In this episode, Devenee Schumacher shares her journey from her grandmother’s kitchen to founding and building SDC Nutrition into a leading manufacturer in the health and wellness industry. She reflects on how her love of food, curiosity for science, and commitment to quality turned a homegrown idea into a company built on integrity and innovation. Devenee discusses how honesty and persistence guided her through the challenges of scaling a new market, why investing in people and doing what’s right creates lasting impact, and how true growth comes from staying grounded in purpose and passion.

Key Takeaways:

• Purpose and passion often begin with humble roots where love for craft and family spark lifelong curiosity and drive.
• Integrity and quality build trust in products, partners, and people and form the foundation of lasting success.
• Resilience and innovation thrive when leaders stay true to their values, adapt to change, and keep improving what they create.
• True fulfillment comes from doing what’s right, investing in others, and leading with honesty, purpose, and heart.

Chapters:

1. 00:00 - Introduction
2. 05:16 - Humble Roots and Lifelong Curiosity
3. 07:40 - Turning Passion into a Product
4. 14:07 - Integrity and Innovation in Manufacturing
5. 22:10 - Growth, Partnership, and Purpose

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You'll also find other Microcap Moments episodes, alongside our series Everyday Heroes and Bigger. Stronger. Faster., highlighting the people and stories that make the microcap space unique.

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This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, or a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the “Terms of Use” page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.

Michael Burcham: 00:00:18

Welcome to Microcap Moments, a podcast from Shore Capital Partners that highlights the stories of founders, investors, and leaders who have taken on the challenge of transforming ideas and small companies into high growth organizations.

Michael Burcham: 00:00:33

The journey of building and scaling a business takes one down many unexpected paths.

Michael Burcham: 00:00:38

It's a journey where we learn from our mistakes, fall down often, but have the entrepreneurial grit to pick ourselves up and persevere.

Michael Burcham: 00:00:46

Within this series, we will share these stories of success and failure of the challenges and the rewards faced by those who dare to dream big and through their lessons learned we hope to inspire others who are on a similar journey of becoming, growing, and leading.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:03

In this episode, I talk with Devenee Schumacher, co-founder of SDC Nutrition, Dev's story as a co-founder and really a market maker in the nutrition space during the late two thousands started in her grandma's kitchen.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:15

This is where food for her became closely associated with love and family, and as Dev started her own family, put herself through culinary school, and deepened her knowledge of food, became a fish monger, a butcher, and a chef.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:28

She also became interested in her own health and wellness, and as it turns out, what was good for Dev was good for a whole new generation of CrossFit athletes, and particularly women who were paying closer attention to nutrition and the science of performance.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:42

Dev shares the challenges she faced in sourcing and manufacturing the quality of ingredients she demanded for her products.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:48

And how that challenge necessitated a shift in her business from a pure product company to a manufacturer of ingredients and supplements for other companies through a couple of decades of growth and scale, setbacks and wins, and a headstrong commitment to nutrition and manufacturing the highest quality ingredients.

Anderson Williams: 00:02:06

SDC Nutrition is a far cry from Dev's Grandma's kitchen.

Anderson Williams: 00:02:09

But the connection between love and nutrition, Dev felt there remains at the heart of every ingredient and every product.

Anderson Williams: 00:02:16

SDC makes.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:17

I grew up dirt poor.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:18

We had nothing, you know, and I worked my way to where I was.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:22

So did life fast, got married, had kids.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:25

I was 19 years old, almost 20.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:27

You know, did that said I can't live this life and put myself through culinary school.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:32

I graduated valedictorian, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:34

So during my schooling, the dean made me go work at the Duquesne Club, which is the number one city club in the United States, and.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:42

So I got to work and do some really, really cool stuff.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:44

I've cooked for presidents, vice presidents, NFL, NBA, NHL.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:49

Like I've done a lot of really cool things, but I didn't make enough money, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:53

I had kids in daycare, like I, it, it didn't was enough money, so I, they opened up Whole Foods Market in Pittsburgh.

Dev Schumacher: 00:02:58

So I applied, was hired on the spot.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:00

So I went there as a fishmonger, became immersed in all the education, knew everything about seafood, where it came from, all the things.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:07

They asked me to move to the meat department to manage it.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:09

And I became the first female butcher ever for Whole Foods market.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:13

And while I did that, my husband was in the meat and seafood industry and one of the long-term businesses of downtown Pittsburgh was going up for sale and it was Benkovitz Seafoods, and they've been open since the late 1800s.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:25

And so it was just a small retail store.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:27

You bought fresh fish, fried fish, and it had a deli, and so we purchased that.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:33

I ended up leaving Whole Foods market to run that and become the executive chef there.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:37

During that time, I was getting into shape.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:40

My business partner now was my trainer.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:42

So we were training living a low glycemic lifestyle.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:46

I created cookies and cakes for us to eat, like granola bars and things.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:50

That took off like a lightning bolt.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:52

I used to bake every single day after work.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:54

So we created this whole food bar line.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:57

Selling maybe 600 bars a week.

Dev Schumacher: 00:03:59

My kids putting stickers on clamshells, my husband helping me.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:03

And then we were like, well, we need a good protein.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:05

We're buying EAS out of Sam's Club.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:07

We created a protein powder with a company over by Philadelphia.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:11

They were the first ones creating sugar for us.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:14

We left them, went somewhere else.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:16

They were doing the same thing.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:17

Left them, went somewhere else.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:18

They were the doing the same thing.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:20

But when we found out they were doing it, obviously we did our plant.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:23

But in the meantime, since then, so 2018, I moved off grid and lived in the middle of nowhere.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:29

I went back to school, became a chemist in a cosmetic formulator.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:33

I moved back to Ohio in 2022, went back to school and I'm a functional nutrition lifestyle practitioner now, and so everything that I've done with my life has all come back to circle of, we're like the originator of creating natural products.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:51

No colors, no artificial, no anything, no gluten.

Dev Schumacher: 00:04:54

When it wasn't even a thing, me becoming a formulator was because I didn't wanna put this stuff on my skin anymore and it wasn't available.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:01

Me becoming a doctor is because I truly feel you can fix your body with food.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:06

You don't need all these drugs.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:08

A little bit of exercise and eating a little bit of something better is just a better process.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:12

And so, I've done a lot.

Anderson Williams: 00:05:14

Yeah.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:14

But I still sling supplements every day.

Anderson Williams: 00:05:16

Yeah.

Anderson Williams: 00:05:17

So go back to the early days.

Anderson Williams: 00:05:19

What drew you to culinary in the first place?

Anderson Williams: 00:05:22

Just go back to that basic foundation in food.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:26

My grandmother.

Anderson Williams: 00:05:26

Yeah.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:27

So we're Italian and everything about our family was food.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:31

Everything about our life was food.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:32

We never had alcohol or anything of that at any party or family function.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:37

It was where's the cavatelli, where's the cannoli?

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:39

Where's, you know, where's all of the food and the love, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:42

That came out of my grandmother doing this for her family.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:46

That's what it was about.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:47

When my parents would drop me off to stay sleepover grandma's for the weekend or whatever.

Dev Schumacher: 00:05:52

When you were four and below, you sat at the little kid's table right below the fish tank and she would bring you dough and you'd play with dough and all the things, and once you turned five, you graduated and you got to go up to the island.

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:05

And so sometimes you'd sit on the island, but you would learn, she would teach, she'd take your finger and she'd teach you how to roll the cavatelli or she'd teach you how to press the pastel or whatever we were doing.

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:15

My mom is the oldest of nine, so we're the first generation, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:19

So I've always gone back to that.

Anderson Williams: 00:06:22

How did you think about that evolution for you of going from that love of a grandma's kitchen to nutrition?

Anderson Williams: 00:06:30

Right?

Anderson Williams: 00:06:30

Like I listen to all those, it makes my stomach growl.

Anderson Williams: 00:06:33

Listening to your grandmother's kitchen, but that's a long way from nutrition.

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:36

Sure.

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:36

'cause she used a lot of sugar and flour, you know?

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:38

But doing that, so my next.

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:40

Step was becoming a chef, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:42

And so then I took that ability.

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:43

So when you become a chef, so part of that is learning how to prepare fish in a raw form and cutting meat to a certain degree, but not butchering.

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:52

And you know, so my thought was when I go and I became a fish monger, and I became a butcher, what people loved about me was I told 'em how to cook it.

Dev Schumacher: 00:06:59

Every customer that came in, they would say like, Devenee, what do I do with this?

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:03

I have no idea.

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:04

You know?

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:04

And I would be able to help them make good things for their families.

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:08

And if I can impact you, you can impact her and she can impact somebody else.

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:12

And when you do that over and over, I just think overarching we can make a difference in this world.

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:18

So in between that time just FYI, when I had my kids, I developed allergies and my allergies were getting worse and worse and worse.

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:25

So I, I wasn't able to cook anymore.

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:27

And so me taking my skillset and being able to offer it and teach others, I just felt like instead of giving them a fish, I taught them how to fish.

Anderson Williams: 00:07:37

Yeah.

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:37

And they're able to fend for themselves eventually.

Anderson Williams: 00:07:40

Did you start studying nutrition differently because of that?

Anderson Williams: 00:07:43

And then you mentioned your sports and your training and so forth, but when did you really start looking at the science?

Anderson Williams: 00:07:49

Obviously future version of you becomes a chemist.

Anderson Williams: 00:07:52

But when did you first, and how did you first start thinking about the science?

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:55

It was when I was getting, uh, control over like my workouts and whatnot.

Dev Schumacher: 00:07:59

When I started eating low glycemic, I started paying attention to what does sugar do to you?

Dev Schumacher: 00:08:05

How do foods interact with your body as a whole?

Dev Schumacher: 00:08:08

And you know, there wasn't a lot of education behind it and there wasn't a lot of education out there, but it was really more of understanding how does certain foods impact with your blood sugar and how do I feel and how do they make me feel, and how are my workouts being impacted by what I'm doing?

Dev Schumacher: 00:08:25

And so Sean and I were able to eat a certain way, be able to watch our workouts increase, be able to watch my weight go down, and your body transform.

Dev Schumacher: 00:08:35

And then we did that for the people that he trained.

Dev Schumacher: 00:08:37

So eventually I was a figurehead, practically living in his gym.

Dev Schumacher: 00:08:42

So we thought of our company name and we designed everything on the treadmill, but it wasn't so much just working out all the time.

Dev Schumacher: 00:08:48

It was truly what are we ingesting and what is it doing to us?

Dev Schumacher: 00:08:52

And then as a brand grew, then you meet like all of our ambassadors and our athletes.

Dev Schumacher: 00:08:56

Then CrossFit started and when CrossFit started those individuals were game changers.

Dev Schumacher: 00:09:02

They really made an impact on natural 'cause they demanded it and they had a lot of information in science behind them because the type of athlete that they are demanded additional doctoring and therapeutic and just more information on how nutrition impacts their life.

Dev Schumacher: 00:09:20

And so they truly made a lot of things happen.

Anderson Williams: 00:09:24

How did you get from that place where you were doing things for yourself and with your trainer that were mirroring your needs to launching a product and a business that was facing a market, right?

Anderson Williams: 00:09:35

It's one thing you've understood your own body.

Anderson Williams: 00:09:37

You're making things that are working for your body.

Anderson Williams: 00:09:39

That's a big jump to then start to say, I'm gonna put something out to the market for everybody.

Anderson Williams: 00:09:43

How did you get from private sort of side of this to a public facing in entrepreneurial venture?

Dev Schumacher: 00:09:50

It was our meal replacement bar line.

Dev Schumacher: 00:09:51

So I was making cakes and cookies for Sean and I, and so when his clients would come to him, they're sitting on the table and they're like, oh, what's this?

Dev Schumacher: 00:09:59

And he would explain the ingredients and tell 'em what we were doing.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:02

Then they would buy them and very, very quickly people were coming in day in and day out, 6, 12, 18 at a time and purchasing them.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:11

And so we literally, word of mouth through his clients and who they were telling and that kind of just grew.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:17

And so we were able to educate that base and then they educated and so then we brought on more athletes at that time.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:24

So it was truly just networking with his clients and so we kind of expanded that way and that's when we said.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:30

Let's create our own protein powder.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:32

So that timeframe to put time around it was 2008.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:36

There were no gluten-free foods other than chocolate cake and rice bread.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:40

No ethnic food aisle.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:42

Nothing was available.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:43

Fitness booty camps were just becoming big.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:46

Group fitness for women was just becoming big.

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:49

When you walked into A GNC, it was very male-centric, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:10:53

Huge biceps on the labels, big, greasy abs on the labels and when you walked in the door, it was all those big five pound tubs and women would walk in.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:03

There was no wellness, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:05

There was capsules and tablets, but not like there is today.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:07

There was no wellness, there was no condition specific.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:10

You walked in and it was testosterone and protein, and women were like, I don't wanna look like this.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:15

And they still say that, I don't wanna look like this.

Anderson Williams: 00:11:18

Were those your earliest adopters then were women?

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:20

Yes.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:21

So when we said let's develop a protein powder, we said, okay and when we developed it, it was for women.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:27

It was a fun About Time logo and About Time stood for, it's about time you have good ingredients and great taste all wrapped up in one.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:34

'Cause back then it was, if you had good ingredients, it was a horrible taste or if you had a great taste, it was horrible ingredients.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:41

So we created the best of both worlds and made it gluten-free.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:46

And so we were able to go to women and be like, it's okay.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:49

And it's unisex.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:50

You can give this to your kids, you can give this.

Dev Schumacher: 00:11:52

We educated how children, especially in sports, needed protein, not Fritos, like, you know, you need protein, so.

Anderson Williams: 00:11:59

You mentioned before when we were talking that you had challenges just so that anybody listening can have a sense of what the market really looked like.

Anderson Williams: 00:12:07

It's to think of the 2025 market, it's a very different thing.Than what you're describing.

Anderson Williams: 00:12:10

But, so you had that market challenge of GNC being the central thing, and you go in, you bulk and muscle and mass.

Anderson Williams: 00:12:17

And all of these kinds of things on the shelves, but you ran into challenges in the manufacturing side as well, so can you talk a little bit about that?

Anderson Williams: 00:12:25

Just so anybody listening can understand that even the supply chain and all of that was not matured yet either.

Dev Schumacher: 00:12:31

Very, very limited.

Dev Schumacher: 00:12:32

So even before supply chain people like GNC, they didn't understand natural.

Dev Schumacher: 00:12:37

So our first challenge started there 'cause we sold our product to GNC and I would say maybe in nine months.

Dev Schumacher: 00:12:45

They came to us and said, we have to give this to the franchisee side because we don't understand it.

Dev Schumacher: 00:12:50

We don't know how to sell it.

Dev Schumacher: 00:12:51

And so that's how we got connected with the franchisee system over there.

Dev Schumacher: 00:12:55

But when we launched this, you, you're absolutely correct.

Dev Schumacher: 00:12:58

We were so limited in raw materials.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:00

Our challenges were, yes, we have Stevia to use, we have some natural coloring.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:05

We had beet root and betacarotene, but there was nothing, nothing creative like there is now.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:10

So as we grew as a manufacturer and tried to be creative, and Sean and I knew a lot about food in general 'cause we would just read and learn a lot about food.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:20

We requested this from manufacturers and so as we requested and sent it out there, we helped those companies become more creative.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:29

You know, we created demand for better materials.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:32

And then as the world started catching on, that demand grew greater and greater, and greater and greater.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:38

And now look at the grocery stores.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:40

You have entire aisles dedicated to gluten-free.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:43

And you know, from 2008 to have two products in gluten-free to 2025 to have endless foods.

Dev Schumacher: 00:13:51

2008, those two products weren't that great tasting, and now today you have no taste difference between a Chips Ahoy cookie or if it was a gluten-free cookie.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:02

Everything's very similar in taste.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:03

You're not giving anything up anymore to choose a better lifestyle.

Anderson Williams: 00:14:07

Part of that quality story too was part of your shift to manufacturing.

Anderson Williams: 00:14:11

So you started by making your own products, but then figured out that what you were putting in your products was not what you thought you were putting in your product.

Anderson Williams: 00:14:19

So will you talk a little bit about that shift and how that compelled you into the, not just the product side, but the manufacturing side?

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:25

Absolutely.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:26

So when we originally started, we were using another manufacturer, it wasn't us.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:31

And back in the 2008, 2009.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:34

CGMP wasn't even a thing back then.

Anderson Williams: 00:14:37

Explain what that is for us.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:38

Certified good general manufacturing practices.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:40

So CGMP is what all manufacturers have to be now, so that you have to follow those good manufacturing practice laws.

Anderson Williams: 00:14:49

Got it.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:49

Or you're not supposed to produce product.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:51

So CGMP wasn't a thing.

Dev Schumacher: 00:14:54

Manufacturers were able to kind of do whatever the FDA, you know, they created rules for the dietary supplement manufacturing system and it's.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:02

CFR 111 and CFR 117.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:05

And basically all they did was handed out a book that said if you're gonna be a dietary supplement manufacturer, you have to follow these rules.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:12

But ultimately, there's no one following up to see if those rules were happening to anyone.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:17

Maybe every once every five years or longer, they would come out and check a facility.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:22

So with no real guidance out there or oversight.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:25

The kids will play.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:26

And so you found that a lot back then and there were very few manufacturers back then.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:32

So as we found out, I was creating a cookie for a friend of ours for his product line, and he was doing third party testing for macros.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:41

So fats, carbs, and proteins and his test results kept coming back saying, Devenee, these are really high in carbohydrates and low in protein.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:50

And so they started testing the raw materials and tested our protein and found out that our protein was a 60% protein and not whey isolate.

Dev Schumacher: 00:15:59

And so we were like, okay, well something's wrong here.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:01

And that's when we addressed the manufacturer and, and of course they're like, we don't know what you're talking about.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:06

And you know, you show 'em the test results and then we started moving to a new facility when we went to the second manufacturer.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:12

In between there, we said, listen, we've gotta raise money.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:15

We're gonna open up our own manufacturing facility and we're gonna have ingredient integrity.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:20

So we started that process.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:21

We had a handful of angel investors, which were Sean's clients at the time.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:25

They gave us the money and invested in us.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:28

So we started building that facility out.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:30

We went to a secondary manufacturer, bought product.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:33

Found out inconsistencies in color, inconsistencies in texture, aroma, all the things.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:39

We would third party test it and the protein would come back too low.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:42

So as we were still building our facility, Sean and I were learning how to formulate, getting samples in trying to recreate our own products that were currently on the market.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:51

We went to a third manufacturer.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:53

Same thing, inconsistency in color, texture, aroma, protein percentage, way too low.

Dev Schumacher: 00:16:59

And then we eventually opened up our doors in March of 2011.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:03

We started manufacturing our own product, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:06

We got the ingredient integrity.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:08

We matched all of our flavors.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:10

And then quickly found out like I don't sell enough to keep the lights on, so.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:13

We have to bring new clients in.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:16

And so Sean was always the networker, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:18

He would talk to people, find out call brands, you having problems like, and people were open.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:23

They were open to say like, I think we're having problems.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:26

They'd send samples into us.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:28

We would test it.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:29

We have to rework their flavors, rework their pricing, get, tell 'em what the true pricing of their product was and you know, and then have to relaunch their brands.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:39

And some of these customers were on the market for a lot of years.

Dev Schumacher: 00:17:42

So we quickly became known as the company that fixes problems, and we from that time have been heavy in R&D and we're known for 95% or higher flavor matching, literally just by organoleptic, which is physically tasting a product and then using our ability to figure out what flavors those are and make it.

Dev Schumacher: 00:18:03

So to this day, we've been very, very good at that.

Anderson Williams: 00:18:06

It's really amazing, and I don't want to skim over the fact that if my math is right.

Anderson Williams: 00:18:11

In about 10 years, you had two kids, went back to school, became a chef, became a fish monger, became a butcher, started exercising and making your own stuff, started selling that stuff, recognized that the people making that stuff were not making it honestly then decided to start manufacturing the stuff that went into what you were making, that's not the path that everyone just says, yep, I'll go figure that out.

Anderson Williams: 00:18:32

Like what made you think, you weren't just doing it, buying your own product, you were actually challenging an industry, a nascent industry, like where'd that come from?

Anderson Williams: 00:18:41

Why did you think you could do that?

Dev Schumacher: 00:18:43

That wasn't the plan.

Dev Schumacher: 00:18:45

It became the plan.

Dev Schumacher: 00:18:46

We were so invested in knowing that the quality of our product should be here.

Dev Schumacher: 00:18:52

It should be what it is.

Dev Schumacher: 00:18:53

We were so invested in making sure that the market was able to receive what they were supposed to be receiving from us.

Dev Schumacher: 00:18:59

So like that drive for better products, better quality products, better tasting products, and really giving good nutrition to people is what brought us to that level.

Dev Schumacher: 00:19:10

Businesses are all about making money, but not all the time.

Dev Schumacher: 00:19:13

You know, I'm a big believer in if you can just be honest with people, give them a really good product, they'll take that ride with you and grow with you until your ride is over.

Dev Schumacher: 00:19:23

And that's really what we did.

Dev Schumacher: 00:19:25

We built a community before these communities really even happened.

Dev Schumacher: 00:19:30

To this day, I'm not real big on social media or anything, but the minute I put something out there, my community surrounds me with love, questions, and anything that I could possibly want.

Dev Schumacher: 00:19:41

Yeah.

Dev Schumacher: 00:19:41

So

Anderson Williams: 00:19:41

I have to believe in that process.

Anderson Williams: 00:19:43

So you built a community that was really looking for something that you are offering and that came from a really genuine space of what you were looking for, right?

Anderson Williams: 00:19:51

But you had to have gotten pushback.

Anderson Williams: 00:19:53

You are displacing.

Anderson Williams: 00:19:54

A handful of manufacturers, and I won't say nefarious, but at least a shady sounding industry and you were coming in and saying, we're gonna be transparent and we're gonna be better, and it's probably gonna be more expensive because it's higher quality.

Anderson Williams: 00:20:06

But what kind of pushback did you get?

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:08

We got a lot, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:10

So the pushback that we got was other manufacturers would get a little bit of upset when we would call them out and really call them out on what they were doing or explaining to their customers what they were doing, and then they would lose their customers.

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:23

The raw material industry.

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:25

It was really time that we lost there.

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:27

There was no real pushback from them.

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:29

It was we gotta find people to create this so we could sell it to you.

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:34

So that just took time for that industry to kind of catch up to our thinking.

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:39

And honestly, I started this company with $500, you know, and grew it to what it is today.

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:44

We didn't have the marketing money since we didn't plan to be a manufacturer, our investors, they probably would've given me marketing money, but we had to give me money to build a facility.

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:54

So, you know, we never really had those marketing dollars.

Dev Schumacher: 00:20:57

So we missed the boat, so to speak.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:00

We would create it and put it out there.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:02

We just didn't have the impact globally, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:05

Yeah.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:05

We didn't have the impact out there.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:06

So other brands as natural caught on, we actually created natural for many, many, many other brands, and we said, we're gonna create for you because this is the way the world's going and you need to be on this train.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:18

And so that grew and grew and grew and grew and grew, and so many new things were created out of there.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:24

And people with deeper pockets were able to push and do, but over time.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:28

We realized that we're not marketers.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:30

We were two people with one goal, and it was creating really good products and growing that business and selling that business.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:38

All the jagged ways that we had to change and turn and loop around made us a little bit of a different company.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:45

And yes, we kind of backtracked and went into contract manufacturing and we still have our brands.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:50

But I don't think I would do it any other way.

Dev Schumacher: 00:21:53

You know, I had the ability to touch so many people, to give them opportunities to grow in their brand, to become better in the market, and have a differentiator that made them special.

Dev Schumacher: 00:22:04

You know?

Dev Schumacher: 00:22:05

And I'm hoping that their brands grew and grew and grew and you know, they became better people for it.

Anderson Williams: 00:22:10

And talk a little bit about the evolution of the market and just your own thinking as you went through this process.

Anderson Williams: 00:22:18

You built a strong brand with About Time over years at the same time you were doing the manufacturing.

Anderson Williams: 00:22:25

Not to mention basically creating a new market.

Anderson Williams: 00:22:27

At what point did you decide that the manufacturing was the way forward?

Anderson Williams: 00:22:32

And then you mentioned you weren't

Anderson Williams: 00:22:33

marketers and so forth

Anderson Williams: 00:22:35

but tell me a little bit about that decision, because that is also not a small decision where you're kind of becoming the team behind the scenes enabling other companies to do work with your level of values and your level of ethics, but it's not necessarily your name or your face or your brand that's out there that everybody's seen.

Anderson Williams: 00:22:53

Talk a little bit about that and was that a difficult decision?

Dev Schumacher: 00:22:56

Um, I don't think it was difficult, but you know, like direct to consumer was different back then.

Dev Schumacher: 00:23:01

The tools that we had were nowhere near as sophisticated as they are now.

Dev Schumacher: 00:23:06

The one real reason that we decided to go to manufacturing was truly algorithms on social media.

Dev Schumacher: 00:23:13

They were ever turning over into something new.

Dev Schumacher: 00:23:15

The amount of money we would spend just to acquire a new customer.

Dev Schumacher: 00:23:19

It just kept rising and rising and rising, and it just became inefficient.

Dev Schumacher: 00:23:23

And back then direct to consumer and all of these ads, social media, I don't think anyone really had a handle on it.

Dev Schumacher: 00:23:32

And so we chose manufacturing because we spent our time trying to figure out social media and the algorithms, and it just wasn't working.

Dev Schumacher: 00:23:39

We were tired, and so that's really why we chose it.

Anderson Williams: 00:23:43

At some point you decided to look for a potential financial partner for the business.

Anderson Williams: 00:23:49

Will you talk about, and I know it took a little bit of time, so will you talk a little bit about why you started to think about a financial partner, particularly private equity, and then just a little bit of the story and the time you took to find the right partner?

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:02

Absolutely.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:02

As we became a manufacturer and we were growing the business, we got to a point where we were maxing out on our abilities to grow the company, and so we discussed, Hey, we can be this, you know, $25 million company, or $26 million company forever.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:20

Or we can go back to the original goal to create a brand, build a brand, and sell a brand.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:25

Our brand was just different now.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:28

And at that point, that was really the decision.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:30

Well, we gotta go back to what we originally set.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:33

We wanna build a brand and sell a brand and have somebody else take it over and make it an amazing brand.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:39

And so we started that look maybe around 2019.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:44

We danced around with a few PE firms, Shore Capital in particular.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:48

And so, you know, then the pandemic hit and that kind of went away for a little bit for everybody.

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:53

Shore Capital came back around just to say, Hey, how you doing?

Dev Schumacher: 00:24:57

Kind of sparked us out of our little lull there.

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:00

Kind of got us out of that lull of the pandemic 'cause we were busy, right?

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:04

The pandemic happened.

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:05

We were making vitamin C out the wazoo and you know, zinc capsules and we were really, really slammed with certain products at that point in time.

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:14

But you know, they peaked our interest coming back around again.

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:17

And then we always said, well, let's see what else is out there and we took that time and we just weren't ready.

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:22

We wanted to get the business to a little bit of a better state of what we were in.

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:26

And you know, when we decided, and I think it was like late 2022, we said we're ready.

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:33

And I think January of 2023 we reached out to Shore Capital again and said, come back around.

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:39

Third time's a charm.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:40

What was it about in your mind?

Anderson Williams: 00:25:42

'Cause I'd love to get into the head of the founder in this conversation.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:46

What was it in your mind?

Anderson Williams: 00:25:47

Post pandemic and otherwise where you were like, I think we're ready now.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:51

You've been thinking about it.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:52

You instinctively or otherwise knew you weren't ready prior to that.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:55

Do you remember what it was that made you go?

Anderson Williams: 00:25:58

No.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:58

I think now we're ready.

Dev Schumacher: 00:25:59

I don't know if it was an exact moment, but we were making money.

Dev Schumacher: 00:26:02

We understood almost everything about that business.

Dev Schumacher: 00:26:06

And we were honest with ourselves of, I don't know how much more we can do, 'cause we didn't have the skillset.

Dev Schumacher: 00:26:12

And so, it was we need expertise brought in here and we didn't wanna just go hire random people and kind of say, do this.

Dev Schumacher: 00:26:21

Our ultimate goal was to sell the company.

Dev Schumacher: 00:26:23

And so that expertise came to us in the vision of a PE firm who's gonna be able to invest their time, their resources, their finances still give us the ability to say, we're gonna still run this company, but almost be that protector for us to say, let me guide you, let me guide you and help you grow it.

Dev Schumacher: 00:26:43

And that's truly what we wanted.

Dev Schumacher: 00:26:45

We wanted to run own business but have that guidance on how to get it to the next step.

Anderson Williams: 00:26:50

And I can't help but go back to your description of your grandmother's kitchen and the early products you were making just for your own nutrition, and then having the validation of others and then recognizing all the challenges in the manufacturing that you've described and so forth.

Anderson Williams: 00:27:04

How did Shore end up being the right partner for you?

Anderson Williams: 00:27:07

What was different?

Anderson Williams: 00:27:07

You looked at a couple of others and maybe related to that, what were some of the concerns and some of the flags that you were throwing up as you did this kind of research?

Dev Schumacher: 00:27:15

Yeah.

Dev Schumacher: 00:27:15

The one thing I would say is I remember saying that you guys were always classy.

Dev Schumacher: 00:27:19

Everything that Shore Capital did for us, there was a response to every action as simple as they sent a bottle of wine, or they sent a Shore Capital shirt and hat, or a thank you or inviting us somewhere.

Dev Schumacher: 00:27:31

Everything was always closed off with some kind of remembrance of thanking us for our time to spend with them, not the other way around.

Dev Schumacher: 00:27:40

And that's probably the most I take from Shore Capital right now is they're really thankful for the companies who wanna come work with them.

Anderson Williams: 00:27:49

Can you give us an overview of where SDC Nutrition is today?

Anderson Williams: 00:27:53

Just give us a sense of the size of the company, your size of your team, a little bit about your market, that's where you are, a couple years into the investment.

Dev Schumacher: 00:28:01

Yes, so we're around 135 employees at this point.

Dev Schumacher: 00:28:06

$52 million in sales, and we're moving into a brand new facility.

Dev Schumacher: 00:28:11

So in order to grow and bring on more revenue, our current facility, we have limitations.

Dev Schumacher: 00:28:17

And so we built a brand new facility from the ground up.

Dev Schumacher: 00:28:20

We're in the process of moving at this point in time and really, really excited to get in there.

Dev Schumacher: 00:28:26

We built that facility to be customer friendly, so there's conference rooms and lounge areas and kitchens for all of our clients, just so when they do come in, they're not out of sorts.

Dev Schumacher: 00:28:37

They don't get behind on their work or running their businesses, and they're able to come into our facility, create new products, go over business, go over pricing, and do what they need to do and really not miss a beat.

Anderson Williams: 00:28:54

If you enjoyed this episode, check out our other Microcap Moments episodes at www.shorecp.university/podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:04

Here you'll also find our Bigger.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:06

Stronger.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:07

Faster.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:07

and Everyday Heroes series, each highlighting the people and stories that make investing in the lower middle market unique.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:13

This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners and recorded in the Andrew Malone podcast Studio with story and narration by Anderson Williams.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:21

Recording by Austin Johnson.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:24

Editing by Reel Audiobooks.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:26

Sound design, mixing, and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:30

Special thanks to Devenee Schumacher.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:32

This podcast is a Property of Shore Capital Partners, LLC.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:35

None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:44

See the Terms of Use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.