You’re chatting with the cashier as he rings up your items and you realize he could really benefit from Synergy’s products and business opportunities. You have about 30 seconds to tell him about Synergy WorldWide because a line of anxious shoppers are standing behind you. You must decide what to say to pique his interest without telling him everything. What do you say before you leave him with your business card?

We want you to give us your best Synergy business pitch! The Top 5 best pitches will be published in the Spring 2016 Legacy eMagazine!

CONTEST RULES:

1. Write your Synergy business pitch down in 100 words or less. Pitches that exceed 100 words will be disqualified.

Tips: Explore the Synergy WorldWide corporate website and blog for inspiration. Consider Synergy’s mission, products, and business opportunity. You decide whether you want to focus on one or multiple topics during your pitch. 

2. Write your pitch as if you’re speaking to someone else.
3. Keep it compliant. This means avoid making unapproved health claims.
4. Send your final pitch to marketing@synergyworldwide.com before midnight on Friday, April 8. Include your name and Synergy ID# in your submission. You may submit your pitch in a Word document or in the body of your email.

We know there are plenty of Synergy pitch experts out there and we want you to amaze us with your salesmanship. If you haven’t established your Synergy pitch, this is the perfect opportunity to start brainstorming! Can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Beginning April 1, early bird registration will begin at €99.

Before your shipment of Synergy products arrives at your doorstep, before the products are manufactured and packaged, and before the individual ingredients and final products are tested, Lynda Hammons, Vice President of Quality Assurance, investigates and scrutinizes the source that produced the product ingredients.

Several times per year, Lynda travels to destinations around the globe to visit Synergy WorldWide and Nature’s Sunshine Products vendors for routine audits. This is, of course, after the vendor has gone through a meticulous selection process, which evaluates their processes. About 90 percent of Synergy’s vendors pass Lynda’s audits, and the 10 percent that don’t have to prove they’ve corrected the issues found during the audit before doing business with Synergy again.

Thousands of steps are taken before a Synergy product reaches a consumer’s lips, but each step holds great importance considering the end goal: enhancing global health. There isn’t a measure Synergy would not take to ensure the safety and potency of its products. The fact that Synergy’s Quality Assurance team actually conducts regular vendor audits sets it apart. Countless companies rarely or never visit the sites where their product ingredients are harvested or manufactured.

“I’ve visited a number of vendors who are prepared to take me out to lunch and give me a tour of their facility,” Lynda said, “and they are amazed when they realize I am serious about doing the audit. There are a lot of companies out there that just aren’t taking the time to do these critical inspections.”

The vendor selection process begins in Purchasing. If a new product calls for never-before-used ingredients, Purchasing searches for vendors from China to Germany to California. The Quality Assurance team works with Research and Development as well as Purchasing to perform an onsite audit once a vendor passes the initial round of screening. Today, many of the company’s preferred vendors have been supplying raw materials to Nature’s Sunshine since its conception in the 70s.

“We don’t go for the cheapest, and we don’t switch vendors to get a better deal,” Lynda said. “We enter into our vendor relationships with the intent to have a long-term partnership with them, however, that doesn’t mean we stop testing the materials they give us. If we’ve been getting pure raw materials from a vendor for 40 years, it doesn’t matter. We still take the time to test every batch of product that comes into the manufacturing facility.”

New vendors must be audited before Synergy uses any of their materials, while existing vendors are audited every 2-3 years. Risk assessments based on country, material, and supplier, are conducted each year and play a part in deciding which existing vendors are due to be audited. China’s botanical vendors are deemed “high risk” when considering Synergy’s quality standards, which is why the Quality Assurance team visits often and will spend three weeks in 2016 auditing all of its China vendors.

Lynda and her team make their expectations clear before beginning an audit, and though Lynda is a stickler for quality, she wants the vendor to pass the audit and works with them to see how she can help them meet Synergy standards. Helping a vendor often includes giving them a product forecast, testing method expectations, and other specifications. This is why Purchasing and Quality Assurance request audit meetings before the actual audit begins. This is where vendor relationships are formed.

When Lynda begins inspecting a supplier’s facility, she makes sure that they follow Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), which is a system that was created to minimize the risk of any pharmaceutical production that cannot be eliminated through testing the final product. Synergy products are also tested and manufactured following GMP requirements. An audit lasts a minimum of eight hours, and the length of the audit largely depends on how difficult it is to extract or produce the needed material.

The process begins by overseeing every step a particular product goes through, starting with receipt of the material to warehousing. During this process, the facilities are evaluated, including the bathrooms where the availability of soap and hot water is confirmed. Vendors without access to hot water for proper employee hygiene fail immediately. Of course, the facilities need to be clean and well maintained. Then, the vendor’s quality control labs are evaluated to make sure that the vendor’s quality processes match Synergy’s. Before raw ingredients even reach the Nature’s Sunshine Products manufacturing facility, they’ve already been tested many times to confirm their purity and potency.

Perhaps the most time consuming part of vendor audits is assessing the vendor’s documents. Lynda asks for random sanitation, quality control, specification, stability, pest control, GMP training, employee training, calibration, validation, environmental micromonitoring, change control, and recall procedure documents, to ensure the vendor maintains consistent, clean, and safe manufacturing processes.

Lastly, Lynda speaks to the vendor about their green initiatives. What are they doing to be eco-friendly? What do they do with hazardous waste? How do they maximize their energy efficiency? How do they recycle? Are they involved in any sustainability projects? Synergy wants to partner with and support suppliers who are passionate about doing their part in preserving the Earth. Synergy’s Quality Assurance team doesn’t let vendors get away with anything. When vendors travel to the Nature’s Sunshine Products/Synergy WorldWide manufacturing facility, they are amazed, and they often tell Lynda that they wish they had seen the facility before their audit to fully understand what kind of a company they were up against.

“It’s wonderful to work for a company that supports every step in the quality process,” Lynda said. “We want to help as many people as we can with our products and opportunity, and in order to do this we cannot have anything but the best.”

Champion boxer Malin Hermansson has been putting every ounce of focus into her training since her parents gave her a punching bag at 14 years old. 

“Boxing is an incredibly intense sport and it suited me perfectly,” she said. “I needed an outlet for all of my energy, and that is what boxing did for me.”

 She hung the bag on her front porch where she would jump around and hit it. It didn’t take long for her to fall in love with the sport. Her love of boxing strengthened from then on. Raised in Fagersta, Sweden, Malin didn’t waste any time in beginning her training.

“There are two important pieces to the puzzle for training,” she said. “Having the right people with you, and taking proper care of your body.”

Since making Synergy products a staple in her training regimen, Malin has even higher hopes for her athletic future and looks forward to what she will achieve using these products. Malin believes in Synergy products because they give her the “necessary push to take [her] martial arts boxing career to the next level.”

“Early on, I started going to an old abandoned school near my hometown for training,” she says. “The facility had a real underground feeling to it, the room was cold very old, but the team I worked with were fantastic… we spent a lot of time in that place.”

After continuing her trainings for some time, Malin had her first string of matches, and a few years later ended up in Karlstad where she joined the boxing club BK 1925. There she won three silvers and a gold, all in different weight classes. And her impressive qualifications don’t stop there. She has this impressive list of accolades to prove her talent:

1. Falken Cup, Silver, 2009
2. Mellansvenska mästerskapen, Silver, 2011
3. Falken Cup, Gold, 2011
4. Swedish Championship, Silver, 64 kg, 2012
5. Swedish Championship, Silver, 54 kg, 2013
6. Falken Cup, Gold, 2013
7. Mellansvenska mästerskapen, Silver, 2013
8. Golden Girl, Silver, 2014
9. Swedish Championship, Silver, 60 kg, 2014
10. Swedish Championship, Gold, 57 kg, 2015
11. Nordic Championship, Bronze, 2015

Malin recently started training in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) after she moved to Örebro and it is quickly becoming a new love for her. She currently represents Örebro Boxing Club and is involved in comprehensive training both in and out of the ring. Malin has big plans for herself and we look forward to supporting her to greatness!

At about this time every year, sunshine leaks through windows revealing the dust that accumulated during the winter months on shelves, windowsills, and baseboards. Much like the interiors of our homes, our bodies deserve just as much attention.

Now is the perfect time to do a little biological spring cleaning! Body Prime’s clinically tested formula of magnesium, apple pectin, and prune powder, will prime your body to absorb optimal nutrition from the healthy selection of foods you incorporate into your diet.

In addition to this powerful formula, here are a few in-season, high-fiber vegetables that will enhance your internal spring cleaning and get you on track to better health:

ARTICHOKES
Eating one artichoke fulfills an entire day’s fiber requirements. Because artichokes are high in fiber that help control constipation as well as preventing the risks associated with absorbing the toxic compounds in some foods.

ASPARAGUS
Rich in glutathione, asparagus has the ability to break down harmful compounds, such as free radicals. The spear-shaped vegetable also ranks high in antioxidants, which are known to neutralize free radicals and save cells from the damage these intruders may cause.

FENNELL
This crunchy, sweet veggie is a fantastic source of fiber and can potentially remove toxins from the colon. Its high folate content give it the properties to convert homocysteine—a dangerous molecule that damages blood vessels—into more gentle molecules.

ONIONS
For centuries, people have been using onions to reduce inflammation. Like asparagus, onions are free radical scavengers and are beneficial to gastric function. The quercetin found in raw onions is more potent than quercetin acquired through tablets and is said to protect against oxidative stress.

SPINACH
This vibrant, fresh green brightens up anything from a smoothie to an omelet. It’s rich in glycoglycerolipids, which can help protect the lining of the digestive tract. It contains an astounding amount of Vitamin K and has anti-inflammatory properties.

WATERCRESS
Quit using watercress as a garnish and start eating it by the forkful. Containing 200% of the daily recommended Vitamin K in just one cup, watercress improves bone health and calcium absorption. Try adding watercress to pesto or pasta sauces for nutritious dishes.

Wishing all of you a beautiful Easter holiday with your family friends!

Please remember that due to the Easter holiday, some warehouses will be temporarily closed, which may slightly delay product shipments.

Happy Easter!

Bronze Camp á Íslandi á næsta leiti! 

Taktu þátt í fyrsta Bronze Camp viðburði ársins sem haldinn verður á Hótel Kríunesi í Reykjavík á Íslandi 7. maí n.k! Gættu þess einnig að vera búin/n að ná Stjörnutitlinum (Star) fyrir 31. apríl n.k.

Þetta námskeið á eftir að verða þeim, sem hafa náð annað hvort titlinum Stjarna (Star) eða æðri titli, ógleymanlegt. Ef þú er ekki fullgild/ur eins og er, skaltu keppast við að ná Stjörnutitlinum svo þú getir verið með okkur í Bronze Camp, þann 7. maí n.k. Norðmaðurinn Stefán Patrik Kristofferson, Emerald Executive og félagi í Milljón dollara klúbbnum (Million Dollar Club), tekur þátt sem sérfræðingur frá Synergy og mun hann vera þér til halds og trausts og hjálpa þér við að bæta þig í viðskiptunum og sem framkvæmdastjóri (business manager).

Dagurinn verður tileinkaður persónulegri þróun og liðsfélagar munu fá þjálfun í kynningarfærni, um hvað hún snýst og hvernig henni er komið á framfæri.

Í fyrri hluta námskeiðsins munt þú læra undirstöðuatriði árangursríkra kynninga og að útskýra eigin hvatningarkynninga. Í seinni hluta námskeiðsins, eftir hádegisverðinn, munt þú læra að kynna þína eigin hvatningarkynningu.

Þessi viðburður er þeim, sem hafa náð Stjörnutitlinum, að KOSTNAÐARLAUSU. Vonumst eftir að sjá þig!

Vettvangur:
Hótel Kríunes,
Kríunesvegi 12,
203 Kópavogur,
Ísland
www.kriunes.is

Sími: +354 567 2245

Klukkan hvað?:
10:00 – 17:00

Skilyrði:
Stjörnutitill eða æðri titill

Hádegisverður:
Kaffi og te verður á boðstólum allan daginn og mun hótelið bjóða upp á sértilboð á hádegisverði sem er súpa dagsins og kjúklingaréttur á 2.800 ISK.

An elite group of  Synergy Team Members went beyond the call of duty in February by not only becoming Elite Honors Qualified, but training those they sponsor to become Elite Honors Qualified. By fulfilling the Elite Honors requirements and sponsoring requirements, these Team Members earned Go Elite bonuses based on the number of Elite Honors Qualifiers they sponsored. Click here to learn more about the Go Elite Promotion.

Synergy WorldWide paid out €19000 in Go Elite bonuses in February. Amazing! We hope that this payout will continue to increase until the Go Elite promotion ends on August 31, 2015.

Challenge yourself to Go Elite this month!