October 2019
Vol 6 | Issue 258

Q&A with Marc Isaacson of Village Green Apothecary

CEO

Principal Series:

Village Green Apothecary is a leading integrative pharmacy located by NIH in Bethesda, MD with a staff of over 50. Our team of nutritionists, Naturopathic Doctors, clinical herbalists, and pharmacists provide customized solutions to optimize health goals. Since its founding in 1965, VGA has been on the cutting edge of functional medicine and nutrition, focusing on providing the highest level of personalized health for every customer.

Village Green’s integrative pharmacy offers prescription drugs, custom compounding, and nutritional products, as well as private wellness consultations and specialized testing.


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Why would a family office want to invest in Village Green Apothecary?

According to the 2018 Council for Responsible Nutrition Consumer Survey on Dietary Supplements 75% of US adults took supplements in 2018 and according to The Mayo Clinic approaching 70% are on at least 1 prescription drug. Along with the prescribed drugs, most people are overwhelmed with information and just guess from advertisements and casual research as to what supplements they should take. Village Green Apothecary is proven and well established in business for over 53 years, providing customers with the highest level of personalized service and guidance to help people optimize their health. Our team of 50, looks into areas that others do not, such as drug-nutrient interactions and depletions of nutrients in one’s body. Our work to dig deep and personalize makes the true difference to optimize one's health outcome. The core Village Green team of nutritionists, Naturopathic Doctors, and pharmacists have over 150 years of collective knowledge and experience and are leaders in the industry.

The supplement category has grown to over $36B and is anticipated to grow by 6% annually. Fueling future growth are 78 million Baby Boomers, followed by 84 million Generation Xers, who are already spending billions on their health.
Given that we have a stable business with over $7.5 million in annual revenue and that we are positioned for ongoing growth through the expansion of strategic partnerships and internal product offerings, we have the necessary cash flow to provide up to 12% monthly interest to the right fit family office investment.

Our total capital raise of $1.5M will be used for a recapitalization to pay off bank financing, short-term debt, provide working capital, and funding growth opportunities. We are considering an investment structure as a combination of debt and equity.

How does Village Green Apothecary differentiate from its competitors?

"Village Green Apothecary is focused on the one-to-one interactions between our industry leading staff of nutritionists and Naturopathic Doctors and each customer to bring personalized health to the market. We work directly with practitioners, have our own testing lab partner, and offer nutrition consultations in-house to help optimize health and get to the root cause of current and prospective chronic conditions for our customers.

Our personalized approach is epitomized by our compounding pharmacy, which is unique in that it can make both customized nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals, based on anyone’s unique biochemistry and needs determined by working with our collective team. What sets us apart and up for success now and in the years to come is Village Green’s hands-on approach, not only by providing 10,000+ supplements we carry (including our own proprietary brands with 40+ patented ingredients), but by creating that personalized experience with our 20,000+ loyal customers to make sure we help build the lasting, meaningful impact on our customers lives and our strive to find new ways to do so."

What is Village Green Apothecary’s Growth Plan?

Village Green Apothecary has begun work to significantly expand its current nutritional consultation program to a scalable model designed to attract nutritionist talent and grow our customer base, both locally and nationally via remote virtual consultation sessions. In turn, this will drive additional supplement and compounding revenues.

Our pharmacists are working with and growing our practitioner network, including traditional medical doctors and practitioners trained in functional/integrative medicine to expand our referral base and act as a bridge between traditional and functional medicine for patients and customers. Additionally, for a number of years, our compounding team has focused on developing several strategic and collaborative partnerships with practitioners and a leading lab customizing nutraceutical formulas to address improved mental health. This collaborative partnership has significant long term upside as there is clinical data on over 40,000 patients documenting highly effective outcomes in areas that include, ADD, Autism, Anxiety and Depression. Based on results data, this approach to supporting mental health has shown to provide much better outcomes than other traditionally available options. This compounding segment for Village Green has continued to grow and now represents more than 50% of our current compounding pharmacy revenue.

The other growth opportunity that represents meaningful upside for Village Green Apothecary is enhancing our online presence. Given our lack of capital, we have put limited resources into our website (currently 3% of the business) and digital marketing efforts. Investment funds will be used to revamp our website, marketing campaigns, and further focus on our unique product and service offerings. We expect the website redesign and upgrade to include transitioning to Shopify as our core eCommerce platform. This will provide an improved user experience, data analytics to drive decision making, and enhanced marketing capability to help scale our online expansion. We plan on integrating a virtual chat app into our Shopify store with one of our live clinical nutritionists available to help consumers find the right supplements for them and upsell additional products and nutritional consultations services to differentiate from other online supplement providers and drive additional revenue.


Marc Isaacson of Village Green Apothecary

Marc Isaacson – CEO Marc has led successful entrepreneurial ventures for over 25 years, including a beverage company (Glacier Ridge) which he sold after five years. He led the successful expansion of Melitta Coffee into the U.S. markets. In 2002, Marc acquired Village Green Apothecary (VGA,) which was founded in 1965 as an integrative pharmacy and located next to the National Institutes of Health. VGA has since expanded into a full-suite of personalized health offerings, including a custom compounding lab and one of the largest selections of health products found anywhere, with over 10,000 products and 500 brands including the company’s Pathway and Sinus Survival brands. With traditional and compounding pharmacists, nutritionists and a knowledgeable full-service staff, VGA offers personalized solutions for its customer base.

Marc has a BS in Business Management from Ithaca College and has completed a three-year Executive Education Program at MIT. Marc is a 25-year member of the Entrepreneurs Organization. Contact Marc:

marc@myvillagegreen.com; cell: 610-453-9079