The Vitamin Shoppe (formerly Vitamin Shoppe Industries, Inc., stylized as theVitaminShoppe) is an American,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

-based retailer of

nutritional supplements A dietary supplement is a manufactured product intended to supplement one's diet by taking a pill, capsule, tablet, powder, or liquid. A supplement can provide nutrients either extracted from food sources or that are synthetic in order ...

. It also operated three stores in

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under the name VitaPath from January 2013 until March 2016. The company provides approximately 7,000 different SKUs of supplements through its retail stores and over 17,000 different SKUs of supplements through its retail websites. In 2002, Vitamin Shoppe Industries was sold to an affiliate of

Bear Stearns Merchant Banking Irving Place Capital, formerly known as Bear Stearns Merchant Banking (BSMB), is an American private equity firm focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments in middle-market companies in the industrial, packaging, consumer and reta ...

, a

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

unit of

Bear Stearns The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was a New York-based global investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm that failed in 2008 as part of the global financial crisis and recession, and was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chase. The compa ...

, for approximately $310 million. The Vitamin Shoppe held an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

on October 26, 2009. The company made $751.5 million in net sales in fiscal 2010 and had a market capitalization of over $1 billion. Since attaining its peak in February 2013 the stock has lost more than 90% of its value as of August 2017.

History

Jeffrey Horowitz founded The Vitamin Shoppe in 1977. In August 2019, Franchise Group, Inc announced the acquisition of The Vitamin Shoppe. In August 2020, The Vitamin Shoppe reported it has hired Laura Coffey as Executive Vice-President, Chief Financial Officer. Within this position, Ms. Coffey is in charge of Corporate Finance, Financial Reporting and Evaluation, Risk Control, Accounting, Internal Audit, Tax and Real Estate.

Products

The Vitamin Shoppe's retail stores and online sites carry a line of

with supplementary lines, such as FitFactor, NatureFuel, ProBio Care, and the Bodytech brand of sports supplements. In addition to their own brands, the company carries third-party lines, including professional and specialized lines. A 2015 study, led by Dr. Pieter A. Cohen of

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, found that three supplements — JetFuel Superburn, JetFuel T-300 and MX-LS7 — sold at Vitamin Shoppe contained BMPEA. In response, Vitamin Shoppe removed these products from shelves because the safety of these supplements were in question and may not comply with F.D.A. regulations.

Reception

On January 19, 2007, independent laboratory ConsumerLab.com found 32.8 micrograms of lead per daily serving in Vitamin Shoppe's "Especially for Women" multivitamin. 15.3 micrograms is more than ten times the amount of lead permitted without a warning label in California, the only state to regulate lead in supplements. The amount of lead found was found to cause cancer and death to 29 people nationwide. In the wake of extensive adverse media coverage, Vitamin Shoppe withdrew the product, but in a statement made by CEO Tom Tolworthy denied it had any proof the vitamins were contaminated and asserted that, despite the high lead levels found in the Consumer Labs tests, its vitamins were manufactured in accordance with "good manufacturing practices." On June 15, 2011, Vitamin Shoppe's ''Ultimate Woman Gold'' 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. This multivitamin passed ConsumerLab's test, which included testing of selected index elements, their ability to disintegrate in solution per

United States Pharmacopeia The ''United States Pharmacopeia'' (''USP'') is a pharmacopeia (compendium of drug information) for the United States published annually by the United States Pharmacopeial Convention (usually also called the USP), a nonprofit organization that ...

guidelines, lead contamination threshold set in California Proposition 65, and meeting U.S.

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...

(FDA) labeling requirements.

References

Vitamin Shoppe Company History
Funding Universe

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, June 22, 2001
Spinoff is unspun

, January 17, 2001

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Vitamin Shoppe Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Companies based in Hudson County, New Jersey Health food stores 2002 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1977 Retail companies established in 1977 Food retailers of the United States Nutritional supplement companies of the United States 2009 initial public offerings 2019 mergers and acquisitions Secaucus, New Jersey 1977 establishments in New Jersey