Just juice? 'Super fruit' beverage spawns $1B multilevel business for XanGo

On stage at a sales convention, XanGo executive Joseph Morton said that when he first stumbled across mangosteen, a tropical fruit with purported curative powers, "I didn't have to have it confirmed in the New England medical journal before I would listen."

The multilevel marketing company has built a huge business around its mangosteen-based juice, which it promotes as an immunity booster. The company still hasn't proved its health benefits — which it says could include a stronger immune system and improved joint function — to skeptical experts.

XanGo's Web site includes a disclaimer that the juice is not meant to treat or prevent disease. A lab test arranged by The Associated Press found its antioxidant power to be on par with other fruit juices.

Morton, a 37-year-old triathlete nicknamed Ironman Joe, was on a business trip in Malaysia when he saw mangosteen, a white delicacy wrapped in a blood-red leathery shell, on the dessert menu.

From that introduction, Morton — the company's president of international and distributor relations — capitalized on a new brand category of liquid "super-fruits" that is "doing gangbusters," said Jeff Hilton, a partner at Integrated Marketing Group, a branding and packaging consultant.

Lehi-based XanGo has more than two dozen competitors that sell fruit juices, powdered drinks and vitamin fizz tablets. Another Utah County company, Tahitian Noni International Inc., sold $2 billion worth of noni juice, from the French Polynesia fruit, in its first 10 years by 2006. South Jordan-based MonaVie bottles a blend of acai juice from the Amazon basin berry. Pure Fruit Technologies Inc. underprices XanGo on a mangosteen-based juice that sells in health food stores.

XanGo, a private company that doesn't reveal financial statements, said at its October convention that since its launch five years ago, sales of the mangosteen-based juice topped a cumulative $1 billion. The company ships out bottles by the case from Spanish Fork and says it has 700,000 unsalaried sales associates in 17 countries.

"That's the only product they sell, and people are taking it around the world," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who quaffs the purplish-color XanGo and pops multivitamins and other supplements every day. Hatch was the prime sponsor of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which allows the sale of supplements unless the Food and Drug Administration can prove them harmful.

An independent lab test performed for The Associated Press shows XanGo's antioxidant strength is no better than other readily available fruit juices, yet it costs nearly $40 a bottle. XanGo insists mangosteen contains other beneficial chemicals.