OpTree

USANA is happy to congratulate members of the Sony Ericsson WTA –(Women’s Tennis Association) Tour on their recent Olympic participation and victories. USANA is the official health supplement supplier of the WTA tour and has been a supporter of the tour for years.

USANA first partnered with the WTA tour late in 2006. USANA supplements are some of the only supplements out there that are all natural and all pure and can back up that claim with a guarantee of purity of any substance prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

USANA has already congratulated athletes in other medal ventures including fencer Becca Ward and 41 Year old Phenom Swimmer Dara Torres, both of whom use and support USANA.

USANA partner Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Athletes who were successful in Beijing include Russian Singles Gold medalist Elena Dementieva and Doubles Gold Medalists Serena Williams and Venus Williams who are all currently playing in the US Open.

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USANA has just unveiled their Million Dollar Club Walk of Fame, which recognizes distributors who have earned over a million in commission through their USANA businesses.

The new Walk of Fame will be located at the entrance of the USANA headquarters located in Salt Lake City.

USANA honored and recognized almost 100 independent distributors who have made it to the Hall of fame. USANA founder Myron Wentz, along with CEO Dave Wentz, recently recognized the distributors in a special ceremony where each was presented with an engraved granite star.

“Our Million Dollar Club members are truly the stars of USANA, so we wanted to give them the star treatment,” USANA CEO Dave Wentz explained. “Through hard work, dedication, and entrepreneurial spirit, these Associates have shown that great things can be achieved through a USANA home-based business.”

As new distributors make it to that amazing $1 million dollar mark, their names too will be added to the walk of fame. The Million Dollar Club Event was held in conjunction with the 16th Annual USANA International Convention which is being held this weekend in Salt Lake.

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While the summer has been settling down a bit since the Weekenders carnage, there still seem to be some hot topics that just seem to re-shape themselves. USANA started off the summer with a push by its Chairman and then CEO, Dr. Myron Wentz and his holdings Co, Gull Holdings, to the company private. After two and half attempts a “low-ball bids”, Wentz and Co appeared to put their tail between their legs and move on. Not so fast. As we reported this week, USANA’s stock (USNA) had a truly amazing run up 38% giving Wentz and Co a $160m gain on paper. The strategy of low-balling an offer only to have an independent counsel say it was way too low was brilliant. It also helped that USANA settled its difference with Barry Minkow who seems to have agreed to just disappear and leave USANA alone - although terms of the “settlement” were never released.

We had the chance to sit down with legendary network marketer, Dwayne Dyer of XanGo. His story of success is truly one of mythical proportions having a network of over 1 million people around the world! He gave us some pretty good insight into how he built his organization and the power of XanGo which has put Mangosteen on the map.

There were also some interesting deals announced this week. Nu Skin announced a research partnership with Toyo Bio-Pharma. On paper, this is a very strong deal for both companies given Nu Skin’s distribution breadth and Toyo’s global dominance of the process of fermentation and culturing all natural ingredients into cosmetics products.

Another deal was announced which partnered EcoQuest with the American Lung Association. The new relationship stems from Eqcoquest’s unveiling of its new air purification system called “Gemini” - which is the company’s first indoor filtration product that has gotten some pretty rave reviews. If you have any issues with allergies in your home, this is one product yous hould seriously consider.

In keeping with this weeks deals, Pureworks merged with Youngevity which while it was a bit of a surprise to us, does seem to make sense. The value to Pureworks is the expansion of their health and wellness products to now include a complete line of hand, body and home sanitizers. The deal definitely makes sense and can only be good news for the distributors of both companies which now have more products to sell with a larger number of people selling them.

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We have been covering the whole USANA saga to go private and Wentz and co. offering first $26 to take the company private and then upping their offer to $28 before getting completely rejected...twice.

Well what is most interesting is how Wall Street has reacted to the news to abandon talks to go private and the settlement with Barry Minkow. In literally a week, USANA’s stock (NASDAQ: USNA) has seen a huge jump from $28 (Wentz and co. last bid) to a close of $38.15 today - a 38% increase!

For those that may or may not follow MLM public companies, it is very rare to see such growth in a short period of time. No question that all of the news the company has been able to put behind them has helped but another theory comes to mind and that is Wentz had absolutely nothing to lose if his bid was rejected and everything to gain.

For one, USANA got a lot of free publicity out of the talks which gave them greater exposure to trading desks around the country and world. The other key component as we had pointed out since Wentz is the largest shareholder, the rejection by the independent counsel which was hired to review the offer (and later rejected as being far too low) only showed that Went’z stock was undervalued to begin with and people should start buying it up. GENIUS!

So where does that leave Wentz and Gull Holdings today? Combined they own over 16m shares which means they have made (on paper) roughly $160 Million in a week! Not a bad return for making a low-ball offer on your own company huh?

Whether this was planned from the start or is a product of the outcome, I give a lot of credit to Wentz and Gull for the results. It was a brilliant plan that was executed almost flawlessly with incredible results. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that Minkow is now out of the picture as well.

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