First quarter sales at Whole Living, the US-based whole foods nutrition group which trades as Brain Garden, increased by 10 per cent to $1.4 million, helping the company to reduce its losses by 42 per cent to $458,436.
Ron Williams, president of Whole Living, said: "We're very excited with our first quarter results, and feel that the company is positioned for tremendous growth as a result of the considerable time and energy invested in bringing product manufacturing in-house and to upgrading our infrastructure to expand capacity to meet increasing demand.
"Had we not devoted resources to these areas, our bottom-line performance for the quarter would have shown even better comparable results, but in view of accelerating demand, our ability to efficiently manage this demand was necessary to maximise growth and shareholder value."
Williams added that the bulk of revenues - some 80 per cent - had come from repeat custom, and that this had pushed sales higher than had been expected. He said that he expected this positive performance to continue in the future, adding that Whole Living was well on its way to reaching its target of $11 million in revenues for the year. Sales for fiscal 2001 were $5.9 million.
The quarter also saw an increase of 151 per cent in the average per-order dollar amount, as well as a sharp rise in the monthly repeat customer base.
Doug Burdick, chief operating officer of Whole Living, said: "Seeing the per-sale average rise so dramatically clearly evidences growing market acceptance of our product line. I see this growth trend continuing."
Whole Living is a direct seller of whole foods, with a customer base throughout the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.