to the healthy products, nutritional knowledge and excellent customer service. It was time for Elwood to beat the odds and change the game in his favor. Because Elwood was still the president of Fearn, he knew raw material costs, blending costs, shipping costs, packaging costs and distributor costs. He also knew that the Fearn plant had excess packaging capacity particularly between jobs, when extra hands were available. He couldn’t sell his own Fearn products directly to his store, because that might upset his local distributor, and since the health food business was so small, that could have created even bigger problems at Fearn. So Elwood decided to package his existing bulk flours at the Fearn plant with a different name and a different label. The new package would be sold direct to his store, eliminating the distributor markup, salesman commissions and normal freight costs. By leveraging the Fearn resources, Elwood had a plan that made sense and he had the willpower to make it happen. Bill Richard (second from left) and Elwood Richard (right) with two customers The name “N O W” was chosen because industry standards were a big concern and this acronym stood for Natural, Organic and Wholesome. Elwood and Lou defined these categories specifically so that there would not be confusion over what is natural and what is not. For instance, Natural meant that “agricultural chemicals were used to raise these products, but no preservatives or chemicals of any type were used in processing, preparing or preserving the product.” Likewise, Organic meant “grown on composted soil, raised, processed and preserved without the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, fumigants or chemicals of any type in any step.” Finally, Wholesome meant “Synthetic, but identical to natural in molecular shape and structure.” An example of wholesome might be Vitamin C, which is naturally sourced from corn, but is synthesized in several production processes. Another is the amino acid L-methionine, which is the naturally occurring form, compared to DL-methionine, which is not naturally produced from a food. Incidentally, the name NOW has no relation to the National Organization of Women, which also goes by the same name, NOW. To my knowledge, NOW Foods 24 BEATING THE ODDS
