Business View Magazine - April 2016 75
of the first teams to ever go the amino acid route; they
were cutting edge on that.”
A lifelong athlete, Wells was nonetheless aware that
his professional playing days would end well before he
was ready to retire from life. Luckily, his keen interest
in proteins that could be pre-digested so that the body
could assimilate them easier, provided the stimulus
for a very productive post-football career. After leav-
ing the Raiders, Wells began putting his own amino
acid product together with the help of biochemist,
Dr. K.H. William Lau, PhD. In 1985, he, his partner
Dave Smith, with whom he parted ways a few years
later, and a group of investors, founded the MegaPro
Company to distribute his new line of innovative, high-
quality, sports nutrition products. “That company went
along until ’91, and then we started Max Muscle,”
Wells says. “Shortly thereafter, I met Sean and brought
him in as a partner.”
Sean Greene is the President of Max Muscle Sports
Nutrition. He recounts how Wells went on to design,
not just the sports supplements they sold to their cus-
tomers, but also an entirely original marketing scheme
that would come to define the company’s business
model and open its pathway to financial success.
“MegaPro’s biggest account was with GNC – General
Nutrition Center,” Greene begins. “And he learned,
from doing business with them, that a majority of their
sales were coming from sports nutrition. At the same
time, Footlocker was doing very well as a specialized,
niche retail outlet for shoes – as opposed to going into
a large sporting goods store. He took that philosophy
and developed a strategy that said, ‘Why don’t we just
specialize in sports nutrition and go after that consum-
er, directly?’ At the time, it was one of the first specialty
nutrition retail outlets that focused on sports nutrition
and the more serious athlete.”
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Max Muscle Sports Nutrition
WHAT:
Premier franchise specializing in innova-
tive nutritional supplements
WHERE:
Headquarters in Orange, California
WEBSITE
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