Ken Brailsford

Kenneth Brailsford was the co-founder of Nature’s Sunshine and Enrich International, and the founder of Zija International. He is an icon of business success and wealth, an Entrepreneur of the Year, father of herbal encapsulation, and philanthropist. He is also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon or LDS Church. He was a mission president for the Central States (U.S.A.) Mission of the Church.

Kenneth-Brailsford-MormonAll of Brailsford’s business ventures in the herbal supplement field have been direct marketing businesses, so Brailsford is considered to be the “Grand Daddy in the Home Business Industry.”  He spent 35 years in the  direct sales industry, over billions of dollars in sales.  Brailsford was born in Niagara Falls, New York. He grew up in Utah, earned an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in 1969, and served two years in the military before helping start Nature’s Sunshine. He served as its president until 1979 and ran Herbalist Magazine until he sold it in 1981.

After leaving Nature’s Sunshine, Brailsford worked as a stockbroker, but then decided to reenter the herbal industry after his noncompeting agreement with Nature’s Sunshine had expired.  In 1985, Kenneth E. Brailsford, his wife Linda Brailsford, and David T. Lisonbee incorporated Nature’s Labs, Inc. under the laws of Utah and became its founding directors. In 1987 the name was changed to The Enrich Corporation.

To support Enrich, Nature’s Sunshine Products, and other herbal corporations in Utah County, the R.P. Scherer Company in the 1980s began a plant in the Springville Industrial Park to produce gelatin capsules. Scherer’s general manager claimed in the Daily Herald of Provo, Utah that his firm had ‘the world’s largest plant that only produces capsules’ and that it ran ‘365 days per year and 24 hours per day’ to make some two billion capsules annually.

By November 1992 The Enrich Corporation was shipping between five and ten million capsules every month. Soon the firm moved to a much larger facility in Orem, Utah (Daily Herald).

The vitamin and nutritional supplement industry received a major boost in 1994 when Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act (DSHEA). Utah Senator Orrin Hatch sponsored that act in part because of Utah’s leadership in the supplement industry. That law helped improve the public image of the supplement business. It also spurred responsible scientific research and standardization in the industry, and boosted the number of successful natural supplement companies in Utah.  Quality control in the entire industry was bettered.

By the late 1990s Enrich offered six categories of nutritional and personal care products. Enrich purchased raw herbal materials from four continents, and then processed and manufactured its products in its own Pharmatech plant with six encapsulation machines. It was honored several times in the 1990s by being listed in Inc. magazine’s annual listings of the fastest growing North American firms.

Ken was President and CEO of Nature’s Sunshine For over 30 years. He retired in 1997, with no plans to return to the nutrition industry. But when his friend and CFO from Enrich International came to him with a business plan and a Discovery Channel video on the moringa tree, Ken launched into the research that came to fruition in Zija, a new direct-marketing venture. Zija has grown rapidly with its intitial product, Goyin™ juice, derived from the moringa tree and other plants with anti-oxidative properties.

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