Check out what I got in the mail the other day from this supplement warehouse.
I have not picked up a bodybuilding / supplement warehouse magazine in about ten years or so. I guess I am on a mailing list that some company bought. I proceeded to flip through the pages, and I started to have flashbacks on what the supplement industry used to be. It used to be controlled by these magazines. The magazines we’re not informative and give you useful information. What they were meant to be was a tool to sell you supplements. If I think about too when I was in college back in the early 1990’s, there were a few machines that come to mind. Ironman Magazine, Flex, MuscleMag International, Muscle Media 2000, & Muscular Development. These were the big five magazines. And honestly, they ruled the supplement industry. As I read most of these magazines month after month looking for supplement advice etc.some what, I came to realize that each magazine somewhat gave MORE attention to one particular brand of supplements than most. Take for example MuscleMag International. All they did was talk about Muscletech. Page after page you could not get away from an ad for Muscletech. Whether it was a flat out an ad or an article cleverly disguised to push one of Muscletech products. Then you had Muscle Media 2000. Which pushed Bill Phillips supplement line EAS. Again, page after page, you’d see ads for EAS supplements. At the beginning of the magazine, at the end of the magazine, all you would see were ads for EAS supplements. However, after a got smart I started to realize the agenda of these magazines were to sell you their supplements which were probably in the same building as their supplement warehouse.
These magazines in the 1990’s controlled bodybuilding & supplement “information”. They had a grip on the entire fitness industry. That is why the supplement companies related to these magazines sold so many supplements in my opinion. The internet was not around at that time, and the only information you could get was from these magazine/ supplement warehouse outfits. Brands like Weider, Muscletech, EAS, grew tremendously. They could put on their magazines and give information that steered their readers to buy their supplements. Then the internet happened. BOOM! These magazine/ supplement warehouse companies started to collapse. Well, at least their gripped on the supplement industry began to loosen. From what I remember Weider was super popular in the 80’s and 90’s, and now you’re lucky if you find their products in any store. From what I see, they sell most of their supplements in 3rd world countries, like India and Pakistan, where their buyers there still think Gamma-O will make them huge, and Mega Weight Gainer 10,000 will help them put on 30lbs. (Believe it or not the serving size of one of Weider Products was 450 grams! I shit you not! and it came in a 10lbs BOX or bucket) This is the kind of bullshit supplements these guys pushed and sold to consumers. But they were able to do so because of their control of the supplement information. That is all people know. Below is a picture I found, the serving size is literally 450 grams. That is 1 pound of freakin powder!
Things began to change when the Internet was born. People had access to information. People had access to each other. Wanna be muscle seekers could go on a “forum” or a “chat room” and asked questions about supplements. They could ask a question like, “Did anyone else blow the lid off their toilet bowl after drinking 1 pound of Weider’s Weight Gainer 10,000?” And people would respond! It was awesome! Supplement scams we’re soon being dissolved (at least the bad ones) to some degree.
However, my nightmare return when I got this magazine in the mail. This magazine called “Status Fitness Magazine”. It is funny because the internet has changed things so much. Back in the day when you saw the cover model on a magazine like Flex, you’d be like, wow who’s that. Now all you need to do is go on Instagram and you’ll find 1,000 girls that look just like this and better. On the cover of this Status magazine that I got is Jennifer Nicole Lee. Back in the day she was the shit. Now, obviously, she’s a sell out and she would have never posed for this magazine when she was on top of the fitness world.
I preceeded to open the magazine and of course was hit with an ad
The world’s most effective L-carnitine it said. Legally that is a claim. And legally I could file a lawsuit against them making them prove it or pay damages. Being a supplement expert I know that the best quality L-carnitine is called Carnipure. Here it is if you want it. [easyazon_link identifier=”B009129IWO” locale=”US” tag=”bp025-20″]Carnipure L-Carnitine[/easyazon_link] I proceed to look up the company that makes it called “hard magnum”. (sounds more like a viagra type company, than supplement company). I went to their return policy page and got this address
19278 25 Ave, Surrey BC Canada V3S 3X1
I then went to this page in Status Magazine and found this address.
I then went to google maps and google both address and found out that they are very close to each other. Smell that? I smell something funny! I smell something like a magazine/ supplement warehouse scam going on! Is this the 1990’s all over again. In my opinion yes. The first address at 25 av is most likely their supplement warehouse. The second address most likely is some sort of office. It is some coincidence that both of these companies are located in Canada and only a 45-minute drive from each other? How strange isn’t it? I am going to allege that both companies are related somewhat, and they are running a supplement warehouse / magazine scam.
On a side note, never buy supplements from Canada. I feel they do not have the quality control that the FDA has. Not that it matters really because nobody follows the federal regulations for dietary supplements anyway….but at least you can sue them if you have to get a liver transplant. In addition, this company claims “pharmacuetical grade” supplements. Uh…no such thing. That would make it a drug and a big no-no here in the United States!
[clickToTweet tweet=”Don’t be fooled by this surefire supplement scam!” quote=”It is unbelievable to me how this supplement warehouse / magazine scam still exists. Obviously, there are people out there that don’t have internet access or something. “] Page after page of this magazine is filled with advertisements for Hard Magnum supplements.
I continued to flip through the magazine and found this.
This is your classic bullshit review. The magazine pretends to review a random supplement, in this case, their own, and give it rave reviews. However, I found something very disturbing in this magazine, which could easily put this company in legal trouble. They are making serious legal claims here. And I quote from this fake review.
“E-brake is formulated to slow estrogen production. Men and women will experience increased strength, enhance muscle growth, reduce recovery time, decreased water weight and even increased libido with decreased estrogen production. ”
WOW, what CLAIMS. These are technically DRUG claims.
Here’s another claim in the fake review. And I quote
“E-Brake decreases the conversion of testosterone to DHT, thereby increasing levels of free testosterone.”
Again, what a serious claim. This is a drug claim. This, in my opinion, is can easily be used in a class action lawsuit against this company and the FTC and the FDA if this shit company we’re in the United States can put a beat down on them. You cannot make these kind of claims. They are saying that their supplement will have drug like effects, that it will actually increase your testosterone! This is insane!!
After that, I had to throw out the magazine and start to write this blog post. I wanted to warn people that magazines and the scumbags behind them are still out there. Even with the internet available I guess a business like this still can flourish. Which obviously they are because this is some magazine and they have a ton of supplements. You would think with the internet that a company like this could not thrive.
The internet, unfortunately, is just as bad if not worse. The supplement industry is controlled by the certain websites. How? Well, let me explain.
Google. It is the main problem. The internet is controlled by Google. When you search for something, GOOGLE, determines which websites rank on the first page. If your company or whatever, ranks on the first page, those are the websites that get clicked. As you can see with this graph below, everyone clicks on the 1,2,3 results. Forget about the 2nd page of Google (11th result and below)
So how does Google determine which websites rank in which order? A lot of people have theories and my theory, after researching companies websites like MOZ (these guys are search engine experts), ranking is more or less based on domain authority. Google ranks pages with high DA. The higher your DA, in most cases, the higher your page rank. 100 is the highest number for DA. My company’s DA is 41. Bodybuilding.com is 82. Therefore, they will rank higher than me for search terms like, “whey protein”.
Now if you rank in the top 5 in google for a search term, you’re making a lot of money. Ranking in the top 5 of a Google search term is like have a super bowl commercial vs. having a commercial on some obscure channel at 2 a.m in the morning. See the difference? It is easy isn’t it. Google ranking is huge. Thus, the websites that rank in the top 5 are controlling and dictating the supplement industry to the masses. A company like mine is being seen at ten people at 3 a.m in the morning on channel 891. Whereas Bodybuilding.com is being seen by millions on Channel 7 at 7 pm. on a weekday night!
Check out this graph on the percentage of people that click on the first page results. As you can see nobody clicks on 2nd page. or the 11th result
In addition you have these phone reviews and review sites. Take a look at this excellent article about fake reviews.
Not only do you have to worry about fake reviews, but you have these review sites. These review sites are merely set up for a money making operation. They rank high in the Google searches for some reason. Thus they get a lot of traffic. People go to the site, click around, buy a product, and the review website make a commission. Meaning, most of the time these websites will only review supplements where they can make the most money. Have you ever seen a Proteinfactory.com supplement on any of these review sites? Nope, none of the ones that rank high in the Google Searches. These companies do not want the public to see what I have to write about the supplement industry and how most products are a scam.
Every result in the Google search is the same cookie cutter stuff. A company like, mine, which has useful and truthful information to share is off the radar. The authors of most of these high ranking sites on Google are nothing more than wanna be experts that have no clue about supplement manufacturing. However an expert like myself, who has been manufacturing supplements for almost 20 years, cannot get his voice heard unless he pays Google thousands a month in advertising fees.
In conclusion, the magazine I received, this supplement warehouse scam is still alive and you should be aware. Most of the time a supplement wareshouse that is big enough will have their own magazine as a marketing tool to try to bait you with bullshit information in hopes to sell you their supplement.
Before I go, let me give you some tips if you want to buy from a supplement warehouse.
1) Ask the supplement warehouse for their FDA registration number
2) Google the address in the magazine like I did and then google the supplement companies address. That will tell you if they are related.
3) Dont be fooled by reviews, most of them are fake. Use supplementreviews.com instead. Amazon reviews are dicey. Some are real, but I have personally received emails from companies offering me to buy reviews on Amazon.com
4) Dive deep into Google search results when looking for a supplement warehouse. Go to page 10 if you have to. Get away from the top 10 guys. Maybe you’ll find useful information and not the cookie cutter stuff on the first page of Google.
5) Read my website thoroughly if you want the truth about supplements :). And if you want a real high quality protein supplement, get my [easyazon_link identifier=”B015HR705I” locale=”US” tag=”bp025-20″]Native Whey Isolate 2lb Vanilla[/easyazon_link]
Alex Rogers is a supplement manufacturing expert. He has been formulating, consulting, & manufacturing dietary supplements since 1998. Alex invented protein customization in 1998 & was the first company to allow consumers to create their own protein blends. He helped create the first supplement to contain natural follistatin, invented whey protein with egg lecithin, & recently imported the world’s first 100% hydrolyzed whey.
