BLT - Blis Technologies

[emearg]

The bit that confuses me is that you chaps were searching the net and finding that BioGuard appeared to be spreading to more than the original fifty stores and you thought that was very good news. Now the product is being mothballed for six months in those stores and that is good news? I just don't see how both can be good news?

As I noted above this isn't the end of the world. It is a new product that is available on the web via Costco (and others) which is good. It may be back in six months which would also be good news.

I guess I am just expecting a little more balance and not expecting every single event to be painted as positive. That really would make this thread a fan club and I don't want to be a member. I just want to take part in informed and considered discussion.

Sorry if I am interrupting this incorrectly, or if I am just plain wrong.

Happy happy joy joy

[Zito]

I popped into the local pharmacy to pick up something this afternoon and spotted Blis K12 Throat Guard Daily sitting behind the counter. So I asked the pharmacy assistant about it. She said that she had some at home and swore by it, said it really worked for her. As she knows me I have no reason to doubt her word was genuine. Anyway,I grabbed some, thought I'd give it a go - we have two school age children who are susceptible to colds and two pre-schoolers who get everything the older ones bring home.

I was impressed on three fronts: (1) the packaging was really eye-catching in silver and looks great; (2) it was prominently placed behind the counter so is sure to attract interest from punters; and (3) if the pharmacy assistant has some at home and believes in it she will be steering people towards the product and be positive about it.

A small plus to be sure but a plus nonetheless.

Disc: holding. Would be accumulating further at 10-11c if not fully invested.

[simla]

I'm not quite sure how to explain that clearly, Emearg. You've probably noticed that I usually respond to things I'm not so happy about by not referring to them a lot. But I don't say positive things about things I'm not actually positive about.

My basic excitement about BLT has always been the maths. Applying that to the Bioguard situation, several points stand out.

Firstly, Blis is out there making pretty good progress on a large number of fronts now, so Bioguard is not a make or break situation, although we hope it will be a very useful result. Even as I sit here, the local chemist handout has an ad for Blis reading, "Need a throat lozenge that really works?". Over at CulturedCare there's a twitter from someone saying they had 5 pieces today because it tasted so great. Nature's Plus have just brought out even more products recently. Japan is open etc. Type in "+Blis K12" on Google and get heaps of real results. All we actually need from Bioguard, and all the other products, is for many of them to be at least okay. Well, Bioguard DOES seem to have at least joined the "at least okay" group with this news. No?

Secondly, I wasn't especially expecting a full nationwide rollout in a hurry, only good progress, which we probably got. To supply Costco nationwide would involve catering to the equivalent of 75 New Zealands in a very short timespan! What I definitely wanted to hear was that Costco did not reject the trial - which we have apparently heard - and that some progress was being made in expansion - which, again, we seem to have detected ourselves. Yes, I hadn't picked it would go off the shelves over summer, but neither was I expecting much in the way of sales over summer of a product specifically marketed for winter ailments. So, that wasn't a positive development from my point of view, but neither would I particularly expect it to change Bioguard annual sales by more than perhaps 20% or so, perhaps. Bioguard is apparently currently on sale in Oregon 3.5m, Washington 6.5m, Alaska .7m, Montana 1m, Utah 2.7m, Idaho 1.5m = 16m people. Could they really have added just 3 more states quickly, California 40m, Illinois 13m, or NY 20m? Yes, it would be great, but I wasn't relying on it. So, they do appear to have successfully opened in a fairly large market for the long term with this news, and shown some progress in expanding to more markets. No?

Thirdly, and most importantly, I have always seen the maths of Blis requiring some form of exponential growth. Einstein is said to have described compound interest as the most powerful force in the universe. It is far more important to me that the compounding is happening than whether it is fast or slow. Slow compounding will still produce vastly greater results than no compounding. So I attach far more importance to the yes/no idea that the product will be in the market long term, where is can grow market size, than to whether it is compounding fast enough just now. Well, this news is that Costco will apparently stock it long term. No?

And fourthly, as I have said, I do not see that we can really interpret this as telling us how sales have gone. If they were going badly, Costco would simply have dropped the product, which we are told they are not doing. So the more likely interpretation of this news is that sales are either so-so or good, either of which is fine considering the size of that market. No?

So I am okay with this news because I judge it mathematically. The stand-out news to me was that Bioguard seems to have successfully got itself aboard a large, compounding escalator, and to me that stands head and shoulders above whether early results are 50% better than might have been expected at this stage - which, for all we know, they might have been anyway.

Emearg, I can't promise you that BLT is blasting off without a hitch, because neither you nor I know that. But I can tell you I am not trying to see everything with rose coloured glasses. If the news had been that Costco was going to dump the product, I would certainly have been concerned at what that implied. As it is, this seems a perfectly satisfactory position.

[simla]

Bioguard has two points for us: a possible short and long term boost by selling into a high volume situation; and at last a chance to see a little about how the end consumer is liking it. With this news, we do not know how the first has done. With the second, we know it has done well enough to earn a long term spot at Costco. It's not a lot of news - we still have no idea how Bioguard is selling - but it is more than we have heard about how any of the other products are selling, so good the product was accepted.

[simla]

I've tried to say quite clearly why I read this positively. Do you want to explain an alternative view? The main negative in here seems to be it being off the shelves in summer. I grant that I would prefer the alternative, but I do not think that outweighs the rest of the news: passed the trial, and may be available in other big outlets. I think we have to take the news in total, don't we? It seems logically difficult to rely on the no-summer bit, but discount all the rest?

[simla]

Zito, I don't think that's small news. At this stage of the game, I think our biggest interest is in how this will sell to end consumers. All the business-to-business sales are great, but still need end consumers to like it. So it's great news that it sells well at the coal face.

[simla]

I suppose I better make my periodic disclaimer that I am never advising that anyone should buy, sell, or trade BLT shares. That is for each to decide for themselves. Yes, obviously I own some myself.

I see this forum as an opportunity to discuss publicly available information, that we each may better decide on how sensible our own thoughts are. The current disagreement is a good example of why that is worth doing.

[fungus pudding]

Question.

What is the normal time span for health related products to get off the ground? Apparantely some of the nutter quack type alternative products have made vast fortunes in a short time. I'm no expert but it seems to me that they either fly or fail quite rapidly, so why has Blis taken so long to get....well, nowhere really?

P.S. I'm not claiming Blis to be a quack product. Just threw that in as an example of the market.

[Cannibal]

The Cultured Care gum is getting lots of press lately.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/C...759/story.html

The story has gone national... 12 BIG PAPERS! Even the author, Pamela Fayerman, is quite shocked. Retailers might want to get their product display front and centre (grin).

http://www.facebook.com/CulturedCare...are.Probiotics

[brucea]

The Cultured Care gum is getting lots of press lately.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/C...759/story.html

The story has gone national... 12 BIG PAPERS! Even the author, Pamela Fayerman, is quite shocked. Retailers might want to get their product display front and centre (grin).

http://www.facebook.com/CulturedCare...are.Probiotics

Many thanks Cannibal for passing this link on!! I noted there is a further link on the page to http://www.canada.com/health/story.html?id=2654359 which has the same story. The studies done by the University of BC give credence to the claims about the effectiveness of Blis K12, so this is a significant promotion for Blis in Canada ...and of course elsewhere, given the power of the internet.