Objectively one of the worst personal and professional experiences of my life.
Pros
To reiterate other reviews - they made payroll on time, every time. I found my total compensation to be fair.
Cons
The CEO is well intentioned most of the time, and he can be pleasant to talk with at times, even funny. But he's secretive, selfish, rude, intolerant, and known for being prone to public outbursts. In my 2+ years at the company, he publicly "shame-blamed" employees in front of colleagues no less than 5 times that I was present to witness. Vitacost has bare-open seating, so this occurred within earshot of 100+ people each time. If anybody had caught one of these with a camera phone video and put it on YouTube, it would catch serious media attention. Everything in his mind is zero-sum. That is to say, if anything goes wrong, it must be somebody's fault and they must pay by being belittled and yelled at. I've never seen people cower at a superior like this outside of the military. I've never seen so many people stressed to the point of physical illness as I have at the corporate office of Vitacost. It was, frankly, disgusting and heartbreaking to see otherwise good people get trampled on professionally and emotionally every day. The games that management plays with the employees, at the behest of the CEO, is borderline psychologically abusive. Too, and perhaps more importantly regarding the possibility of success for the company, the CEO is simply not of this technological era. He literally barely understands how to work his computer. Others have noted this in their reviews, and they are not exaggerating. But lets be honest, as the CEO, he doesn't really need to use his computer, because his job and his value, like any CEO, is to bring direction, leadership, vision, and managerial wherewithal to the organization. I've never seen such a lack of all of those at a company primed for success. Lastly, he does not understand the intersection between retail and technology, a concept otherwise known as ecommerce. The business model is sound. To be clear, much of management are not bad people. The rest of the C-level and middle managers, are altogether great, well balanced people who work hard to make a difference. Customers want the products that they sell, and for the most part, Vitacost does a great job at delivering those products. But yet they still manage to lose millions of dollars every single quarter. Its incomprehensible to me that investors keep dumping money into this company. If this company manages to turn itself around, it will be one of the greatest small-cap turn around runs in history. I do hope they can manage to get back on track.
