OpTree

The salmonella scare that has hit the U.S. has finally made its way to the direct sales industry. Amway Global has announced that the company has voluntarily issued a recall of three types of the Nutrilite Energy Bars due to the possibility that they contain peanut paste that has been tainted with salmonella.

Last week, Amway Global recalled three flavors, the vanilla pretzel, peanut butter and chocolate nut roll Energy Bars. The company said that those three flavors possibly contain or have been tainted in some way by the peanut paste that is at the center of the health scare.

The recent salmonella outbreak has been traced by the Food and Drug Administration to the Peanut Corporation of America in Georgia, a vendor that Amway sometimes uses for their products. Robin Luymes, communications manager for Amway said that customers have been notified by letter.

Amway also notified customers that another product sold in the Amway Global catalog, the Austin Toasty Crackers, have been recalled due to contamination as well.

If you have purchased these products through Amway or an Amway Global rep, please either return them to the company or throw them away!! Although no confirmed cases of salmonella have been linked to Amway products, it’s better to be safe!

The products, SKUs, and manufacturing lots are being recalled are:

Vanilla Pretzel Energy Bar, SKU/UPC 10-6529; lot numbers 8219A, 8242A, 8276A and 8304A

Peanut Butter Energy Bar, SKU/UPC 10-6530; lot numbers 8294A and 8340A

Chocolate Nut Roll Energy Bar, SKU/UPC 10-6528; lots numbers 8287A, 8357A and 8246A

Product Intro Kit, SKU/UPC E9745; lot numbers 8275BPS1, 8275BPS2, 8275BPS3, 8275MSN1, 8275MSN2 and 8275MSN3.

The lot numbers appear on both the package and the individual bars.

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YTB International continues to sell off some of its assets to raise money after a disasterous year for the company both legally and financially.

The online travel company announced that they have finally found a buyer for its 1980 Learget 35A that they have been trying to get rid of for a few weeks now. After a deal the Espectra Aviation Inc fell through earlier in the month, YTB will sell the jet to Peterbridge LLC for $1,095,000. This is according to a recent filing with the SEC.  The interesting thing is if you try and find out any information about Peterbridge LLC you will find nothing.  What makes this a little odd is that YTB has a history of “relationships” with vendors and business deals that appear to be very incestuous.  Even a Google search of Peterbridge LLC returns nothing.

Earlier in the month, YTB sold its Edwardsville, ILL office building complete with all of their equipment for $1.5 million dollars to Prestige Management Services. Now the company plans to sell off another one of its buildings. WR Landing LLC will purchase 10 acres of land from YTB. The land is near its Madison County ILL headquarters. The money will come partially from cash and half through a noninterest bearing promissory note. By the way, WR Landing LLC is another company that you cant find any information on.

YTB recently announced terrible third quarter results which were no doubt related to two significant class action suits being brought against the company. Since the lawsuits were announced, YTB has rebuilt its management team, laid off employees, reported dismal earnings and now is selling off its assets. Hopefully the company will be able to pull themselves out of this, but if I worked for the travel company, I would keep a close eye on what is going on.

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In the wake of the announcement that third quarter profits have plummeted for online travel site, YTB, comes the announcement that the company has decided to mix some things up in their management team.

The company announced this week that they have promoted J. Kim Sorensen to Vice Chairman and Andrew Cauthen to President. 

Sorenson, who was previously president of YTB International, will remain President and Chief Executive of the company’s subsidiary, YTB Travel Network. 

Cauthen joined YTB since 2004 as the company’s Chief Operating Officer and then moved up to serve as President of YourTravelBiz in 2006. Cauthen was then named COO of YTB International in January 2008.

YTB has been hit pretty hard these last few months, not only have their profits plummetted almost 90% percent, but they’re being investigated for illegal practices in two different states, they’ve had to lay people off and just yesterday came word that they had to sell an office building and their learjet.  Hopefully these reassignments will shake things up a bit and get the company going in the right direction. 

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YTB International Inc., has just released their financial results for the third quarter, and not surprisingly, the company did not do well.

Currently, the online travel agency which uses independent sales reps to sell travel packages, is under investigation by two different state attorney generals, in Illinois and California, for allegedly operating a pyramid scheme.

Corporate filings (YTBLA: OTC) show pretty meager earnings for the third quarter, showing a profit of only $288,000 in the three months ending September 30th. That is a huge decline from the same quarter last year when the company raked in over $2 million dollars in profit.

Filing with the SEC show that while revenue grew, so did its operating expenses which climbed 13 percent this year. All total, net loss for the nine months ending September 30th was $3.4 million dollars.

“While we are disappointed by the reduction in our net income, we are also aware that much of the softness we are seeing is reflective of both an industry-wide trend and a difficult comparison to last year’s explosive growth,” company CEO Scott Tomer said Monday. “In the face of a looming recession, growing companies face the difficult choice of either cutting back on marketing efforts to save on expenses, or increasing these efforts in order to capture the increasingly selective customer,” he added

The company said that it plans to help raise cash by selling some of their assets, including an office building in Edwardsville as well as the company’s Learjet.

The YTB stock has gotten hammered this year.  From a high of over $4 to where it sits today at around $0.33, the company’s issues continue to mount as concerns about the ongoing lawsuits and financial situation continue to plague them.

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