Nu Skin Opens Innovation Center With 15,000 Attendees

 

Downtown Provo will be all about Nu Skin in the coming days as 15,000 of the company's closest friends and distributors from around the world celebrate its new home.

A grand ribbon cutting for the global headquarters of the Nu Skin Innovation Center will take place at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Getting to this point has been more than two decades in the making and a dream that founder Blake Roney and his team have eagerly anticipated. And, the building is completely paid for.

This is home for us, said Rich Wood, chief financial officer. Provo is home and we want to have all our employees here. This brings most of the corporate employees to one place.

Wood said there are still about 400 employees at the distribution and call center in the East Bay Business Park location. The whole purpose for the highly sophisticated and modern building was for the employees and to make collaboration easier.

We were located in five different locations, said David Daines, vice president of human resources. Collaboration was important to us, we needed to get people together in one location. Everything you see is designed around employee experience and the distributors.

Worldwide, there are more than 4,000 employees, and according to Daines, the company will add more next year. Wood said the new building already is at 90-percent capacity.

He said that if employees make it through the first two years they typically stay.

Half of our employees have been here 10 years or more, he said. This workplace environment can't be replicated.

He also said that with growth comes challenges.

Eventually we'll have to continue to expand. That is in the planning phases now, Wood said. Nu Skin owns the buildings to the west of the Innovation Center to Freedom Boulevard and has recently purchased property on the west side of Freedom Boulevard continuing down the street.

Wood also acknowledged the disruption to those businesses during construction has been difficult for them, but those days are over. Employees and construction crews were encouraged to eat at Sensuous Sandwich next door to the new building to keep their business coming in.

What's that cylinder thing?

The silver cylinder that sits atop the building houses all the mechanical equipment for the building. According to Wood, it was a specific creative design of the architects and captures the heat off the data center and other equipment and is recycled to heat the building and to melt snow that would sit around the building. It also gives power to cool it in the summer.

Architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, based in Seattle; and Okland Construction, out of Salt Lake City, designed and built the LEED Silver certified structure that uses environmentally friendly building practices.

Company officials said they hope for an even higher LEED rating, gold certification, next year.

Even before this building we've been recognized as the best place to work in Utah for five years, Daines said.

I think this is a unique building, Wood said. One, because it's in Provo, and two, because of its design using glass and light.

For instance, in the employee work out rooms slanted ceilings reflect off the heat and sun from those exercising as they enjoy the view from the large plate glass windows.

A dominant feature of the facility is the 50-foot LED Dream Wall on the west end of the building. The screen features Nu Skin products, tweets and texts from distributors reflecting their dreams and thoughts, and during March Madness the wall will be the place to watch NCAA basketball games. It can also be used for live streamed messages and events.

Beyond its office space, conference rooms that hang out from the building, research and development areas, luxury bathroom facilities and green spaces, it also has a state-of-the art gym and weight room facility always open for employee use.

The glass surround windows that face south and east offer a clear shot of the new Provo City Center LDS Temple and the mountains behind.

This is a significant project for Nu Skin and for the city of Provo and we are honored to be involved, said Ray Calabro, lead architect. We've made the building very light and transparent to reflect the qualities of the Nu Skin brand and to connect the staff and visitors with extraordinary views of the surrounding Wasatch Mountains.

According to Calabro each material, whether glass, stone, or metal, was carefully chosen to provide a timeless and elegant composition in the building.

This is a very exciting project for both Nu Skin and Provo, said Mayor John Curtis. Nu Skin is a key stakeholder in our downtown, and we're all benefiting from its success, which it's using to invest in both its future and ours.

This project, along with the convention center and several other recently completed projects, is a sign that, in spite of a slow national economy, Provo is experiencing significant growth and expansion.

Public places

Downtown shoppers and pedestrians can walk through the grand lobby that separates the new center from the Nu Skin Tower and from Center Street to 100 South. The lobby includes a large water feature, white leather couches and benches with a northern view looking directly at Mount Timpanogos and newly planted gardens to the south. At the other end of the main floor is The Spoon eatery open to the public, and the Nu Skin retail store that has been housed in the Provo Pharmacy building across the street.

The Spoon eatery on the main level features an Executive Chef whose food is inspired by the weight management programs and anti-aging products developed and sold by Nu Skin.

An outer building at Freedom Boulevard and 100 South named The Pavilion will be used for distributors and distributor meetings and other conferences. The views of the new temple, gardens and mountains will be the focal point. The Pavilion will open in late spring according to Wood.

The south side gardens will feature more than 110,000 plants.

All the landscaping will be done this fall. Already under the grass are planted 60,000 crocuses ready to bloom in the spring, Wood said. He noted that Nu Skin has been working closely with the LDS Church to make sure their gardens blend in with the landscaping planned for the Provo City Center Temple. A wrought iron fence will be the only thing separating the two facilities.

Show us the money

Originally the new building was to be $80 million, but Nu Skin leaders added some amenities taking the cost to just more than $100 million. On Aug. 1, Nu Skin announced record breaking second-quarter results with revenue of $682.9 million, a 15 percent increase over the prior-year's period. Quarterly earnings per share increased 30 percent in the prior year.

In a news release at the time, President and CEO Truman Hunt said, We are extremely pleased with second-quarter results that reflect the strong momentum of the business. We are particularly pleased with these results given the record regional agel.OC product launches in the prior-year period.

Additionally, we generated continued growth of both our consumer and sales leader base, reflected in 32 percent growth in actives and 23 percent growth in sales leaders. Overall, we saw healthy trends throughout the global business, particularly in the Greater China, North Asia and Americas regions.

Source: Herald Extra