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A divorced mother of young twin boys, Michelle White was working full-time
and completing her bachelor's degree. The year was 1998, and Michelle
was working for a fruit processing company in Leelanau County, Michigan.
That was when she first noticed something interesting. For years, older
people had been coming to the fruit-processing plant and asking for
jugs of cherry concentrate, a by-product of pitted tart cherries. All
of these people claimed that the Montmorency tart cherry concentrate
significantly relieved the pain and swelling of arthritis*.
And that gave Michelle an idea: Why not bottle the cherry concentrate and market it to the whole country, letting everyone know about all of the nutrients in tart cherries? As she did more and more research about tart cherries, she became more and more passionate about the need to educate the broader public about the many naturally occurring nutrients and micronutrients in Montmorency cherries.
Michelle assumed that her employer would be as excited as she was about marketing the concentrate to a much broader market. When her employer made it clear that he wasn't interested, Michelle recognized an opportunity and grabbed it. So in 2001 she quit her job at the fruit processing plant. Using savings, credit cards, a line of credit on her house and a lot of sweat equity, she financed the start-up. Michelle asked her father to help her write a business plan, and she went into business for herself as Leland Cherry Company. The response was amazing. One response was from Fisher Properties, an industrial conglomerate that owns tart cherry orchards and bottling facilities, which became her major seed investor. With a payment that could have broken the company due 2 days before Christmas, John Fisher wrote a large check to keep the business alive based on nothing more than Michelle's hand-written IOU.
By 2008 Michelle realized that the business needed to change in order to handle the tremendous growth. In September of 2008 Michelle’s Miracle® was reincorporated into a Delaware Corporation and Leland Cherry Company was merged into the new company. Michelle began seeking early stage investors and was able to attract Phenomenelle Angels Fund as the lead investor, with Fisher Properties reinvesting and new investors including the MI PreSeed Fund and its key supplier, Cherry Growers, Inc. filling out the round.
Today the company sells three different formulas of Michelle's Miracle® Tart Cherry Concentrate Dietary Supplements and CherriMax® Dietary Supplement Tablets. The products are sold online through the company's web site, MichellesMiracle.com and at a growing number of health food stores and grocery stores throughout the country. Several major distributors (UNFI, Tree of Life, Whole Foods South and Midwest) have picked up Michelle’s Miracle® products in the past two years.Today, in addition to running a growing company, Michelle is pursuing a master’s degree in Holistic Nutrition through Clayton College of Natural Health. And this pioneer with a passion is happy to see the recognition that tart cherries are getting in the scientific community. (Visit ChooseCherries.com® for documentation of recent scientific studies.)
Since starting her company, Michelle has become increasingly concerned about the importance of preserving the cherry farmland of northern Michigan. Michelle’s Miracle® donates a portion of every product sale to the Leelanau Conservancy (TheConservancy.com). Founded in 1988, the Conservancy has protected more than 5,400 acres of precious land and 10 miles of shoreline to date, and has created 19 natural areas and preserves.
You can order Michelle's
Miracle products here >>