Evolution is Everything
EXPLOSIVE GROWTH. A fresh vision. Twenty years of groundbreaking inventions.
For David Schmidt and LifeWave, the company he founded to share his inventions with the world, there’s so much to celebrate. As the company marks its 20th year in business, David and his team are grateful for LifeWave’s biggest year yet, reaching over $400 million in sales in 2023.
DSN was honored to recognize that success with the Bravo Growth Award, accepted by LifeWave President Meredith Berkich and members of the Utah-based leadership team, at the Global Celebration in April. “It takes a village.” said Meredith, “We couldn’t have accomplished this without our global teams, and of course, our passionate Brand Partners who seek to meet the needs of people in their communities by finding ways to improve life quality.”
A Lightbulb Moment
A proven and award-winning inventor, David launched LifeWave in 2004 following the development of a career-shifting invention—a new kind of phototherapy that could stimulate the skin with light to elicit a cellular response that creates more energy. This technology was originally the result of a project David was developing for the US Navy to improve energy and stamina for Navy SEALS aboard submarines.
LifeWave’s initial light-focused health product grew to a product line of patches that targeted specific health concerns and conditions—from fat-burning to energy to sleep and more. This “patch chapter” was just the beginning for LifeWave, as David continued to innovate and invent new and exciting products for the company.
“It has evolved over time,” David explained. “We started as a patch company and then evolved into a health technology company. Now we’re a life technology company. If I had a recommendation for an owner of a network marketing company, I would say that evolving a business is so critically important to success.”
Staying a Step Ahead
This continuous evolution is the driver behind the company’s most recent success, coupled with a well-executed strategy that was ten years in the making. Around 2008, David and his team began a ten-year journey of investing over $4 million into stem cells and regenerative medicine.
This path led to over 70 patents, new applications for light therapy and a pipeline of compelling intellectual property. By 2018, LifeWave was ready to go to market with the most successful of those innovations, and that launch changed everything. The company went from $20 to $40 million in sales in 2018 to $63 million in 2019 and has continued to grow, reaching nearly $400 million in 2023—that’s a truly remarkable 2,000 percent increase from 2018 to 2023.
While the company evolved, its focus on the original LifeWave technology remained consistent, which David points to as just one key to the company’s success, along with infrastructure development.
Future Focused
“It’s about remaining focused on your flagship product and resisting the temptation of coming out with other products,” he shared. “It’s essential to keep the focus on the one thing that drove you to success and then to build an infrastructure in your manufacturing, customer service, order fulfillment and marketing that is going to be able to sustain the growth.”
He continued, “In the past, we didn’t have the manufacturing capacity for a $600 or $700 million company. Today, we have manufacturing capacity for a $1.2 billion business. When it was obvious where we were going with our trajectory at the end of last year, we invested another $4 million in manufacturing equipment. And by the end of this year, we’ll be able to support a company doing about $1.8 billion annually. Our management team likes to have a huge cushion so that if we doubled in size this year, we could handle it without any issue.”
But infrastructure doesn’t appear on its own. David packed his team with experienced manufacturing experts who could see the same future that he did and make the changes LifeWave would need to grow when the time came. Some of those plans were developed in 2010, many years before this current season of growth had arrived and included automation capabilities that expanded LifeWave’s capacity.
Today, equipped with the manufacturing capabilities to produce LifeWave products on a massive scale, David is looking to the next chapter of his company’s story that has inspired yet another evolution. And he couldn’t be more excited to share it with the world.
“I’m incredibly excited about our new innovations and what that’s going to mean for our ability to transform lives for the better,” he shared. “We’re evolving from being a lifestyle company, to an anti-aging company, to a stem cell company, to a life technology movement.”
LifeWave’s recent Bravo Growth Award win is a fitting recognition for an inspiring season for the company. Meredith said, “We are grateful to our Founder, David Schmidt, and our Executive Board, while recognizing the incredible efforts of the team at DSN. We are thankful for all they do to champion this greatest of opportunities—where ordinary people can experience the extraordinary”.
Congratulations to David, Meredith and all the leaders at LifeWave for this well-deserved honor!
From the June 2024 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.
