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Written
by: Madeline McMahon M.A. ’24
|
Oct. 15, 2024
A Lifetime of Lightbulb Moments
Marty Rifkin ’82 was recently honored with the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from the John P. Lowth Entrepreneurship Center
Marty Rifkin ’82 built manufacturing plants to produce his gummy vitamin products. Photo by Bob Kerns
Giving Back, Creating Opportunity:
The Kate Jones & Marty Rifkin Scholarship for UTampa nursing students was created this fall. Over the next decade, 10 exceptional nursing students per year will receive a grant designed to empower them to pursue and achieve their goals.
While Rifkin was in Tampa last spring, he recorded an episode for the En Factor podcast hosted by Rebecca White, director of the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center and James W. Walter distinguished chair of entrepreneurship. The episode is titled “Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Philanthropy: Marty Rifkin’s Journey of Impact.” Check it out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Podbean or click the button below to learn about Rifkin’s entrepreneurial mindset.
Everyone starts out somewhere.
For Marty Rifkin ’82, his career began as “that kid on the block who sold everything.” Coloring books, soda, candy — you name it, he had it laid out on a folding table in the middle of summer. His first-ever employee, his best friend from the neighborhood, earned a competitive wage of candy bars and, if it was a busy day, a few dollar bills.
Later, at UTampa, Rifkin had a better sense of what makes a good product, but he still had a lot of learning to do. Without regard to patents or pitches, he thought he had come up with the next big thing: the chip clip. But when someone else had the same idea, plus the connections to pitch it to Frito-Lay, he was back to his notebook of ideas.
Flash forward to the present, and Rifkin has a lifetime collection of successful businesses built on a mix of spark, follow-through and a healthy dose of wisdom.
“THE GUMMY GUY”
After graduation, Rifkin dabbled in ventures as varied as water filtration technology and film production, but an investment in a struggling vitamin company in 1985 was what really started to nourish his career.
Rifkin and his wife and business partner, Kate Jones, used all their time and energy to turn the company around. They moved to Vancouver, Washington, where the company was located, and put their other projects to the side, determined to make it work.
“It kind of sharpens your focus when you’re almost out of money,” said Rifkin.
Rifkin tapped his health-oriented mother, who packed him “the weirdest lunches at school,” and his siblings, who also ran vitamin companies, for some insider expertise. After throwing several ideas around, the group was stuck on how unpleasant chewable vitamin tablets can be — not many people love the chalky sensation in their mouths. Rifkin’s team of brainstormers realized that if they could solve that problem, they’d have an edge over other chewable vitamin brands.
That was when Rifkin came up with the idea of making vitamins that looked and tasted like gummy bears. But he was a businessman, not a food scientist. Yet.
“Our first product launch was just horrible,” Rifkin admitted. “The products would change colors or get really hard, like rocks.”
After about six months, Rifkin thought he might have to give up and go back to the chalk. But he’s always thought of himself as a “tinkerer,” so after some more research and development, he was able to stabilize the gummy product and even create a variety of flavors. The company launched L’il Critters Gummy Vites for kids and VitaFusion for adults.
Even with a finished, presentable product, the company faced struggles. Disrupting a market isn’t easy, and it took years to convince retailers that the idea was credible.
“I remember making presentations (to potential buyers), and people would laugh me out of their office,” said Rifkin. They thought his product was just glorified candy.
Rifkin kept a positive attitude and reminded himself that the skepticism kept competitors from chasing him. When he would visit stores like Walgreens or Target to sell the product, he’d often encounter sales reps from other vitamin brands, circling and taunting him like hyenas in the wild.
“I’d see them in the lobby, and they would call me ‘the gummy guy,’” said Rifkin.
They would be mostly from large pharmaceutical companies, and they couldn’t believe that he was “still trying to sell that stuff.” But the customers caught on before the other companies could keep up. Rifkin eventually acquired strategic placement in some stores, and customers could see the gummies right next to the usual tablets, then consciously compare the two and choose the better-tasting option.
VitaFusion and L’il Critters Gummy Vites vitamins starting picking up in the early 2000s, and many competitors got in line. Today, the global gummy vitamin market is worth more than $9 billion, according to Allied Market Research.
“We were an overnight success that only took us 25 years,” Rifkin said.
The first retailer to place a bulk order for the vitamins was Walgreens, and Rifkin threw a company party after shipping the order to the warehouse in Florida. But stock room employees weren’t told how to handle this new kind of product. While Rifkin and company were celebrating, the gummies were melting on the loading dock. They started putting warning signs on the pallets after that.
Once that fiasco was dealt with, the product started selling far more than anything else on the market. At one point, VitaFusion and L’il Critters Gummy Vites were in more than 100,000 retail locations. After years of jumping hurdles, handling a recession and pouring their all into the company, Rifkin sold the company to Church & Dwight Co., the parent company behind Arm & Hammer, OxiClean and other popular brands, in 2012.
Marty Rifkin ’82 manages his manufacturing plants full time. Photo by Bob Kerns
SIDE QUESTS
While running the vitamin business, Rifkin bought real estate to build factories large enough to fit the manufacturing equipment. After the company sold, Rifkin continued to own manufacturing spaces and still manages those properties full-time.
In addition, Rifkin and Jones have always been drawn to causes outside their industry. They established the KMR Group Foundation in 1991 in Vancouver, even before they found solid footing in the vitamin company. “We always did it even when we weren’t able to,” explained Rifkin.
The foundation provides resources and support to a variety of projects, from funding community shelters, to scholarships, to orphanages around the world. Jones primarily runs the nonprofit, while Rifkin is a lead consultant.
Rifkin doesn’t talk about his successes without giving credit to his partnership with his wife. They met in their first year at UTampa and started collaborating on business ideas soon after. (Jones eventually graduated from USF with a marketing degree, a program UTampa didn’t have at the time.)
Jones has always handled the marketing and communications portion of their ventures, and some of her campaigns have even appeared in university textbooks. While Rifkin can list off invention ideas in rapid-fire succession, Jones has the prowess to pick the best ones and plan a gradual public roll-out.
“I’d be like, ‘Here’s 20 products. They’re all great!’, and she’d go, ‘No, no, no, you don’t understand,’” Rifkin said.
Those differing personalities came together to form a synergy that has lasted for decades
Marty Rifkin ’82 spoke at commencement in May. Photo by Marsha Kemp
BACK TO THE INCUBATOR
When Rifkin returned to campus in February to accept the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award, he was greeted with a day full of campus activities.
He and Jones spoke with students openly about their failures, successes and everything in between. Dean Koutroumanis ’89, MBA ’91, associate director of the Lowth Center and professor of management, says that their tenacity, perseverance and honesty about their struggles resonated with students the most.
When they let their guards down, the students were able to see themselves in the couple. “These students can relate because these alums walk the same streets and have been on the same property,” Koutroumanis said.
“That’s a big deal, because they can see anything is possible with anybody.”
Rifkin visited the entrepreneurship center with John P. Lowth ’82 himself when it opened but had never been fully exposed to the highly experiential work of the students. Rifkin had been classmates and close friends with Lowth and Mike Southard ’82, namesake of the Southard Family Building.
This was the first year for the Lowth Center's Lifetime Achievement Award, and Southard was the one to submit Rifkin’s nomination, marking a full-circle moment for the trio.
Rifkin made the cross-country trek to Tampa again last spring when he delivered one of the commencement addresses in May. He spoke to a building full of graduates who had grown up with gummy vitamins, sharing the story of how something so commonplace to them came into existence.
Rifkin’s final advice to the graduates was to harness their youth and passion to pursue ambitious ideas and make a positive impact on the world.
Beyond the commencement stage, he added to not forget to take your vitamins.
Giving Back, Creating Opportunity:
The Kate Jones & Marty Rifkin Scholarship for UTampa nursing students was created this fall. Over the next decade, 10 exceptional nursing students per year will receive a grant designed to empower them to pursue and achieve their goals.
While Rifkin was in Tampa last spring, he recorded an episode for the En Factor podcast hosted by Rebecca White, director of the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center and James W. Walter distinguished chair of entrepreneurship. The episode is titled “Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Philanthropy: Marty Rifkin’s Journey of Impact.” Check it out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Podbean or click the button below to learn about Rifkin’s entrepreneurial mindset.
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