Founded in 1969, Swanson Health Products is the realization of one
man’s dream of bringing wellness to the world. Today, the company
carries on that dream, reaching millions of health-conscious people in
the United States and around the world.
Family Foundations
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries millions
of immigrants from around the world set sail for America with the hope
of a better life. Among these venturesome people, August Swanson left
his home in Sweden and headed to North Dakota in the mid-1890s, making
his new home in Fargo. He met and married Selma Nelson, and in 1915
their son Leland was born. Raised on the plains of North Dakota, Leland
grew up with an appreciation of nature and the beauty of wheat and
barley fields waving in the summer breeze.
Leland and Verna Swanson just before Leland left for the South Pacific in World War II |
An idyllic lifestyle in North Dakota was interrupted
in the 1940s. Like millions of other young American men, Leland
answered his country’s call to serve in World War II. Just before he
left for duty in the South Pacific, Leland married Verna Nelson and
looked forward to the day he would return.
Leland made it through the war safely and was
discharged from service in 1945. He returned to Fargo and took up life
as a stockbroker, helping others invest in the new, booming future of
America. Life couldn’t get much better. He and Verna started a family
with sons Jay, born in 1948, and Leland, Jr. (Lee), born in 1951.
Awareness Takes Root
Golf was a passion for Leland Swanson. He enjoyed
playing the game and, more importantly, he enjoyed the people he met on
the course. But in the late 1950s Leland noticed it was becoming more
difficult to play golf. Arthritis was setting in and Leland began
looking for help. While local doctors tried treating him, Leland wasn’t
getting much relief and his focus turned to the study of health.
Leland began reading everything he could get his
hands on that had anything to do with arthritis and health in general.
He immersed himself in the writings of Paul Bragg and Adelle Davis,
early pioneers in the natural health movement.
Leland read countless books, attended health
lectures and loved to talk about health with anyone who would listen. He
began taking nutritional supplements, starting with vitamin E that he
ordered from Sturdees, one of the first health supplement outlets in the
country.
As his knowledge of nutrition expanded, Leland took
more and varied nutritional supplements, seeking to focus on overall
health. By 1968 he was ordering quite a variety and he began to think
about ordering by bulk to keep up his supply. He also thought it would
be great if he could share his newfound support system with others. He
ordered 5,000 vitamin E capsules from a manufacturer in Ohio, purchased
an advertisement in Capper’s Weekly Magazine and began selling
supplements through the mail. It didn’t take long before Leland ordered
other nutritional supplements and wellness products for resale and put
together a small catalog that he mailed to potential customers. Swanson
Health Products was born.
Goals and Growth
Leland Swanson circa 1969 when Swanson Health Products opened its doors |
When Leland decided to sell nutritional supplements
and bring the potential for better health to the doorsteps of the
nation, he also set ground rules for Swanson Health Products (SHP),
declaring that “the satisfaction and goodwill of our valued customers is
our most important asset.” He pledged to “provide the world’s finest
dietary supplements at the lowest possible prices with honest,
outstanding customer service.” Those founding principles form the rock
upon which SHP still stands.
In 1969, when SHP began operations, Leland’s oldest
son Jay was working fulltime at a bank in Fargo. Younger son Lee was
still in school and helped his father as much as possible. Lee (now
president of SHP) was actually the company’s first employee. Father and
son began offering a line of basic nutritional supplements in the 1970s
and, as more people found out about the quality, pricing and service
offered by SHP, the company began to grow. In 1975 Jay Swanson quit his
job at the local bank and joined his father and brother to help with the
expanding business. “We went from zero customers in 1969 to about
30,000 by 1979,” Lee later noted.
In 1980 SHP was operating with about 10 employees
out of a storefront in downtown Fargo. In 1982 the company moved its
mail order manufacturing and shipping operations to a 15,000 sq. ft.
facility in Fargo’s Industrial Park.
But as the company was growing in 1982, tragedy
struck. Leland Swanson died. His sons vowed to carry on the tradition
that Leland had started and lived for, and headed toward Leland’s
ultimate goal of “bringing wellness to the world.”
Lee Swanson, left, and his brother Jay, right, with Mark Naumann, a banker who helped Swanson Health Products in the early years |
As SHP expanded, the company grew out of its
warehouse facility and began renting extra space around the city of
Fargo to accommodate the bulk of nutritional products being ordered by a
society that had undergone a rebirth of health consciousness. In 1996
tragedy struck the company again when Jay Swanson died, leaving the
heritage of commitment to a healthy America solely in the hands of Lee
Swanson, Jr.
Now operating a company with over 200 employees, Lee
announced in a general meeting of the SHP staff that the company would
move on with an even greater commitment to offering high-quality
products, low prices and exceptional customer service.
In the 1990s, the development of the SHP website,
swansonvitamins.com, opened another avenue of service to meet the needs
of customers. The website offers not only health and wellness products,
but also product descriptions, healthy recipes, reports on promising
research and a wide variety of health-related information, all available
at the fingertips of SHP customers.
Under Lee’s direction, SHP has continued a rapid
rate of growth. At the turn of the new millennium, SHP moved into a
brand new 120,000 sq. ft. facility that allows the company to house its
call center, customer care center, marketing, manufacturing, storage and
shipping under one roof. The new building is currently undergoing an
expansion process and more growth of the facility is planned in the
immediate future. To handle the great influx of orders, manufacturing
and mailing, SHP now employs over 500 people.
In May of 2010, Swanson Health Products expanded operations to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Swanson Health Products’ East Coast Distribution Center
(ECDC) will serve as a fulfillment center established to help SHP do
what it does best: serve its customers. The location of this facility
was chosen to eliminate one to two days of transit time on orders
shipped to east coast customers.
Similarly, in April of 2011, Swanson Health Products opened its West Coast Distribution Center
(WCDC) in Sparks, Nevada, to eliminate one to two days’ of shipping
transit time to customers located on the west coast. The ECDC served as a
successful model, helping to improve delivery time to east coast
customers. The company wanted to provide that same level of customer
service to west coast customers and found a perfect location to
accomplish that goal in Nevada.
Expanding the Family
As SHP grows it has a greater opportunity to give
back to the community that nurtured it. SHP and its employees support
Fargo and its residents through donations of time and money to numerous
ventures like United Blood Services, Holiday Clearing Bureau, Big
Brothers, Big Sisters, Roger Maris Cancer Center, Fargo Senior
Commission Meals on Wheels, Special Olympics, Cass County Health, United
Way, and much more. The company is the headline sponsor of the Health
and Fitness Expo at the Fargo Marathon. The mission of the Fargo
Marathon and Health Expo is to provide a community supported, nationally
recognized, quality running event that attracts athletes of all ages
and abilities to the Fargo-Moorhead area and promotes health and
fitness.
Lee Swanson, President of Swanson Health Products |
“We take our responsibilities of corporate
citizenship very seriously,” said Lee Swanson. "Fargo has been very good
to us. This is our hometown and it is our duty to support the community
in any way we can.”
Of course the main focus of SHP is taking care of
its customers. “We treat people like we like to be treated,” Lee said.
"One of our major concerns from the very beginning was that our
customers would feel like we were treating them like real people, not
just numbers or dollar signs. We believe that our customers are our most
important assets. That’s why we try to deal with our customers on a
personal, one-to-one basis, not through pre-recorded messages.”
“I like the way L.L. Bean Company describes a
customer,” Lee said. “They say ‘a customer is the most important person
ever in this company—in person or by mail. A customer is not dependent
on us, we are dependent on him. A customer is not an interruption of our
work, he is the purpose of it. We are not doing a favor by serving him,
he is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so. A
customer is not someone to argue or match wits with. Nobody ever won an
argument with a customer. A customer is a person who brings us his
wants. It is our job to handle them profitably to him, and to
ourselves’.”
"Besides treating our customers well," said Lee, "we
are in the unique position of being able to offer products direct to
customers without going through a middle-man. Because of that fact, we
are able to save customers 50% to 70% on their nutritional supplement
expenditures. And those savings are on some of the highest quality
products in the world. We bend over backwards to bring the finest
ingredients to our customers at the best prices possible."
Swanson features top brand ingredients, like Pycnogenol®
pine bark extract, CitriMax® Garcinia cambogia, LipoSan ULTRA®
chitosan, Tonalin® CLA, ChromeMate™ chromium, Phase 2® white kidney bean
extract, Palmetto Pure® organic saw palmetto, Albion® chelated
minerals, Ubiquinol CoQ10, Lyc-O-Mato® lycopene, and many more.
Today, the company continues to expand its selection of diet and weight loss supplements, natural products for hair, skin and nail health, healthy foods (featuring many organic options, as well as green foods like spirulina and chlorella) and products for special diets, including vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and kosher concerns.
SHP goes another step beyond its competitors by offering powerful guarantees. All products are backed by a 100% Satisfaction, Money-Back Guarantee and our Price Matching Policy.
If you are not satisfied with your purchase for any reason, simply
return the unused portion for a full refund of the purchase price. If
you find a product priced lower from a qualifying competitor, let us
know and we'll match that price. As a leading supplement brand, Swanson
Health Products is Good Manufacturing Practices certified and also
voluntarily participates in third party supplement testing by
independent organizations including ConsumerLab.com.
As SHP moves closer to its 45th anniversary, Lee
Swanson speaks to the company’s success. “At Swanson Health Products, we
treat every customer like we would treat a good friend or neighbor, and
I think most people appreciate that. When you shop with Swanson, you
can expect fast, friendly, personal service every time. Unlike most
other companies, when you call Swanson, you get to talk to a real
person, not a machine. That means if you have questions, you get
answers. If you have a problem with your order, you get the personal
attention you need to solve it promptly. It’s hard to put a dollar value
on service like that, but I think it makes a huge difference. When all
is said and done, our affordable prices are probably the main reason
most of our customers first start shopping with Swanson, but our
outstanding customer service is the main reason they keep coming back.
It’s like my dad said back at the beginning, ‘the satisfaction and
goodwill of our valued customers is our most important asset’.”