After Losing $1 Million Overnight, This Entrepreneur Formed One of the Largest Health Snack Companies Daniel Lubetzky, CEO and co-founder of Kind, discovered a hidden opportunity amid a flood of bad news.
By Rose Leadem •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Sometimes bad news can actually strengthen your brand. At least that was the case for this founder.
At the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey, Daniel Lubetzky, now the CEO of Kind, a leading healthy snack food company, was working at another snack brand importing fruit-nut bars when a major change occurred. His outsourced manufacturing company told him they would be adding artificial ingredients into the "all natural" bars. Lubetzky was stunned. This went against the entire premise of the company and the way they marketed their products. After he advised major national grocery chains such as Whole Foods of the new ingredients, clients dropped the brand fast.
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"Overnight we lost over a million dollars in sales that we had killed ourselves to get to," Lubetzky says, adding that he decided to pave a new path. "It was very daunting for us to decide we had what it takes to build everything from scratch. That's when we decided to create Kind."
By not giving up too quickly or easily, the company created one of the fastest growing healthy snack food companies in the U.S., which has sold more than one billion bars to date.
Check out the video to hear more about Lubetzky's journey and how he prevailed.
