So there were no deals being made back then? Based on your post, am I to infer it was all concocted by a rogue PR guy who sending our PRs without management oversight or sign off? No emails of "does this look ok?"
There was no market exposure of the product to customers? No distributors or hundreds of sales people charged with selling the product?
We can look at history and see sales -- some fairly impressive considering where BIEL was at the time. So what happened?
My gut simply tells me word of mouth and repeat ordering should be strong. From that period, and to this day.
I.e., when I run out of icyhot, and find myself in some kind of inflammatory pain, I buy more.