In 2003, after more than 20 years as an independent distributor of professional supplements, Brian Blackburn, the company’s CEO, left that career and moved his family to Florida, establishing the business by borrowing resources and funding from friends and family. Blackburn’s wife also left a prestigious career, one at the National Institutes of Health, to help manage Xymogen.
The company now has a 300,000-plus square foot campus with a manufacturing facility, 430 employees and in 2024 had over $150 million in sales.
From humble beginnings in a garage to a multimillion-dollar family-owned business today, Xymogen is moving beyond origins as a company that caters to approximately 30,000 physicians and their patients to one that also markets and sells supplements to the population at-large.
“We had to [expand] because we saw how the industry was changing, how people are now taking health into their own hands,” said Brian Blackburn Jr., chief strategy officer at Xymogen and son of the company’s founders.
More people were turning to supplements during the pandemic to support health. Data from Xymogen show that patients were going to doctors’ offices 20% less post-pandemic.
Also, during this period, Xymogen found out that other companies were using its name and reputation to bolster their own search engine optimization campaigns. Instead of relying only on physicians for business, Xymogen decided that market forces had directed it to start selling supplements to the masses.
In 2022, Xymogen partnered with Front Row, an exclusive distributor on Amazon, to provide supplements online. However, health care practitioners still receive the best pricing on its supplements.
“We feel like we are really scratching the surface of where the company can go and how we can help so many people live healthier lives,” Blackburn Jr. said. “It’s so cliché and I know people say this, but we’re not in it for the money.”
No private equity
Xymogen is not departing from its status as a family-owned, privately held business any time soon, and its founders do not want private equity to have decision-making powers over it, Blackburn Jr. said.
Beyond employees who have bought into the company, Xymogen’s investors include 460 physicians who also prescribe its supplements. The company’s founders and family own just over 60% of Xymogen.
“All the investors are mainly family. It’s either blood family or friends of family, or our practitioner family,” Blackburn Jr. said. “We’re fully liquid. So any time anyone wants to buy their stock back or wants us to buy their stock back, we do it almost in a day.”
Vetting quality ingredients
As Xymogen’s target market has primarily been physicians, the company said its products should exceed standards of other supplement brands. Supplements must be substantiated by human clinical studies, and it will not rely on animal studies to prove efficacy.
The company’s quality team also vets each ingredient supplier, including packaging suppliers, and Blackburn Jr. said these products are often checked three times before they “come in the door.”
That commitment to quality extends to the supply chain, Blackburn Jr. said. If one of the company’s main ingredients goes out of stock, Xymogen will wait until that ingredient is back on the market and not just swap it for another, lesser quality ingredient.
These ingredients and products will be on display at the Xymogen Xperience, a two-day functional medicine event in April, in which speakers will present research on brain health.
”We are very much a relationship-driven company and these events help drive that," Blackburn Jr. said.
