Have you tried our newest flavor, Granola Crunch? If not, do yourself a favor and order it today from the PureFit store, or ask your local PureFit retailer when they’re going to start carrying it. Available for about three weeks now, PureFit Granola Crunch is already breaking every record we have for the launch of a new flavor.

Briefly… Granola Crunch had its coming out party at last week’s Surf City USA Marathon in Huntington Beach, California. To say it was a hit would be an understatement. Every single person who sampled the bar during the marathon’s Active Lifestyle Expo said it was the best tasting PureFit Bar they’d ever tried. So many people purchased boxes of the bars that we ran out well before the Expo ended on Saturday afternoon.

Early feedback from retailers, fitness clubs, personal trainers, and gyms across the country is the same… they can’t keep the bars in stock because customers are already coming back to buy up their remaining inventory.

For a small company like ours, it’s really gratifying to see people reacting so positively to our newest product. Years of planning go into the creation and launch of each new flavor, and with each new flavor we add to the line of award-winning bars, we strengthen our position as the number one selling wheat- and gluten-free sports nutrition bar available today.

If you’re unsure if you’ll like the new flavor, consider trying it out by ordering the PureFit Sample Kit, which includes one of each flavor, including Granola Crunch.

Back in the beginning of June, I proudly announced here on the Blog that PureFit Nutrition Bars could now be found in select Costco stores in Texas. Shortly thereafter, we were invited to visit Costco stores in other states, where we ’sampled’ and sold limited supplies of our bars with great success.

Recently, as you’ll see below, I decided not to continue working with Costco as a PureFit Retailer. While the decision was a difficult one to make, my hope is that after reading the following, you — our customers — will understand our position and continue to support us as we work hard to build a sustainable business:

Note: The following was posted by me, Robb Dorf, yesterday morning in the comment section of my June 1, 2009 blog entry, PureFit Debuts with Costco in Texas:

I expected to get some feedback from customers upset about not being able to get the bars at Costco. I’ll do my best to explain. The PureFit bars available for sale in Texas were part of a great opportunity Costco gave us. It is called a “90 day rotation.” It was an extraordinary opportunity to work with Costco. We learned a lot. We’d do it again, but not if Costco wants to sell the bars for .99 cents.

Simply put, they want to sell nutrition bars for under $1.00. PureFit is a premium product, with a suggested retail of $1.99. You can shop around and find them for $1.50, but that is really as low as we like to see the product sold. We can’t support our existing bar, within the existing Costco system, if they require we sell them at .99 cents. Costco wants to sell our bars because they know they are better than the other brands. They can easily see the why our bars are better, and quite frankly, we pointed out all of the reasons are bars are more expensive than the bars they currently sell.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Costco customer. I enjoy shopping there as the prices are fantastic. The problem is Costco believes all nutrition bars should sell for .99 cents. That is ridiculous. I just bought a TV from them. Every 46” was a different price. Sony’s were more than Visio’s. The new Samsungs were more than last year’s Sony’s. Consumers are smart enough to do the research and make an educated decision. If I want to spend 50% more for a Samsung, which offers more features, that is my choice. That is exactly what I did. Why Costco believes consumers will only pay .99 cents for a nutrition bar is simply ridiculous.

I’m sorry you won’t be able to find PureFit at Costco anytime soon. We are sold in over 2500 stores across the US and Canada and most of the leading online stores that carry us offer exceptional pricing. Amazon even offers free shipping. GotBody.com has them at $22.50/box and of course, you can always order directly from us.

Many people wouldn’t dream of running a marathon just a couple of days after Thanksgiving, but that’s exactly what 10,000+ stuffed souls are preparing to do here in Seattle the day after tomorrow. As you would expect the ‘hardest working CEO in the nutrition bar industry’ to do, I’m up in the Emerald City today and tomorrow for the 38th running of the Amica Insurance Seattle Marathon, Marathon Walk, Half Marathon and Half Marathon Walk — an event that takes place so close to Thanksgiving that it’s both remarkable and inspiring so many people find the time and energy to not only participate at these distances but to finish after eating all those leftovers!

Traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday is never easy, especially when it’s for work. Lucky for me, I’m blessed by the fact that 40,000 or so runners, walkers and their family members will soon trot past the PureFit booth (#68) while picking up their race packets and T-shirts. For me, more than anything else, interacting with race participants and others means I get to say “Thanks” – thanks for trying our bars; thanks for all the great feedback; and, thanks for modeling such good behavior when it comes to your own health and well being.

You know, 2008 has been a phenomenal year for everyone associated with PureFit. From establishing new relationships with key accounts like Kroger and Puresource, to launching our new website and this blog, I have a lot to be thankful for. In particular:

• To Jenna, Belinda, Darcy, Christian, Stewart and everyone else who helps with our daily and strategic operations… thank you for all you do. PureFit would not be where it is today without your hard work, insights and ability to laugh!

• To our customers… thanks for being so loyal and for helping us spread the word about the benefits of our wheat- and gluten-free nutrition bars and the 40/30/30 approach to health and weight management. Everything we do we do for you!

• To our retailers, vendors and business partners… thanks for working with us and being such awesome collaborators.

• To my family, friends and dogs… gratitude consists of being more aware of what you have than what you don’t. Thanks for keeping me grounded and balanced; I enjoy my work because of the life I get to live when I’m not working.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! If you’re in Seattle this weekend and you find yourself passing through the Amica Insurance Seattle Marathon Health and Fitness EXPO at the The Westin Seattle to pick up you runner’s number and T-shirt, stop by booth 68 and say hi.

After six months of conceptualizing, planning, and building, we are excited to announce the launch our new  corporate website (officially dubbed, PureFit 3.0).

PureFit 3.0 is our third–and by far best–website. The design process started in earnest a few months ago with this easy-to-navigate blog, and took off from there. Most notably, we re-engineered our shopping cart to make it more user friendly, and redesigned the rest of the site to make it more visually appealing. Even though you see one site when you visit PureFit.com, I like to think of it as three distinct sites:

• PureFit.com provides you with everything you need to know about choosing the right nutrition bar, how to purchase our award-winning nutrition bars, and why we do what we do.
• PureFitBlog.com provides up-to-date info on nutrition, what we are working on, and a plethora of cool and behind-the-scenes stuff that makes us tick (and laugh).
• PureFit.com/Store allows you to buy award-winning PureFit bars and clothing using our new state-of-the-art shopping cart.

We also worked closely these past few months with our good friend and the world’s leading authority on stretching, flexibility, and injury prevention—Kinesiologist, Brian Dorfman—to improve his site, BrianDorfman.com. Brian’s site is the place to go to learn more about simple exercises that can and will improve the quality of your life.

Please look around the new PureFit.com and let us know what you think (you can email me at robb at purefit dot com, or you can leave a comment below).

Today I would like to take a moment to sincerely thank everyone who makes PureFit the great company that it is. Needless to say, without our committed following of customers–those of you who actually buy and consume our award-winning, all natural nutrition bars–we wouldn’t be in business, but our team, which is made up of a very diverse and unique group of professionals who flat-out just make everything magically happen, also deserves a major pat on the back.

First and foremost, I want to thank Jenna Brien, our enthusiastic in-house sales associate. For those of you who have had the pleasure of meeting Jenna, you know she’s a ball of energy whose true passion in life is teaching spin and being around her husband Will. Jenna and I laugh so much together that our office manger, Belinda Jordan, said we’d sell an additional million bars if we’d simply quit goofing off so much. From that moment on, I realized that Belinda, a 20-year-old college student, was the smartest employee I had! The problem is, she laughs at all of my jokes and impersonations, and that of course only fuels my antics. Regardless, Belinda’s a real gem and things just wouldn’t work around here with her.

This post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Darcy Pendarvis. Darcy could be the CFO of a major corporation but prefers to help out Orange County, Calif., companies with their bookkeeping, payroll, and banking/financial strategy. As a QuickBooks Pro Advisor, Darcy is able to provide me with all of the financial info I need at a moments notice. Without her, I know we wouldn’t be around. She has saved me many times and I cannot thank her enough.

Christian Riggs is one of our freelance graphic designers. He’s outrageously under-priced, lives in Utah with his wife Amy and their four gorgeous kids, and is one wickedly cool guy. Check out his work at www.riggscreative.com. Christian is responsible for our new logo and packaging (thanks to Becky Nelson for giving us the original concept), and he also does a great job on our print ads, eNewsletters, and many of the other collateral materials that keep us in business. Thanks, Christian!

No one laughs more at me or my jokes than my publicist/business consultant, Stan (last name withheld for fear that he’d come to my home and waterboard me for getting his name indexed by Google or some other search engine). Stan’s more than just my publicist and business consultant… he’s a true friend and a brilliant business tactician. Thanks, Stan!

Here at PureFit, we work with so many nutritionists and Celiac specialists that it’s hard to thank them all. Nevertheless, I’d like to mention Kim Brown, Danna Korn (author of Gluten-Free Living For Dummies), Dr. Bari Rooney, and Melinda Dennis. Thank you–each and everyone of you–for all of your sage advice and referrals!

Needless to say, if you’ve made it this far in today’s post, you must be wondering who I owe the utmost thanks too, and that of course would be my wife Traci, who in 2000 encouraged me to “go for it.” She allowed me to take what little money we had and start PureFit, and now, some eight years later, we’re still here, kicking the nutrition bar industry’s butt. Thanks, Traci… you truly are the best!

Thanks to everyone else who make us great (and yes, that includes you Kilee, and you too Pikachu… the two of you may act like dogs, eat dog food, beg for treats and table scraps, and even walk around the office on all fours, but I know that you know that I know that you guys can read!)

I’m Robb Dorf, founder and CEO of PureFit. PureFit is truly a product of my own personal passion for living a healthy lifestyle rooted in fitness and good nutrition. As a student, I studied exercise physiology, and I followed my studies with more than a decade of experience in the health and nutrition industry. Fitness and nutrition is more than just head-knowledge for me. It’s also more than just a business proposition.

I am an athlete who, like anyone who has had the satisfaction of achieving personal goals, is proud of my own athletic accomplishments. More importantly for my customers, however, the first-hand knowledge I have gained in the process of training and competition has been invaluable in my pursuit of the ideal nutrition bar.

PureFit is, for me and my team, truly a way of life. We are constantly aware of how much misinformation is out there when it comes to nutrition and fitness. Educating people on what it takes to achieve maximum health and fitness is as much a part of what we do at PureFit as deciding what ingredients should go into our next nutrition bar.

My vision has always been to take a holistic approach to one’s health, and like I’ve always said, I like to keep it simple. Life is too short to not do what you enjoy, and regular exercise and good nutrition make doing what you enjoy even more enjoyable.

Welcome (and finally) to the PureFit Blog. I know, I know…we’re a bit behind the times with launching a blog, but it’s only because we’ve been so busy over the past seven years pursuing the best nutrition bar we can make.

Let’s pretend for a moment that we had been blogging since our establishment in July of 2000. If you had been following our blog, you would certainly remember the excitement we shared with you when:

1. We were chosen as Bike Magazine’s Nutrition Bar of the Year in 2004.
2. You would also recall the pride we expressed when we announced we were donating 20,000 PureFit Nutrition Bars to U.S. troops in Iraq through Operation Gratitude in August of 2007.
3. No doubt you would recall our enthusiastic support of the Best Friends Animal Society, Challenged Athletes Foundation, Celiac Sprue Association, and City of Hope.
4. You would have also read about new flavors, new reviews, new packaging, and wider distribution–we would have written about it all.

Many of you know that instead of writing blog entries, we were traveling. You saw us at more than 100 events around the country, but had we been blogging, many more of you would remember our blog entries chronicling the PureFit Team’s relentless travel schedule intended to get our bars into the hands of fitness enthusiasts, athletes, and the people who need them most, like celiacs and diabetics. We are, after all, happiest when we can be face-to-face with any individual committed to good health through nutrition and exercise.

You would of course also remember reading numerous blog entries about the exploits of Kilee and Pikachu (don’t worry, there will be much more to come about these canine PureFit pundits-they really do run the show!) and the rest of the PureFit Team.

In short, if we had been blogging over the past seven years, you would recall seven years worth of stories about bringing the best bar to market. Seven years of blood, sweat and tears in pursuit of the most nutritious energy bar available. Seven years of overwhelming pride in our product (and you would know we’re most proud of what our bars DON’T contain-no dairy, wheat, gluten, artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated oils, trans fats or sugar alcohols). Seven years of passion for educating you about how to achieve optimum health and fitness through nutrition and exercise.

In the final equation, while we are a company that makes a very competitive, award-winning product, which has traveled the world with some of the top performing athletes of the 21st century, we are really just people (and two dogs) who care about the well-being of other people (and dogs). That’s where our company began, and that’s what our blog is really all about. It is an opportunity to connect on a more personal level with you, for you are way more than just customers to us.

Welcome to the PureFit Blog-welcome to the PureFit family. The next seven years are going to be incredible.