Paul Dijkstra Helps Transform InterHealth Nutraceuticals
January 31, 2009
According to his boss, Paul Dijkstra, CEO of InterHealth Nutraceuticals, is the ideal manager and leader—the kind of guy you want running the show. “[Paul] is not someone you need to coddle, push or prod,” said William “Skip” Seroy, chairman of the Benicia, California-based nutritional ingredient supply company. “He brings strength, energy and enthusiasm to the job, along with intelligence, drive and expertise.”
It was Dijkstra’s skillful use of these qualities to create a solid team and communicate a strong vision that helped transform InterHealth from a small science-based ingredient supplier to an international industry player. His management finesse also brought Dijkstra to the attention of Nutrition Business Journal’s editorial advisory board and research team and earned him our 2008 Management Achievement Award.
Founded in 1987, InterHealth was Seroy’s brainchild. A third-generation dietary supplement manufacturer, Seroy and his family had been in the nutrition industry since 1940, operating Seroyal Brands, which sold both a professional and retail line of products. In the mid-1980s, Seroy developed a new innovative chromium product under the Seroyal banner. When the company was sold in 1987, Seroy retained rights to the chromium ingredient. He patented the offering and subsequently found himself in the branded ingredient business, at a time when selling evidence-based ingredients was a novel idea. Marketed as ChromeMate—an oxygen coordinated niacin-bound chromium, which plays a role in insulin function, blood sugar maintenance and cholesterol levels—the product became the genesis of InterHealth. As the company grew, management, operations and finance became more important, recalled Seroy, and the need to expand his leadership team became paramount. Enter Paul Dijkstra, who joined the company as executive vice president in 2005, to develop the company’s international markets. Within two years, Dijkstra was named InterHealth’s CEO. Prior to joining InterHealth, Dijkstra worked in business development for BI Nutraceuticals and served as CEO of Zuellig Pharma Singapore. Dijkstra’s background running internationally based nutraceutical and pharma companies proved to be just what the R&D-based InterHealth needed. A Dutch national who had worked in the European Union, Middle East, Asia and Africa, Dijkstra had a clear sense of how he could bring the team together to drive business, open new segments and identify international markets for InterHealth’s products.
But to make his vision a reality, Dijkstra had to formulate a clear business plan detailing where the company was headed, along with directions on how it was going to get there. He then had to communicate that to the team in a way that would inspire proactivity and performance. “It sounds simple, but it’s not,” Dijkstra told NBJ. “Most companies are very reactive to what is coming their way.” Keeping InterHealth’s R&D focus at the company’s core, Dijkstra and his team worked to determine the company’s strongest market opportunities and prioritize resources. As Dijkstra explained, his challenge was to take a very complex global strategy with established priorities and make sure all the different departments and staff members around the world understood and could execute on their parts of the plan. It took clear direction and targets, tough driving and getting the right people in the right jobs. “I really want people to enjoy work, so I tried to create an atmosphere of high motivation and high delegation,” Dijkstra said. But, he added, each employee had to be the right fit for his or her job.
Dijkstra noted that working with a staff that hails from all over the world has been both challenging and rewarding. “We have a diverse group of employees representing many nationalities,” he said. “It is rewarding to help articulate how important it is to work together.”
Under Dijkstra’s leadership, the company developed a global strategy identifying key international markets in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Mexico. With products in cardiovascular health, joint health, diabetes and weight management, the team identified weight management as a key market segment, and began looking for weight-loss product opportunities in both supplements and the food and beverage sector.
Last year, InterHealth’s revenues grew 60%, and the company faces promising expansion opportunities in Korea, Australia and Japan. Super Citrimax, its calcium/potassium hydroxycitric acid (HCA) product, is the No. 1 selling HCA weight-management ingredient in the world and is used in such leading brands as Fuze Slenderize, Sobe Lean and Hydroxycut, the top-selling weight-loss supplement in the United States.
InterHealth uses a partnership model, working closely with companies that understand its ingredient research. It is a high-value, long-term research-based proposition, said Dijkstra, who added that he is bullish on InterHealth’s prospects for 2009. While Dijkstra would not comment on a rumored potential sale of the company, he did say this: “We want to be a big player and build a platform from which to take off—either through new product development, acquisitions or partnership.”