Innovation is part of the company’s culture

The story of Douglas Laboratories begins with chiropractic, so it is only natural that chiropractors are comfortable dealing with this manufacturer of nutritional supplies. Back in 1951, the company founder, Sam Lioon, was running a small business selling mineral water in five-gallon bottles to chiropractors. On a fateful day, Sam injured his back carrying one of his heavy deliveries, and as a result wound up visiting a chiropractor for his own care.

His son, Douglas Lioon, CEO of the company today, tells the rest of the story: “After my father hurt his back, he was looking for a new business to try, and saw an ad by a California nutrition firm looking to expand in the Pennsylvania-Ohio region of the country.” This was a chance for Sam Lioon, who already had professional access to chiropractors in the area. So he entered the nutritional supplement business with Dartell Lab’s limited line of products.

“Sam realized that he needed to add more products to meet the needs of his customers,” Douglas explains, “so he still distributed Dartell’s line, but also started to include new offerings like vitamin E soft gel capsules in demand by chiropractors.” When Dartell was sold in the early 1970s, Sam was ready to launch his own firm, Hi-Vidomin Labs.

Starting out fresh

Upon graduating Villanova University with a degree in business and marketing, Douglas thought he’d try his hand in the family business and joined Hi-Vidomin, but began to clash with his father nearly from the outset, over disagreements in marketing and promotional strategy. “My father wasn’t interested in my ideas about telemarketing, 1-800 numbers, and advertising,” Douglas recalls. “Back at the time, those were fairly radical ideas, especially for nutrition suppliers.”

Changing how the company operated would be too risky, Sam thought, so in 1979 he created Douglas Laboratories as a small start-up, a testing ground for Douglas’ theories, where his son could sink or swim on his own. The new firm was still based on the same core business philosophy Sam had established: the pursuit of the highest-quality products to offer doctors of chiropractic. But would “modern” marketing methods make a difference?

“Remember,” Douglas says, “that back in the 1970s, nutrition and supplements were still pretty ‘out there,’ and not established as mainstream practices like they are today. Sam was really a pioneer for his time.” As it turned out, Douglas had the right combination of techniques and strategies to launch Douglas Laboratories into the new era. A national advertising campaign spurred strong demand for the young firm’s limited line of multivitamins and neurological support supplements.

“I wanted to make my vision of a national company a reality,” he says, “but I still had to do my share of knocking on doors, too.” Realizing that the clients knew their needs better than anyone else, Douglas assembled an informal doctors’ advisory panel, who suggested refinements to the laboratory’s lineup of products.

As word began to circulate about this energetic new lab, it had the effect of increasing opportunities, as Douglas explains: “When we started to gain in market traction and volume, large-scale suppliers like Mitsubishi in Japan came to us, looking for partners to channel with.” So Douglas Labs began to innovate from both directions — responding to customer needs and requests, and taking advantage of the suppliers who were gravitating toward them.

“Initially

we were an all-chiropractor supplier,” Douglas says, “but as nutrition and naturopathic medicine caught on, we’ve begun partnering more with a broader base of nutritional experts.”

Grappling with rapid growth

One of the challenges Douglas Lioon had to face was, somewhat paradoxically, the rapid success of Douglas Labs. In fairly rapid order, to respond to demand, the company had to grow quickly in scale and scope, building out infrastructure and adding factories and equipment while maintaining a consistently high level of quality. Recalling the pressures of that time, Douglas put in long days, with 72-hour weeks and extensive travel the norm.

To meet the challenge of maintaining quality, Douglas committed to securing ISO 9001 (quality management) and ISO 17025 (competence of test and calibration laboratories) accreditation for all of the company’s production facilities. “It’s an on-going process,” Douglas explains. “You have to prove your results as you go forward, with audits twice yearly to check for compliance. You have to live up to your claims.”

To Douglas Lioon, the success of his company is measured more than simply by its growth. “The true yardstick of success is really about market respect and response. Seeing more doctors who want our products, seeing improvement in the lives of patients. People rely on our promise and we deliver,” he says. As he’s matured and developed his staff, he’s been able to reduce his workload and spend more time with his wife and three children.

Validating nutrition

Like many specialty manufacturers, Douglas Labs markets through a network of doctors because, at the end of the day, it is the doctor who can best determine a patient’s nutritional needs and educate the patient on the value and use of individual products. The company produces product instructional literature and holds well-attended webinars for nutrition professional, on topics presented by independent experts who want to share their perspectives and outcomes with Douglas Labs’ products.

“We have a bright future,” Douglas says, “and the opportunity to continue being a leader in providing products to doctors who practice nutritional medicine. After all, it is more economical to prevent disease, and nutrition is all about prevention.”

Innovation is part of the company’s DNA and is reflected in its new products and services. “Just this month we launched our brand new iPhone and iPad app,” Douglas says. “We are the first in our industry to use this new generation of tools to make it easier for our customers to select the right supplement for their patients.”

As it happens, Douglas Lioon’s son, named Sam like his grandfather, is a recent graduate and will be starting soon at the company, becoming the third generation of the Lioon family to work in the business. “I think it’s really rewarding and I thank our customers for helping our industry grow from being a secret to its position today as a known benefit to health and well-being,” says Douglas.

Daniel Sosnoski is the editor of Chiropractic Economics. He can be reached at 904-567-1539, dsosnoski@chiroeco.com, or through www.ChiroEco.com.

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