This Entrepreneur Started Her Business on Maternity Leave — Now She Runs Canada’s Largest Vitamin Gummy Manufacturer

By Khera Alexander

“When you have the mindset to give it a try and find the right timing, right industry, and right product, I think everybody has a chance to be an entrepreneur,” says Aisha Yang, co-founder and director of Herbaland Naturals Inc.

As the co-owner of Canada’s largest gummy vitamin manufacturer, Aisha was destined to be an entrepreneur who made a global impact — it was just about timing and finding the right opportunity.

With a keen interest in international business and entrepreneurship, Aisha was attuned to knowing when and how to identify an opportunity early on. “Before I started my own company, I was looking for any possible opportunities, even when I was still an employee,” she says. “My mind was actively searching for ideas and waiting for the ‘aha’ moment to start a business.”

Before Herbaland Naturals, Aisha had a career in aviation as a flight attendant in Taiwan. When she immigrated to Canada in 2001, she continued to work for the same airline, holding several positions from ticketing to customer service to working in sales and marketing.

Working in these roles not only allowed Aisha to learn new things and work with diverse teams but also helped her cultivate transferable skills she uses in her current business.

“Those diverse jobs really created a solid foundation of who I am today,” she says.

In 2009, after the birth of her third child, the timing felt right for Aisha and her husband Musharaf to take the leap into entrepreneurship and build their business.

“During my maternity leave, I wanted to use the 11 months of free time to create my company and see if anything happened.”

Leveraging her 11-year career in aviation and her husband’s background in nutraceuticals, Herbaland Naturals was born.

Initially, Aisha and her husband would purchase nutraceutical gummies from their contract manufacturer. “We used to buy products from someone else, and we were like a marketing company,” she says.

In 2013, when their supplier was acquired by an American company, they faced the difficult decision of either shutting down operations or taking matters into their own hands and manufacturing their products in-house.

“We decided to take a risk, even though that was out of our comfort zone. We decided to buy a machine, learn how to make gummies, and learn how to become a vertically integrated supplier.”

By having ownership and control over the different stages of the production process, Aisha, and her husband, could avoid being in such a precarious position again. This change was one business decision that helped propel the company forward and encouraged momentous growth.

Today, Herbaland Naturals is the largest gummy vitamin manufacturer in Canada, producing over 70 million gummies for almost 40 countries worldwide.

With four business locations totalling 150,000 sq. ft., over 250 employees, and a diverse staff from more than 20 countries, Herbaland Naturals creates plant-based gummies to serve consumers with various dietary needs.

All products are gluten-free, low-sugar, sugar-free, dairy-free, soy-free, allergen-free, and nut-free, a far cry from the sugary, gelatin-based products that dominated the market when Aisha first started her business.

With a belief in quality and a company ethos that champions the value of diversity, inclusion, and environmental impact, Herbaland is also B Corp certified — an important distinction for businesses that meet high standards of social and environmental transparency, accountability, and performance.

Operating with high social and environmental standards has led Aisha and her team to make decisions that don’t just benefit Herbaland — these decisions are also made to benefit the broader public and empower people to live healthier, more conscious lives.

Adaptability is also one of the company’s strengths, as Herbaland became the first company to ditch plastic bottles and use 100 per cent compostable packaging for their products in 2022, a decision Aisha says was to give consumers more agency while positively affecting the planet.

“Changing the packaging to compostable is truly from our heart. We will do anything else we can to have consumers appreciate that they have the option to be more environmentally friendly and more sustainable.”

As an award-winning entrepreneur with a thriving business, Aisha is not unfamiliar with industry recognition, but being nominated and completing her application for the 2023 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards was a distinct career highlight for her.

“Women of Influence+ has a really good reputation in the business industry,” she says. “Every single question on the application helped me self-reflect. What am I doing? How can I do better? It’s not about winning or being a finalist. It’s about the whole experience.”

Happy to just be nominated, Aisha was shocked when she won in the Excellence category.

“The awards night was a life-changing night in my life. I feel so honoured and humbled to be recognized,” she says.

Aisha continues, noting that her win was not just about the acknowledgement, but that it is indicative of a larger impact when women entrepreneurs align with one another.

“We women, together as one, how can we make our society better? Our community, our country? There are so many fantastic businesses that one day can grow from small to medium to large. They can become global, and they can become influential. That’s why I’m honoured to be the recipient of this award.”