Earth's Creation: a private label supplement maker at $6M a year

Earth's Creation is the consumer-facing brand of EC Nutrition, a private label and contract manufacturer of nutraceuticals in capsule, tablet, powder, softgel, gummy, liquid and CBD form that sells to businesses building their own supplement lines as well as to individual consumers including people over 50 and college students, and its founder reported $6M a year in revenue in a September 2023 Starter Story interview.

How it started

EC Nutrition started in January 2000. Founder and CEO Donald Passwaters came into it with over 40 years in the supplement manufacturing industry, and the company began with no buildings and no equipment of its own.

By the time of the 2023 interview it ran a 100,000-square-foot facility with more than 20 supplement manufacturing machines, employed over 50 people across manufacturing, office administration and warehousing, and was based in Greenville, South Carolina. The official site lists the facility address as 18 Page Court, Travelers Rest, SC.

The Earth's Creation name stayed attached to the original consumer website, which the founder said still receives around 2,000 visits a month and has over 600 backlinks.

What it sells and how it charges

The EC Nutrition website, as fetched on 2026-09-30, describes the company as a private label supplement manufacturer with over 40 years of industry experience and says it has been supplying nutritional products in domestic and international markets for the last 25 years. It promotes a GMP-certified facility and says the business follows strict GMP protocols and FDA standards.

The manufacturing range the site lists covers:

Capsule manufacturing
Tablet manufacturing
Powder manufacturing
Private label softgels
Private label gummies
CBD contract manufacturing
Private label liquid supplements
Private label skin care
Private label supplements

Alongside contract manufacturing, the company owns several brands — Earth's Creation, EC Sports and Herbacure. Products the founder singled out include OptiNOs, which he described as a clinically studied ingredient that promotes muscle building by activating mTOR and protein synthesis, and Brain Boost, a nootropic ready-to-mix drink he said contains over 18 ingredients for brain health, including the only form of de-bittered bacopa available on the market.

On price the website states nothing: no rate card, no minimums, no product pricing. What it offers instead is a free quote, with the team getting back to enquiries within 24–48 hours. The founder did not give figures for pricing or order sizes in the interview either, so what a run costs is not public information.

How it got its first customers and what kept growth going

Exporting was the opening. Passwaters had prior experience in foreign markets, so the company aimed at exporting nutritional supplements as a niche rather than fighting for US retail shelf space from day one. Two things did the early work: institutional support and narrow advertising. "Our collaboration with the US Commerce Office and targeted ads in these niche markets helped us acquire new customers and expand our business," he said.

Paid search then carried the manufacturing side of the business. "Our use of Google ads for contract manufacturing and private-label services has been highly successful," he said — ads run in different countries, backed by the documentation export clients need, which is a bundle most domestic-only manufacturers cannot easily match. The newer EC Nutrition site receives around 600 visits a month, including traffic generated by those ads.

EC Sports, the consumer brand, took a different route: e-commerce sales driven by Facebook ads aimed at competitor audiences. On the retention side, the founder's explanation is unglamorous — keep delivering quality product and service, because in contract manufacturing a client can move a formula elsewhere.

The numbers

Figure	What the source says
Revenue	$6M a year, founder-reported in the September 2023 interview — reported at that date, not current revenue
Team	Over 50 employees; 3 founders at the time of the interview
Started	January 2000
Facility	100,000 sq ft, over 20 supplement manufacturing machines
Facility spend	Around $200,000 in the previous year to build additional production rooms, doubling the facility's size
Growth	400% revenue growth over the previous six years; the founder anticipated another 400% over the next five years
Start cost	No dollar figure given — the founder said the company had no buildings and no equipment
New markets planned for 2023	Canada, Saudi Arabia and India

Two of those numbers deserve a flag. The $6M figure is what the founder said in September 2023 and should not be read as where the business stands now. The 400% figure is revenue growth over the six years before the interview; the second 400% was the founder's stated expectation, not an outcome.

How it compares

Against 1M.chat's analysis of 1,997 businesses with founder-reported revenue in Starter Story interviews (2015–2026) — a self-selected sample of founders who chose to be interviewed, not a random sample of all businesses — the Health, fitness & wellness category looks like this:

76 businesses in the category with founder-reported revenue
Median monthly revenue: $74.5K
Share of the category at $1M a year or more: 46%
Median employees: 3.0
Share started by one founder: 59%
Top growth channels, of the 52 businesses in the category with channel information: organic social media 71%, SEO and organic search 48%, paid ads 40%, word of mouth and referrals 36%

At $6M a year, this business sits at about 7 times the category median, and its 50-plus headcount is well clear of the category median of 3.0 employees. It also does not fit the most common founding pattern in the category: three founders, not one. On channels it is closer to the minority pattern — paid ads, cited by 40% of the category businesses with channel information, is the channel the founder credits for both the manufacturing and consumer sides of the business.

What a founder can take from it

Start where you already have an edge. Exporting was not a random bet here; it followed experience the founder already had in foreign markets, which made the paperwork and distributor relationships less of a mystery than they would be for someone starting cold.

Match the channel to the buyer, not to the brand. Search ads caught businesses looking for a contract manufacturer; social ads caught consumers for the sports brand. One business, two different buying processes, two different channels.

Automate the step that caps your output. Some machines boosted productivity by up to 500% here, cutting lead time and labor cost. If your constraint is a manual step rather than demand, that is where the money goes.

Buy trust on the supply side. The founder's example is prompt payment to vendors: raw materials are the input everything else depends on, and reliable payers get treated differently when supply is tight.

Keep debt off the table while cash flow is uncertain. His stated position is to build a plan, find the target market and fund growth from revenue rather than borrowing — a preference, not a rule, and one that fits a business that grew over decades rather than in a funding cycle.

Sources

Revenue, team and start-cost figures are what the founder reported at the interview date, not current figures and not a prediction of what you will earn. Product and pricing facts come from the business's own website as checked on 30 September 2026. Method & sources · Disclosure