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A nutritious Balance
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June 25, 1997: 4:52 p.m. ET
Dick Lamb, president of Bio Foods, Inc., speaks to CNNfn
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Eating on the run has become an American passion and produced a boom in the market for high energy snack foods. A new entrant to the market is the Balance Bar, which is starting to appear in supermarkets as rival to the popular Power Bar.
Dick Lamb, president and chief operating officer of Bio Foods, Inc., joined Valerie Morris on "Business Unusual."
MORRIS: Before we get to your product, let's talk about you a little bit because you've had quite a varied background. An engineering degree, an avid athlete, a champion wind surfer. So shifting careers is nothing new to you. Does that help you shift and go into business as well?
LAMB: Well I think experience always helps. The other, I did have a couple of startup businesses, so I know what's involved and know that there's a lot involved -- a team that you have to build. But I think the important thing is starting with a good product. I've been fortunate to be involved with companies that have an excellent product and that makes starting a business very easy.
MORRIS: Well I gave this little background because not only is shifting careers good for being able to continue working but it also must give you some valuable insights about recognizing opportunities perhaps ahead of them becoming popular fads.
LAMB: Well I think it's true to some extent. Wind surfing was something that really was a brand new type of sport and it was difficult in the early days to get it established. There were many parallels with a Balance Bar because when we first started five years ago, we had a bar with more fat and protein than was commonly recognized as good for people in the diet. The world has changed enormously since then, but I think we were a little ahead of our time. But now, people are recognizing the benefits of a balance of nutrients in snacking as well as in meals, and they're responding greatly to our product.
MORRIS: I understand that this was really for a very specific market when the Balance Bar was first created. Tell us about that.
LAMB: Well, the Balance Bar was very good for blood sugar control. In other words, instead of having highs and lows that you get from, let's say carbohydrate snacks, most people would recognize this from children when they feed them sweets, 2 hours later they have low blood sugar and are impossible.
But because of this property in our bar with a balance of nutrients actually steadying blood sugar, we first tried to penetrate the diabetes market. We were quite successful at that. Used that as a springboard. And yet the bar is good for everyone. It's a great meal replacement. It gives you longer appetite satisfaction on fewer calories and from that springboard we were able to go into the natural foods market which, in less than a year we've become the leading bar by far. We've raced passed some of the more established market leaders.
MORRIS: Well let's talk about an established market leader and what the differences are, if you will, between the Balance Bar and that other bar. Name it and then tell us the differences.
LAMB: Well I think it's no secret that the pioneer in this field was the Power Bar, and I think all of the nutrition bar companies certainly owe them a lot.
MORRIS: How do the two products differ and then how do the two businesses differ, even though it's a similar market?
LAMB: Well, Power Bar has always taunted itself as a sports bar and I think its name implies that. They are -- Power Bar is 75 to 90 percent carbohydrate, very low in fat. It has some protein in it. We have a totally different nutritional philosophy. In fact we think that Power Bar was good in its day because it did follow the high carbo, low fat dogma that is now being challenged, and we are sort of the second generation bar. I mean it -- Power Bar was good in its time, kind of like a model-T Ford was good.
We certainly think that our bar answers needs for the, you know, 21st century. It's balanced in protein, carbohydrate and fat, provides essential fatty acids and essential amino acids. You get -- because of its lower carbohydrate, doesn't have the sugar, it doesn't cause a rapid rise in blood sugar but instead gives you steady energy for a much longer period. So you get longer appetite satisfaction on fewer calories, which of course means weight loss. So it's really a good product for anyone.
MORRIS: But when we go back to look at the initial marketing, that was kind of mediocre, the response to your initial marketing. Have you then since looked at that and then changed your marketing strategies?
LAMB: Yes. We didn't know what we had. We had a very unique product. We knew it was a great product because we'd all experienced the benefits of it. But we felt because fat was a dirty word five years ago, it's becoming much less so to the knowledgeable people, which actually is shown in our penetration on the natural foods market. They're the most knowledgeable, discriminating shoppers or grocery shoppers anywhere and our success there indicates that we have a great product that people understand.
MORRIS: But are you number one in the health markets?
LAMB: By far. Our top two flavors out sell the nearest competitor by two to one. So we are -- this is based on market data. It's not just our wishful thinking.
MORRIS: Your previous marketing infomercial and ads, as I said, kind of a mediocre response.
LAMB: Yes. It was an attempt to address the issue of having to educate the consumer of why they needed to have more fat and more protein when they eat. And we felt, gee, if we have hands on, if we have people talking about this, let's say marketing representatives. So we tried that sort of a multi-level or actually it was a two level multi-level scheme. We tried an infomercial and it was moderately successful. But the break-through came when we decided to attack the natural foods market, just because we felt we had gotten some indication it was selling well in the West coast through stores, and we thought the most discriminating knowledgeable shoppers might react to the product. So we repackaged and in fact they did.
MORRIS: Well it certainly hasn't hurt at all that you have endorsements by some pretty heavy hitters. Chicago Bulls Scottie Pippen and the cast of Baywatch, Madonna, to mention a few.
LAMB: Well they're not necessarily endorsers. We know they're users of the product. Madonna's personal trainer, Ray Kybartus, is very well known in Hollywood and trains a number of stars, actually requires his clients to use Balance Bars. He believes in this balance of nutrients very much and actually designs meals for them so that their other meals mimic the composition of the Balance Bar, and its quite successful.
MORRIS: So what can we expect then in the future from Balance Bar?
LAMB: Well, we expect, we've grown from 1995 30 times, our sales in 1997 are going to be very strong. We think we'll be adding new products. We have just started to penetrate. We are at about 40 percent of Power Bar now and that's just in the natural foods market. We think wherever we're going to hit against them we really do quite well. And we intend to be $100 million company in 2 years.
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Balance.com
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