Vasayo combines the best of Asian and American elements to lay the foundation for a global brand.
YOU MAY NOT HAVE HEARD OF THE HEALTH AND WELLNESS COMPANY VASAYO, BUT YOU WILL LIKELY RECOGNIZE THE NAME OF ITS FOUNDER: DALLIN LARSEN. With a background in the direct selling industry that spans three decades, Dallin is perhaps best-known for co-founding MonaVie in 2005. By 2008, MonaVie’s annual revenue had skyrocketed to $850 million. Dallin retired from MonaVie in 2014.
After retiring to the scenic mountains of Utah for two years, Dallin and his wife, Karree, decided to retire from retirement. Now, the couple is back for their third and final venture in the health and wellness company they founded: Vasayo. Headquartered in Pleasant Grove, Utah, Vasayo soft-launched in January 2017 and officially opened its doors five months later, in May 2017.
“Karree and I decided retirement wasn’t for us,” says Dallin Larsen, Vasayo’s Founder and CEO. “We missed building relationships with people through network marketing. Will Vasayo become a billion-dollar company? I wouldn’t be surprised. However, that’s not why we started it.”
Dallin emphasizes the importance of the couple’s intentions in founding Vasayo, and it’s not about being the fastest growing or the flashiest. “We’re in this for the long term,” Dallin says. “We have every intention of building a sizable organization, one relationship at a time.”
“Karree and I decided retirement wasn’t for us. We missed being in the people business.” —Dallin Larsen, Founder and CEO, Vasayo
Vasayo Founder Karree Larsen states that building a company slowly and steadily will win the race, in the end. “I’m not interested in a rocketship ride,” Karree says. “I’m interested in longevity and in creating a solid foundation and building a legacy.”
Although Vasayo is less than two years old, the company has already paid out tens of millions in commissions to its Brand Partners with its top producer earning in excess of $2 million in 2018, and recently named Maria Fiorini Ramirez—a woman The Wall Street Journal once rated as the world’s foremost financial forecaster—and James Bramble, a direct selling veteran of more than 20 years, as the first-appointed members to the Vasayo Board of Directors.
“We’re a private company, we don’t release numbers, but I will say our first year at Vasayo was larger than our first year with MonaVie,” Dallin says. “And MonaVie reached annual sales of almost a billion in three and a half years.”
A Global Commitment
In addition to Dallin and Karree, Vasayo’s owners include two other key individuals: Daniel Picou, Vasayo Co-Founder and President, and Dan Zhu, Vasayo Co-Founder and President of Asia-Pacific.
Daniel brings his expertise in global business strategy and development to Vasayo’s executive management team. And Dan spent 20 years in the U.S. direct sales industry, first at Tahitian Noni and then at MonaVie.
“We have a unique story where east meets west,” Dan says. “We are the only company I know of with North American and Chinese ownership combined. It gives us a unique advantage in Asia.”
Thanks to the company’s strong leadership, Vasayo has planted strong roots in the Asia-Pacific region. Although headquartered in Utah, the company also has global offices in Taiwan and Hong Kong, plus a new office in Thailand is in the works. “We started this company with global intentions,” Dan says.
Vasayo’s commitment to the Asia- Pacific region was evident from the beginning. “We soft-launched in the U.S. in January 2017 and, that same month, Dallin and I made a trip to Hong Kong,” Dan says. “You can see our commitment to the Asia-Pacific region.”
In addition to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand, Vasayo is currently laying the groundwork to expand into other markets in the region—such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Vasayo is also shipping into Japan as part of their Not for Resale (NFR) program.
Products With Liposomal Leverage
Vasayo offers health and wellness products, which target a range of needs, from weight loss to cleansing, from energy to sleep, and more. All of Vasayo’s products feature liposomal delivery for higher bio-availability in the body.
Vasayo’s liposomes are doublelayered bubbles or spheres that surround nutrients, helping them to pass through the harsh environment of the digestive system intact for better absorption and use by the body.
“We are the only company we know of with North American and Chinese ownership combined. It gives us a unique advantage in Asia.” — DAN ZHU, Co-Founder and President of Asia-Pacific, Vasayo
“We wrap the nutrient to help it get into your body for higher bioavailability and absorption,” Daniel says. “We use that same technology for all our products and now we’re also using it for CBD One.”
Products With Liposomal CBD
The company’s newest product offering, CBD One, is a cannabidiolbased product that comes in both a cream and a tincture form. “We’ve got the worldwide exclusive rights through a patent for liposomal CBD,” Daniel says. “With the millions of new people entering the gig economy, coupled with the expected growth in the CBD market with the passage of the farm bill, no company is better poised to create significant global market share over the next several years than a company called Vasayo,” says Maria Fiorini Ramirez.
Adding a CBD-based product to Vasayo’s product line has opened doors for the health and wellness company. “It’s giving us the ability to start a conversation with a person who might not have necessarily been interested in our other products,” Daniel says. “We believe CBD is going to be a major part of the company.”
It was Karree’s idea to offer a CBDbased product—something she had pushed for several years prior to CBD One’s launch in early 2019. The passage of the 2018 Farm Bill factored in to the company’s decision to move forward with a cannabidiol-based product.
“The Farm Bill opened up the floodgates for people to have a higher comfort level with CBD products,” Daniel says. “There are a lot of companies out there that are generating buzz about CBD. And people are looking for a bit more detail and documentation, which is leading them to Vasayo. It certainly helps that we have, to our knowledge, the only patent protected, liposomal CBD product that is also THC Free, Non-GMO, Organic Compliant and that is a product of the USA, from plant to package.”
Technology, Tools and Rewards
Vasayo’s Brand Partners run their businesses from a cloud-based back-office platform called the VCloud. Vasayo’s platform reduces corporate overhead, allowing Vasayo to invest more in their products and the compensation it pays to its global Brand Partners.
“I’m interested in creating a solid foundation and building a legacy.” —KARREE LARSEN, Founder, Vasayo
“We’ve been very lean in developing our VCloud,” Daniel says. “Our corporate philosophy is to run lean and mean so we can pay out a higher percentage to the people who are doing the work, our Brand Partners.”
In the VCloud, Vasayo’s Brand Partners can view commissions, run reports, check order statuses, communicate with their team, enroll others and shop—from both their smartphone and computer.
Vasayo also puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to its rewards program. “We took 200 Brand Partners to Paris last year,” Dan says. “This year, we’re taking about 300 to Germany as well as other trips to Hawaii, the Bahamas, Greece and Fiji. We’re really investing in our Brand Partners.”
All told, Vasayo seems to have the best of both worlds—a solid infrastructure combined with the entrepreneurial excitement of a new startup. “We’ve got the foundation of a five-to-10-year-old company with the timing of an 18-month-old company,” Daniel says. “With a combined 50 plus years in Direct Selling experience in management, we’re making sure the right foundation is laid so we can be a global company for decades to come.”
HEARTS & HANDS FOR HUMANITY
IN AFRICA, more than 40 percent of the total population has no access to clean water, and more than 60 percent of the population has no access to sanitation. Every minute, a child under the age of 5 dies due to water-related disease.
Vasayo is helping to support this need for clean water through its work with Hearts and Hands for Humanity. This charity provides clean water to communities in Africa using a Center Earth Drill, which can drill up to 250 feet below the earth’s surface, creating wells that reach clean water buried underground.
“Through Hearts and Hands for Humanity, we’re drilling wells for children in Africa where over 2,000 children under the age of five die every day from water-borne diseases,” says Dallin Larsen, Vasayo Founder and CEO. “Since the company launched, we’ve raised enough money to drill wells for about 75,000 children. Our goal is to have more than a million children in Africa drinking fresh water every day because of Vasayo within the next three to five years.”
Part of Vasayo’s commitment to Hearts and Hands for Humanity is to ensure that 100 percent of Brand Partner donations go toward providing clean water to African communities—with no administrative costs or salaries taken out.
“We, along with our Brand Partners, want to leave a legacy that outlives us,” Dallin and Karree say. “We feel like we already have because these kids in Africa are going to continue to have fresh water long after we are long gone. We’re off to a significant start. And to do something significant is exactly the reason we birthed Vasayo.”
