e-Preneur Flexes Niche-savvy Muscles (First Person)

Joshua B. Smith

Owner, MySupplementStore.com

Bentonville

I started my business in 2002 with less than $50 in my pocket. Last year our revenue was $2.4 million. I think we’ll break $3 million this year easily. My business was also ranked 793 on Inc. magazine’s 2007 list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in the nation, and ranked 40 on the retail list.

Before I started the online store, I worked for an oil company in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. During the off-season, I’d been helping James Brown at Your Total Fitness Shop in Fayetteville build an e-commerce site to sell supplements and workout accessories.

The site wasn’t working out the way James wanted it to, so I asked him if I could have the name and site to give it a try on my own. He said “go for it.”

I still didn’t have much money, but James helped me out again by letting me fill orders in the back of his shop after hours. After a year, I moved to working out of my apartment, and almost got into hot water over having whole pallets of supplements dropped off in the parking lot.

After that, my wife Megan and I moved, and I started operating out of a two-car garage. At the time, I thought, “Wow this is more room than I know what to do with.” Eventually though, the operation took over all of that space, as well as space in my neighbor’s garage.

But the Lord blessed us again, with a huge new warehouse just a half-mile from our dream home in Talamore.

We just started our new NRG-X Labs line of supplements, which is making huge profits and is our number one seller. We contracted the manufacturing out to a chemist in Washington state. NRG-X Labs will be a big part of our future growth.

It wouldn’t have been possible without God. We’d like to some day become a “reverse-tithe” company, donating 90 percent of our earnings to our church and living on the other 10 percent.