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PROVO, Utah (AP) -- A Springville businessman is expanding his operations with the purchase of a building to manufacture personal care products just weeks before he's to begin serving a nearly three-year prison term.
Thomas E. Mower Sr., the founder of international multilevel marketing company Neways, will start serving a 33-month prison sentence on Nov. 13 for income tax evasion. On Friday, he purchased the former corporate headquarters of Springville ladder company Little Giant Ladder for nearly $3.5 million, with plans to use the building for his company SupraNaturals.
SupraNaturals will use the space to manufacture personal care products and dietary supplements. Mower plans to hire up to 150 workers by the end of the year.
The building is occupied by Wing Enterprises but will be converted to additional manufacturing and office space for SupraNaturals once Wing's lease expires in April, said Ryan Moss, Wing's CEO.
"Martha Stewart was still running her business even though she was in prison. I don't see why it should stop Mower," Moss said.
When completed in mid-2007, the SupraNaturals plant will be a private label maker of personal care products including shampoos, conditioners and soap, as well as dietary supplements, bottled water and chewing gum.
"We have contracts with liquid soap customers, and hope eventually to also make dietary supplement capsules. But we won't have any specific brand or formulas under the SupraNaturals name," said Gary Chlarson, who has served as project manager with the company for the past 18 months.
While Mower is principal investor and owner of SupraNaturals, he will not be involved in managing the business nor will his pending prison sentence affect the company, Chlarson said.
SupraNaturals is separately owned and managed from Neways.
Neways was founded by Mower and his then-wife, Leslie DeeAnn Mower, who each own 50 percent of the company.
The Mowers, who divorced in July 2000, will start prison terms next month for failing to pay personal income tax on about $3.2 million, which prosecutors say came from their companies Neways U.S., Neways Australia and Neways Malaysia.
A federal jury last year convicted them on six counts of income tax evasion and one count of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. Mower was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison and fined more than $75,000. Leslie Mower of Payson was sentenced to two years, three months in federal prison and ordered to pay a $60,000 fine. Both were sentenced to 36 months of supervised release after they serve their prison terms.
The former corporate attorney for Neways, James Thompson of Chandler, Ariz., also was convicted of one count of conspiracy to defraud the IRS and was sentenced to two years, one month in prison.
Information from: The Daily Herald, http://www.heraldextra.com
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
