A special report on Montana's Economy and Businesses
| Business is healthy
Company founder built a firm on his knowledge of dietary, nutritional supplements By ROBERT STRUCKMAN of the Missoulian
Name: Larry Kolb About 16 months ago, the Missoula corporation relocated from cramped quarters downtown to a new office building near the airport. The company’s customers include nutrition and supplement stores, including GNC as well as major box stores such as Wal-Mart and Costco. Things weren’t always rosy for Kolb. About nine years ago, he was laid off from Nurture Inc. He still speaks about the experience with a bitter tone. Then he added: “Of course, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.” It forced him to get creative and dig into his entrepreneurial side. Kolb, a Hellgate High School graduate, had earned a business degree from Arizona State University. In 1989 he found work in Michigan selling vitamins and cosmetics products to stores in the Midwest. He learned the business and advanced until he was a vice president in the firm. Then he “threw in the towel and moved back to Montana” for a job managing sales for Nurture. After he was laid off in 1995, in between his bouts of self-pity, Kolb contacted friends and business partners from his days in the Midwest. Kolb had job offers in Chicago and Portland, but he wanted to remain in Missoula. His girlfriend, now his wife, would have moved with him. The couple have children now, aged 4 and 2. His first connection was with Joe Zhou, then a chemist developing a toiletry line for Amway. His products included shampoos and body lotions. The native of Shanghai and Kolb believed they could work well together, especially when a third partner surfaced, Inabata America Corp., a subsidiary of a $3 billion multinational corporation based in Tokyo.
“Plan B was Technical Sourcing,” Kolb said. Plan B worked just fine. Inabata America bought into the company in the first quarter of 1996 and the company has grown steadily. Kolb had started a relationship with Inabata when he had worked in Michigan. The company occasionally operates as a venture capitalist, investing in entrepreneurs as they develop a business plan and get a company rolling. “This is a very capital-intensive business. We could never have found the kind of funding we need locally,” Kolb said. For two years Kolb worked out of his home. He was buying dietary supplements from Chinese factories; Zhou saw them through the certification process in order to import them and then shipped them to America. Technical Sourcing’s customers wanted the company to control production, so Kolb and Zhou began to increase their involvement in the manufacturing end. This fall, the company has about 500 employees in China, including factory workers and others developing new products. Meanwhile, sales in the United States were growing. Kolb hired support staff in Missoula and sales people around the country. This year, Technical Sourcing has offices in New Zealand, Australia, England and the Netherlands. In Missoula TSI has about 12 employees. In total, the company has about 550 on the payroll. In the last few years, the company bought 60 acres on the outskirts of Shanghai. “Basically we’re building a complex of factories that will be a pharmaceutical company in China,” Kolb said. Over the years Technical Sourcing has done research with the University of Montana and St. Patrick Hospital on a number of products, including one meant to improve circulation, endurance and all-around athletic performance. Another supplement that affects the management of glucose has applications that might benefit patients with diabetes as well as athletes, Kolb said. |
