While Amazon dominates e-commerce, iHerb quietly commands a $650M health empire with 38 million monthly visitors choosing supplements over general marketplaces. This is the story of a 28-year-old company that outlasted the dot-com crash, resisted private equity buyouts, and built a vertical moat so deep that even Jeff Bezos can't easily cross it.

"iHerb doesn't sell products—they sell trust in a $150B supplement market where authenticity is the only currency that matters."

The tech stack tells the story of a company obsessed with speed and scale. jQuery and Bootstrap might seem dated, but they're battle-tested. Tailwind CSS and DaisyUI show modern frontend thinking. Priority Hints and Lazy Loading reveal a team that obsesses over Core Web Vitals—critical when your customers are mobile-first supplement buyers in Seoul, Tokyo, and LA. This isn't a startup chasing shiny objects; it's an enterprise optimizing for conversion at global scale.

• Direct traffic parity with organic search signals true brand equity—customers aren't finding iHerb, they're choosing it
• Korean and Japanese search volumes exceed 130K combined, proving international brand moats work better than local SEO
• 2,045 employees generating $318K revenue per employee shows ruthless operational efficiency in low-margin vertical
• 28-year runway without VC funding suggests a profitability model that eludes most DTC health brands