WDNY: (We’re Not Dead Yet) will market and produce functional products for the 55+ consumer. LIVE LIFE...WELL!
- KLS
- May 27
- 13 min read
For the 186th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with WDNY, Inc. and Co-Founder, Wayne Lutomski. WNDY (We're Not Dead Yet) Inc. develops brands that serve the 50+ consumer. From the Vivendus Beverage to Force of Nature, the only certified carbon neutral cleaning and disinfectant solution available in the market. This non-toxic cleaner kills 99.9% of all germs, viruses and bacteria. Great as a CPAP cleaning solution and perfect for nursing homes, rehab centers, etc.
"Together Talks" feature # 186: Wayne Lutomski presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
Story of how it was created?
I've had a very blessed career. I've been in the food and beverage industry, almost all of it, 40 plus years. Most of it working and launching brands in international markets. I've physically launched brands in 67 different countries. Brands like Gatorade, Snapple, Pepsi, Starbucks Frappuccino, Welch's, Gala Wines, power brands in these markets. Some, multiple times, Japan, four or five different brands or China, three or four different brands. I've had a blessed career.
But when I turned 60, my role at my last employer ended. I was part of the team that was putting the restructuring together, so it made sense. But I thought with a pretty strong career background, it would be easy to find a job, and it wasn't. It was very difficult, in fact. And then COVID hit, and that made it even worse. I looked back, I wasn't ready to let it go. I wasn't ready to stop working. I could still add value, even though I was 62. I'm now 65.
But corporate America didn't want to talk to me. The question was what do I do know how to do? Like I said, I've launched brands in 67 different countries. I know how to launch beverage brands. I decided to look at that and wondered where would I go.
I realized that at my age, my body doesn't quite work the way it used to. I still work out five, six times a week, and yet my muscle mass is shrinking. But that's just the natural part of aging. So when I started digging a little deeper, I recognized that there are a lot of issues that people, as you age, your body just doesn't work the way it did.
I asked if I can do something about that, right? We put together a line of products that will enable the 50 plus generation to live life vibrantly, to live life well. To help them, me, manage some of the things that we can't do quite as well as we did, whether it be memory or recovery from exercise, our body just It takes longer to recover from a golf game, gardening, a workout, pickleball, whatever the case may be. Our energy levels are lower. Those are the products that we developed. The WNDY became an acronym for the ethos of the brand, which is we're not dead yet. We're not dead. We can still go out and add value. We can still go out and play. We can still go out and have fun.
Life is not over. We're not dead yet. So that's what WNDY stands for. And the products that we're bringing to the market will help that consumer enable themselves to live life migratory, to live it well.
What separates you from your competition?
First and foremost, for the WNDY product, the brand name is called Vivendus, which in Latin means to live life, but in an engaged manner. What clearly differentiates us is two things. One, that target audience. What products specifically target the 50 plus consumer other than pharmaceuticals? There's not many, if any, right? That separates us. Then secondly, the product. It is a functional beverage, specifically. We made for the lifestyle, not only the lifestyle, but the needs, the physical needs of this particular consumer.
We are also helping consult with other brands, bringing them to market. I would say three things we bring to the table. One, our experience. We've got a team, 10 of us on the team. All of us have been vice presidents or higher of the various companies we work for with expertise in co-manufacturing, in sales, in sport marketing, in product development, design, and creative work, and so forth. We've got a tremendous amount of expertise that we can share with any brand that comes on. Secondly, to that point, is our connections. Like I said, I'm 65. I've worked with a lot of different companies and a lot of different people I've worked with over the years, as do most of the team members. We can help connect you from point A to point B. Then I would argue the third thing that really comes to play is our approach to marketing and building a business. There's some tried and true principles that we try to communicate to the brands that we work with on our consulting basis to get them to think differently about their brand. I would say there are two key elements. One is what I call the Kobayashi Maru, and we can talk about that later. But secondly, it's really driving that consumer insight. It drives the, for lack of a better term, the tagline, the ethos of what the brand is all about and how it relates to the consumer. Those two understandings really drive a lot of what we're trying to accomplish for our consulting customers.
What have been the biggest challenges?
Raising the funds to launch the Vivendus brand. That's been a real challenge to accomplish. Not sure why, other than, of course, COVID has a lot to do with it. Just the general market upbeat with last year's elections and now with all the turmoil in the markets. Fundraising has been difficult and we do need to raise some additional funds to secure a successful launch for the brand. But the other piece of it, too, was finding consulting partners, brands that we can work with, where we can add the right level of value to make it worth our effort and their investment in us. We want to really make them successful. And we're choosing in that respect as to who we work with.
What types of companies make a good fit?
From the consulting point of view, certainly CPG, which is so broad. It's food and beverage primarily would probably be our sweet spot. That's where our connections are most. We will look at other non-food beverage brands that could benefit from some of what we know. And then in terms of the consulting portion, because I just find this very interesting, how do you manage, obviously the 10 of you have vast amounts of experience that most, say, founders are potentially half your age that don't have that level of experience or they have no experience in CPG, food and beverage. Many people approach a brand and a launch without evaluating everything. Our experience allows us to identify those milestones that were possibly missed. We know how to ask the challenging questions to guide them to be building a stronger consumer proposition, a stronger business proposition, if you will.
Those are all key elements, because a lot of the early stage and, say, mid-market companies, they're starting to build that experience, starting to build that knowledge, but not always. That's where we can really help them.
Do you feel you are almost the blind spot for these companies?
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Everything is now data-driven. Everything is web-based, especially around marketing and advertising. That's great. But if you don't have the right consumer proposition, generated from the right consumer insight, it doesn't matter. You're not going to maximize your potential. You've got to really hone in those things very properly. It's still advertising, but you've got to get that right. But it could also be co-manufacturing. It could be the sales approach, what's the right sales approach for a product. It's easy to go sell say e-commerce. But is that going to give you the skill that you want to achieve to really turn the corner? If the answer is maybe, how do you think about it differently? How do you drive distribution and retail? It's easy to sell it into Publix or Safeway or Kroger. Okay, what about all those convenience stores? What about the mom and pop independence? They cannot drive significant volume on a store-by-store account, but they drive when added up can be a significant play. Those are very, very important questions that most founders, younger founders particularly, don't think about.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
That's very interesting because eventually the offer did come, and I took it. That delayed the start of this business. That offer came, it was a good two-year run, and it was over. But it delayed the entry to what we want to do with the Vivendus product. That being said, it actually probably gave us space and time because to try to raise funds during the height of COVID and shortly thereafter. Trying to launch that product may not have been the best time in any event, particularly given our target consumer. In retrospect, taking that job was the right thing to do, but did it delay where we wanted to go, yes. Would it have mattered, probably not.
How has your previous experience helped?
As I mentioned, I have been blessed in the opportunity to launch a brand in 67 different countries. Some brands had lots of dollars to go in there and just really drive the market. Most of them had limited budgets as we were starting out in international, trying to figure out the way for it. There were two key things, one was finding your partner that you would work with and finding one that shared your values and your vision for the business. The reason why I say that's important is because if your vision for the business is we're going to sell a million cases, and theirs is 500,000, you've got to disconnect right from the get go. You're going to spend more time managing that disconnect than you are managing the business to ensure you hit the million.
The same thing is equally true in terms of the values. Moral and ethical values, but also the values in terms of how you communicate. What do you communicate? How often do you communicate? What's the style of communication? Those elements are very, very important. Because again, if your values are misaligned, you're going to spend more time managing that element than you are going to be managing the business. That partner selection is very, very important. And make sure they're aligned to what you see and how you want to go do it.
The second part is the consumer insight. Most of the brands that I worked with had established U.S. businesses with an established consumer proposition, commercials that made sense in the United States, not necessarily in South Korea, not necessarily in Japan, or China, or Chile, wherever. The real important thing is the equity of the brand, what that brand stands for, what its purpose was, remains the same. How you execute it in an individual country may vary. That's really driving deep into the consumer insight as to what that consumer sees about themselves and reflect that back in the advertising.
It's a matter of finding what is that methodology, what is that communication, and style of communication that makes the difference. The brand proposition, yes, the equity is still the same. The communication aspect of it is very different. But those two things are the really critical components of getting it right, partner selection and that consumer insight.
What have you learned since starting this entrepreneurial journey?
The big difference is the amount of work that you have to do personally. In the past, I've had teams and I could chart it off. Yes, I have a team now, but there's still a lot of those little day to day things that you've got to do that you never really thought much about when you were working in a big company. Because someone else did that, and it was their job, and it was part of it. That's been a big aha.
The other piece of that is the amount of time that all takes. As a result, you really have to be very ruthless in managing your time to make sure you're getting enough time to do the value added stuff versus those day to day things that have to get done. As an entrepreneur of a small team trying to pull that together, that's one of the big challenges for sure.
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
In the early stage of the WNDY-Vivendus lifespan, we purchased the marketing rights to a company, to a brand that fit our target very well. It was already in the market, had sales, could have enabled us to do better fundraising. We had a proof of concept and so forth. This is where I really made the mistake of not aligning properly on the values and vision, going back to what you previously talked about. After so many years, you think you get it right. But I was so excited about it that I just, I didn't see some of early warning signs. As a result, that fell apart relatively fast. It cost us a tremendous amount of money that we could have used to invest and launch our Vivendus product right from the get-go.
That was a big mistake on my part. The learning from that is remember your experience. Remember what you've been taught. Don't get ahead of yourself in terms of the excitement for what the vision is or could be. Instead, be more steadfast and I think that was a key to learning. Certainly how we're approaching the launch of this business is now the relaunch of it, if you will, is by being a little bit more, I don't want to say cynical, but more intentional about it. As opposed to just being caught up in the excitement of being an entrepreneur and making a decision based on hope rather than what you really know, which is getting those values and vision right. Therefore being intentional about the next steps that go forward.
What is your why?
A couple of years ago, when I was leaving the office, walking to my car, I saw a bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot that said, "if you could ask God one question, what would it be?"
My first step after reading that was, wow, that's an interesting question. The second step is, why the suffering for all the little ones? The young children with cancer and so forth. And the third step, and it was truly one, two, three. The third step was, you're asking the wrong question. The question you ought to ask, and I try and believe God was involved with this, is, what are going to do about it? I'm not somebody that can help cure cancer for a child. That's not, I mean, at this point, I'm well past that.
But it doesn't have to be children that I can do something about. As I mentioned, 50 plus consumer, particularly as you get a little bit older, still want to live an engaged life. They still want to live an active life, but their body does not necessarily work the way it did. Some people, they're blessed and it does. Others, not quite. Well, I can do something about that. And that's what's driving this thing here is that we can do something about it to help people live their life well as they age.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
Outside of work, actually, and that would be my faith life and my family. That gives me great joy in both areas, in terms of my faith and belief and in just raising my family. I travel an awful lot, quite frankly, easily half my time. And yet I was still able to be engaged, fully engaged with my three children. All three are functioning adults, if you will, and functioning at very high levels. That's a blessing. I'll never trade that.
That's it.
If you're asked business-wise, it was launching our energy drink in the Russian market in Moscow, St. Petersburg. I was with Pepsi at the time. We were in the market. Red Bull was the dominant player at the time. This was a good 20 years ago. They had a set strategy. This is what we're going to do and the initial thought was, well, we'll copy that. It just wasn't working. That's where the concept of Kobayashi Maru came up. I mentioned it earlier. It's finding the game you can win, playing a different game, if you will.
Instead of going after all the clubs where you would do a Red Bull and vodka, instead of switching our product out for Red Bull, well, they'd come in the next week and pay mor, you're never going to win that game. The game we could win is this is, we're great at retail. We're great at distribution. We're great at display activation and so forth. We really refocused where we were going to be, did a completely different TV advertising campaign versus what Red Bull did. Within three weeks of that launch, we went from number three to number one and remain so today.
Another example was launching Starbucks Frappuccino in China. The launch was so successful that we literally had to air freight containers of products, think about the cost. But you couldn't be out of stock. We weren't making any money, but we were certainly selling a lot of product. But again, it was taking a look at the consumer and doing something unique and different that was very compelling that just drove volume off the charts. Those would be two of my key highlights in my career for sure.
Piece of Advice
In business, and it's trite, everyone says it, but not everyone follows it, it's all about the consumer. It's not about the customer. The customer is Safeway, Kroger. You've got to do that, yes, but at the end of the day, it's all about the consumer. Who are they? What do they think about themselves? And how do you reflect that back to them in your communication? Think about that is how you build a brand that is going to have strong loyalty and stay in power over time. Truly understand that consumer insight from business. I would say in terms of life, you know, as a 65-year-old, faith and family, because those things are permanent. Brands and jobs, they come and go, especially in this day and age, people are in a company much more than five to six years before they move on to the next thing. But what stays is family and your faith. I would strongly recommend that that's where your primary investment be made.
Community Callout
Mike Dobson
Ryan Coughlin
Greg Via
In Closing
KLS wants to thank WDNY, Inc. and Co-Founder, Wayne Lutomski, for today's "Together Talks" feature.
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