Vita Health growing to meet the demand

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/05/2011 (5573 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ONE of the city’s oldest niche retail chains is being transformed by one of the fastest-growing sectors in the retail food business, propelling it into a whole new era of growth.

Vita Health is celebrating its 75th birthday this year. While it still has a couple of its old-style vitamin, minerals and supplements “pill stores,” the company’s image has been radically transformed with four new Vita Health Fresh Market stores.

Featuring fresh produce, organic meats and dairy and environmentally friendly cleaners and household products, the new stores are about five times the size of the old ones.

These are not your parents’ Vita Health stores.

In addition to all of the new merchandising and infrastructure required to handle perishables, the new stores include some modern retailing design essentials like hardwood floors, wood fixtures, situational lighting and handsome displays everywhere.

“Vita Health was selling health products when no one was interested in that,” Matthew Holtmann, the third generation of his family to run the business, said half sarcastically.

Of course, there has always been a good business and a loyal Winnipeg customer base for Vita Health.

But the point is, the company had what it takes to recognize a growing demand from within its own clientele and had the smarts to seize it and forge ahead.

“Maybe there’s still a little of that left-wing, tree hugger, wing-nut mentality attached to the health food business, but it has become a lot more mainstream than it has ever been,” Holtmann said. “And that’s a trend that is not going to change.”

Helen Sherrard of the Canadian Health Food Association is reluctant to say there is more interest than ever before in the segment, but clearly the business is moving clear of the fringes.

“For the last few years there has been rapid growth, no question,” she said. “There are more products being licensed and the industry is maturing. And public awareness of the products is on the rise.”

Maybe because the roots of the health food and health products business were located far from the mainstream, Holtmann is happy to give his customers credit for Vita Health’s growth and evolution.

“This has really been driven by customer demand,” he said. “You don’t always get to pick and choose where you grow. Opportunities come around that you just can’t say no to; you don’t know when they will come again.”

There were a couple of opportunities that occurred in the late ’90s that changed things radically for the company and then put things back on track.

The company was started by Gerhard Seier in 1936 as a small mail order company selling herbs and patented medicines, mainly to European immigrants in Manitoba who maintained their traditional use of herbal products.

Eventually he built his own manufacturing operation that grew to a 185,000-square-foot facility in St. Boniface and became a significant supplier of vitamins and supplements to his own small local retail chain as well as to retailers across the country.

In 1997, Seier and his son-in-law John Holtmann (Matthew’s father), who had taken the reigns of the company, sold the entire operation to Leiner Health Products, the largest full-line supplier of vitamins and nutritional supplements in the United States. But a year later Holtmann bought the retail chain back.

(Since acquiring the Winnipeg manufacturing operation, Leiner struggled through years of financial instability and the Winnipeg operation subsequently changed hands a few times. It is currently owned by NBTY, which in turn is owned by the larger private equity firm, the Carlyle Group.)

Regaining ownership of the retail chain by the family effectively allowed Vita Health to return to its roots.

“Sometimes multi-generation family businesses can get so large that the best person for the job may not be the closest relative,” Matthew Holtmann said. “We had the unique opportunity to go back to our roots and re-grow the business.”

Over the past four years, four of its six stores were converted to the larger Vita Health Fresh Market concept and last year Holtmann made his first acquisition, buying Eat It, a no-frills, full-service organic grocery store in the city’s West End.

Holtmann said Eat It will continue to operate in its original form, using Vita Health’s buying power and best practices while the old “pill store” learns from Eat It’s experience running an organic food grocery store.

Holtmann said there are all sorts of opportunities for more growth, but the company has plenty to do as it becomes the standard-bearer in the new era of health-conscious retailing.

 

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

Business started 75 years ago

1936 — Gerhard Seier opened his first store on Fort Street

1940 — Store moved to the Curry Building and becomes the Vita Health Company.

1968 — Bought building at 102-104 Osborne St., which became the second retail outlet.

1971 — Bought building at 108 Osborne St. and opened Garden of Eden vegetarian restaurant.

1982 — Built 50,000-square-foot plant on Beghin Avenue and in 1993, expanded it to 100,000 square feet.

1997 — Vita Health Co. sold to Leiner Health Products.

1998 — Vita Health Stores were bought back by the family.

2007 — St. Vital Square store moves into new unit to quadruple in size and become the first store under the new brand Vita Health Fresh Market.

2010 — With four Vita Health Fresh Market locations, the company acquires the no-frills organic grocery store Eat It.