History & Future Growth
Most companies originate
from the mind of one person, even though their ultimate
success comes from the collaborative effort of many people.
For this reason, this page has been abstracted from
previous material written by the company's founder.In 1985 Greg Caton was working as one of the co-founders (est. Oct., '84) of a direct sales firm called Consumer Express (established in Oct., 1984, which subsequently went on to go public, traded on the NASDAQ as Nutrition For Life International - or "NFLI," and then 15 years later closed its doors) [See bio.] One of Caton's responsibilities at that time was discovering new, exciting products, preferably proprietary in nature, to satisfy the "newness" factor that is essential to maintaining an edge in the highly-competitive network marketing industry.  Sometime in the fall
of 1985 he heard of a process used to make superior meat
substitutes, primarily imitation jerky products.
Caton received prototype product from a food technology consultant
in November of that year and saw great potential in developing
a market for similar products. He was qualified to evaluate
the prospects because from 1981 to 1983 he promoted textured
vegetable protein products from ADM (Archer Daniels Midland)
and I was already familiar with their drawbacks.
This product and the process used to make it was far superior.
In February, 1986,
Caton incorporated Lumen Food Corp. I also wrote
Lumen:
Food For A New Age (later renamed simply,
The Lumen Book)
and sold over 40,000 copies through a mail order
division of the Company that would begin operating the
following year.
Initially there was only one
customer: Consumer Express, his other company. As his partners
were not supportive of developing the program further, they
all parted ways in March, 1987, and Lumen Foods went on to develop
the health foods market. Largely through trade shows, health
trade magazine ads, and direct mail promotionals to the
retail store trade. The first three years were very
difficult (see first 11 years), and
in fact, Lumen Foods was forced into a reorganization
in September, 1989Around 1994 the Company began to see a profit and began to develop other markets. Meanwhile, Stonewall's Jerquee, a snack the company developed in 1992, became the lead product, contributing the most to developing retail store and consumer loyalty. Amazingly, market share was driven primarily by small ads, shelf-talkers, and word of mouth. (The company was never sufficiently capitalized to pay slotting fees.) It was even able to get into some supermarkets via its network of health food wholesalers. Currently (2006)
the company is in a form of "statis," having seen a "levelling
off" in the 2002 to 2006 periods, where, without any further advertising
or marketing, the company has seen a consistent $700-800,000 a year
in annual sales. Re-investment back into the company and
efforts to "grow the business" have not taken place,
largely due to legal problems connected with founder,
Greg Caton, in an unrelated business.
See the Pending Legal
section of the Executive Summary to
this Business Plan.
Continued, next column |
Future Growth
Greg Caton - Founder Written July, 1999 
"It has been my belief since
I was first exposed to food engineering techniques for making
advanced meat analogs (i.e. replacements) in 1981 that the
substitutes themselves will end up replacing "the real thing."
The example I have used in countless lectures is margarine.
Margarine was invented in the 1800's, but did not come to the
forefront until World War II when consumers in Allied countries,
primarily the U.S., became open to a suitable as a result of
war-related rationing. Since 1958, margarine, a vegetable-based
fat, has outsold "the real thing," butter worldwide and
is now the leading source of edible fat in every industrialized
country. The supremacy of margarine, an imitation product, over
butter, a "natural" product, is now a case study in the success
of well-engineered foods over the very source products they
are designed to replace."It is the destiny of
meat replacements to do the same thing that margarine did to
butter. Considering that textured soy products have only
been available in their present form since the 1980's, they
will have done so in a far shorter span of time. (Some of
the ecological reasons for the inevitability of meat
replacements taking over is found in an educational piece
I wrote on vegetarianism, called
"50 Reasons...")."As a testament to this
position, Lumen Foods has grown over 150% in the last year.
It is increasing sales in the institutional, commercial,
retail, government, and private label markets -- packaged
and bulk, flavored and unflavored, full-fat and fat-free,
with entrees and without. "We have adjusted to
moving quickly to 'situational' sales time frames, most
recently various "e. coli outbreaks" and the "Y2K food
storage" phenomenon."One of our customers,
Mr. Cary Brown, has recently started serving product to
the Veterans Administration hospitals in the U.S. They
are so pleased with the product, they want it nationwide.
Lumen Foods could assume 100% of the manufacturing
(which Cary would rather not get involved in) were the
capitalization of such a tool-up not an issue. "Lumen Foods is also
an emerging snack foods company. Beef jerky is well worth
imitating. According to the Wall Street Journal,
beef jerky and related meat snacks are an $800 million
a year business. Currently, Lumen Foods makes what
our wholesalers have indicated is the best-selling,
best-tasting meat replacement product on the market,
Stonewall's Jerquee.
(See retail store
testimonials). If Lumen Foods were to only claim 1% of
that market, that would be $8 million annually. Because
Stonewall's Jerquee is a more delicious chew and has
price points that are lower than real jerky, we feel is has
this potential and more. "For more information
on our active marketing developments, see our
Products, Services & Markets page. |
Lumen Foods used "banner"
advertising extensively in cyberspace in 1999 to get among knowledgeable consumers and generate sales. In that year, Lumen Foods more than doubled its income to $1.8 million, taking advantage of concerns about the Y2K computer virus. With the addition of a few HTML pages and some minor line extensions, Lumen Foods made almost as much money that year off an event-driven marketing campaign than the current asking price of the entire company today. |
Future Growth ---- Insights: Spring, 2006 . . . . By Its Founder
"Less than two months ago, Lumen
Foods celebrated its 20th Anniversary as food
manufacturer. It was a bittersweet historical mark,
and now that my wife and I have made a decision to
sell Lumen Foods and move, the feeling
is made more so. Four years ago, we attended
the ExpoWest Natural Foods show in Anaheim, Calif.,
and Cathryn was approached by the president and
founder of one of the largest vegetarian food
companies in the U.S. with annual sales of over
$40 million."This
accomplished entrepreneur told Cathryn that
he and his son were fans of Stonewall's
and asked what Lumen's annual sales were.
Cathryn told him: a little over $700,000 per year --
to which he replied, 'You have to be kidding!
A product this good should be grossing
at least $10 million a year, especially
with your price points!"The significance of such
a comment does not escape me."And had I not discovered
a legitimate, effective cure for cancer that was announced in 1858 and
effectively suppressed by medical authorities and their
governmental allies for nearly 150 years, things might
have turned out differently. I would not have
also founded Alpha Omega Labs in 1995, taken a position
against medical corruption, and not have been prosecuted
for my actions as a reformer on the vanguard."Lumen Foods never
had a chance to reach its real potential -- or even a
respectable fraction thereof -- not because of any
inherent deficiency in its product, process,
or concept, but because its
founder suffered from a kind of
revelatory embarrassment of riches. I was blessed
with more possibilities than I had the capacity
to bring to fruition. I attempted to pour a
gallon of the finest wine of the mind into
a small cup whose volume was perpetually
limited by politics, the trench warfare
of big business, and a legal milieu which served
to assist authorities in not only fleecing us
of our empire, but killing our desire to
go back, finish what we started, and make
our original enterprise blossom into
what it should have been to start with."Put in its
simplest terms: we are selling the business because
we need to heal from the past, start over,
and recreate ourselves. A new owner who brings focus
and hardwork into Lumen Foods as a 'new venture'
has enormous upside potential, simply because
we have been able to accomplish and extract
so much, yet apply ourselves so little --
evidenced by my many other business activities,
for which Lumen Foods' profits
provided the seed capital."The right
new owner can do far better.
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