Nature gets nurtured: an herbal-supplement company in Brevard strives to make mother nature's best better.

• Author: Campbell, Spencer
• Position: PICTURE THIS

Brevard-based Gaia Herbs Inc. built its 45,000-square-foot headquarters in the shape of an eagle. The theory is its outstretched wings absorb energy from the sun and transfer it to those working inside. That style of building is part of Sthapatya Veda, Indian principles of architecture based on the laws of nature and championed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru to The Beatles. This might sound like hippie mumbo-jumbo, but it's one of Gaia founder and CEO Ric Scalzo's core beliefs, and it's difficult to argue with success. His company, which sold $32 million of health supplements in 2013, sprouted from a 200-square-foot office in 1987. "Disruption is apparent everywhere in business with respect to nature. I like to think we don't disrupt nature but improve the tilth of the earth."

Gaia doesn't leave Mother Nature to her own devices. It has poured millions of dollars into research and development, combining Eastern medicine with plant physiology and science. An in-house lab uses high-pressure liquid chromatography, inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry and other fancy-sounding methods of measuring crop composition to ensure that, for example, the polysaccharides in echinacea--an herb that enhances the immune system, relieves pain and reduces inflammation--are at optimal potency. "We're essentially observing the forces of nature as they develop these chemistries in the plant and then harvesting the plant at the right time, when it has reached its peak of activity," Scalzo, 60, says.

A Massachusetts native who became interested in spiritual development after college, Scalzo graduated from The School of Natural Healing in Springville, Utah, in 1982. He returned to New England to work as a clinical herbalist before starting what became Gaia in 1987 in Harvard, Mass., where he and an apprentice bottled elixirs. The...