Doug Miller, CEO of Core Nutritionals, rejoins the PricePlow Podcast for Episode #219 to cover the full Crush It Holdings portfolio update: selling his Arms Race Nutrition stake, killing the Myoblox revival, two years of Unmatched Supps with Kris Gethin, the launch of Nova Prime Labs research-use peptides, and another brutal round of protein price increases.
Episode #219 of the PricePlow Podcast welcomes back Doug Miller, founder and CEO of Core Nutritionals, for a full portfolio catch-up 4.5 years after Episode #050: Protein Prices on the Rise and Figuring it Out with Doug Miller. Doug's opening line sets the tone perfectly: "We're *still* figuring it out and protein prices are *still* on the rise!"
In this conversation, Mike and Ben cover the entire Crush It Holdings universe:
- Doug's amicable exit from Arms Race Nutrition
- The decision to shut down the resurrected Myoblox brand
- Where his focus now sits -- Core Nutritionals, Unmatched Supps (his two-year partnership with Kris Gethin), and
- The freshly launched Nova Prime Labs research-use peptide venture.
Along the way, the crew digs into CreGAAtine, Unmatched's DTC pivot away from broad retail, an incoming Stem Cell product launch, the Unmatched Bar targeting Olympia 2026, and how another protein price spike is reshaping Core's lineup. Merica Labz gets a few shouts as well.
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https://blog.priceplow.com/podcast/doug-miller-219
Video: Doug Miller Returns: Core Nutritionals, Unmatched Supps & Nova Prime Labs
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:28 — 57.5MB)
Detailed Show Notes: Doug Miller on Core, Unmatched Supps, and Entering the Peptide Space
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0:00 – Introductions
Mike opens with the callback everyone will recognize: Episode #050 was about protein prices being on the rise, and Doug's response is instant. "We're still figuring it out and protein prices are still on the rise." With that, Doug walks through the current state of Crush It Holdings, the umbrella holding Core Nutritionals (now 22 years running), Unmatched Supps, Merica Labz, Nova Prime Labs, the Nutrition Corner retail chain, Crush It Coliseum gym, Crush It Athletic and Physical Therapy, and the soon-to-open Crush It Wellness MD clinic.
At one point he was running what he calls "one and a half brands" out of a single facility: Arms Race Nutrition, Merica Labz, Myoblox, Core Nutritionals, and Unmatched all overlapping at once. That stretch taught him a lot about where to focus -- and where to cut.
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1:00 – Exiting Arms Race and Putting Myoblox to Bed
Doug sold his Arms Race Nutrition shares back to co-founder Julian Smith at the end of 2024. The split was fully amicable. They crossed paths at the Arnold Classic and talked for an extended stretch, and Arms Race still uses Doug's facility for some 3PL work.
Myoblox is a different story. It "kind of fell on his lap" and Doug ended up owning 90% of a brand he didn't create. Halfway through 2025 he liquidated and closed it out. The lesson he took away: "We could, but *should* we?" The barrier to entry for a supplement product has never been lower, but rebuilding the retail buzz of the 2010-2014 DM*A era around a resurrected brand from that period was a near-impossible brief. Original founder John Foster brought real creative energy, but that alone wasn't enough to justify the distraction.
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7:00 – What Makes a Brand Worth Running
Ben asks a pointed question: when you resurrect a brand someone else built, what value are you actually buying? Doug's answer gets to the core of how he thinks about brand-building. A good formula, a good-tasting product, and a clean label are the minimum requirement now. Every decent company clears that bar. What separates lasting brands is community, trust, and a clear point of view.
Myoblox was a lifestyle brand that needed to be sold at a lifestyle price point. But Doug's team can't help over-engineering. The result was a misfit: sophisticated, fully-disclosed formulas inside a brand that wasn't built for them, at a price point the brand's legacy customers didn't expect. He could put the same effort into Core or Unmatched and get a much better return on that time.
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12:00 – Core Nutritionals and Unmatched: Two Brands, One Focus
Doug Miller and his team at CORE Nutritionals always find a way to figure it out. Listen to him talk about recent events in Episode #050 of the PricePlow Podcast
Mike frames the landscape well: Doug's brands all stand for something. Core is trust, legacy, and two decades of transparency in the bodybuilding community. Unmatched is natural biohacking at the longevity-performance intersection. Merica Labz is the fun, tongue-in-cheek side project that has always punched above its weight -- but it isn't where Doug's real attention goes.
Core is still heavily wholesale, with people actively building retail relationships rather than mass-blasting a deals email. But DTC and Amazon are a growing strategic priority. Post-COVID, the market flipped: customers find brands online first, then seek them out in stores. The retailers benefit from that awareness. The market has changed faster in the last four years than Doug ever expected, and it keeps changing.
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16:00 – The Kris Gethin Partnership: Founding Unmatched Supps
Kris reached out to Doug during the period after leaving Kaged when conversations about starting something new weren't yet possible. When they could talk formally, Doug laid out exactly how the business would run. Kris was equally specific about product requirements. They aligned on everything that mattered, and after meeting Kris and his wife for dinner, Doug and his wife Steph knew they had the right partners.
The only real friction: Doug loves sucralose. Kris wanted nothing but natural sweeteners. Doug pushed back hard and wanted to throw in a little sucralose and be done, especially on the pre-workouts. Kris wouldn't move, and Doug now credits that stubbornness for the end result. After working through custom stevia blends, Rebaudioside M (RebM), Rebaudioside A (RebA), and a high-end natural masker most brands aren't using, they finally landed on the right combination. The whole pre-launch development window ran close to a year.
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19:45 – Going All-Natural and Pulling Back from Vitamin Shoppe
Guanidinoacetic acid (GAA) might deliver creatine to your muscles and brain better than creatine alone - but standalone GAA has risks. CreGAAtine adds B-vitamins to fix the homocysteine issue. Interesting option for advanced users who want to optimize beyond basic creatine.
Unmatched's initial retail launch at The Vitamin Shoppe was premature, and Doug says so plainly. The brand's customer demographics weren't established yet. Once they looked at DTC data, the picture became clear: a 35-55 buyer with higher income who demands premium products and will pay $10 more for a pre-workout if it's genuinely better. That person wasn't shopping in traditional bodybuilding retail channels.
The brand pulled back, re-centered on DTC and Amazon, and told The Vitamin Shoppe directly that they'd return when the time was right. That decision opened the door for product launches that would never have made sense in mass retail, like a $120 stem cell product. The long-term relationship with The Vitamin Shoppe stays intact, just paused.
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22:00 – CreGAAtine: The Science and Unmatched’s First-in-the-US Play
Mike admits he was initially skeptical about CreGAAtine® until he went deep on the research. The mechanism: guanidinoacetic acid (GAA) is creatine's direct precursor, but taking GAA alone aggressively depletes methyl donors, raises homocysteine, and creates cardiovascular risk. CreGAAtine works around this by pairing GAA with creatine monohydrate and B-vitamin co-factors that replenish those methyl donors (we also like to see it formulated with betaine, aka trimethylglycine). The full breakdown is in the GAA / CreGAAtine deep-dive guide.
Unmatched claims "first in the US" to use CreGAAtine in a finished product (outside their own branded ingredient sold directly). Ben captures the brand positioning cleanly: if you're a conservative user, creatine monohydrate is exactly what you need. If you're a biohacker who understands what you're taking and wants to push further, this is where Unmatched earns its place.
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24:30 – White Packaging, Stem Cell Launch, and Managing the Pipeline
A single 500mg dose of CyanthOx™ sea buckthorn extract was shown to mobilize three distinct circulating stem cell types within two hours. That's the anchor ingredient in Kris Gethin's new Unmatched Supps Stem Cell, a 9-ingredient cellular longevity formula.
Unmatched is rolling out a new visual system: white bottles for the longevity series, black bottles for performance products. The new Unmatched Stem Cell product -- a $120 longevity flagship -- is launching as the first in this white-packaging line, and at time of recording Doug spoiler-announced it was dropping "later this month." The Unmatched Longevity Multi, Longevity Test, and Longevity Sleep are all migrating to white bottles as part of the same series.
The pipeline problem is real. Formulator Dave Rynecki and Kris together generate more ideas than Doug can budget, inventory, or manage. Doug has put them on a formal innovation pause through the end of 2026. The constraint isn't creativity -- it's cash flow and SKU creep. If a new product pulls attention from an existing bestseller, both suffer. Nothing goes out of stock on Kris Gethin's watch, which means launches have to be planned carefully.
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30:00 – Functional Foods: Core Balls, Brownies, and the Unmatched Bar
Core has tried functional foods twice. The Core Balls launched in 2020 with real potential, but the team made the mistake of including digestive enzymes in the protein, which changed the flavor profile over three months. Next came the Moose Tracks Protein Brownies -- moving fast until mold issues forced a pause. Any mold at all was unacceptable, and the product went on hold.
Now Unmatched is swinging at the category with a longevity-focused bar, targeting an Olympia 2026 debut. Doug says it cleared his personal palate test -- a high bar for a self-described sucralose snob -- using all-natural ingredients and a multi-functional ingredient stack. It's not built around any single hero ingredient. Two flavors launch with a third in development, and the strategy is small-batch, sell-through, reorder, keeping freshness high and inventory lean.
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35:30 – Merica Energy and the Unmatched Drink
CORE Nutritionals Pump BLACK uses the Full Yield nitrate system to stack free-form ingredients AND their nitrate forms. 10g citrulline, 3.2g beta-alanine, 2.5g betaine, plus 1g total nitrates. Three distinct NO pathways, zero caffeine, zero compromises.
A possible Merica Energy return hangs in the air. Doug says a small part of him says don't, but a bigger part says do it. The most likely path would be a limited-time drop rather than a full re-entry. The more concrete news is an Unmatched-branded functional drink in development, 12 oz, launching DTC-first.
The manufacturing setup makes this viable: the co-packer is 18 minutes from Core's HQ and 6 minutes from Doug's house. Shipping costs are one of the least-discussed pain points in the beverage business, and cutting that distance changes the unit economics meaningfully. Doug won't name the competitor whose recent formula changes created the market opening, but he's confident there's a real hole to fill with a drink Kris Gethin actually wants to drink.
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38:45 – Entering the Peptide Space: Nova Prime Labs
"Everyone said I was Drug Miller -- I had to get into peptides!" The joke lands, but the real story is more grounded. Doug started hearing everyday gym members talking about peptides: not just competitive athletes, but regular 40-something men and women who wanted to live better and longer. When Kris Gethin, who's been tracking peptides for 10-15 years, proposed doing it together, the alignment was immediate.
Doug's personal experience: he used what's known as the "Glow Stack" (BPC-157, TB-500, and GHK-Cu) for a nagging knee injury, and saw real results. He admits he was visibly shaking the first time he had to handle a needle, which he offers as evidence he genuinely isn't "Drug Miller." The GHK-Cu had an unexpected side effect: noticeably improved skin and hair. He hasn't yet experimented with GH secretagogues or MOTS-c, but he's open to adding them when the time is right.
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43:30 – Quality Standards and the Scammer Already at the Door
Unmatched Supps BH2K isn't your typical pre-workout. CreGAAtine technology, zero artificial ingredients, and a stimulant that won't wreck your sleep. Kris Gethin and Doug Miller created something different here.
Nova Prime Labs launched three weeks before recording and someone was already spoofing their site and Instagram. The knockoff goes by "Nova Prime Peptides" -- that's not them. It's Nova Prime Labs.
The quality standard Doug laid out: US FDA-registered facilities for lyophilized production, identity and purity testing at manufacture, sterility testing at the source and verified through cold storage. He describes the sketchy China email problem (like random spam listing Tren, Dianabol, and peptides for PayPal or Bitcoin) as the baseline they're explicitly not competing with. The goal was to build a brand that matches Core and Unmatched's quality standards, this time for research-use compounds. A strong legal team is essential because the regulations are actively evolving.
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49:00 – Oral Bioregulators and What Nova Prime Won’t Sell
Nova Prime deliberately keeps its catalog separate from Unmatched's -- no dietary supplements on the research site, no peptides on the supplement site. The brand currently offers 15-17 compounds and is preparing a second "tranche" of launches focused on oral bioregulators: shorter-chain peptides with roots in Russian science, covering organ- and system-specific applications. Oral BPC-157 for gut health is a major demand driver in this category.
Clear lines exist about what Nova Prime won't touch: GLP-1 agonists, SS-31, and anything formally classified as a drug are off the table. Doug is explicit that staying in what he calls the "low risk zone" is non-negotiable, because the regulatory landscape is still forming. The longer-term goal is to expand beyond research-use-only through Crush It Wellness MD, offering full medical consultations and pharmaceutical-grade protocols.
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51:15 – GLPs, Fat Burners, and “Natural” in 2026
The Unmatched 2SHRED System offers stimulant-free 24-hour weight management with separate AM/PM formulas. Founded by Kris Gethin and Doug Miller, this system works around the clock without artificial ingredients.
Ben asks the unavoidable question: did GLP-1 drugs crater fat burner sales? For Core, the category disruption is real. Core BURN has been out of stock long enough that actual demand data is hard to read -- a restock is coming. On the Unmatched side, Unmatched 2SHRED's non-stim formula positions it well alongside GLP-1 users who still want metabolic support without stimulants.
The bigger discussion is about what "natural" means now. Doug says BPC-157 is banned by WADA. His take: at this point in his life, longevity and being present for his family matters more than competing in a natural bodybuilding show. The definition of natural has always been fuzzy at the edges, and injectable peptides haven't moved that line as much as people assume. Ben raises the injectable L-carnitine example -- an amino acid delivered by needle -- as another case where delivery method complicates the definition.
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57:00 – Crush It Wellness MD and Protein Prices: Still Figuring It Out
Crush It Wellness MD is Doug's next vertical integration step: partnering with medical doctors in North Carolina to offer full consultation-based peptide and supplement protocols, with a pharmacy being built alongside it. For people who want medical-grade oversight instead of doing their own research, the research-use-only model doesn't go far enough. The loop runs from Nova Prime (research use) to Crush It Wellness MD (medical consultation) to Nutrition Corner (retail).
Which brings it full circle to protein. Raw material costs are now updating every three weeks. Core has moved from 2-lb tubs to 1.5-lb bags and discontinued the 5-lb Core ISO for now. That 1.5-lb bag's raw cost is roughly 150% higher than the 2-lb tub cost three years ago -- 25% less volume at 2.5x the price. Core PRO keeps running with monthly LTO flavors locked through end of 2026. Core VEGAN is doing extremely well despite its own cost pressures. Doug is direct: price increases are coming, and the industry isn't overcharging... it's surviving.
Unmatched Supps Longevity Multi+ is a 7-packet daily system that makes your average multivitamin look like child's play. We're talking clinical doses of everything from Spectra antioxidants to spermidine for cellular longevity.
Big thanks to Doug Miller for coming back after four and a half years and talking through everything happening across the portfolio. If you're following Core, Unmatched, Nova Prime, or Merica Labz, PricePlow has news alerts for all of them.
And thanks to Darren and the team at PerfectShaker for sponsoring the PricePlow Podcast -- check out their lineup of shaker cups at PricePlow.com/perfect-shaker, or get the full story behind the brand in Darren Thompson: Inside PerfectShaker | Episode #209.
Subscribe to the PricePlow Podcast, sign up for news from Core, Unmatched, Doug Miller, and Merica Labz on PricePlow, and leave us a great review on iTunes and Spotify!
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Where to Follow and Learn More
Connect with Doug Miller
Core Nutritionals
- Core Nutritionals Website
- Instagram: @corenutritionals
- Core Nutritionals on PricePlow (sign up for news alerts)
Unmatched Supps
- Unmatched Supps Website
- Instagram: @unmatchedsupps
- Unmatched Supps on PricePlow (sign up for news alerts)
Nova Prime Labs
Merica Labz
- Merica Labz Website
- Merica Labz on PricePlow (sign up for news alerts)
PricePlow Podcast Episodes Referenced
- Episode #050: Protein Prices on the Rise — Doug Miller's First Appearance
- Episode #073: Patrick Mabe at The Tactical Games with Core and Merica Energy
- Boss Status Episode #8: Inside Core Nutritionals HQ
- Episode #209: Darren Thompson — Inside PerfectShaker
- BevLab Podcast #003: Kris Gethin
Unmatched Supps Products and Articles
- Unmatched Supps Stem Cell
- Unmatched Supps BH2K: The All-Natural Pre-Workout with CreGAAtine
- Unmatched Supps Longevity Multi
- Unmatched Supps Longevity Test
- Unmatched Supps Longevity Sleep
- Unmatched Supps Dileucine
- Unmatched Supps 2SHRED AM & PM
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