A Taiwanese immigrant couple named Tei Fu and Oi Lin Chen went from living out of their car to building the billion-dollar Sunrider global herbal foods empire.
t 's the kind of thing you might expect to hear from those who form the rank-and-file of a multi-level marketing company that came out of the Utah desert and mushroomed into a global herbal products empire. After all, they're the shock troops who slammed up against the innate western skepticism of herbals, or for that matter, anything not pickled in unpronouncible preservatives.
"When I was first exposed to Sunrider I thought the whole thing was a
little hocus pocus," says Darcy, a 35-year-old Canadian in the business of wholesaling bingo and party supplies. "Know what I mean?" He shoots us a quick, spooky
look and wiggles his fingers like a campy, vaudeville hypnotist. "I didn't pay
much attention to when my wife first started taking the products, but then
she started to get really involved in it, becoming a distributor and
everything. She started swearing by the products. I couldn't figure out what
was going on."
In time enough people did figure it out, turning the now Torrance-based Sunrider International into an $500-million a year seller of herbal foods and dietary supplements. Like Amway,
Herbalife, Nu-skin and others, Sunrider International markets all its products
through an enormous worldwide network of independent multi-level
distributors and salespeople who have dubbed themselves Sunriders (as in,
"Are you a Sunrider?").
We met Darcy over breakfast in the banquet room of the Grand Hyatt Taipei which is hosting a convention of Sunriders from all over the world who, with the help of sales incentive packages, have gathered to be a
part of Sunrider's tenth anniversary celebration and to witness the opening
of Sunrider's newest Taiwanese corporate office building.
"When my wife became a distributor," continues Darcy, "I was a little
concerned. I mean, to me all this Chinese herb stuff and ancient Chinese
folklore and philosophy sounded like a lot of mumbo jumbo, but my wife was
taking the products and she swore by them."
[CONTINUED BELOW]
Besides producing herbal foods, Sunrider International promotes a
philosophy of harmony and balance, spiritually, emotionally, mentally and
physically. Their belief is that when the diet is properly balanced, the body
will become balanced, and once the physiology is balanced, the spirit and the
psyche will fall into balance, creating total health and harmony. True, this is
a traditional Chinese philosophy dating back five millenia or more, but to
many westerners used to penicillin, aerobics and Nutra-Sweet, it still sounds
like mumbo jumbo.
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In Sunrider's early days Tei Fu Chen mixed vats of herbal extracts in the basement of their Utah apartment while wife Oi Lin ran a fledgling medical practice upstairs.
"Besides producing herbal foods, Sunrider International promotes a philosophy of harmony and balance, spiritually,
emotionally, mentally and physically."
t 's the kind of thing you might expect to hear from those who form the rank-and-file of a multi-level marketing company that came out of the Utah desert and mushroomed into a global herbal products empire. After all, they're the shock troops who slammed up against the innate western skepticism of herbals, or for that matter, anything not pickled in unpronouncible preservatives.
