Mr. Kerker: The company was founded in 1994. We started selling multivitamins through health shows and physicians. The company really took off in 1999, when it went to an e-commerce platform, changed its name to Vitacost.com, and began selling vitamins and supplements through the Internet. The IPO process began in about 2007. However, courtesy of market conditions, it took us almost three years to be able to get the IPO done. But I'm happy to say that on Sept. 23, 2009, we went public. And we actually rang the bell at the Nasdaq on December 22, a few weeks ago.
TWST: You had a 32% increase in sales in Q3. Tell us how you were able to achieve that growth especially in this down economy.
Mr. Kerker: It comes down to an overall value proposition, and that is price, selection and superior customer service. So I guess first, customers would probably say that our best feature is our prices. And it is our goal to be the lowest price available on the Internet or for that matter anywhere. Now again, we don't guarantee to be the lowest price because there are people that are going to sell products from their garage and we are not going to face all competitors, but we are going to typically be less expensive than any reasonable competitor. Next is our product selection - we currently carry a little over 23,000 individual products referenced through about 1,000 different brand names, and we look to dramatically increase that this year. Also we aim to be the consumers' one-stop shop for purchasing all of their healthy living products. And finally, we pride ourselves on our customer service. Customer service really starts with timeliness and accuracy of delivery. If you place an order at Vitacost.com before two o'clock, there is a 93% chance that that order is going to ship the same day. And as an e-commerce company, it is critical to us to be able to get orders to the end consumer, both right as well as timely. We also have a 24-7-365 in-person call center; it's housed within North Carolina in our facility there, and we have an 800 number whereby customers can call looking for their products, asking questions, placing orders through the call center. And that is a feature that is somewhat unique to online companies. If you would look at a lot of other Web sites, you would be hard-pressed to find an 800 number or a live person who would actually pick up the phone and answer your questions.
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