Cold Gold
Striking a blow in the age-old quest to find a cure for the common cold
Vital Stats: Victoria
Knight-McDowell, 42, president of Airborne Inc.
Company: Carmel, California,
natural cold remedy company that produces effervescent herbal
tablets
2003 Sales Projections: $10
million to $15 million
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Study Time: "I was
getting sick in the classroom, and watched parents and teachers
constantly catching colds. My family [had negative reactions] to
mainstream medication, so we were always doing something that
seemed bizarre at the time; now it's common to seek
'alternative medicine.' I started doing research and
experimenting with herbs I had luck with in the past."
"We were
waiting for Trader Joe's to place an order and didn't know
what we were going to get. It was astronomical, like 40,000 tubes.
We were still putting the labels on by hand."
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Covert Op: "We gave
Longs Drugs a dozen tubes to test-market locally. [My husband,
Rider, and I] would visit these nine Longs and take turns buying it
so it would scan as something that was selling. We did this for a
couple of weeks. Then one day I went to Longs in Santa Cruz and
[the product was] gone. I was afraid they found out and yanked
everything. Rider told me all the stores had sold out and they had
real orders."
Media Bugs: "We have
two school buses, festooned with [cartoon] germs and people, with
full-time drivers. Dirk from the first Survivor was a celebrity
spokesperson; now we have Barry Williams from The Brady
Bunch. We also launched our Sore Throat Gummi Lozenges and have
radio and print ads coming out."
Third Shift: "I miss
teaching very, very much. I'm on hiatus because my son was born
around the time that Airborne started to take off. [I'll still
be involved in Airborne], but next fall I'm teaching two days a
week; now I can afford to!"