ALL ONE Vitamins

My family has been in the vitamin business since the 1930’s. My Dad was the founder of ‘Plus Products,’ famous for introducing the first nutrition candy bar the ‘Tigers Milk Bar’ to the American public in the 1960’s.

Working with Adelle Davis our family introduced the first high potency Vitamin C tablet, the first ‘Stress’ formula, and the first comprehensive multiple formulas.

Lots of firsts.
I came aboard in 1972 when my Dad and I developed the first high potency multiple vitamin mineral powder, ALL ONE.

We have been selling the ALL ONE formula in Health Food Stores since 1984. For the twelve years before that, we sold it strictly to doctors and their patients mail-order only. Our initial reception in the health food class of trade was an awesome success.

In 1986 there was an incredible confluence of events.

One:
We had thousands of satisfied, excited ‘ALL ONE’ customers.

Two:
I met Prem Kumar.

Prem was a young man from Ahmedebad, India who was walking around the world for Peace. He wore a banner made for him by school children in England. When I met Prem he was on the final leg of a four year ‘around the world’ journey. Because of his commitment, sincerity, honesty and basically … putting his legs where his mouth was I decided to support him by joining him on his walk from Santa Barbara to San Francisco.

It took a month and was an amazing experience.

During that walk, through Prem’s stories, I became very aware of the Earth, our world, and all of the kindred spirits all across our planet, who believe in world peace. There were hundreds of people, in dozens of countries, who supported Prem in his Journey. My walk from Santa Barbara to San Francisco was my chance to taste a bit of his experience.

When I got home from that magic time I was sitting at my little ‘Mac’ computer (the first year of the personal computer), working on one of the first ‘Mac Paint’ programs, rendering a little drawing of the Earth from space.

While I was drawing away someone came into my office and said: “hey we have all these different kinds of people taking ‘ALL ONE’ and are really having great experiences. Maybe we should come up with a little folder that we put under the lid of ALL ONE that says something like: People who take ALL ONE.”

When they said that, I put the words “ALL ONE People” in a box around the drawing of the Earth I had been drawing and …

“BINGO!”

The ‘All One People’ logo was born…

We put it on the ‘All One People’ folders under the lid of the can with the individual stories of the people who loved ‘ALL ONE.’ It was a great promotion. Then we decided to put the ‘All One People’ logo on a button. We went to the Anaheim trade show in the spring of 1987 and put a bunch of ‘All One People’ buttons out there. The response was incredible.

That was when I met Steve Ehli. Steve came up to me and said: “This is the most amazingly timely image I have ever seen.” His excitement and enthusiasm created an environment in which we went wild. We created “All One People” posters, “All One People” T-shirts, “All One People” buttons, “All One People” hats, “All One People” refrigerator magnets … you name it … In the next few years we distributed well over one million “All One People” images.

By request we printed them in more than a dozen languages including Spanish, Hindi, Italian, French, German, Hebrew, Tibetan, and even Esperanto.

In fact, a great story is that in 1994 when I had the incredible honor of meeting The Dali Lama in Dharamsala India I showed him a button and he gave me a sweet smile and whispered “I’ve seen those.” Well you can imagine … from my little Mac a mere seven years before to …

There is something about those simple three words wrapped around the image of the Earth that speaks to the heart of human beings everywhere.

By 1994, we felt the need to put the image to a non-political, humanitarian cause so we created ‘The Vitamin Angel Alliance’ in conjunction with Direct Relief International. Under the ‘All One People’ banner we created an alliance of players in the Nutrition Industry and Direct Relief to distribute much needed supplements to those in need around the world. We had a number of very successful promotions with the support of Whole Foods Markets and launced the program.

Howard Schiffer, who was the Nutritech’s President at the time, has continued to direct and grow ‘The Vitamin Angel Alliance’ into one of the premier success stories in our industry.

Pretty amazing isn’t it … how a few words … a photo … an idea can truly help change the world.

So … we’re back. I truly feel that the ‘All One People’ logo and image is more relevant today than it was in the 1980’s.

Our world has changed … Now more than ever it is important to see that every life, decision, choice and action of everyone effects the life of everyone else. So please join us; wear the buttons, hats and T-shirts proudly and share them with your friends and ones you love.

Love,
Doug Ingoldsby