OceanGrown International Review and Profile

OceanGrown International no longer appears to be active as a direct sales company.

Original Npros business profile for OceanGrown International, preserved below for archival purposes:

OceanGrown International, commonly known as OGI or OGILife, was founded in Utah in 2007 by Kerry Brown and Travis Martin. Brown served as president, while Martin was identified as a founding partner and company owner. The company began selling in the United States and Canada within approximately seven months of its formation and operated from the Salt Lake Cityâ€"Provo area. Its business concept centered on health, beauty, and "active aging" products formulated with ingredients derived from the ocean.

OGI initially focused on its OAVE skincare line. Products included OAVE Face, OAVE Body, OAVE Mist, and OAVE Inside, an ingestible skin supplement. Formulations were promoted with marine-derived ingredients such as astaxanthin, Irish seaweed, Icelandic moss, Antarctic krill oil, omega-3 fatty acids, kelp, algae, sea salts, and coral-derived minerals. The company later expanded its positioning to include nutritional supplements and weight-management products. Cyanotech, a Hawaii-based producer of natural astaxanthin, confirmed in 2008 that it had entered an agreement to supply BioAstin-related ingredients for OceanGrown products.

Professional surfer Bethany Hamilton became an OGI spokesperson in January 2008 and promoted the OAVE line and the company's active-lifestyle message. OceanGrown also operated the OceanGrown Trust charitable program, which supported environmental preservation, sustainability, and organizations working to keep oceans and other natural environments clean. Hamilton was invited to select a charitable organization as an OGI "TrueBlue Partner."

OceanGrown combined conventional retailing with multilevel direct selling. Consumers could purchase products directly, while independent business owners earned income from retail customers, preferred customers, new distributor orders, and the purchasing activity of their sales organizations. A surviving company presentation described eight forms of compensation: a 20% retail margin, 10% on preferred-customer sales, a 33% first-order fast-start bonus, unilevel commissions extending through nine levels, a company-volume campaign pool, check-matching bonuses, leadership bonuses, and monthly business-builder bonuses beginning at $200. The plan required 100 personal qualifying volume for full qualification and advertised a minimum company payout of 50% of commissionable volume.

On August 18, 2009, OceanGrown and Synergy WorldWide announced a strategic alliance. The arrangement gave OGI representatives access to Synergy's international markets, operational resources, and distributor-support infrastructure while allowing OceanGrown products to reach a broader market. OGI President Kerry Brown said the alliance would provide representatives with more tools and resources for building their businesses.

OceanGrown did not continue as an identifiable standalone network-marketing company. Its OGILIFE federal trademark application, filed on March 3, 2009 for network-marketing and direct-retail services, was abandoned on December 8, 2009.