Chang writes the Sequel to a healthy business plan

There were more than a few moments when Charles Chang thought about chucking it all. He could never have foreseen the incredible growth his modest natural supplement dynasty would put up eight years ago when he went for broke and started a company in his basement.

Port Coquitlam-based Sequel Naturals has become a progressive, leading edge distributor of plant-based whole food supplements and natural health products with 30 full-time and 60 part-time staff. But the early days were more than humble for Chang.

In 2001, the Vancouverite quit his job as vice-president of sales and marketing for a corrugated packaging company.

“I always had an itch to do something on my own,” says the 38-year-old.
Chang started empire building with a lone product, the natural immune system enhancer Colostrum, known as “Mother’s Milk”.

He quit his VP job before even making a single sale of Colostrum, then went full bore promoting it, blowing through his life savings in the first year.

Undeterred, Chang jumped at the opportunity to place some ads in the Canadian natural health magazine alive, selling his “pride and joy” Toyota 4Runner to buy them. Then his wife got pregnant with their first child.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” recalls Chang. “I wasn’t making any money.”

Persevering, Chang booked hotel rooms and embarked on his own speaker’s tour, feeding prospective clients while convincing them to buy Colostrum. A never-ending road trip, he made six visits to Toronto that year calling on more than 500 stores.

Today, Chang’s Sequel Naturals is one of the fastest growing natural health product companies, doubling in size in each of the first five years of its existence and featuring established and trusted brands such as Vega, MacaSure, and ChlorEssence.

And Colostrum? It’s still for sale, but today only accounts for five per cent of the Sequel Naturals business.

“We don’t advertise it,” admits Chang, “but we can’t get rid of it. It’s still popular.”
It’s not like Chang didn’t have his eye on the rise of the health and wellness industry when he jumped into a new career. Many of his clients at that packaging company were biggies like Flora, and Chang shrewdly observed that the next trillion-dollar market was probably in wellness.

And not just wellness as a generic, blanket term. At Sequel Naturals, it’s plant-based whole foods.

As Chang likes to say, that’s the future of health.

North American culture is waking up to what much of the rest of the world already knows, that over-processed, high in toxins and calories, animal-based foods and body products are simply unhealthy. Plant-based is more usable by the body, contains a greater healing capacity, and comes with less of an environmental and social cost.

“The closer to nature and the less refined and processed it is the better,” says Chang, revealing that the next step for Sequel Naturals is to help customers grow a younger body.

When we exercise we break down our body’s tissue at an accelerated rate and the new tissue built to replace it is dependent on diet.

“What’s that new tissue made of?” asks Chang. “What you ate in the last couple of days. You’re totally rebuilding your body all the time and the biggest threat to the health system is diet. There’s a rampant overabundance of processed foods that are high in calories and low in nutrition.”

Putting plant-based whole foods in our diets will quickly rebuild our tissues with a more powerful material.

The message, included in the Sequel Naturals slogan of “Real Foods Fast”, is getting out via a slate of celebrity and athlete ambassadors (as diverse as singer Bif Naked and UFC fighter Mac Danzig) who voluntarily sign up online to spread the Vega word. The wholefood meal replacement formula accounts for 80 per cent of Sequel Naturals’ business.