Purity Life Heath Products CEO - Matthew James on The Future of Natural Health Retail and Distribution

It was always our dream to be able to be a full service distributor in terms of being able to service the stores with grocery and well-insighted items, the whole store. And so when we did the initial management bio with our private equity partners, the Banyan Capital Partners based in Toronto back in 2012, we were very intentional in trying to pursue Ron to acquire his businesses. At that time he had the Christmas, Coral and a Verizon business. And then through the last 13 years we've been continuing to pursue him. So it's been a 13 year journey to close this acquisition. And so we were very fortunate that Ron finally agreed to sell the business back in September of 2025 so that we could create the only Canadian-owned 100% full service across grocery and wellness from coast to coast to coast distributor of National Organic Health products to really service the needs of our business partner. Brokers, vendors, retailers to continue to grow the natural products industry in Canada and be a solution for brands that want to come into Canada as well as domestic brands. So along 13 years that we're happy that we can make it happen and now be this full service and an owned distributor. Hi, this is Bruce Cole in conversation with Matthew James, the president and CEO of Pure De Life Health Products. Matthew, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me and Bruce looking forward to this. Does this feel like old home week from the old days when we used to do the old CNHR podcast? It sure does at that time though. It was in a small little room around a little table with a sound editor helping us but that was certainly fun. That was a throwback before podcasts or as big as they are now. Yeah, it was it was pretty fun. We nailed some pretty interesting topics and we covered lots of things and I think this new podcast in conversation was was born out of our early efforts back in 2019 and 2020. But thanks for being part of this Matthew. Yeah, thank you and I applaud you for the effort of highlighting and natural products industry particularly Canadian health food retailers because you know they're often not as highlighted. They should be in the work that you've done previously with CNHR and now this podcast is great because it really puts a spotlight on all the great work you're doing to improve the health of Canadians. Yeah, no, thank you for that. Well, CNHR, you know, it's been a lot of fun and it's in wonderful hands with the team and alive and I just felt it was a good time to depart and I mean that in a nice way always be somehow involved in CNHR but it's in good hands with the alive team with Ellen and her. But yeah, the podcast is just a chance to share more stories right lots of great grace in our industry. And you have quite a story it's you're in your 25th year now with purity life. It's hard to believe but yes, I've been in the industry for over 33 years now I started as a very young gentleman to where I am today. You were 11 years old if I remember correctly. I wish. Yeah, I think is around 23 maybe when I started. Yeah, that's that's unreal. How fast it goes. It's I don't know this industry doesn't age you but it sure makes the years go by quickly. Well, it's easy when you're having fun. I've been having a lot of fun for the last 33 years and 20 almost 25 of those at purity. So it's been a great ride and I really appreciate the opportunity of working industry that reflects my lifestyle. So that's wonderful. And I've always had a close connection with purity. I just always loved the people and I always love what purity life was doing and I noted that I think it was 1984 purity life started. Right. Yes. 42 years and I made a note that that's a career for most people 42 years is I mean when purity life started. I'm most nobody in the industry now is around. I mean, when you think of it that way, it's kind of it's kind of incredible. Yes, things have definitely evolved over those 42 years and my claim to fame now is that I'll be a purity longer than the founder David Chapman, which is a milestone in itself given me and the least start the business in 1984 from one product to what it is today. It's incredible. You know, we're kind of lucky both of us to be in in the early days and watch this industry growth from I'm not saying almost nothing but from a baby to what it is now. Absolutely. Things have definitely evolved that I often say, you know, in the early days, you could be successful despite of yourself. Just because of massive interest in the products now it's become a lot more sophisticated a lot more mature a lot more competitive and a lot of the major players in the CPG world have moved and requires a whole level of sophistication to just maintain your position let alone grow. Well, I noted that purity life has 400 employees now seven warehouses and you're serving 10,000 stores across all channels, staggering numbers. And that's a recent transformation given the acquisition back in September of the former horizon subsidiaries that was PSC on a C and horizon proper and burn a B. And so we basically doubled our size in terms of revenue as well as employee count. And we're busy in the integration period right now trying to create one purity life so common set of computer. Software systems to use across our seven warehouse common policies common procedures because we really want to be able to provide our grocery business partners so vendors brokers retailers that same easy to do business with experience that they've enjoyed on the wellness side and so 2026 is a transformation on year so that we can really put one purity life in place and really continue to be easy to do business with for all our business partners. So we can continue to grow everyone's business in a natural product space. Matthew, can we talk a little bit about the acquisition because I mean a lot of people were aware of it, but I never really heard the backstory and and Ron Francis goes kind of a legend in our industry, the owner of horizon is kind of a kind of a behind the scenes guy. I always got along great with Ron, but he wasn't a flamboyant out there kind of guy and I honestly thought he'd never retire or so I thought he would speak at my funeral for sure, you know, but but that was really big news, but I don't think it was probably probably properly addressed. So I thought this would be a chance maybe you could tell us a bit about the backstory how it started how it evolved. Sure, so it was always our our dream to be able to be a full service distributor in terms of being able to service the stores with grocery and wellness items the whole store. And so when we did the initial management by a with our private equity partners, a band in capital partners based in trial back in 2012, we were very intentional trying to pursue Ron to acquire his businesses. At that time, he had the Christmas, Coral and and a rising business and then through the last 13 years, we've been continuing to pursue him. And so we were very fortunate that Ron finally agreed to sell the business back in September 2025 so that we could create the only Canadian owned 100% full service across groceries. Wellness from coast to coast, distributor of national organic health products to really service the needs of our business partner brokers, vendors retailers to continue to grow the natural products industry and Canada and be a solution for brands that want to come into Canada as well as domestic brands. And so along 13 years, but we're happy that we can make it happen and now be this full service Canadian own distributor. I would never have dreamed it was that long, but you obviously had a vision to do this and hats off to you for pursuing Ron so doggedly. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. How much of a change has been for the food side of the business? I'm assuming you're pretty happy with all the systems on your wellness division. Are you trying to incorporate the grocery side into the wellness platform or the wellness model? So good question. And the reality that sometimes escapes people is we didn't buy one company. We actually bought three separate companies that happened to be held by a holding company called Horizon Limited. So we bought PSC on that bank who were right on we bought the horizon proper business and Bernabé and we bought the all NFC for my own, C Co up in Sa saga. Each of these businesses were running with their own systems or using systems in a very specific way. They had their own culture, their own policies, they had their own procedures. They didn't really share customers. They all kind of had their own territory. So it was really three separate businesses. So now we're trying to integrate three separate businesses into one purity life. And so that is not an easy process. And so with that we are, you know, we rolled out, you know, a common set of policies, a common set of procedures. We're just in the midst now of rolling out what we call it IT TechStack, which is an ear. our team system, a warehouse management system, finding its module, prodding information, our PEM system, across the grocery division. So it's an aggressive integration plan, but it's really to provide value to our business partners. So as I said, right, they kick off of this interview. We want to be able to provide that same easy to do business with experience that all of our business partners have experienced for a long time in the wellness side, also on the grocery side of the business, and getting the IT systems in place, getting the common policies and procedures in place, so people can talk the common language they could technically work in any parts of the business. That's what 2026 is all about. So we are aggressively integrating these businesses, these three into one purity life. So we can really unlock that potential in 2027 and create that value for our business partners. 'Cause the other day, people want to grow their business, and we want to be easy to do businesses, and we want to be their partner to grow business with. And so, as a full service distributor across grocery and wellness, now we've got that platform to do it. So we're really excited about it, but it's not an easy process for sure. - No, I was gonna ask you, you brought in Horizon with the other companies, ONFC, et cetera. Were there any things that they were doing, that you weren't doing at purity life that you saw and say, "Wow, let's incorporate that. Let's try that." - Absolutely. So certainly, Horizon of the three businesses was probably the most sophisticated because they were the largest as well. Run by Terry Newell had been there over 30 years and stole their leading the business today. And so they had done a lot of really good work, particularly in a province that has a more progressive rules around sustainability. And I specifically talked about the whole pile deposits and the recycling program, they were much more evolved than we were. And so we've been able to learn from that process to be able to implement it nationally as this whole issue of recycling and ball deposits and more materials being recycled now gets rolled out province after province after province. And so that's certainly been very helpful. And clearly, we were experts or didn't have expertise in the grocery area. So we're relying heavily on all the on-mcpsc and Horizon team members to help us with providing more value on the grocery side of it. And so we've got them heavily involved in what we call user acceptance testing for our new ERP deployment to make sure that it rolls out smoothly. And then we could unlock this same easy business with strategy on the grocery side using these common systems. - Remember, Matthew, I just want to touch on easy to do business with. I told you before, I love that. I love the fact that you've just come out and say, okay, we got all the bells and whistles, but bottom line is we just, we want to be easy to do business with. Where did that line come from? I know it's a business philosophy, but how did you decide just to use that line? - We were fortunate in the early days of having a business coach that met with us every quarter of sure years basically. And really helped us hone our mission vision, strategies and values. And when it came down to our strategy, we just wanted something really simple for everyone to understand. And easy to do business with is very simple. People understand that. We all deal with that every single day. This morning, I was trying to book an appointment for getting my car cleaned and dealing with this business. And they had a terrible app. And it's just like so hard. I couldn't get it to work. I was like, that's a perfect example. Not being easy to do business with. And we just want to reduce the friction. So every day it's easy for retailers to come to us get an order with a high fill rate deal with credits. They're people to return their calls or emails. You know, just the basic things that we all experience friction every single day in our lives dealing with businesses. And it's no different when you look at like Amazon and Amazon people have all their opinions about it. But at the end of the day, that's really the service they're offering. They call it the one click experience. And that's pretty easy. When you go onto Amazon, you find something. And all you have to do is click and boom, it arrives the next day. And so we're trying to emulate that experience. Clearly, we're not as large or nearly as sophisticated as Amazon, but we aspire to that. And that's why when we look at easy to do businesses, it means like investing heavily in technology, software, IT technology, investing heavily in continuous improvement initiatives to constantly look at how we can get better. So we can reduce that friction. And we can get to you to be easy to do business with. So really, it was just born out of the reality of wanting to be able to have this frictionless experience for our business partners, being brokers, retailers, and vendors to do business with us. So they'd want to do more business with us so we can continue to grow. Yeah, it's funny how the world's evolved. It used to be you would call a company and get a person. And now you get a touch pad and you got a press for it for this, press one for this. And it's just got away so much from service. And I think maybe that's why, and I'm not sure how long it's been five years easy to do business with or is it longer? - Like it's longer now actually, yeah. - I've always wanted to tell you that I love it because you just cut through all the smoke in the bowl and go, we just want to be easy to do business with. So I really like that a lot. - No, I'd like to be honest too in the sense that, we're not perfect and for us, easy to do business with is not a destination. It's a journey and it means be easy to do business with internally here, but also with our business partners externally and we're constantly learning, constantly getting feedback from our business partners who are online portal, through emails, through whatever means, this to challenges on sometimes. Hey, you're not being very easy to do business with when you don't process this in time or you do bring it up this pricing or your filerates are low. And we acknowledge that in the sense that, yeah, it's a continuous journey, no destination. And we constantly have to work at it all the time. And so much so that we designated a gentleman here, Phil Bean, to be our director of continuous improvement. Now he's got a whole big team with him and they're just focused on continually improving in all the processes every day, across our whole business. Right now they're very much focused on the integration which is a big part of our continuous improvement initiatives and our easy to do business with strategy on the grocery side long term. But before that, you know, he would be basically spending his time with people coming and saying, "Hey, you know, if the system could do this, we could be a lot more easy to do business with." Or the system could do this over here. It would be a lot less friction in my day and we weigh more efficient for us to do various tasks. And so we've always been committed to that culture of continuous improvement. And that's been a big part of how we've been able to support this easy to do business with strategy. - How much do you listen to your retail customers? How much is that influencing how easy you are to do business with? - You know, the feedback that we get from them is invaluable and the feedback, we all have to understand and appreciate that the feedback is a gift. And so you need to accept it as the gift is intended because that can really make the difference in terms of how you can improve. And so we gather feedback through our online order and portal, or more than 50% of our orders comes through. And we survey constantly on there, every three months retailers that come on there get direct feedback from them and they score it they call them P.S. score. And that score anytime is below five, that feedback comes directly to myself and to my inbox. And I can see the good, bad, the ugly of that feedback. And we action that feedback, we circulate it around the company on the retail side. And we do something very similar as well with our employees where we survey that feedback weekly on the same basis. You know, we need to accept feedback because the gift is intended and we need to action it to improve. So we're doing it all the time. - This is kind of on topic, but I saw this sign a number of years ago at a little golf course up north where I live and nobody carries cash anymore. I don't think it feels like nobody does. And they had this little sign in the pro shop and said, for your convenience, we only take cash. And I thought they're trying to pull one of those Jedi mind tricks on us. If they keep saying it, we'll believe it. But I said, I don't think that's convenient at all. And I don't know. I just thought that was pretty funny. They're trying to convince us. It's, oh yeah, it's really convenient. But I thought it was a really funny sign. - Yes, it is indeed. - That's a great example. - Well, it's what you hope not to see. It's the opposite of what you're doing. So it's kind of funny. Matthew, why don't we just take a short break to listen to a little word from our sponsors and we'll be right back with Matthew James from Pure Delights. - A strong immune system isn't just about defense. It's about intelligence. Provedas immune nine complex delivers complete intelligent immune support with nine full spectrum organically grown mushrooms from Ontario's Niagara region. Rich in beta-glucons, polyphenols and antioxidants. This advanced formula helps us balance immune response, support gut immune communication, and strengthen overall resilience. Feel vital all year long with immune nine complex and take control of your health. Collex symptoms like crying and irritability are often caused by discomfort in an infants developing digestive system. Orange naturals baby probiotics plus D3 drops offer research back to colic support that can help balance out their gut flora to soothe tummy troubles. Each drop contains specialized probiotic strains with a boost of vitamin D3 to support healthy immunity. Give your customers a simple solution for treating colic symptoms with baby probiotics plus D3 drops. Learn more at orangenaturals.com. Hi Bruce Cole back in conversation with Matthew James, the president and CEO of Pure DeLife. Matthew, you and I a few weeks ago were both at the alive executive summit in Vancouver prior to the CHFA. That was a pretty interesting couple of days. What do you think? Absolutely. It was wonderful to get together with like-minded colleagues, network, have interesting fun conversations and hear from the various speakers and certainly having the formats up there including myself was quite interesting representing retailers brokers, brands, distributors and getting all the insights and questions. I really enjoyed it. It was Matthew James, Matt Breach, Matt LeBault and Matt Holtman. Matthew Holtman. So it was all the mats and the mathes. It was like a panel never seen before, all the mats and mathes. But as you touched on it was different voices, distributor broker, retailer. And for me that was, I can't say it was a highlight of the summit, but I thought it was the most interesting discussions because the four of you were talking about just the industry in general, what was happening. And I thought I'd raise a couple of those points because everyone had some great things to say, but I really liked some of the points you raised. For example, the independent retail channel is really healthy and successful and it is still very vibrant. What do you think? Absolutely. I mean, those retailers that are focused on enhancing the shopping experience for consumers and really meeting consumers where they're at and not trying to very lack in white to find the selection of products they're going to offer to the consumers. Those are the ones that are winning. You look at Ontario and there's some retailers that are doing very, very well opening up store after store after store and really enhancing the shop being experienced and expanding their set and offering of products and blurring the lines a little bit because of the other day, these retailers and independent retailers are competing with everybody and the shopper I think is mad hole mean correctly, identified as the retail panel member. Recognize that these shoppers that are in the store are also in Costco are also in the sobies or paths and food groups or law laws of the world. They're moving around and buying certain things from certain stores and you need to be able to capture those retailers and for those that are focused on the shopping experience and bringing innovation quickly which the big players can do quickly they can succeed and we are seeing that and all the problems is across the country. Yeah, well, I think one of the things that's really helped our traditional stores is the ability to turn things around quickly by locally. Is it? I mean, you can probably tell better than me are there still people making stuff at home in their sink and their bathtub and I mean, the old days you know people making candles at home but there's still some of that going on and the health food stores can react to that quicker. Yeah, I think it's a little more challenging in that area with the tightening regulations whether it's CFA or health Canada or the National Health Product Directorate. I mean that has definitely become more challenging but it's not like there's a lack of innovation that's something I brought up on the panel. What there's a lack of is sometimes there's a lack of sophistication in that innovation. So there's lots of great innovation out there but then it has to be prepared and packaged to be able to go through the various supply chains whether it's direct to retail or through a distributor or whatever it is but the in the day this innovation has to have UPCs that scan they got to have basic you know packaging information French and English all that kind of stuff and and like I said there's no lack of that right now. We were approached multiple times a week. I mean we're almost launching if you look at the number of brands we launched one a week and so we're seeing a ton of innovation and that's definitely driving growth but it's trying to weath through all that to make sure that it meets the retail needs the consumer needs as a sophistication has the financial support to be able to go into retail and so you know it's it's not that there's a lack of innovation it's just continuing to coach these brands and these these founders of how to do business in our channel to be successful and so I'm really encouraged by all the amount of innovation and I think it's only accelerating. I mean we just came from whether it was a CHAPA show in Vancouver or Expo West in Anaheim last week and it's just a massive amount of innovation there's definitely some seismic things that are happening in the industry that are impacting consumer buying choices pattern changes and there's an opportunity there for retailers for sure. Matthew where where's the innovation coming from? Is it the large companies the small companies? Where's most of it coming from? I'd say ultimately it's coming from consumer demand and consumer changes so you know a simple example of this is what I call this seismic shift that's happening right now so GLP1's these weight loss medications that are available throughout North America are having a massive impact on the industry and consumers specifically in the US one almost 20% of consumers are are taking or have taken a GLP1 weight loss like like ozampic will go be whatever and that's the objectives now the oral doses are coming out in the generic so that's only going to increase and that's causing a huge shift in terms of you know general consumption of food is going down but the quality of food that people are looking for is going way up and so they're interested in what natural food retailers are selling because they want higher quality proteins they want higher quality whole grain products they want you know supplemental protein in all forms they want supplemental fiber in all forms they want magnesium in all forms because these are the nutrients that support people that are on GLP1 weight loss products and you know it's massive what's happening in the US so when you look at what's what's going on retail or what we saw at the show like at Expo West, aisle after aisle after aisle was every form of protein you could think of all different types of fiber you could think of all different types of magnesium so this is coming out of the reality the consumers are taking these products it's altering their purchasing habits and now that's creating innovation opportunities for all these startups and legacy brands as well and there's just a massive proliferation and that's translating into retail opportunity we were in a target last week and you know it's amazing how fast targeted now to respond and they've got a whole section of GLP1 even our health food retailers are putting up full sets of GLP1 support nutrients doesn't mean health food retailers maybe agree with people taking this but at the end of the day you got to meet consumers where they're at and we all know we all have family members and all our family members are on different journeys of health and it's you can't beat them over the head tell them they got to be eating granola and they got to be vegan or they got to be paleo they got to be ancestral whatever you got to meet them where they're at and for those savvy retailers that recognize this then they can create this great set and they've got these consumers coming again oh my god I am taking GLP1 and buy this and they become more educated and they want to buy that it's like a door opener or a gateway for them to buy more products and spend more time in the store and really getting to experience it more and buying more products and so I think those savvy independent retailers they can react quickly and put in those sets that attract a broader audience of customers can really succeed and we're seeing that. Do you think more health food customers are starting their journey in the mass or online and they're eventually making their way to traditional health food stores? Absolutely and a perfect example of that is what I actually mentioned during the panel discussion where we had this brand that approached us which was online online and we're like oh I'm not sure that's going to work in independent health food if they've already gone online and they haven't gone to retail retail might not be particularly health food retail may not be that supportive well were we ever surprised it was like completely opposite so in essence we were wrong we presented the product to retailers and they're like oh my god we've got all these customers that are asking for that yes we listed immediately and all of a sudden you know we've got a massive amount of business flowing through independent health food retail and coexisting with Amazon coexisting with Costco and to this brand's credit they had created these special offerings for all the different channels, whether it's sizes or flavors. And so they were all Coexisting but not directly competing so definitely it's to be can and it can't we just can it is driving consumers into independent retail and so it's up to those retailers then to take advantage of that and create Yen calves and the sets and the deals and the promotions and that That's a date demos or trainings to really capitalize on that It seems like in the early days The traditional health retailers were a little bit afraid of the mass and everyone picking up their products and That's understandable because you know our our folks started it, but it's also interesting to see how it's it's kind of reversed and it's Paying you know, maybe surprising benefits. They didn't expect this Now if you as a retailer can provide a Positive shopping experience with a great selection great interaction on customer service and easy check out process A lot of unique and interesting things in there you can be successful and we're seeing that with Independent retail or now I mean they they're some retailers Particularly Ontario and a west that have really Increased their sophistication how they market and how they merchandise and how they category manage and how they drive Innovation and how they promote and so those are the retailers that are winning but that's that's like basic retail 101 Simply when you're talking about a very competitive space against e-commerce online retail big box retail full-drug mass retail Independent retail and so if you provide some of those basic things and take advantage of the best that you have with The you know to provide innovative products faster than yeah, you can win Matthew I'm gonna just ask you a little question about e-commerce now You talked earlier about Amazon and the one-click experience What is e-commerce done for our our natural health or traditional health food retailers? I was on a call this morning we were talking about this and and if you look to the US what's happened there and with many of these brands There's a huge concentration Particularly on the wellness side of that business going to be commerce because the end of day is consumers You know people are looking for convenience. They've got we all have very busy lives and so if you can Through a few clicks on your computer get a product to arrive the next day You never have to leave say this office and just shows up here. That's pretty easy and it's pretty hard to argue that that's not Driving massive changes because it is and so in the US We have a huge portion of wellness of supplements health and beauty It is moving to e-commerce versus traditional brick and mortar retail That is not as developing candy yet, but I can tell you it's coming Maybe we're only 10 or 15 percent but if it moves up to 60 that's gonna change and so you've got some very sophisticated Retailers and and retailers that have a massive Sophisticated online e-commerce business that are trying to take advantage of that to compete against Amazon to offer that scene convenience So it's definitely having an impact The grocery site is a little more Insulated only because of the challenges with frozen refrigerate certainly dry those not me dry is on Amazon You can buy you dry grocery items I think that's gonna continue to evolve here and so both retailers Distributors brands all have to be very aware of that and understand the implications of it Because it's not going away. I mean, it's just the convenience no one can argue with the community You know, I don't like the Amazon only that but you know We all see all the Amazon boxes arriving at all our various friends front doors or whatever And we all do it because of the experience is so easy and so can be but it's definitely having an impact on retail And retail has to adjust and offer you know different innovation different experiences and or For online as well, which many are doing all of the above Yeah, and I don't have any numbers in front of me, but I know e-commerce grew a great deal during COVID and I wonder I mean if you you might have more insight is it grown since then are more retailers coming around to it certainly E-commerce Generally speaking from the state of national organic presentation that we saw last week So this is spins and nutrition business journal putting on this huge presentation with over 400 people in the audience talking about what's taking place and There's no question that e-commerce is growing in a faster rate than other channels for sure What is also very interesting is a natural and organic is also growing a much faster rate than conventional So there's still a lot of opportunity for natural organic both in the brick and mortar and online But people need to understand clearly that Convene inside but just like our easy-to-business with that can be so the one click has a big impact and people need to Understand what they're gonna do is retailers brands brokers to be able to address that so yes It's it's a it's a real thing and it's going on all the time and it's continuing to grow And Matthew went about social media. What is it doing to our traditional health food stores? It's definitely driving trends, you know a great example is you know We've sold a brand here in Canada a kaiola garlic for many many many years I think it's been about 45 years kaiola is available in Canada. Maybe Salis is the only brand that's been available long-term There is a you know a non-domestic brand and solely and You know recently saw this massive surge in kaiola sales in January and it really came from from a few micro influencers Talking about him and all the sudden we're getting this huge uptake both in our brick and mortar business and our online business And so it has a massive influence and it continues to have a big influence You know the challenging thing for us is just how to stay on top of it And you know we're seeing it now. It used to be Facebook and then Snapchat now it's all movie to TikTok and TikTok is driving a lot of trends and now they got TikTok shops in the US now I had a lot of brands are really focusing on TikTok to drive all their consumer emotional activity and so it's a huge huge force and it's having massive impacts on various brands and so we see this time and time again all of a sudden something will pop and we're out of stock What's going on? It was some social media Activity whether it's a group of micro influencers or one major influencers, but it's definitely real and Having an impact on our industry and the challenges just to be able to have the stock to be able to meet the demand when it is available when the big demand is surging And I was gonna ask you this too, you know, I think natural health really started with our stores 40, 50 years ago our traditional health food stores And over time, you know everybody is selling natural health products now, but it feels like One of the things I notice is is the Education in our stores of the staff it seems like You know everyone's got some kind of designation now, which I think gives us credibility Are you also seeing that on the mass side to stay in? Educated people working in the store people with designations Our answer is no definitely not They got rid of all those people That to put it really blood and so no they're they're making Offering or they have an offering of natural health products, but generally speak when you look at a food drug mass retail They're gonna category be interested set down to some very basic items And if you're looking for innovation or unique then it's your specialized formula's or health for that matter You're gonna need to go on to a need to depend how food retail work Excuse you walking the door some was gonna agree you I was just at a store the other day and they were greeting me on I think I'm okay, and then I realized five seconds later No, I don't actually know where this magnesium product is can you actually show me so they took me over and show me all the options and Excited well, it's really helpful. You have this type big. Oh, I do so that I bought it You're not gonna get that at a Costco or any of the food drug mastery toes that for us for sure And if they do have product selection is gonna be three items maybe whereas When you go into a health food retailer, it's a whole shopping experience because they have many items and you can look at Maybe this sort of mean that and you can get some help and so it's a it's a much more for me personally Much more enjoyable experience because it's like an adventure. You're going in there You're looking for products you're discovering new items and it's tough to do that on e-commerce It's tough to do and can't do it with drug masters They have got a category manage down And so I enjoy going to an independent health food retailer even when we travel all over the world We go to try to find independent retailers because they generally have more interesting product selection Faster innovation and it's just a better experience generally speaking. It's more of an adventure than going into a traditional Big box retailer Kind of along those lines. I guess during COVID a lot of products were launched online It may be they weren't in traditional retail space. Are you seeing more of those online? Launch products appearing on the shelves of traditional health food stores I mean, I give the example earlier of the one brand that we we've seen that with but that's there's more and more of that happening now So as brand they launch directly onto ecommerce, they get some level of success. Sometimes we call those Instagram, Instagram's like on Instagram. And then they want to backfill their distribution by going into traditional brick and mortar retailer. So we're definitely seeing that trend develop now, which is truly unique. We never saw that before. Usually it was very traditional in a sense that, okay, launching independent, figure that out, scale your business, and then move into food, drug, and mass, and then some big box or warehouse type, or amount of retail and then online. But now that's completely changed. There are many brands that are huge brands that are only sold on Amazon or only sold online that you don't even see a retail. And so there's definitely a very significant opportunities for brands that choose that path. The challenge for many of them is just to figure out how then to do business going the other way and to retail and all the other costs. 'Cause they're so familiar with a direct-to-consumer format. - Okay, I'm gonna go off the charts here a bit, but I've always wondered this. Some health food stores you go in, and it's, you know, the shelves are done by category. So weight loss, but sometimes they're blocked by company. And you see this beautiful orange wall or a blue wall. And I always wondered, what's more effective? Do you have any thoughts on that, any ideas? - That's the reason debate that's been going on forever. I think the brands, especially the supplement brands, they love the block because it's very prominent. You walk in, you see it, you just think the block of orange or yellow or blue or green or whatever it is. And so the brand's certainly like that. But will you actually think about yourself as a consumer and you're walking into a store and saying, oh, I need something for a constipation or whatever? You know, you're looking for a whole bunch of products for constipation. And so you're going and looking for that set. And I think that's probably the reality. Some will do both, but I think a lot of them more progressive retailers now are doing the condition specific 'cause that's how people shop. And I would even equate that to, on the food joint mass side, there used to be this whole thing where, okay, food joint mass retail, they're gonna have the store within the store, here are all the natural products. And here's all the conventional, well, now some of the thoughts are, well, put the products for the customers or shopping. So if you're shopping for chips, then put all the chips together. So you have natural chips, you've got organic, you've got conventional, you've got the ketchup chips, meaning that's so healthy options, the high fat ones. But they're all there because that's the way customers shop, they shop with their looking for. And so that's the raging debate. I'm sure someone has some statistics on it, but just as consumers ourselves, we know how we shop. And that's often how we're shopping. And I've often heard the story, particularly with the store within the store, concepts in big box, where they come out of the produce area and they just stumble across the natural products there and go, wow, what's this? And they see all the products in there and they wander around. So you know, debated either way, brands have their preferences, then there's a consumer side, I think at the end of the day, consumers, they're looking for solutions. So if you can present solutions to them very easily, they're going to buy. And we've seen that with the GLP1 set. So GLP1 support nutrients, all different brands, all different items, but there's just one set. Hey, I'm taking GLP1. Here's all things that are useful for me. Super easy. I'm staying there. Oh, I'll take that. That's all. And just going back to your conversation about going into a store for a magnesium product, I've done the same thing. And there's 13 types of magnesium. Like how do you possibly decide? You need help. Right. I mean, if you're a first time customer and someone says, you know, you've got to start taking magnesium, how do you possibly even know where to start? I think that's really evolved as well, because now we have help in our hands with our phones. I mean, you can chat GPT. You can look up all this stuff. Like it's right there in real time in terms of what's available. I think a lot of people now, they're doing a lot of research even before they're walking in the store. And sometimes they even know what they want. Like I knew what I wanted. And so that I'm looking for help to find it amongst this 3000 items that are on the shelf and all the different colors. Where is it? Show me this product. It came in, looked for up here here. It's right there. Oh, perfect. And then it may get help. Well, there's this one or the Z one or this price we got special here. OK, great. But I think now people are very informed. They become their own health advocates now. And they're taking the power of the internet and chat GPT and Gemini and everything else that's out there and educating themselves and walking into knowing what they're looking for. Basically, I know in the store where it is. And then I think that's where there's the opportunity for the retailers to show them where it is. Show them the various offerings, upsell them, or maybe sell them a companion product, perfect partners. They often call that. And so that's where the retailer can really come in and increase the basket size of the consumer that they know, generally, what they're looking for maybe. And then they can just nuance in terms of sizing the price, the special companion product, whatever. I wonder how much-- and I've heard this a little bit. You might know more than me how much the traditional health food store staff has to help the customer unlearn things that they've learned online. And they come in and tell them exactly what they want. And I read this and I read this online. And maybe you've heard a little bit about that, too. I'm sure there's definitely some of that in the fish and social media with an influencer that doesn't have any credentials of any sort, other than the recognition and they are recommending product. Yeah, there's certainly definitely some of that going on. And that's an opportunity for health food retailers to help the consumer refine their purchasing decisions to get them a specific match for what they're looking for. But first, the customer's got to come in the store. And so how do you get them to come in the store? So hey, if they've come in the store through social media, through an influencer, through their own health journey, look, you look at cheaply, that's a win. Because now they're in the store and you could actually influence them and say, OK, well, you were looking for this type of magnesium. Well, maybe you should get the Bizglyzene, because that's a better form than the oxide. Or maybe you should get Bizglyzene with citrator, malay or glycine, whatever, because those are better forms. And that's where the retailer can really add value and increase the basket size for the consumer that's coming in. Matthew, one other little thing that was mentioned and I thought I'd just ask you to comment on it. When the health food stores, there may be struggling or trying to figure out what to do against the mass or online. How can they possibly find what their competitive advantage is? Where would you recommend they look? It's definitely speed to market. Independent retail is always winning the game as it relates to jumping on innovation, featuring in their stores. That's true. There are a lot of big box retailers that have very fixed category review periods, which can be a year in some cases. So they're going to wait a year for innovation. And that's not unique in the traditional big box retailer format. These very specific category review times. But if you're an independent retard, you can make a decision today at having your store tomorrow or the next day. And then you could take advantage of that. So the speed to market really shouldn't be underestimated in terms of the benefit independent retail hands. And so if they can have a whole GLP1 set, the purity life can provide or other distributors and take advantage of that and have it set up next week. Wow. That's a big advantage versus some of these traditional retailers where it could take them a year to get that. And then you add onto that with passive demos, education and store help within the store when the consumer arrives to select the product. You can really take advantage of a lot of things that big box retailers, they can't move that way. It's just not possible. And so there's always a space for independent retail that provides that unique shopping experience that provides customer service that provides that easy to do business with experience when the consumer comes in. They can purchase something at ZStick and get it out of the store. But that's always in advantage. You don't have to park in a parking lot that's packed and then walked 2,000 feet through the store. Because this massive box and figure out where the product is now, you can get greeted by someone with a smile and can be taken right to the section by the product the only five minutes or say longer if you want. So the independent retail will always win in that regard. No, that's good. Thank you. You know what? I just want to ask you a bit about the Vancouver show. Here, we started with the Alive Executive Summit. And now we're under the Vancouver show, which was a couple of weeks ago. Over the years, in the old days when I used to go down to the show and a couple of days before and set the booth up, I was always marveling at the purity life village that was going up. And it was always massive. But now you say you've grown out of village status. And now it's the purity life city. This is true. We were one massive city at the CHAFA Vancouver show. We-- extended our massive city from one end of the convention hall right to the very back. So from front to back in two miles one being grocery, one being wellness. It was the first time that two teens came together under the one purity life, easy to business with rotating signage and all our branding and we had the town or the city hall at the front with the area for people to sit and interact. We had a lot of events going on for the vendors and brokerage and also for the retailers to explore the various innovation that we were bringing to market. So it was wonderful to have that first time being together as one massive city to be able to provide the retail partners with that experience and all the innovation that we were launching, innovation from Australia, from recent trade missions, innovation and grocery. There's lots of unique things to see for our retail partners and to really experience what it's like to see the larger purity life. And you didn't exhibit at Expo West and Anaheim? No, we don't. I mean we import about 35, 40% of our products from the US. So we go down there to meet with the partners that were importing into Canada as well as look for new innovation available 14. And then we try to figure out, where is the best fit given the need for bilingual packaging, pricing and the categories. And so it's a little trickier now for sure because there's definitely the bike needing sentiment. But there's still a lot of very unique innovation that's coming out of the United States that's not available in Canada. And so we're looking to that cross-grouching wellness to be able to bring you to Canada. But now we've also gone to Australia a few times now. We've got a distributor partner down there that called Pertelite's doppelgonger. We need help products and we've partnered with them. And they've been able to introduce this to a lot of Australian innovations. So we use the Vancouver show to launch a number of those brands to Canadian retailers, whether it's half-a-way or fresh water or vital zang, Thrive Tallow. We had a number of them there being featured. Yeah, it sounds to me like the word of the day between you and I here as innovation. It just sounds like because you've talked about that a few days ago and we spoke as that seems to be the word. It definitely is. That's was driving the growth in the industry and we saw that in the spends and nutrition business journal information at the state of National Organic. It's the innovation within the natural organic space that's driving general grocery sales across all the various chain and all. It's not coming from conventional innovation. It's going from all this and I made a natural health product, organic product, sustainable product across wellness and grocery. It's really driving growth. And you know you look at the consumers, whether they're hiring consumers or lowering consumers, more consumers are way more knowledgeable than the ever it have been about the reports of food. And so even if they're getting squeezed by realities and inflation, they're not coming back on their supplements. They may be making different purchasing decisions within the food but they're still buying natural organic food. They're just buying different options of natural organic, whether it's private label or value sizes, but they're still buying natural organic. So they're not cutting back in that area. Statistics that were presented by nutrition business journal and spends were very compelling in that regard in terms of there's still a lot of strong tailwinds for the natural organic industries because fundamentally people recognize that they don't want to increase their lifespan. They want to increase their health span. And so what do you do? You want to increase your health span? Eat healthier foods, take supplements, exercise. And so that's super helpful for our industry. I think that will continue to carry us with a lot of wind in ourselves going forward. Every day we juggle it all. Deadlines, family, workouts, and everything in between. Proveeda's bioactive B-complex forte delivers energy where it matters most at the cellular level. Our next generation formula includes fully active B vitamins, pantathine, and advanced NAD support from NADH and nicotinamide riboside that helps create consistent energy that lasts. 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We need to understand that as it relates to e-commerce and the convenience of e-commerce. But I think generally speaking, the outlook for the next five years has presented by Spins and Nutrition Business Journalists. Very positive. We're continuing to see strong, single-digit growth year after year going of past 2030 because the reality, the consumers are very focused on this lifespan versus health, versus lifespan. And so they're looking at how they can improve their health. And that's great for our industry. Yes, there'll be changes in where people buy product, extra product, but I think as an industry, as long as we can continue to focus on consumers and meet consumers where they're at, where they have solutions for their various health needs without judging them, then we will continue to be able to capitalize on that. Yeah, they'll be changes along the way. But as long as we're on tune with the consumers who are making the buying decisions, we can continue to be very successful because people are interested in improving their health. They want to live longer. They want to have more life to their years, not years to their life, and that speaks to the whole health versus lifespan. So I think it's, I'm very bullish as they would say, or optimistic, in terms of how this year will continue to grow. Yeah, it'll be changes, but there's still a lot of growth on the right. That's really good. That's positive. One last thing, what's next for purity life? Can you share anything? Oh, we have to get through 2026 and make sure that we can offer that same easy to do, easy to do business with experience for our grocery business partners as we are on the wellness. And then once we've done that, we will really drive hard on accelerating the innovation that we bring to market. Now that we would have all the systems in place and looking to continue to grow in other markets outside of Canada, likely through acquisition to be able to extend the wings of purity life across North America if we can. We're in a good position. We're very focused on the natural health we've already focused on, you know, being a really good partner for all the business partners that we work with, business partners, being owners, retailers, and vendors. We can add value and grow together. So for those that want to join us in that mission, we're happy to have them alongside us and continue to have them grow. And with the strong tail winds of the fewer interests in natural health, that's in a good position. So we've got good partners, the investment side, banking capital partners that will allow us to continue to grow and that's what we're focused on. Matthew, as always, I thank you for making the time to join me. And we've had a lot of good conversations over the years on the podcast. I hope we can do this again. And I wish you all the best and thanks again. First, I really appreciate all the work for doing it for the retailers. They really deserve the support of the life flow or industry. It did more than the majority of purity life sales and some world-life with your mission to really lift them up any way we can. Now that's great to hear. Matthew, thanks again for joining me. This is Bruce Cole in Conversation with Matthew James and we'll see you next time.