WhiteDove Herbals takes flight for boomer market: Celestial Seasonings veteran helms alternative medicine company.

• Author: Mitchell, Karen
• Position: Company overview

In business, as in life, there's a time to start something new and a time to say goodbye. Boulder entrepreneur John Hay is attuned to the rhythms of the cycle.

Hay, 61, has been a founder or key executive for some of Colorado's most recognizable names including Celestial Seasonings, Alfalfa's Natural Foods, Rudi's Organic Bakery and Cell Technology.

Comes now his latest enterprise, WhiteDove Herbals, a hygiene company with 10 employees and a commitment to create herbal alternatives to everyday medicines. Its new product line features herbal gum, antacid and elixirs for treating common ailments.

WhiteDove, named for its spiritual context--and the last name of the company's head herbalist, Linda Whitedove--was established in 2006 with a few hundred thousand dollars in capital and a merging with Homegrown Herbals, a tincture company owned by a friend. The decision brought back Hay's passion for the healing side of herbs that had excited him when he came to Colorado from New York in 1970.

"WhiteDove is in the right place at the right time, with so many baby boomers out there looking for alternatives to expensive prescription drugs that often have side effects," Hay says. "I've raised about $1 million to date, and we have 25 investors."

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Hay expects WhiteDove to realize about a half million dollars in sales this year.

"It takes a couple of years to snowball, and we plan to be a $50 million company in the next five years," he says. "That's still less than one-tenth of a percent of the antacid arena, a quarter percent of the gum market and between 5 and 10 percent of the herbal extract market."

The company's first mass-market offering, PowerBite, with an all-natural sweetener Xylitol, already is available in local markets and coffee shops and has a coveted American Dental Association recommendation, with dentists as a targeted market. Na-turight, the over-the-counter herbal antacid, is just coming onto the market and has virtually no competition, Hay says.

An added reward for the WhiteDove CEO is that his son, 26-year-old Peter Hay, manages operations at the company.

"The impetus for me is to do things for my children," John Hay says. "I'm planning to stay at WhiteDove for at least five years, growing it to a decent size."

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