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Dr. Sam’s Journey with the Nutrilite™ brand and Amway: A Legacy of Healthy Living

I was interviewed recently in acknowledgement of the Nutrilite™ brand’s 90th anniversary today.  It’s a lifelong legacy for me, and I’m excited to share the resulting story with you!

For Dr. Sam Rehnborg, Nutrilite is more than a supplement brand – it’s his lifelong passion. As the son of Nutrilite founder Carl F. Rehnborg, Dr. Sam was quite literally born into the business. From his earliest memories, he was immersed in his father’s work developing nutritional supplements.

To help celebrate the Nutrilite brand’s 90th Anniversary, and to accompany the release of The Nutrilite Story Third Edition, we sat down with him to discuss his legacy and continual growth with Nutrilite and Amway.

Can you tell us about your earliest memories with Nutrilite?
Dr. Sam as a toddler on Balboa Island.

I was in Nutrilite before I was born, really. My earliest memories go back to when it was just my dad, my mom, and me. We lived on Balboa Island in a small one room apartment.

We’d visit my father in his small laboratory down the street where he worked on his products.

He loved to swim, and I’ll always remember how he would swim across the bay with me on his stomach.

I was his first test subject, in a way. It was a wonderful time in our lives.

Can you share more about what your father was doing to launch his business early on?

My parents separated when I was 3 or 4 years old. It was hard on my mom at the time because of how busy my dad was. She took me back east to Connecticut with her and tried to get things going in her life. My dad visited and brought me back to California after a while.

We moved to Los Angeles and lived in a small apartment where he could continue working on his products. The business started to grow during that period, and he found a 3-acre farm in the San Fernando Valley where he could harvest alfalfa to use in the products.

He would process the alfalfa in a small factory in Los Angeles. He rented another place nearby where he could package the product. This is where distributors would come to pick up their product supply. The business kept growing, so he found a 10-acre farm near Buena Park to continue supplying ingredients for his products.

Who were some of the people helping your father market the product during that time?
Nutrilite founder, Carl Rehnborg.

He found that the best way to sell Nutrilite was through women who were using the product themselves.

It really came down to a woman named Alma Stewart who was one of his first customers. She kept asking to sell the product, but he didn’t think she would be able to sell it. But she was persistent, and after another sales setback he decided to give her a try.

He gave her a 25 percent discount on the product and told her she could mark it up from there. She was immediately successful. And she became one of his first salespeople selling the product because she believed in it and lived it, because it changed her life. People were intrigued with my dad, but they could see themselves in Alma when she was talking about Nutrilite and being a product of the product.

At the same time, he needed to be closer to the farm, so soon after we moved to Buena Park where we lived and worked. That’s where everything really got started. The business took off.

What were some of your first jobs with Nutrilite?
Dr. Sam as a young boy in Southern California.

Early on, I would work in my father’s laboratory sweeping the floor. Also, when I was about five or six, we’d go to the farm in the San Fernando Valley where my father harvested alfalfa.

My job was to pick walnuts and strawberries and sell them to people who came by. It was a great adventure for the family, especially during the war when gasoline was scarce and when we needed the extra money to make ends meet.

As the business started to grow, I would often go with my dad to make presentations about his products to potential customers.

During this time, he became known as the Vita-man and as his test subject, people would ask me questions and I would include in my answers that I ate my Nutrilite.

“Does your son use the products,” they would ask? He would say sure, and he would call me over to interact with me.

That would usually clinch the deal!

What were your early teenage years like?

The business started to grow when I was at that age, and as my father got more successful, and even before my teenage years, he sent me off to a military prep school to get a better education. As I grew up, I went to many different schools into my teenage years.

Going to so many different schools helped me learn how to take care of myself and connect with people. After I finished high school in Newport Beach, I went to Stanford for six years and then five years at UC Berkley for my Ph.D. I was always interested in the sciences. I studied chemistry, biochemistry and physical science, and then biophysics at Berkeley for my Ph.D.

How did your involvement with the company evolve as you got older?

In summers during school, I’d work on the farms or in the laboratories in a variety of different locations doing different jobs.

When I went off to college, I’d come back during holidays and work at the plant for about three months. I’d earn money to take back to school with me.

While I was at school, my dad would call me at least once a week to tell me what he was doing and to find out what I was doing. He was always really interested in my studies, especially when I got to graduate school.

What was it like when you officially joined the company after you received your Ph.D.?
Dr. Sam as a graduate student.

After I graduated, the business was at a crossroads. It was a tough time, and my dad was getting up there in years.

He said, “We need you back here at the company.”

So after a trip around the world visiting 40 different countries, I came back and started as Assistant to the President.

I jumped right into the thick of things and brought a lot of young people into the business to help me with the marketing, guys like Danny Rogers and John Brockman. At that time, Barney Bailey was incredibly helpful also.

What were some of the key challenges you faced early on?

Nutrilite had reached $50 million in sales but eventually dropped to $10 million because of the regulatory scrutiny we faced. The government temporarily shut us down, but we fought it in court and won. Then the government established regulations that ultimately worked in our favor because we finally knew what was permissible.

At the time, Dr. Stephen Tinkoff was running the company, he was a good leader, but his strength was not in sales and marketing. So, my responsibility was to help get us back to basics. We had to figure out how to sell the product effectively. We started by going door-to-door, but quickly realized that wasn’t the best approach.

We started traveling around the country, putting on meetings, and gradually built up our distributor groups. That was really the beginning of our success during that period.

What stands out for you about working with Nutrilite employees?

From the beginning my dad was always telling me that the most important asset you have are the people that are going to help you make and sell these products. He loved talking to employees and helping them understand why he was making these products, and why they ought to use them.

That’s why we always provided supplements for the employees to use, that’s always been part of it. It had to do with how the product was sold, the biggest thing was to have people use the product to be able to sell it – that meant the employees, too.

He also instituted profit sharing, which he believed to be tremendously important. We were one of the first companies to do so. He believed that for a business to be great, people had to be a part of it.

What does the Nutrilite and Amway family mean to you?

I feel like even though we all come from different backgrounds we are all the same in many ways and we all have the same potential. It isn’t about one single individual who has all the answers, everybody’s got to be a part of it. Everyone in this family is in it together. It’s about the camaraderie and respect for each other.

ABOs all over the world should feel the same way.

Can you tell us about the first time you met Jay and Rich?
Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos.

I was at a leadership meeting in Los Angeles with my father and he was most interested in having me meet Jay and Rich. He pointed them out to me and said they were really going to go places. He was excited because he knew they were the future of the business.

They wanted to know everything that I knew about Nutrilite. They both asked a lot of questions. Every time I ran into them after that, they wanted to talk to me to get my perspective on how Nutrilite was doing.

They had started their Ja-Ri business at that point, but they always maintained a line between Nutrilite distributors and Amway distributors before we merged. Joining with Amway was a big step and my trust in Jay and Rich helped make the process possible.

What do you consider to be the most rewarding aspect of your career?

The most rewarding aspect is really helping people understand what they are eating and why our products could be added to their diet to help them have better nutrition and a healthier life.

Can you tell us about the “product of the product” philosophy?

That came from my dad. He always said the best way to sell the product was to use the product.

It was about getting more people to embrace the product as part of their lifestyle, not just making a one-time sale.

Dr. Sam wearing his “I eat Nutrilite” pin.
How has Nutrilite evolved since your father’s time?

The big evolution was certainly expanding internationally. My father always wanted to get back to China and other parts of the world. That’s where I got involved too, figuring out how to start companies overseas. Joining with Amway allowed that global expansion to happen.

How have you achieved work life balance in your career?

I’ve always felt that work, love and play are all part of it. You’ve got to get them all in there, you don’t just focus on one or the other. It’s about finding something that you really love doing and getting after it. You want everybody to have the opportunity to have a full life, whatever role they’re playing. It’s especially true today. We need to keep connected.   

Which Nutrilite product are you most proud of and why?

Obviously, it’s the Double X™ supplement. It’s Amway’s number one product and it’s the most complete product with all its components as close to nature as it can be while being effective. And it’s continually being improved. When my father came up with it, he was basically saying to people that embracing his products meant embracing a healthy lifestyle.

Looking to the future, what excites you about Amway and the Nutrilite™ brand’s potential?

I’m excited about what we can do at places like our farms to help people better understand this magnificent planet and the world we live in. How can we make it a better place, and what can we do to help people embrace that and understand it?

Dr. Sam on the Amway campus in 2023.

We can’t just wait for a problem to occur and then try to solve it. We need to plan and prevent problems from occurring in the first place. We’ve got to embrace this approach – our Health and Wellbeing – to protect our futures. We need to take care of everything – the people, the plants, the living creatures, the oceans, the land.

That’s what I’m passionate about now.

Revisiting the Origin Story of the Nutrilite Brand

Carl F. Rehnborg in Shanghai wearing a light colored suit and holding his pith helmet in the 1920s.

I’m excited to tell you that in just a couple months, The Nutrilite Story 3rd Edition will be released and available for purchase. Writing the book — all three editions — has been a labor of love for me.

Revisiting the origin story of the Nutrilite™ brand and sharing my father’s experiences motivates me to stay the course sharing my message of health and wellbeing.

When my father, Carl F. Rehnborg, founded Nutrilite in 1934, his vision was to create a company that would provide people with the highest quality nutritional supplements. He believed that everyone deserved access to good nutrition, that everyone should benefit from a plant-based diet.

He also understood that stewardship for the planet is directly tied to our self-interest and our individual well-being.

A Place of Golden Opportunities

In the spirit of my father, I want to share an excerpt from chapter two of the book, “A Place of Golden Opportunities,” to get you excited about the upcoming release.

It’s magical for me to imagine my father traveling east to the other side of the world in 1915 to begin building a business in China. It’s not as if he could just jump on a plane and arrive, after all.

Passport pages
A page from my father’s United States passport.

His initial trip marked the beginning of a life-long journey of discovery and perseverance that created the Nutrilite brand that we know so well today.

When your destiny is to blaze new trails, it can make you feel like a square peg in a round hole. But then when you find the right fit, magic can happen. So it was for my 28-year-old father during the fall of 1915 when he packed all his goods into a steamer trunk, stepped onto a train in Grand Central Terminal, and embarked on a journey that would take him halfway around the world. He would begin a new career in China as an accountant for Standard Oil Company of New York, which everyone called Socony for short. Beyond the obvious adventure of it all, the Socony job had offered him the means to fulfill a deeper pull, something that had been tugging him powerfully since his days at Pratt Institute, or possibly before, toward that mysterious, inscrutable faraway land.

Before my father could leave, he had to pass a rigorous training program in New York, a program that would prepare him for his new life. During this time, he learned all about the oil business—about oil, solvents, fractionation, and vacuum distillations. He studied Chinese culture, history, and philosophy. He also learned about life as a foreigner in China—how visitors could live in foreign concessions that had the look and feel of their home country. The course was fascinating, but the competition was brutal and the pressure was intense. The class was whittled down from 100 to 20 students in three months. My father not only survived the cut, he thrived in the competitive environment, graduating with honors. His final 200-page project was so good that Socony accepted it as a model for assignments to other men, even putting some of his recommendations into effect. At graduation, the names of the students and their stations were read out. My father’s home for the next two years would be Tientsin (today known as Tianjin), the “City of the Heavenly Ford,” a large port city not far from Peking.

It must have been humbling for my father to stand under the canopy of golden stars in the expansive ceiling of Grand Central Terminal, his pith helmet and pongee suit carefully tucked away in his trunk and try to imagine the adventure that lay ahead. Would it be like anything he and Hester imagined as they had pored over the news, events, and culture of China during their days at Pratt? His long journey began with a train ride from New York through the Midwest to catch a steamship from Vancouver, British Columbia, bound for China after stops in equally exotic Honolulu and Yokohama.

At first, it seemed as if the train would never leave the endless city that surrounded New York, but it soon caught its rhythm and sped through the low mountains on its way to the Midwest. Looking out on the landscape as the train churned on, my father could see the rolling hills of Ohio where John D. Rockefeller had started Standard Oil. He changed trains in Detroit, the city where Henry Ford’s amazing assembly line was cranking out Model Ts so fast that almost anyone could own one. It was hard to imagine that just a few years ago gasoline had been a waste product of the oil refining process, while kerosene for lamps and paraffin for candles were the primary products. In China that was still the case, but when all 400 million Chinese could afford motor cars—well, the future was almost unimaginable. It was a new century and a new world in which technology fueled by oil would make everyone’s life better, and my father was now to play a part in this business, a business of almost limitless potential…

Keep reading my blog for more information about the upcoming release of the new book.

I can’t wait to share it with you!

Cheers!

Seeing the Future in the Archives

My recent trip to Amway World Headquarters allowed me to see the future when I visited the archives and records department. That’s where I found a dedicated team of people keeping track of all the materials and artifacts we’ve generated over the decades.

From left to right: Mckeyia Neely, Sue Bowerman, Dr. Sam, Sue Burd, Stephanie Bustraan, Maritza Andrade – not pictured

The climate controlled, state-of-the-art facility is preserving Nutrilite and Amway history, and it’s providing a glimpse into a future that’s still connected to our past.

Let me explain with a brief history lesson.

The Nutrilite story started when my father, Carl Rehnborg, discovered the power of plant-based nutrients, and their impact on human health, while living in China more than 100 years ago.

While traveling the country, he saw that people living in rural areas were much healthier than those living in the city. They were more physically active, and they ate more fruits and vegetables. By contrast, city dwellers were more sedentary, and their diet was less diverse.

He realized that people who were missing these plant-based nutrients that, at the time, he called “associated food factors” – later they would be known as phytonutrients – were not as healthy as they could be.

He personally came face-to-face with the reality of poor nutrition when he and his family were trapped in an isolated settlement in Shanghai during civil war battles in 1927. During this several-month period, the whole city was essentially locked down while warring factions fought.

With food supplies growing short and noticing the signs of malnutrition among other inhabitants, he would gather whatever greens he could from the settlement’s parks and gardens and whatever foodstuffs he was able to persuade the guards to bring him to prepare soups and gruels.

He even added rusty nails and bones to his concoctions whenever he could, knowing that they would provide supplemental iron and calcium and other valuable minerals. He passed out samples to his friends and neighbors. Dad and the family ate it, and he encouraged everyone who would listen to do the same.

He survived the experience and returned to Southern California later that year with $40 in his pocket.

The time he spent in China and the simple observations he made about nutrition became the seeds of an idea that inspired him to create what is believed to be the first multivitamin/multimineral food supplement in the North American marketplace in 1934. He founded Vitamin Products Company, and later changed the company name to Nutrilite in 1939. It wasn’t without personal trials and tribulations, but my father believed in his dream and worked doggedly for many years to turn it into reality.

The fundamentals of the Nutrilite origin story still hold true. Carl Rehnborg believed in eating healthy, colorful whole foods, supplementing the diet with plant-based nutrients, regular exercise and activity, and a positive mental attitude based in curiosity about the world.

Simply put, these ideas of prevention and optimal health still hold true for the Nutrilite brand and Amway of today and in the future.

What I saw in the Archives

At this point I’m sure you’re wondering what I saw when I visited the archives. Here’s a gallery of photos and ads from the early days of Nutrilite.

I hope you’re able to see the future in our archives just like I did. We’ve come a long way in nearly 90 years.

The future is bright.

Cheers!

An Inspiring Note: The Beginning of the Environmental Movement

Recently, I received an inspiring note from Takeshi Saito, one of our Nutrilite Experience staff members. He’s been a dedicated Nutrilite employee for many years, and he recently helped host a group of Vietnamese ABOs visiting our Buena Park, California headquarters. 

Sitting next to a life-size statue of my father Carl F. Rehnborg. It’s easy to see why it’s a favorite photo stop for visitors at the Nutrilite Health Institute. The statue was inspired by his famous “Pepper Tree Talks” and his many conversations filled with visionary ideas. Buena Park, California. March 2017.
Sitting next to a life-size statue of my father Carl F. Rehnborg. It’s easy to see why it’s a favorite photo stop for visitors at the Nutrilite Health Institute. The statue was inspired by his famous “Pepper Tree Talks” and his many conversations filled with visionary ideas. Buena Park, California. March 2017.

Because of his welcoming, genuine, and outgoing personality, he was able to make a connection with one of the visiting ABOs who stayed in touch with him. She sent him a message explaining how excited she was that she’d received a copy of a special book published more than 35 years ago. It was a used book she found on a popular online marketplace months ago, but she finally received it during the holidays. 

You’re probably wondering which book I’m talking about. It’s a collection of essays, speeches and writings of my father Carl F. Rehnborg. It was published in 1985.  

The note caused me to pick up the book once again and re-read portions of it. It still strikes me how prescient my father’s writings were. How he clearly recognized the importance of sustainability and the need to take care of the planet and, therefore, our future.  

Much of the writing found in his collection coincided with the groundbreaking work of Rachel Carson, who wrote the famous book Silent Spring back in 1962 which inspired the modern environmental movement. My father and Rachel Carson corresponded with each other during that time, they were both forward thinking and recognized many of the perils we were beginning to face as a world community. 

There is an essay that encapsulates his thoughts about where we were going and the changes we need to adopt to keep the future bright for everyone. It was written in 1962 and it was called Preserving and Protecting Our Environment.  

You can find this passage on page 148: 

“For the first time in human history we will now begin to study our environment instead of taking it for granted and thinking of it as able to supply our every careless whim forever. Maybe we are already too late in getting ready to begin our study. Time will tell, but this looks like a very good time to start worrying – right now, not a few decades in the future.” 

We are more than a few decades into the future. It’s here and it’s time to take meaningful action. Sometimes we just need the right inspiration. 

I’m so thankful for the inspiration to revisit my father’s writings. 

Cheers! 

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