Vitacost.com sales grow in Q1, but profits fall

After a delay of several months to iron out stock transaction accounting issues and its listing as a public company on NASDAQ, Vitacost.com Inc. is back to reporting numbers—including its year-end financials and results for the first quarter of fiscal 2011.

For the fiscal year ended Dec. 30, 2010, Vitacost.com, No. 90 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, reported:

• · Sales totaled $220.6 million, up 15% from $191.8 million in fiscal 2009.
• · Net loss was $15.1 million compared with net income of $5.9 million in fiscal 2009.

For the first quarter ended March 31, Vitacost.com also reported:

• · Sales totaled $63.8 million, up 11.5% from $57.2 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2010.
• · Net loss was $2.2 million compared with net income of $2.5 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2010.

Along with reporting its financials, Vitacost.com also is winding up a strategic review and implementing several new initiatives in an effort to build its business, says CEO Jeffrey Horowitz. Vitacost.com has accelerated the pace of new product launches for its proprietary products and expects to launch more than 100 new SKUs this year, the company says. After a formal review of the products it manufactures in-house, Vitacost.com will bring back 83 proprietary products that were previously manufactured by outside suppliers and spend between $3 million and $5 million this year to improve its two distribution centers and its manufacturing facility.

“We believe the implementation of our new go-to-market strategy will enable us to achieve strong growth throughout 2011 and beyond,” says Horowitz.