Bodybuilding.com – building materials for a beautiful body

translation of the article:

Ryan DeLuca is the CEO and founder of bodybuilding.com , which he sold for $100 million. He has chosen to provide the best customer service at the best prices as the main goal of his business. The company's only source of income is profit from the sale of nutritional supplements and sports accessories. It supports and develops one of the largest and most visited forums in the world, and it also employs over 200 people.

This is a long story in 5 parts.

PART #1

How did Bodybuilding.com start?

It all started in 1995, when the Internet was just starting to become popular. I was a big fan of computers and often had the opportunity to be “ online ” while my friends didn’t even know what it was.

I already knew my future wife, Briana. Her mother worked for Micron , which provided her with a computer with Internet access. At the beginning, I didn’t even know what to do or search on the Internet. I spent a lot of time online at Brian's house while she was at work.

I worked hard to become an internet expert and eventually I made my first web page. I was so proud of it that I showed it to my classmates at school when we were in the library. I thought it was just a miracle when my page was magically viewable from any computer! It's nothing special now, but at the time it was truly amazing.

I soon learned that people were making money online without leaving their home and this really interested me. I also wanted to do this.

I read a ton of books and magazines about business and entrepreneurship while my friends were out partying and going out with the girls.

I started writing short articles about how to sell online. I wrote briefly how to start an Internet business, how to get your page to be at the top of search engines. I couldn't accept credit cards, so people had to mail me money. I charged $5 for each article and it only took a few seconds to email it to each client.

I promoted my articles using my search engine optimization techniques and soon my mom started asking me why we started receiving so many different letters in the mail. I started receiving 3-5 orders a day.

It's not a lot, but for a high school student, getting $150 a week was just incredible to me.

Broadcasts of the competition

Since 2007, Bodybuilding.com has been providing free online coverage of two of the world's largest bodybuilding, fitness and figure competitions. Joe Weider Olympia Weekend and Arnold Schwarzenegger Arnold Classic, now known as the Arnold Sports Festival.[24] During Olympia Weekend, broadcast events include the Mr. Olympia and Ms. Olympia competitions, as well as the 212 Olympia Showdown, Fitness Olympia, Figure Olympia, and, since 2013, the Men's Physique Showdown and Women's Physique Showdown. The Arnold Sports Festival broadcasts the Arnold Classic bodybuilding competition and, since 2014, the Arnold Classic 212 for men and Ms. International, Fitness International, and Figure International and Bikini International for women.

Bodybuilding.com commentators at these events include former and current athletes and analysts such as Dave Farrah, Larry Pepe, Bob Cicherillo, Dan Solomon, Lou Ferrigno, Ronnie Coleman, Nicole Wilkins-Lee, Lane Norton and others. In addition to analysis and play-by-play, the broadcasts include interviews with current and former competitors, as well as a fan-selected webcast.

I was happy

Over the next few years, I would spend almost every free minute learning new ways to make money online. And looking back, I remember how much support Briana gave me, for which I am grateful to her.

At that time, not many people knew how important it was to get to the top of the search engines and I focused most of my time on getting better and better. I was able to attract visitors from search engines and redirect them to other companies' sites, earning a commission from it. I earned twice as much as my parents and was able to live separately from them. I received decent money without leaving home and was my own boss.

What more could you ask for?

I got tired of it all pretty quickly. I wanted something more. I wanted to sell a real product, a real company with employees, warehouses, offices, clients and much more. I wanted to “go to work” and create something that would make a difference. I wanted something real and reliable.

Creatine...

At that time, creatine was just beginning to gain popularity. EAS released their creatine product Phosphagen and it became a top selling muscle builder at stores like GNC . It was safe and effective and Bill Phillips of EAS promoted it worldwide through his Body-For-Life . The only problem was that it was extremely expensive. 1000 grams of product cost about $120!

I contacted the creatine manufacturer directly and agreed on supplies. I realized that I could buy it in bulk and sell it to clients for only $79. That's when we launched our first website, wholesale-creatine.com.

Then I made a decision that would seem crazy to most people...

PART #2

In 1997, I just launched my website wholesale-creatine.com , selling pure creatine directly to the consumer online at extremely low prices. I created a small website that provided a lot of information about what creatine is, how to use it, what to expect from it, and much more. It had a very simple shopping cart that allowed for quick ordering. I also created a simple affiliate program to track sites from which customers came to my site and made an order.

First, customers still had to send their orders to me via regular mail to my mailbox because I couldn't accept credit cards yet.

After launching the site, I spent a lot of time creating informational pages that could help me rank higher in search engines. I used my SEO method to get my site to the top of search engines for keywords like "creatine" and "muscle building."

What happened in the first month? Absolutely nothing! Not a single order! Every day I rushed to the post office to check my mailbox and every time my heart jumped out of the pile before I opened it and... every time I saw emptiness. Why wasn't there more than one order? I was very upset. Fortunately, I still had money from my other Internet projects.

I decided to take a break and went on a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with my family and it was a nice vacation that lasted a whole week. For the first time in a long time, I didn't work at all. And then I plucked up the courage and asked Brian to marry me during this trip. We were standing on the beach, it was a warm evening and to my happiness, she said “ yes ”.

When I got home, I decided to check my mailbox for orders... It's funny how some things happen that you don't expect. I inserted my golden key into the door and opened it.

The mailbox was so full of orders that they couldn’t fit into my hands. There were at least 50 orders , each for $79, from customers all over the country. This is a total of $3950 and at the time it seemed like a whole million to me. The cost of creatine was about $30 per jar, so that meant a profit of $2,450. It was great, but the idea that you could continue to develop and grow just captivated me.

At this point, I made the decision to stop working on all my other sources of income and focus only on this. I made $20,000 a month without leaving home at age 20, with little effort and minimal expenses. I did everything I could to start selling supplements online.

And then the trouble really started... Now that we had orders, we had to process and ship them. Now that we had clients, we had to answer phone calls. We had to deal with returns, order processing, purchasing, all happening in my small garage in West Boise. I have never had experience in this field. We had to start it all from scratch. Now you know why my hair started turning gray when I was only twenty years old)!

At that point, my brother Jeremy came to me every day to help with orders. We eventually made it possible to pay by credit card, which made the ordering process much easier. The process went much faster; after receiving payment, we collected the parcels, got into my car and took the orders to the post office.

My friends in college were constantly hanging out at parties and discos and kept asking me why I wasted my time working and studying books. But I loved every minute of it...

Creatine sales were great, but I still wanted something more. Then I bought something larger and more valuable than pure gold. Something that you can’t touch or smell, something that has no taste or smell and still at least once a week people ask me how I got it.

PART #3

It was 1998 (two years before the end of the world) and my business was doing very well. We were selling more and more creatine monohydrate through our little website and shipping it right out of my garage. We stocked all the shelves with jars of creatine and even made extra shelves out of jet skis. Jeremy came every day to help me ship orders. It was a very painstaking process, but we managed. Our goal initially was to deliver our products at an incredible speed to increase our turnover.

We soon added another product, androstenedione , which was quickly becoming a popular supplement, especially after Mark McGuire announced that he was using it. It was a new and legal product that gave people the ability to quickly gain muscle mass and results in their workouts. We bought the domain androstenedione.com and started ordering jars of 60 capsules from our manufacturers.

This certainly helped increase sales, but we still knew that we couldn't grow as much as we wanted with only two products on two simple websites.

I also noticed that the domain name Bodybuilding.com was not used. A guy from California owned it but didn't use it. I contacted him and asked him about selling my domain. Immediately, he replied that he would not sell it because he had big plans for its use. I was disappointed...

A few months later, I noticed the domain was still not in use. I contacted the owner again and asked him to reconsider my offer again. This time he replied that he was busy with his own affairs and could not find time to use the domain name. He might be interested in selling it at a reasonable price. Great! This is my chance, I thought!

From that moment on I couldn't think about anything else! I studied business books, and every day I thought more and more about building a business that not only sold sports supplements, but was also a place where people could learn, network, and achieve their fitness goals.

I started bodybuilding in high school and it has been a big part of my life ever since. I read a lot of magazines, idolized the pros, bought supplements and drinks from GNC and books on how to get big and strong. I loved everything related to bodybuilding. ;

When I first heard about the Internet, I searched for sites and message boards about bodybuilding. I found a few small sites and communities, and I signed up for a few of them. I couldn't believe how amazing it was! I had just been reading sports magazines and talking to a few of my friends who only cared about their jobs, but now I could talk to thousands of people from all over the world. I spent a lot of time on the Internet just surfing sports sites. It was like a dream, although at that time it was not much compared to what could be done.

The thought of being able to get the Bodybuilding.com to create a website where I would like to make my own store was very exciting. I couldn't stop thinking about all the things we could do.

I continued to email the owner of Bodybuilding.com for several weeks, trying to reach an agreement that was acceptable to both of us. He told me that at the same time, a business owner in Japan was trying to buy him too. After many rounds of negotiations, I finally offered $20,000 in cash!

Several days passed without a response. I sat and checked my email every two minutes, praying for a positive response. I wanted my suffering to finally end... I wanted to win!

On the morning of one fateful autumn day, I clicked the “ check email ” button for the hundredth time out of habit. I was sitting in my small office at home with my two dogs, who were patiently waiting to be taken for a walk. Briana was at the gym, so I was alone, sitting in my old Office Max , wearing only my underwear. A notification about a new letter appeared in my mail checking program. I held my breath and read the first five words of the letter... at that moment my heart stopped beating...

"Agreed. It's yours for $20,000."

I could not believe it! I started jumping up and down, running around my house in my underwear and screaming. My dogs didn't understand why I was acting so strange. I felt like I had won the lottery and received Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket at the same time!

I recieved it!

Now it was time to take action!

I hired my cousin Travis Smith to come help me start building the first version of the site since he knew how to write HTML. After many sleepless nights trying to expand the range of products to sell, as well as creating web pages, our site was ready to go out into the world on April 13, 1999.

On this day, we removed the “ Opening Soon ” inscription from the page and installed a real website with a few clicks. I updated the website page https://www.bodybuilding.com and the first version of Bodybuilding.com 1.0

I couldn't sleep that first night. I woke up in bed this morning and struggled to get out of bed as my dogs were practically laying on my head and immediately ran to the computer to check the orders.

We have done! But it was not what I expected!

Story

Bodybuilding.com grew out of wholesale-creatine.com, an online store created by teenage internet marketer and amateur bodybuilder Ryan DeLuca in 1997 to capitalize on the growing popularity of creatine supplements.[6][7][8] After two years of success, usually fulfilling orders from his garage, DeLuca purchased the Bodybuilding.com domain for $20,000 at the age of 21.[9] The site went live on April 13, 1999, and a year later also launched teenbodybuilding.com. While teenbodybuilding.com flourished with articles and writings from some of the most successful teen bodybuilders of the time such as Lane Norton, Anthony Church and others, it was eventually merged into the main domain name bodybuilding.com[10][11 ]

After several years of rapid growth, a majority stake in Bodybuilding.com was acquired in July 2006 by Milestone Partners for an undisclosed sum.[12] That same year, Inc. Magazine ranked DeLuca fifth on his list of "30 Under 30: America's Coolest Entrepreneurs".[13] In January 2008, Liberty Media Corporation acquired a majority stake in Bodybuilding.com for over $100 million.[14] DeLuca remained as the company's CEO.

Bodybuilding.com Headquarters, Boise, Idaho

As of 2014, Bodybuilding.com is a nine-time winner of the Inc. rating. America's 5,000 fastest-growing companies, with reported 2013 revenue of $420 million.[15] 450 employees operate from 3 locations, including distribution centers in North Las Vegas, Nevada; Shiremanstown, Pennsylvania; and Bedfordshire, UK.[16] The company's headquarters are also located in Boysev, along with the company's call center support service.

In 2013, the company donated equipment for Boise's first outdoor gym, located in Ann Morrison Park.[17]

Misidentified drugs

In 2007, the FDA Agent purchased from the company several dietary supplements that were found to contain anabolic steroids. In May 2012, Bodybuilding.com was fined $7 million, and as part of the settlement, CEO DeLuca and his brother Jeremy were fined $600,000 for selling misbranded drugs.[18][19]

Ryan DeLuca leaves

In September 2015, Founder and CEO Ryan DeLuca unexpectedly announced that he would be stepping down as CEO.[20]

PART #4

April 14, 1999 was a Wednesday and Bodybuilding.com launched for one night. This was the next step in my journey that would ultimately teach me more about life and business than anything else. I'll either be bankrupt by age 21 or a multi-millionaire. I wouldn't settle for anything in between).

That first morning, I walked to my computer, barely able to stand, to check if we had any orders. We knew that the Bodybuilding.com had already received about 500 visitors in a day by typing " bodybuilding.com " into their browsers to see what was there, so we knew we had a chance of getting our first orders.

I typed my address into the browser to log into our admin basket. The first message I saw was “ New order ”. Super !

I clicked the message to see how many we had.

To my disappointment we only had one). I don't know why, but I was naively hoping that we should have gotten at least 100 on the first day. I now knew that with our limited product selection and low traffic levels, this was highly unrealistic, but at the time I didn't know what to expect. I've always been an optimist.

I clicked to view our first order and immediately saw signs of fraud. This was not the real goal. It was a thief from Nigeria who used a stolen credit card. So, in reality, we didn't have any orders.

I didn't show my disappointment when I told the news to my brother Jeremy and cousin Travis. It was good. It was only the first day and we had a lot of work to do.

Over the next few days, weeks and months we added more and more content and products to our website. We spent a huge amount of time writing articles, adding new features such as message boards and chat on our site.

Slowly but surely, we began to receive several orders. At first it was only one or two a day, but gradually and consistently we grew like a snowball. We marked our first " 10 orders " per day, then 20 , then 30 , and so on.

Each month brought a new milestone, along with an increase in workload to keep up. This pressure continues to this day. As I wrote this article on February 26, 2008 , I am pleased to report that we received exactly 4,356 orders yesterday. I know that this is just the beginning of the journey, that much more is possible...

Getting over 10 orders a day involved a lot of ups and downs, sleepless nights, fights with family, loss of friends, lawsuits, fear of losing it all, a failed attempt to sell part of the business, and much more that I will detail in the following chapters.

I was working in one of our first physical offices outside of my home, a year after we launched Bodybuilding.com , when I saw five police cars pull up to the entrance. Our warehouse is located in a distant part of the city, where rent was cheap.

Imagine my surprise when federal agents wearing bulletproof vests burst into our office with their police dogs, demanding that we stop working and stay off our phones. After ten minutes of shock and fear, the police gathered all the employees from the building together.

What's happening? Was it some kind of misunderstanding or did we do something illegal without knowing it? Will I go to jail?

Vitaliz, LLC.

In 2015, Liberty Interactive spun off Bodybuilding.com and its stake in Expedia into a new company, Liberty Expedia Holdings.[21] In December 2016, following a mass layoff[22], Bodybuilding.com reorganized to form 4 different companies/brands.

Vitalize, LLC owns and operates several health, fitness and nutrition brands. Bodybuilding.com is a leading e-commerce site and publisher for sports, fitness and nutritional supplements, visited by more than 30 million fitness enthusiasts monthly. Nourish + Bloom is a comprehensive lifestyle program offering high-quality nutritional wellness supplements for today's most active women. WeMotivate is an advertising agency and content production studio with deep expertise and a complete focus on fitness and health. Verity Brands is a food technology and functional foods and nutritional supplements company.

Jas Krjalic is the CEO of Vitalize and Bodybuilding.com.[23]