Nature's Sunshine Products, Inc. also known as "NSP", is a manufacturer of

dietary supplements A dietary supplement is a manufactured product intended to supplement a person'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 ...

, including

herb Herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal purposes, or for fragrances. Culinary use typically distingu ...

vitamin Vitamins are Organic compound, organic molecules (or a set of closely related molecules called vitamer, vitamers) that are essential to an organism in small quantities for proper metabolism, metabolic function. Nutrient#Essential nutrients, ...

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2011): Mi ...

s, and personal care products. It is based in

Lehi, Utah Lehi ( ) is a city in Utah County, Utah, United States. The population was 75,907 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, up from 47,407 in 2010, and it is the center of population of Utah. The rapid growth in Lehi is due, in part, to t ...

, with a manufacturing facility in

Spanish Fork, Utah Spanish Fork is a city in Utah County, Utah, United States. It is part of the Provo–Orem metropolitan area. The 2020 census reported a population of 42,602. Spanish Fork is the 20th largest city in Utah based on official 2017 estimates from the ...

History

Nature's Sunshine was founded in 1972 by Gene and Kristine Hughes, who started encapsulating

capsicum ''Capsicum'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the Solanum, nightshade family Solanaceae, native to the Americas, cultivated worldwide for their edible fruit, which are generally known as "peppers" or "capsicum". Chili peppers grow on five s ...

in their home kitchen. The company employs a

multi-level marketing Multi-level marketing (MLM), also called network marketing or pyramid selling, is a controversial and sometimes illegal marketing strategy for the sale of products or services in which the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salarie ...

business model A business model describes how a Company, business organization creates, delivers, and captures value creation, value,''Business Model Generation'', Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, and 470 practitioners from 45 countries, self-pub ...

in which their products are primarily sold to the consumer by independent distributors who receive commissions based on their own sales, as well as sign-up bonuses and commissions based upon the sales of any distributors they may have recruited. NSP also owns Synergy Worldwide, a multi-level marketing company that also sells nutritional supplements. Products for both companies are manufactured in a production and research facility located in Spanish Fork, Utah. In June 2021, Nature’s Sunshine Products, Inc. and the

David Eccles School of Business The David Eccles School of Business is located on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City, Utah. The school was founded as the "School of Commerce & Finance" in 1917 and subsequently changed its name to "School of Business" in 1927, althou ...

at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...

partnered together to create a new scholarship. Nature’s Sunshine Products, Inc. partnered with the Opportunity Scholars program to provide full-ride scholarships to underrepresented students who are the first in their family to attend college. Like similar multilevel marketing companies, Nature's Sunshine's business has been adversely affected by the lingering effects of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, global inflation and the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

. In the 4th quarter of 2022, net sales fell 13% to $103 million, as compared to the 4th quarter of 2021. According to CEO Terrence Moorehead, the company is making "strategic changes" and "redesigning processes and revamping sourcing relationships."

SEC bribery lawsuit

In 2006,

KPMG KPMG is a multinational professional services network, based in London, United Kingdom. As one of the Big Four accounting firms, along with Ernst & Young (EY), Deloitte, and PwC. KPMG is a network of firms in 145 countries with 275,288 emplo ...

, which had provided auditing services to the company, resigned from the account. They charged that then-CEO Douglas Faggioli had lied to auditors about "alleged fraud," and had approved bribery. In July 2009, the company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines after being charged by the SEC with having bribed Brazilian officials with more than $1,000,000 in 2000 and 2001. This was done "so it could import unregistered nutritional products into the country, and then falsified its books to hide the payments."

References

External links

* {{Authority control Companies based in Lehi, Utah Companies listed on the Nasdaq Manufacturing companies established in 1972 Multi-level marketing companies based in Utah Spanish Fork, Utah 1972 establishments in Utah