Jenny Craig: Looks To Cash In
On Xenical's Popularity
13 July 1999
Xenical:
Prices and Ordering Information
Angling for more ground in the
lucrative weight-loss business, "dieting guru" Jenny Craig is
eyeing the Internet and Hoffman-LaRoche Inc.'s Xenical to
shore up her company's bottom line, the Wall Street Journal
reports. As customers continue to balk at the cost of Jenny's
Cuisine, the full-course meals that can run $75 a week, the
company is testing its marketing savvy on the Internet, where
it hosts a Web site that hawks nutritional supplements and
offers advice "on everything from menopause to osteoporosis as
part of an effort to leverage the company into a broader
women's health concern." Even with the innovations, the
company's stock tumbled 53% in the third quarter ended March
31. Two months later, Jenny Craig announced that it had agreed
to link its own Web site with www.Women.com, "a larger, more
elaborate Web portal."
Jenny Craig President Phil Voluck
said that the company had tried a number of different
approaches, and reluctantly decided to enter the "diet-drug
craze that peaked in 1997." As profits fell, "executives
belatedly gave in and offered fen-phen as an adjunct to the
Jenny Craig regimen," only to have the fenfluramine component
yanked from the market several months later. Although Jenny
Craig "personally laments the position miracle drugs have put
her company in," the company is trying to cash in on Xenical's
popularity. Voluck said he has recently contacted
Hoffman-LaRoche "to try to persuade it to urge doctors to
prescribe the drug in combination with the Jenny Craig plan."
Voluck asserted that "all the aspects of the Jenny Craig
program fit the mold needed for Xenical to be truly
successful." Hoffman- LaRoche spokesperson Valerie Suga
refused to confirm any such talks (Biddle, 7/12).
