera, and if they’re not talking tit for tat the same items that we carry we have an opportunity to talk about maybe why that particular product didn’t work and talk about efficacy of products that we know and manufacturing practices of companies that we’re familiar with, and I think being able to call out the bad players, then I think that’s still an important mission that we need today.
54:45
When customers ask us questions we’re very honest about we don’t carry this because and I think that that is a respectful answer and it might generate some bonding with that customer and so when we change them to another product and it works for them, you get that satisfaction. But I think people are reluctant to call out bad players in our industry and we had a lot of them back then. We had people that were making just terrible claims and they had horrible ingredients and we’ve seen ingredients over time spiked with poor things and people aren’t aware of that. And because the Internet and online sales and home sales have skyrocketed, people have a open dialogue with misinformation now and we have an opportunity to correct some of that misinformation. I think that’s still really important important?
Amanda BallardCo-host
55:40
Yeah, absolutely, and I think something that I’ve heard multiple times in this webinar has been having the trust of your customer and how all of this created more trust with your customer. So I think when you have that, you can much more easily call out those bad actors, because your customers will listen to you. Shifting gears a little bit back into legislation, I know historically we had senators like Orrin Hatch that were industry champions. We had kind of talked about him a little bit with the why behind that. But, roy, I wanted to ask you if you have any knowledge of any industry champions we have in Congress today, or or anybody that’s, you know, more more actively opposed to us, and kind of just fill fill in the audience of who we have on our side.
Roy UptonGuest
56:30
I think there are a number of people. Early on after Deshaies, a congressional dietary supplement caucus was formed and it’s been more or less active throughout the decades since the passage of Deshaies. But there was a recent initiative to re-energize that Dietary Supplement Caucus in January of 2024. So the caucus consists of what? 15 to 20 senators and 30 to 40 congresspeople and we can provide a list of who those people are in those specific states and if you know of, for example, of other representatives that should be on that list. That would be an initiative for people to go after those people and say, hey, can you become a part of this dietary supplement caucus? That would be the first thing. The second thing would be how do we keep the energy of that dietary supplement caucus going? Should there be quarterly meetings, monthly meetings, monthly communications?
57:33
A new study comes out on the benefits of a supplement, an herb or nutritional supplement. We need to have some mechanism that feeds that information to the Dietary Supplement Caucus. Does a critical review make sure that it’s not a lousy study, for example, so that we keep the energy and the momentum in that Dietary Supplement Caucus going, or that we keep them educated about our issues is going, or that we keep them educated about our issues. And again, I think that’s been one of our failures as an industry. We tend to be reactive. This is going to happen to us. Therefore, we have to do something, but very seldom, other than in the way we deal with our customers. We’re not proactive. And again, I would say that’s an emerging leader, younger generation, you got to figure out how do we develop these communication mechanisms by which we build our base of consumer advocates and congressional advocates.
Amanda BallardCo-host
58:34
So, cheryl, I’ll turn it over to you for a second. What do you think makes a strong industry advocate, and what advice would you give to our attendees today for engaging with their legislators, to whether they are current champions of our industry, if they’re a little bit more indifferent, or even if they’re opposed?
Cheryl HughesGuest
58:54
just from all of your experience over the years, Well, I think the number one thing is the success story. With a dietary supplement, they’ve either had their own personal experience or someone in their family changed their lifestyle, incorporated something that helped them out. We do see practitioners and doctors today saying, oh, that’s okay to take it or yeah, you might try. We didn’t see that 30 years ago. It was very rare. So I think those success stories create the advocates. Also, all of the natural healers that are out there. There’s a million different modalities. Those people have had success with their clients. Those are the people that have the stories, that can reach out and tell those stories. So I think that’s how you identify them when you are talking to somebody and you find out, oh, that really worked for you.
Amanda BallardCo-host
59:45
Would you like to be a consumer advocate for us? Just keep them in mind, awesome, okay. So switching gears a little bit to more of the manufacturing side of things. We have Ryan with us and, as a manufacturer and as a marketer in particular, you’re dealing a lot with the regulatory side of how, what you can say on a, on a package, and what you cannot say. Could you just kind of fill us in on what we need to be aware of, to what, what kind of regulations there are, what is, what is it to substantiate your claims, and kind of just fill us in on all the details there?
Ryan SensenbrennerGuest
01:00:21
Yeah. So my role at Enzymedica is really to come up with what we can’t say, and then I work with our regulatory team to figure out how we do say it right. But I’ve spent a lot of time marketing in the world of Dachet. I’ve been with Enzymedica for over 13 years now in marketing. I’ve been with Enzymedica for over 13 years now in marketing and I think, first of all, we’re really blessed in the United States because I can tell you there’s other parts of the world where I can say far less about supplements.
01:00:48
I’m very thankful for the guidelines that Deshaies allows us, but I think you know, without getting into the nuts and bolts of exactly how you substantiate, I think you know, without getting into the nuts and bolts of exactly how you substantiate and what the standards of substantiation will be. What I will say is it’s becoming more important than ever. Someone earlier mentioned the role of influencers and TikTok and all of these things, as brands are bringing them on board. They are agents of your company, right? They are, you know, qualified under rules of both Touché as well as FTC for sponsored posts.
01:01:24
You know, and there was even some new rules that just came out over the last couple of weeks regarding customer testimonials, and if you’re posting testimonials on your stores, social media, for example, you’ve got to acknowledge that there was a business relationship there, so on and so forth. So I think you know again, I could do a whole talk on substantiation, but the knowledge here is that you’ve really got to be careful. And it’s FDA, it’s FTC and then it’s also, you know, local issues, state level, attorney generals, community rules. I saw in the comments about CBD, for example, some things there. You know, we talked to a lot of stores across the country that were having local law enforcement come take CBD off shelf. So you got to be smart about it.
Amanda BallardCo-host
01:02:16
Yeah, what are some tools that we have at our disposal? You know, obviously a lot changed in 30 years from a technology standpoint and I don’t think that we can just get away with oh, we’ll just put that book over here, away from the product anymore. We don’t talk like that anymore. So what are some of the tools out there that retailers can use, manufacturers can use to kind of help them stay compliant with what they’re saying?
Ryan SensenbrennerGuest
01:02:43
Yeah, I mean you’re still going to have in-store the old school third party literature and that beautiful exemption around that, and anyone who’s worked with Hoppy in the industry will know well the role of books and third party literature, how that can help support your sales. But there are some modern tools as well. First of all, stay in the know. I’ll never forget my first week at Enzymedica. I was joined at the company by another industry veteran, scott Cloud, who gave me a list of LinkedIn groups to join, and even back then I joined many of those to stay in the know, and they were the trade associations and media groups. So I think you’ve got to follow those things.
01:03:28
There’s also some really phenomenal experts out there, one that I like to follow. His name is Asa Waldstein. Asa has created an AI-based app called Apex Compliance which has a low-cost monthly subscription. It’s definitely in the realm of a typical health food store budget where you can actually run your content and your posts through it and it looks for flagged at-risk terms and it gives you suggestions on how to reword things. At-risk terms and it gives you suggestions on how to reword things. So APEX compliance is great, and also tools like ChatGPT are evolving. You can put content into there and you can ask ChatGPT hey, please review this against state and federal regulations. I warn you, it’s not perfect, but all of these are tools that are out there that can help you be successful.
Amanda BallardCo-host
01:04:19
Roy, you have something to add to this.
Roy UptonGuest
01:04:21
Yeah, I think it’s important for us to remember that one of the provisions of DSHEA Ryan touched on it was that it allows for the dissemination at point of purchase of third-party independent data. So meaning that if somebody’s asking about vitamin E, you can give them a JAMA New England Journal of Medicine article, a research article that says vitamin E may be beneficial for the treatment or prevention of cardiovascular disease. See a doctor. So that was allowed specifically under D’Shea, which prior to D’Shea that was prohibited. It was considered an extension of marketing. So that’s extremely important.
01:04:59
The second thing that’s important and it’s a little bit of a can of worms and controversial and not clear cut is the fact that the Constitution does have this thing that’s called freedom of speech, freedom of press.
01:05:14
Now, the key is that the press and the speech has to be truthful and not misleading. But there’s case history on both sides supporting free speech with regards to the benefits of supplements, even to the point of being able to say green tea has a preventative effect against cancer, which became a qualified health claim under NLEA, which became a qualified health claim under NLEA. And so we have to pay attention that Dachet was predominantly a labeling and a marketing law, but we also have to remember especially as retails, consumers, health professionals that we also have this other thing called the Constitution of the United States states and we just have to work within the parameters and have integrity on how we present information. Again, as ryan was saying, be in the know, don’t promise what you can’t promise. Don’t exaggerate the benefits just to sell a product. Be really know the have integrity with the information that you’re putting out.
Ryan SensenbrennerGuest
01:06:21
And just one further quick thought on that too, and you know there was a great, great comment in from Mitch on the chat.
01:06:29
I won’t address the full comment, but you know, as you know, any government agency, you know you can debate their level of funding if it’s proper or not. But what I will say is technology is going to play a greater role of enforcement. It already is, now and in the future. And so when you look at these organizations, or again your attorney generals, or these law firms and things that are out there, they’re going to use automated tools that are scraping the internet, looking for keywords that are the most problematic things. Now that isn’t a you know, license to kill or license to cheat, to say what you want and not use those keywords. But again, just be aware, as equally as technology can help us ensure that we are compliant, can help us ensure that we are compliant, it can also be used against us to identify, you know, areas of, you know where maybe a organization or a store is overreaching its messaging, be it on your own website or social media. You’ve got to be smart about that.
Amanda BallardCo-host
01:07:41
Yeah, and that brings me to my next question. Katie, I know your store creates a lot of online content whether it’s social media, your website, blogs and so on.
Cady KuhlmanGuest
01:07:48
What are some things that you and your staff are mindful of when you’re creating that content supporting healthy levels of? We’re very mindful, obviously, to not be treating or diagnosing. We don’t want to say that this is the cure for what they’re looking for, but I do believe that you can train your staff for that type of language that then the consumer can very clearly understand what they’re asking for, that we are giving them a remedy for that. It’s just doing that polite dance around the words. And so you know I was thinking there’s some brands that just do it so wonderful. One of them is Life Seasons, when they actually have on the side each ingredient and how it’s supporting the body.
01:08:30
That’s been a wonderful tool for my floor staff, as they’re learning more and more about natural health, has been to point to what’s on the bottle if it explains it in a really nice way, which they do a great job Vital Planet, you know there’s many other wonderful independent supporting brands in our industry that do that type of thing.
01:08:49
But you know, if you turn that bottle around and it says nourishing the circulatory system, it’s helping to moderate the effects of stress, those kind of generalized words are where we go when it comes to our social media, and that’s been very effective for us. And then when we’re writing blogs which we do write a lot of blogs. That has very much helped our traffic to our website and our SEO for us to be more searchable on Google. For us to be more searchable on Google when we write blogs, we try to refer to a study or something that PubMed said, or something that the nutrient could be pointed back to, what the study said about that nutrient. So instead of just tying in a brand, tying in you know, an exact formula and speaking about exactly what that formula does.
01:09:35
We’re kind of going nutrient or ingredient based and then speaking in the ways that would be Dachet compliant, using PubMed studies. So it’s a little bit more education based on those blogs where a consumer on our social media is probably not looking for ads in depth and they’re able to understand our language.
Amanda BallardCo-host
01:09:55
As I said, with the maintaining optimal health and promoting healthy levels up, so thank you, and I’d actually like to get some feedback from Peter, as well as from Cheryl, about how you trained your staff, since you know you guys lived it firsthand. Any tips that you would give for how to talk about this to your staff? Peter, I’ll start with you.
Peter BroadheadGuest
01:10:23
Yeah, well, we conducted regular trainings on the aisle, of course, with updating information, and I would use other sources of information sometimes to keep people up on the newest information. Nutri-ingredients is a great website, which a lot of manufacturers do, but what they’ll do is they’ll provide studies that are coming out that are short, concise and easy to read so you can get a lot of the newest information. I still use those and send them to people in the vitamin. On that. I use Mark Blumenthal quite a bit from the Herbalgram and his herb clips because he’s got a lot of the newest studies and you can read them and they come out on a biweekly basis, so do that.
01:11:11
I use a lot of audio trainings too. There’s so many good high caliber podcasts out with with uh you know, top functional medicine people on certain topics and people can get the staff can get a deeper understanding of of material to use as long, and also, you know, with current uh literature that’s out from books and such like that. And then then, of course, infra had some great training programs that we used and that was some really important, very valuable tools, because those have all been fully vetted and their whole training modules and educating the staff are excellent and there’s a whole huge library there that can be accessed.
Amanda BallardCo-host
01:11:59
Right Cheryl and then Roy.
Cheryl HughesGuest
01:12:01
Well, I underscore everything that you said, peter, and I would add one other thing. The industry is not the small little cottage industry that we all started out in and we knew everybody, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t know the important players and the companies that we are selling on our shelves. The companies that we are selling on our shelves, so establishing a relationship, calling them up, asking and talking to their departments, getting that feedback for the consumer while they’re standing there. The consumer has a question you can answer, pick up the phone, make the phone call, find out, because that knowledge that you get for that one customer can go throughout the entire vitamin department and answer other people’s questions coming forward. So I still think that’s a valuable resource, in addition to all the things that you mentioned, peter. And, as I said, we use a training tool called Vitamindi and I’ll just share that later.
Roy UptonGuest
01:12:46
Yeah, and I just want to mention that FDA actually provided a guidance document on how to develop structure and function claims and how you differentiate those from disease prevention and treatment claims. So that’s right from FDA. I don’t know if it’s still available on their website, but we could find a link for everybody and provide that. But the other thing I wanted to mention is that FDA actually did a survey a number of years ago as to what kind of language consumers prefer, and they were differentiating between drug language ie this is proven to be safe and effective for you know whatever and the second was qualified health claims, which is like green tea may, in some cases, in conjunction with the low fat, high fiber you know low sodium diet and you turn five times around under a full moon may, in some cases, prevent cancer. People did not like either the drug claims or the qualified health claims. They preferred structure and function claims because this may support healthy sleep.
01:13:57
It’s in reality, none of us can ever tell somebody what is going to work best for them for their particular condition. A medical doctor, if they tell you that is lying. A nutritionist, an herbalist if they tell you that they’re lying or they’re exaggerating, all we can say is that, in our experiences, this is the best we could do to support healthy physiology. Try to promote homeostasis, provide you with what your body needs in order to have a better state of health. And if we’re telling anybody, we’re curing cancer and heart disease again, whether you’re a medical doctor, acupuncturist or retailer, it’s just not true. We can’t say that. So structure and function claims were actually preferred by consumers, and I think that it’s actually a really good mechanism for putting our information out there in an integrous way.
Ryan SensenbrennerGuest
01:15:06
I just wanted to add to that too. I think everything you just said I would look at, as a store owner, as an opportunity. I was talking to a relatively new owner out of Texas at Soho Health Fest, which I’ll plug that event, by the way, too, if you haven’t been down to that show. It is phenomenal what the Sempa team does there. But the store owner, he’s only owned the store for a couple of years now. He was a real estate agent, but he announced to us.
01:15:35
He said a know, a couple times a month I become a pharmaceutical drug rep. And we said what do you mean? And he said well, what he does is he takes at least a day or two every month and he goes to every single doctor’s office and pharmacy in his community, almost like a drug rep, and he brings a little basket of supplements and he brings third party literature and information and he gives it to those practitioners and he builds a dialogue. Now, not everyone is receptive to that right, but in his community he’s now building relationships with those medical experts that create a healthy ecosystem. Between that and every community is different right who is the most trusted? It may be a doctor, it may be a pharmacist. It may be a holistic practitioner. Take the opportunity where you know. Those individuals can be your advocates too when it comes to these kind of claims.
Amanda BallardCo-host
01:16:31
And Katie, I know that your store does that really well. I’d love to hear your insight.
Cady KuhlmanGuest
01:16:38
Yeah, so thank you, ryan, for bringing that point up. So that’s something that’s really big within our business is trying to partner with other people that may not be as like-minded as us. So we go out into the community. We actually have two of our employees One is our nutritionist and then one is our health expert. That works the floor, but they go around and we have a list. A health expert that works the floor, but they go around and we have a list.
01:17:05
And every probably every month, we try to go to five or six new places that either have a medical doctor, a med, spa, bioidentical hormone clinics, orthopedic office, something, and try to just start a relationship. Sometimes that’s met with they’re not interested. Sometimes that fosters a relationship over time. But we do bring a little basket and we try to bring literature that supports their specific industry. So you know, for orthopedic surgeons generally the person needs to lose a little bit of weight before they can have the surgery. So we may bring in things about joint health or assisting in a diet protocol that we can help them with. For the eye doctor we go to, we take eye supplements in and some literature and research on what the supplements can do. So that’s been a big, I think, bridge between us and the medical world here in our community and, like I said, it doesn’t always work, but I think it’s worth a try. So Awesome.
Amanda BallardCo-host
01:17:57
So one more question from Brian before before we head into q a from the audience.
Brian MosserGuest
01:18:09
Yes, I actually was kind of asking the question of you know, we’re talking about how we all came together for Deshaies back in the day, but, like this is also issues that we’re dealing with, or wanting to protect our rights to be able to buy and sell supplements going into the future, which is, you know, how can retailers really be able to educate their communities about how, on a daily basis, they could be protecting their rights going into the future of being able to buy or sell supplements?
Debra ShortGuest
01:18:42
I think you have to be. I think you have to be truthful and you have to and the source that you get your information from has to be a very trusted source of how you’re wanting to convey the message that you’re going to do. You’ve already developed a relationship with your customers over the years and so they trust you, so you’ve got that kind of trust. But the more that you educate your staff, that you educate yourself on how there are new products in industry and how they work specifically, I think that’s probably one of the best things. Now, of course, I’m going to plug Soho Expo, because we have great speakers that are going to be there that are going to talk about product and they’re going to talk about advocacy. As a matter of fact, on Friday we’re going to have a great leader in the industry who’s going to be talking about advocacy on HSAs and FSAs and where that they’re understanding what it is that is legally, that they can say. And two, that is going to be truthful and non-misleading.
01:19:59
The trade magazines that we have out there Vitamin Retailer, whole Foods Magazine, taste for Life Magazine those are all great education tools we also have on our SEMPA website.
01:20:09
If you’re a SEMPA member, you can go on the back end of our website in to pay them to sit there and listen to something that’s going to educate them. I think that is something that we lose sight of sometimes is that if we can’t afford to bring them to a trade show to do that, we can afford to let them sit there while we go and work out on the floor and they can listen to what we got to listen to at the trade show event that we do Our president, renee Southard. She said I can take all the notes that I can, but I’ve got to bring this back to my staff and that’s just a great tool for that. So, brian, I hope I answered your question the way you wanted to. I think the big thing is that education is key to staying relevant in this industry. Networking and being a part of this industry and connecting with the people that we have opportunity to talk to today just kind of enhances that. So I hope that answered your question, brian.
Brian MosserGuest
01:21:26
Yeah, I mean you definitely answered that part of my question. I just wanted to piggyback off what you said as a retailer who pays my employees to do education, regardless what it is. I mean you definitely answered that part of my question. I just wanted to piggyback off what you said as a retailer who pays my employees to do education, regardless what it is. I always try to deal with companies and brands that don’t just support independent stores but that actually have education and science backing the products, and I can’t say enough how helpful it is to have that available and make sure your staff are doing it. And again, we pay our staff. I think that goes a long way for staff members and retailers.
Amanda BallardCo-host
01:21:57
Great. Well, thank you so much, emerging Leaders, for your participation. I’m going to pass it back over to Tina, because the chat has been blowing up with your questions, so we want to make sure, in the few minutes that we have left, that we can answer as many of those as we can.
Tina SmithCo-host
01:22:16
Yeah, some of these were already answered, thankfully, and some of them got answered a little bit here and a little bit there, but specifically from Ted Constantine and I know Katie sort of spoke to this a little bit. But what type of support can supplement manufacturers offer to support independent retailers? Cheryl Bruce, if you guys have some ideas of what would be really helpful in your store from manufacturers?
Cheryl HughesGuest
01:22:41
We do a lot of training, so we have them come in for a lunch and the employees are sitting in the break room with a. Sometimes it’s on TV because it’s remote, Other times they’re in person. They’re eating lunch, they’re getting trained. We want that third-party literature to go out to our vitamin staff as well as some of the other people that are on our staff. We do consumer lectures and people are invited to attend that staff as well as the consumers themselves, and when the sales reps come in, we want that literature. We want to know what is the story behind the products and why are they unique and what’s the literature and the science behind them.
Tina SmithCo-host
01:23:19
Yeah, awesome Peter, it looks like you have your hand up too.
Peter BroadheadGuest
01:23:28
One of the tools that I’ve really loved was Steve Langford, who’s an industry retailer out of Wisconsin, has a fantastic podcast and he interviews industry experts who work with each of the individual companies and he’s incredibly careful on D’Shea following those guidelines when he’s doing these interviews, but I found to be immensely helpful in educating staff. So he’ll have people from a number of country life now you know Kyalik Garlic, on and on and on. Just lots of companies with great information, so that’s a great resource.
Tina SmithCo-host
01:24:06
It looks like that’s HealthCast Health quest podcast podcast.
Peter BroadheadGuest
01:24:13
Yeah, right, all right.
Tina SmithCo-host
01:24:15
There’s probably 120 plus episodes on that perfect library yes, and training we hear that all the time from retailers, that training. If you guys could provide more training in their stores, both for their representatives, and also just have educational events, because that is a good attractor for new audiences as well. So I know they would love to hear that as well. We’ll do one more just because of time and then we’re going to wrap this up. But if you did submit a question, don’t worry, we will reach out to you personally and try to answer your question to the best of our ability. But from Erin Reynolds, she would like to know what was done and who was involved in helping overcome the recent NIC issues with the FDA. Roy, I think you had an answer.
Roy UptonGuest
01:25:04
Yeah, there’s actually. Again, this was a great example. I put it into the chat. This was a great example of how Deshaies did help to protect access. A number of manufacturers and distributors actually held on to pre-Deshaies catalogs.
01:25:22
Remember that one of the provisions of Deshaies was that if something was used as a supplement prior to in the market, as a supplement prior to the enactment of Deshaies, october 1994, then it’s a legally allowed supplement.
01:25:37
Well, we were able to show that at least two companies had NAC as a supplement listed in distributor and manufacturer catalogs prior to Deshaies, and we made those catalogs available to the legal and the trade the legal people in the trades that were interfacing with congressional representatives and regulatory representatives what they also.
01:26:04
Though there’s also a provision that said that if something was used as a drug prior to its use as a supplement, then it was not a legal supplement ingredient, and that was one of the challenges about NAC. But again, the NAC product that was actually used as a drug was an injectable, and the last time I knew Peter Broadhead or Cheryl Hughes was not selling injectable NAC in their stores. So again, we were able to make the case that NAC as a tableted supplement or a capsule was available prior to Dachet and therefore as a legal dietary supplement, and that the drug provision that would have otherwise prevented it was only focused on or only relevant to an injectable preparation which we don’t sell. Perfect example where the framers of Dachet kind of saw the writing on the wall and we’ve been able to use that to protect access to supplements still today.
Tina SmithCo-host
01:27:08
So what I’m hearing is that if you have something coming up where the FDA might be regulating against your product, reach out to Roy and he will fix everything for you. I’m just kidding, but also I’m sure he would make himself available. But, debra, that does bring us to the end of this webinar and thank you, panelists, emerging leaders, everyone who attended, but Deborah, wrap us up. Like, how do people stay involved in webinars like this, in the ability to network and stay involved in the activism community for this industry?
Debra ShortGuest
01:27:52
activism community for this industry. Well, I think that it is. I got to give some credit here to Jay Jacobowitz and the Whole Food June issue of Whole Food Magazine which kind of inspired me to try to have a discussion with you, tina. To put this webinar together, it’s because the title of it was Deshay 30, where is our grassroots army? And we’ve got to get it working together.
01:28:12
Our voice is bigger and better when we all have one voice standing together tall next to each other. So I think that for the next few future years that we move forward is that we need to decide and we need to work together. It is going to be opening a door. I, I have to believe I know there’s a lot Mitch was talking about several different things that industry is is addressing right now but network with each other, you know, communicate on however level. You can attend your trade shows. They are there’s something that are there for you and and you know our companies that that are our exhibitors that come in and our our speakers and education opportunities that are there for you and our companies that are exhibitors that come in and our speakers and education opportunities that are out there. That’s where you learn and that’s where you need to be spending your time and efforts to keep your business moving and going forward.
01:29:04
I know we’re really excited about Soho Expo coming up and we hope that everyone gets to be here Tina, thank you, and Amanda so much for being a part of this and helping us get this message out, and all of the wonderful veterans that we have and our emerging leaders. We couldn’t have done it without you and I’m just so grateful for all of you to be here, all our attendees. We will have this. I think Tina put in the chat that we will have it available. We will host it also on our Soho Expo website. So if you need to reaccess or to re-listen or share with someone, we appreciate that. Again, tina, thank you so much.
Tina SmithCo-host
01:29:45
Thanks to everyone. Yeah, it was great having you guys and we’ll see you next time. Okay, bye.

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