Area company offers residents chance at better health

Ask Summerlin resident Wayne Gorsek about any health concern, and chances are, he'll know the nutrients and foods the body requires for better health. Gorsek is not a physician. He is not a scientist.

He is the founder of drvita.com, an online discount retailer of vitamins, nutrient supplements and organic food products. The heart of the company is at 6980 W. Warm Springs Road, Suite 100. The 55,000-square-foot facility houses laboratories, manufacturing, a distribution center and a call-in center.

The company has about three dozen employees. Gov. Brian Sandoval recently awarded drvita.com a certificate of recognition for its innovation and entrepreneurship in creating new jobs in Las Vegas. It was awarded to Gorsek on Dec. 7 at the Regional Development Authority luncheon, where the governor gave the keynote address.

Gorsek's desire to help others find better health stems from his upbringing. He was raised by his maternal grandparents, Fred and Harriet Gorsek. Both had health concerns later in life - Parkinson's disease, hypertension, arthritis, depression, loss of balance, poor energy, heart and kidney issues.

Seeing how modern medicine looked to drugs and surgery to address only their symptoms, not the cause, Gorsek set about learning everything he could by scouring books and journals at a local medical school library.

"As I spent a lot of time learning about their diseases, I learned the drugs and surgery were just Band-Aids and did not actually prevent, reverse or cure their diseases," he said. He found "thousands of studies showing healthy foods, such as organic berries, broccoli, walnuts, onions, mushrooms, wild-caught salmon, with moderate exercise and certain supplements ... could actually reduce the risk, improve and even reverse most health concerns related to aging."

His research led him to focus on vitamins and foods that were vital for body function support such as coenzyme Q10, B-complex, magnesium, selenium, fish oil and Vitamins D3, C and E.

"All I knew about vitamins when I started was the Flintstones (vitamins) I took as a child," he said.

During this time, Fred Gorsek, 84, was hospitalized. Wayne Gorsek said his grandfather was administered an overdose of heparin by doctors and died from bleeding in the brain. That was in 1992.

The loss spurred him on, and Gorsek spent the last 20 years learning which supplements and foods were the most powerful to improve health. He pieced together numerous bottles of supplements and a healthy diet for his grandmother who suffered from type two diabetes, depression and hypertension. By following his directions and incorporating moderate exercise, he said she reversed her elevated blood sugar and blood pressure. She discovered that she also had more energy.

"She regained the will to live, and her smile and laugh returned," Gorsek said.

Harriet Gorsek lived until 2002, dying just days shy of her 92nd birthday.

Gorsek went on to found his first vitamin company that earned Inc. 500 Hall of Fame status and eventually had a $320 million enterprise value in 2009. It employed about 500 people. When it went public, he said, he was no longer in full control of the company. Gorsek was phased out.

The experience prompted him to start drvita.com. Using the lessons learned from his first company, he automated the new venture as much as possible to streamline the operation and beef up the level of ingredients.

The 55,000-square-foot facility houses laboratories, manufacturing, a distribution center and a call-in center. Gorsek invested more than $8 million into the new facility that opened in May.

A tour, which required donning lab coats, surgical caps and booties, showed that the entire operation is automated. Doors swish open as one approaches. Lights turn on as one progresses farther into the building. It's no surprise that nearly every aspect of formulating the product is computerized, as well. The automation includes sensors to ensure the quality of the ingredients it uses.

To say the company is obsessed with quality control is an understatement.

"All of the product that comes in the door goes into a booth and is sampled so everything is checked for purity and identity before we use it," said Eiger Bjornstad, vice president of manufacturing. "So everything that comes through those doors automatically goes into a quarantine status until we can verify the ingredient is the correct botanical or vitamin, herb or whatever it might be."

The packing area consists of one man at a display screen and a 30-foot tower of blue totes that hold 10,000 products on a carousel system. The computer scans the bar code and knows which ones to retrieve for each order.

The system means a crew of four can do the same amount of work as 30 employees in a normal warehousing system, Bjornstad said. It eliminates back problems for workers and requires less walking to get to static shelving.

"I can fill 1,000 orders without even breaking a sweat," said Chuck Smith, warehouse manager.

The capsule-filling room can also be run by one person who loads the empty capsules into a machine, and the formulated batch is pumped into the shells. Smaller machines can produce 20,000 capsules an hour. The larger machines can fill 92,000 capsules an hour.

When bottles of supplements are filled, nearly every step includes an automated quality check, Gorsek said. Even the tightness of the cap is standardized. Gorsek said by making the company as automated as possible, the consumer is better served.

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.