It's been a long wait for the Vitamin Shoppe, which filed for its IPO back in May 2007. Well, today the company finally hit the markets.

The Vitamin Shoppe issued 9.1 million shares at $17 each (the range was $14-$16). With the money, the company will pay down a portion of its outstanding debt.

Started in 1977, Vitamin Shoppe has grown into a large chain of vitamin/supplement stores, with 434 across 37 states. Even with the recession, the company has still been able to churn out same-store sales growth of more than 4%. For the first half of this year, revenues were $343.7 million, up from $307.1 million a year ago. Net income was $8.8 million.

VS Holdings is the parent company of Vitamin Shoppe Industries and has filed to go public today under the name Vitamin Shoppe Inc.

Founded in the late 1970s, Vitamin Shoppe is now a top specialty retailer of vitamins, minerals, herbs, supplements, sports nutrition and other healthy things. Each store has 8,500 items and there are 11,500 items from catalogs and www.vitaminshoppe.com.

Currently, there are 317 stores in 31 states. The company has also been growing nicely. Since 2003, revenues have increased from $331.2 million to $486 million. In fact, Vitamin Shoppe has generated positive comparable store sales growth for 15 consecutive years.

What's more, the main shareholder of the company is Bear Stearns Merchant Banking (the investment was struck in November 2002). To get the deal done, the firm piled a lot of debt on the balance sheet. But with the IPO proceeds, this is likely to be reduced.

The lead underwriters include Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). The proposed ticker symbol is "VSI."

You can find the IPO filing at the SEC web site.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.