Richard Merriam

Different paths, one destination

Founder/CEO GCI Nutrients, Inc. Board of Directors

Rick Merriam can trace his lineage in the natural-food industry back to 1931, when his father and grandfather started one of the first natural-food grocery stores in San Francisco. Out of that thriving business, GCI Nutrients was formed in 1970 initially as a trucking company to ship ingredients throughout California, and to Texas, Tennessee, and New York. Through his gift for building strong relationships, Rick expanded the ingredient-distribution business and eventually opened GCI offices in Canada, Brazil, India, China, and Europe, many of which he maintains to this day. Those relationships have been key to GCI’s ability to source the very best ingredients of the highest purity, quality, and bioavailability. An industry leader from the very beginning, Rick produced Your Guide to Standardized Herbal Products in 1995, which was the first book to establish specific scientific standards for herbals, which not only helped educate the public to make more informed decisions but also changed the entire landscape of the supplement market, adding credibility and value by supporting nutritional claims with scientific evidence. Today, GCI Nutrients continues that standard-setting with a wide range of branded and non-branded products, including ingredients in the emerging microbiome arena, probiotic and key supportive products and adaptogens, and ImmunoSure medicinal mushrooms. GCI Nutrients has also formed a strategic alliance with Dr. Jit Nag and his Nag Research Laboratories, Inc. (NRL) in Fremont, California. NRL has state-of-the-art capabilities to conduct pre-clinical studies and clinical trials. GCI and NRL offer such services to the Natural Products industry on a very cost-effective basis. GCI and NRL are also founding members of the NutriPharma Coalition, designed to bring the same level of scientific validation to natural-ingredient nutraceutical solutions as there is for synthetic-chemical pharmaceutical solutions. BA, Business Administration, University of Colorado MBA, Haas School of Business. University of California, Berkeley.