Overall 2013 was a very good year for Health Kismet. Not without some challenges, but I definitely added to the foundation I’m hoping to build with the company.

Year over year sales are up about 225%, but keep in mind Health Kismet was a newborn at the beginning of 2013, so it had a lot of room to grow.

I haven’t double checked, but I believe overall supplement sales will have topped out around 2,500-3,000 bottles or so, with about 80% of that coming from Incredible Greens, the rest coming from Incredible Berries. All sales are direct to consumer, no wholesalers.

In the big scheme of things this is really small potatoes, even when you compare it to smaller companies, but its financially stable, profitable, and is entirely self-funded with no outside investment of any kind…..financial, social, or otherwise.

The smallness also makes it easier to exercise tight control over all aspects of the company, which helps deliver a more unique customer experience compared to traditional retailers. I love that to a customer I can usually point out what they like to order, e-mail and phone conversations I’ve had with them, and their direct feedback on what they bought.

Of course, the difficult part is scaling growth. The last two years have have given me an intriguing lesson in the challenges of getting bigger. When sales go up you make more money, but you also have a lot more you have to spend money on since you have new needs that you couldn’t afford to have with your smallness.  You also run out of time to do things yourself and have to do a lot more of what you were doing without sacrificing quality.

So growing a company is sort of a two-legged race where your profits have to grow at a faster rate than the additional risk exposure you have by growing bigger. I think this is why companies often come off as paranoid and aggressive in their behavior, because they’re always right on that edge between the two, even if they’re making a lot of money.

Future Plans

Last year I mentioned that I wanted to release a second product and an educational course on juicing.

I hit on 1 out of 2.  Incredible Berries came out, but the juicing course is still in progress.  The material is done, but tying all the loose ends together has taken longer than I expected.

2014?

In addition to finishing up last years plans, (hopefully within the next few weeks), I’d like to add an additional product or two, and expand the sales channels for Health Kismet.

This includes but is not limited too breaking into retail, international shipping, and maybe setting up arrangements with some distributors in the US and elsewhere.

I’d like to explore all of these possibilities, but I have no expectation of sticking with all of them.  I’d rather be picky in how I grow, and prune the excess to make sure its not growth for its own sake.

There are only two things that grow relentlessly for their own sake: tumors and businesses.  It doesn’t appeal to me at all.

Curiously enough, adding new products will probably be the easiest part.  The actual making of the product scales easily, and once you have suppliers and order handling ironed out, it’s simply a matter of finding the right formula.

A purples powder will come out, probably some time in the first half of the year, and there might be an additional product after that, although that’s still up in the air.

New products are exciting, but I’d rather have too little than too many.  Lots of people walk into a health food store and are simply overwhelmed by all the choice.  I only want to add products if there’s cohesion with everything else that’s happening inside the company.  I don’t want new products for their own sake.

Additional options might include:

• A superfood energy drink
• A protein powder
• A meal replacement powder
• A probiotic
• A rainbow mix, combining the best parts of the greens, reds and purples.

Decisions will be made as necessary.

Most Popular Content of 2013

The most read item on the Health Kismet blog in 2013 is……something I wrote in 2012.

The green superfood powder buying guide.  This is proving to be timeless in its usefulness, and is still perched atop the pageview list among the 338 articles in the Health Kismet blog.   It got read about 25,000 times last year.

For content written in the last year, the most popular hits have been:

The dirty secrets of the supplement industry.

Hidden nutrient deficiencies in your diet.

The truth about grains.  (No, they’re not evil like some people say).

Red superfood powder buying guide.

My personal favorite is my article on why obsessing over the pH of your diet is dumb.

What’s Next

2014 so far looks kind of like this:

Release of juicing course….this should happen within several days.

Release of the purple superfood powder, probably by April.

Going to Natural Products Expo West, to scout out distributors and grocers and find ways to gain some traction there.  That’ll be in March.