The company itself is great. They have a great selection at prices usually better than any other retailer.
Pros
Good benefits, good atmosphere, product trainings, a lot of free product. The people you would work with are generally very passionate about the industry.
Cons
Management is awful. Especially the new management that took over in late 2015. They came in from Vitamin Shoppe and sterilized a formerly warm lively fun atmosphere. They push store managers very hard and don't compensate them in any way. Not even a "good job" and a handshake is offered for working 60+ hours a week and getting paid for 40 hours. They think they can come in, slap a budget on everything, have ZERO marketing plans while cutting payroll to increase customer satisfaction. The opposite happened. They put a strict budget on payroll and then complained about not having enough staff on the floor to help customers. Store managers would constantly ask them for help and go to them for insight on increasing sales and their reply was "what are YOU going to do to increase sales?". Not very supportive at all. Complete opposite of the previous management. What was once a warm inviting knowledgeable place to get supplements and unique gluten free organic foods is now becoming a bland cold uninviting just-another-place-to-buy-vitamins retailer where staff knowledge is declining because upper management doesn't have a passion about health and wellness and that attitude trickles down to the store managers. The weight they put on the store managers also forces them to cut staff trainings in order to focus on other pointless tasks that are expected of them. The previous management genuinely cared about health and wellness as well as being keen business people. The new regime only cares about profits and progress. Same model as VS I suppose. Simply concerned about numbers. Absolutely no heart. So much so that when they came in they put an enormous pressure on store managers and simply targeted certain ones in order to force them out so that they can bring in their minions from Vitamin Shoppe. Since they arrived they brought in 3 of their former managers from VS and that doesn't even include the general manager bringing his district manager from VS that has followed him to every company for over 20 years. Seems kind of biased to me. Suffice it to say it is no longer the company it used to be and in my opinion will only continue to get worse. They have joined the ranks of those companies that will cut any and all corners to achieve domination. Pay for a part time associate starts at $10/hr.
