Aliso Viejo-based drug maker Valeant Pharmaceuticals International is looking to make a top-selling Mexican vitamin a hit with Hispanics here.
Last month, the company started selling Bedoyecta in Hispanic grocery stores in the Southland and in Houston with an eye toward expanding to other areas by the end of the year.
The vitamins are big business for Valeant, which has yearly sales of about $925 million.
Bedoyecta had sales of $50 million in 2006, making it Valeant’s third-largest product, said Wesley Wheeler, the company’s president of North America global product development.
The vitamins trail only Efudex, a skin lesion treatment, and Diastat AcuDial, which is used to treat epileptic seizures.
Demographics are driving Valeant’s move. There are some 44 million Hispanics in the U.S. Of those, about 67% are of Mexican descent.
“This is a really interesting business opportunity for us,” Wheeler said.
Bedoyecta is billed a “multivitaminico” but largely is a vitamin B supplement with vitamin C and iron. Valeant describes the product as “energy improvement agents for fatigue related to age or chronic diseases and as nervous system maintenance agents to treat neurotic pain and neuropathy.”
The vitamins are made by an arm of Ohio’s Cardinal Health Inc. in Argentina.
They’re sold at stores of Anaheim-based Northgate Gonzalez, Southland stores of Mexico’s Grupo Gigante SAB de CV and San Fernando-based Vallarta Supermarkets Inc.
Valeant hopes to start selling through Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Rite Aid Corp. and Target Corp.
Marketing Plans
The company plans to promote the vitamins through store displays, signs and sampling programs, said Jeffrey Cole, vice president of corporate development and general manager of the company’s U.S. specialty division.
Later on, Valeant could consider Spanish-language radio, billboards and bus stop ads, he said.
In Mexico, Valeant promotes Bedoyecta on TV and by sponsoring a soccer team, Atlas Zorros of Guadalajara.
In the U.S., the company hopes to expand the product into six more markets with about 450 stores by the first quarter.
“It is going to be a profitable business for us,” Wheeler said.
Bedoyecta is a bit of a twist for Valeant, which has spent the past few years getting away from its days as ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. The vitamins actually hail from ICN.
In the early 1990s, ICN acquired Laboratorios Grossman SA, Bedoyecta’s originator.
Bedoyecta isn’t Valeant’s only vitamin. The drug maker sells multivitamins for women under its upscale Kinerase “cosmeceutical” brand, which is sold in stores such as Nordstrom and Sephora.
