Officials at Nu Skin Enterprises Inc. expect their Big Planet division can turn a big planet into a small world, after all.
The leaders of the Provo-based direct-sales company said Thursday that the division should help boost sales overall in the Big Planet division plus the Nu Skin personal-care subsidiary and Pharmanex nutritional products division.
"We have invested in the Internet to leverage the most dynamic changes around us, so our distributors can yield a yet higher-than-ever return on time invested," said Nu Skin Enterprises President and CEO Steven J. Lund.
Lund's remarks were presented to an enthusiastic crowd of about 7,000 gathered at the general session of the company's annual convention, which was in the Delta Center. Other activities were held in the Salt Palace. The event continues through Saturday.
Big Planet offers telecommunications, Internet access, e-commerce and other services to individuals and small businesses. The division saw revenue drop 12 percent from the third to fourth quarters last year, and its operating loss during the fourth quarter was down 21 percent in that same period. But 2000 revenues were up significantly from the year before.
Lund said Big Planet technologies, combined with those in the other two divisions, now allow customers to order products online from all three divisions with a single logon. That comment drew a round of applause from the crowd.
"You will be able to take your shopping cart with you as you travel from division to division. This finally — finally — enables the e-commerce possibilities we have been working toward," Lund said.
He noted, however, that company sales remain based on the human contact of direct sales. "Dot-coms failed for all the reasons we will succeed. Advertising banners don't work. Word-of-mouth does and always will. It turns out that a handshake is worth a thousand clicks," he said.
Both Lund and Blake Roney, chairman of Nu Skin Enterprises Inc., acknowledged troubles in getting the Big Planet infrastructure in place.
"It promises to be extraordinarily life-improving and perfectly tailored to the future of direct selling," Roney said of Big Planet.
"It is experimental and torturous some days, yet has more promise than I can communicate to you. It contains the missing link of the communications world, which is word-of-mouth. I continue to believe it will yield monumental success stories in the history books of tomorrow."
Nu Skin Enterprises Inc. products are sold in more than 30 countries, but the company has been hurt by a strong U.S. economy and tight job market. Those conditions have led to fewer people seeking part-time income such as that offered by Nu Skin.
The company saw fourth-quarter revenue fall from $229.1 million in 1999 to $223.6 million last year, although net income was up. Revenue was down from $894.3 million in 1999 to $879.8 million last year. Net income also fell, from $86.7 million to $61.7 million.
But Lund said sales in the U.S. in 2000 were up 20 percent over 1999. The growth in South Korea jumped 84 percent and in Europe by 40 percent.
Lund noted that Nu Skin is "poised for a whole new wave of growth" throughout the world.
"Our journey in Nu Skin Enterprises," Roney said, "has been imperfect and will be tomorrow as well. But we've been breaking new ground for 16 years. There's no textbook for breaking new ground."
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