Q: Let’s start by discussing your vision for iHerb over the next 3 to 5 years. What are your key priorities?
Emun: Let me take a step back and provide a quick background about iHerb. Our mission and vision are to make health and wellness accessible to all. We believe that no matter who you are or where you live, you should have easy access to high-quality health and wellness products at the best possible value.
For the past 28 years, we’ve been focusing on this, and today we serve about 12 million active customers annually in 180 countries. We’ve created a localized online shopping experience, translating our website and mobile app into 19 different languages. We accept over 85 different currencies and offer 40 different payment methods. We source and sell more than 50,000 products directly from reputable brands, ensuring authenticity, as we don’t allow third-party sales. Moving forward, we want to continue building on these efforts, curating the best selection of products, and delivering the best possible customer experience to meet health and wellness needs globally.
Q: Is there something unique about iHerb’s strategy or vision in terms of the future? What are the big challenges?
Emun: What I mentioned is not easy to achieve, but if you think about the wellness space, it’s massive. People increasingly want to proactively improve their health and wellness, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of this demand. The vitamins, minerals, and supplements (VMS) category alone is about a $130 billion industry, but when you add bath and beauty, personal care, and products for moms and babies, it’s over $1 trillion. We want to continue enhancing the quality of our products and improving customization, localization, and faster delivery to meet global demand. Many people in the U.S. haven’t heard of iHerb, but once they do, they stick with us and become loyal customers. Our focus is on getting the word out to amplify that awareness and continuing to improve our offering.
Q: How does your leadership style help you reach those goals?
Emun: My leadership style is based on respect, collaboration, and empowerment. I expect our team members to be humble and smart, and that humility is important because it fosters collaboration and teamwork. That starts with me; I strive to live by these values every day to set an example for my teams. We’re a global company in a unique space, and there’s no one-to-one peer that we can look up to for a roadmap. So, we have to be comfortable making decisions amid uncertainty. I encourage our team to make decisions, learn from mistakes, and move forward quickly. No one in our company knows it all, including me, so we rely on collective wisdom. I also believe in hiring smarter people than myself and learning from them. That mindset keeps you growing and young.
Q: Can you talk about how health and wellness is evolving and what challenges you face in this changing landscape?
Emun: One of the biggest challenges we encounter is the amount of fraudulent products finding their way in to the marketplace. Consumers who purchase mislabeled or tainted dietary supplements become unknowingly vulnerable to potential adverse health effects. This is why trust and product authenticity are paramount to our business. We source directly from manufacturers and authorized distributors and don’t permit any third-party resellers. We want our customers to have the assurance that what they’re buying is what’s reflected on the label.
Additionally, all of our warehouses are extremely clean and temperature-controlled so our products are preserved for freshness and safety.
Q: What’s your approach to team building and developing talent?
Emun: In addition to collaboration and teamwork, we believe in empowerment. We hire people for their expertise, then give them the tools and space to make decisions. You don’t need all the information to make a decision - if you have 70% or 80%, we encourage team members to move forward. If you make a mistake, learn from it and keep going. This empowerment helps develop talent and allows team members to grow into leadership roles. We give them the support they need and help them learn on the job.
Q: How important are strategic partnerships to iHerb, and how do you manage them?
Emun: Strategic partnerships are critical to our success. If you’re a producer or manufacturer of health and wellness products, iHerb gives you access to markets from 180 countries overnight. We handle all the complexities—inventory, localization, customs, and delivery. For us, a partnership is long-term, and we aim for a win-win-win relationship that benefits the partner, iHerb, and the consumer. We’ve been around for 28 years, and many of our partnerships have lasted almost as long.
Q: How do you ensure iHerb remains consumer-centric in its approach?
Emun: A company can only be truly consumer-centric if the people at the top are paying attention to customers. I personally sit with our head of customer experience weekly to review complaints, remediate issues, and reduce customer friction. For us, customer service isn’t just about answering questions quickly; it’s about preventing issues from happening in the first place. We regularly gather data from multiple touchpoints—during shopping, after orders, and after delivery—to continuously improve the customer experience.
Q: iHerb operates in 180 countries. How do you manage the regulatory complexities of these varied markets?
Emun: It didn’t happen overnight. We’ve been shipping internationally for 28 years, and we’ve built a sophisticated team that helps us navigate the regulatory landscape in every market. Regulations change constantly, and sometimes we have only a few days to comply. Our agile team stays on top of these changes by working closely with regulators.
Q: What are your sustainability initiatives, and how is iHerb innovating in this area?
Emun: We’ve adopted environmentally friendly practices where possible. We use recycled materials for our shipping boxes and battery-operated forklifts and automated LED lights in warehouses to save energy. While it’s challenging due to regulations and environmental factors, we’re committed to continually making progress in this area. Our founder is very conscious of climate issues, and we are actively working to be more sustainable.