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Rebecca Antonelli |
| A. |
Jim |
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When did you get into the nutrition business? |
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I have really been researching nutrition for 20 years – as far as developing products- since 1998. |
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What made you start creating the Jim’s Permalean brand? |
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The Permalean brand basically developed as an outgrowth of my midlife crisis. This is when I decided I needed to do something that was really consistent with my lifestyle.
Jim’s Permalean Protein was started in August of 2002. It’s been a six-year process to where we are right now…it’s taken that long to develop this product line. We’ve constantly improved the product line until we finally got what we were ethically compelled to do - which was develop a 100% natural weight management and fitness product line. |
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Have you always been in the nutrition business? |
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No…but it’s been a passion of mine for basically my whole adult life... I’ve been in various businesses. I’m an entrepreneur. I started out in the insurance business and then I started a marketing consulting company….including writing books After that I was convinced to get back into the insurance business again where I specialized in large groups- hospitals and others. |
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Where is the company located right now? |
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In Reisterstown, Maryland – right outside Baltimore |
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In your opinion, what drives Permalean? |
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There is a need to have the best product in the market. By the best I mean it is 100% natural. It solves all the problems that most people look for in weight management. That is taste, bio-availability, high protein, and low net carbs. Bio-availability means that your body can use the proteins and amino acid profile efficiently. There are lots of products out there, the vast majority, that don’t have biologically available protein…..they contain inferior proteins like hydrolyzed protein or hydrolyzed collagen. They aren’t usable, and therefore, it is literally worthless to eat it. We also didn’t want preservatives. We didn’t want any toxins of any kind. We didn’t want high glycemic type products like high fructose corn syrup. We didn’t want too much maltitol which is a sugar alcohol. We do have a small amount of maltitol—only seven or eight grams. We have no trans fats. What we try to do is read everything that we can about the latest nutritional information. And then we make adjustments—as soon as we find out about something we make adjustments. The first time I read about trans fats was about two and a half or three years ago. We immediately got on that. When my dietician said, “What about the high fructose corn syrup? What about the preservatives?” Well, I got to work on it, and now, as far as I know, we have the only product in the marketplace that is 100% natural that has bio-available protein and that is under 200 calories. It has 21 grams of protein. |
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How many products do you make now? |
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We have ten products. We’ve got three flavors of the protein powder. We’ve got two of the protein bar. We’ve got a thermogenic, incredible tea that we call "Activitea". We have a multivitamin called "Nutricel" and a fitness capsule called "Metaboost" that we offer. |
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How are sales for the ones you’ve got now or have you launched into selling that yet? |
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When we started the company we already had the whole product line established. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist where that is concerned. But the core of the product line is the gourmet protein system, the bars and the shakes. |
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What are you best known for? |
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I think our taste and our unwillingness to compromise on having the best ingredients and the healthiest products in the market - 100% natural is very important to us. |
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Who are some of your customers right now? |
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Well we have, literally, dozens and dozens of dietitians and physicians, bariatric physicians and internists. We have gyms. We have small stores. We are beginning to get distribution. We were picked up by UNFI, which has 16,000 grocery stores, primarily in the natural foods market place, including Whole Foods. So we are just beginning the process of distribution, but we have a core audience of several thousand stores and individuals that buy on the web or they order for gyms or doctor’s offices and that kind of stuff. |
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What else makes Permalean special? |
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I would say that when people look at our product line, a lot of what we don’t have in it is really special. We had a conversation with a gentleman and I won’t mention his name or the company, but it is a huge chain of very well-known stores that are focused in on natural products. I asked him what he thought of the taste of the product and he said, “It’s alright. It tastes like the other ones.” I said, “The other ones you are referring to are the leading brands found in the gyms and grocery stores and those kinds of bars?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “If you take a look at what they have in their product, they have trans fats, they have all kinds of hydrogenated oils. They’ve got sucralose, they’ve got artificial flavors. They have preservatives. They have protein that is not bio available. They have lots of sugar. Basically it’s a candy bar. You are saying that our bar tastes like the other bars. That is the greatest compliment they could possibly give me because I’ve got a product that tastes as good as their candy bar and we have a product that is good for you. It is the equivalent of eating a breast of chicken with absolutely nothing artificial in it.
So they gave me the greatest compliment they could ever give me. They said to me that we have a product that won’t offend the people that like candy bars. We know that we have a product that is the equivalent of a breast of chicken that you can give your whole family and feel that it is very, very healthy. A lot of the marketplace just doesn’t understand how difficult it is to do what we do. We have investors and they want to know about proprietary technology and the reversed engineering and stuff like that. It took years and years to get to this point. It would be very difficult to do what we did and we want people to recognize how special it is. |
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| A Conditioning Specialist committed to a life of wellness, Jim founded PermaLean to make a difference. Through his research in nutrition and weight-management, he has become a well-known spokesman for the benefits of protein and wellness having appeared on QVC and other television programs. Jim co-hosted WCBM-AM's 2-hour radio talk show "Wellness For Life". Privately, he is dedicated to weight management and optimal body conditioning and is a Certified Conditioning Specialist by the NSPA. Jim, his wife and two children (ages 6 and 2) live the PermaLean System in their Maryland house outside Baltimore. |
