Reliv

Reliv International, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: RELV
Industry	Nutrition products
Founded	1988 (1988)
Founder	Robert and Sandra Montgomery
Headquarters	St. Louis, MO, United States
Area served	International
Key people	Robert Montgomery (Chairman, CEO), Ryan Montgomery (President) , Dr. Carl Hastings CSO
Products	Dietary supplements, weight management, personal care
Revenue	US$51.7 million (2015)[1]
Operating income	US$-1.27 million (2015)[2]
Net income	US$-1.22 million (2015)[3]
Total assets	US$24.2 million (2015)[4]
Total equity	US$15.8 million (2015)[5]
Number of employees	189 (2014)[6]
Website	www.reliv.com

Reliv International, Inc. or Reliv, is a dietary supplement company that uses multilevel marketing for distribution. Based in Chesterfield, Missouri, Reliv sells its products through a network of independent distributors in 16 countries.^[7][8]

History

Reliv was founded in 1988 by Robert and Sandy Montgomery. The Montgomerys licensed a nutritional formula developed by Dr. Theodore Kalogris in the early 1980s. The formula, called Reliv Classic, became Reliv’s first product.

In the next two decades, the company expanded its sales operations to various countries around the world.^[9] In 1993, Reliv became a publicly traded company on the American Stock Exchange and three years later, the company moved to the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol RELV. The Great Flood of 1993 flooded the company’s headquarters and put a temporary halt to production. The company broke ground on a $4 million headquarters expansion in 1997. It was completed in 1998.^[9]

Reliv was ranked number 3 of the "Top 100 International Companies" in International Business Magazine.^[9] In 2005, the company had an increase of 41 percent in its fourth-quarter net income,^[10] and Reliv International ranked number 43 on Forbes Magazine's "200 Best Small Companies" 2005 list and ranked number 14 in 2006.^[11]

Products

Reliv has three product lines: Essential Nutrition (nutritional shakes), Weight Loss (Slimplicity meal replacement shakes and metabolism-boosting supplements), and Targeted Solutions (nutritional shakes targeting specific benefits such as digestive, joint, and heart health, and an energy shot called 24K).^[12] The company examined the effect of one of their products, GlucAffect, on blood glucose and body weight in a non-randomized, nonblinded, non-controlled clinical study.^[13]

Litigation

In January 2013, Environment Research Center (ERC) filed suit against Reliv, accusing them of "failure to warn consumers that they have been exposed to lead from several of the company's nutritional health products," citing the California Health & Safety Code Section 25249.7(b)(1), commonly known as Proposition 65. ^[14] Reliv responded by saying that the company was in compliance, the significance of the issue was exaggerated, and that the company was singled-out for unethical reasons. Nonetheless, Reliv revised the formula for all of the covered products to meet the new standards of California. ^[15]

References

External links

• Reliv's corporate site