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Non-Tech : LIFEWAY FOODS (LWAY) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mark cox who wrote (181)	2/6/1998 2:30:00 AM
From: mark cox	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 352

About competition for LWAY. He is not worried about any competition. We talked about Alta Dena and Stueve's Natural. He doesn't consider them competition. They don't produce real kefir. The reasons he gave for not worrying about them or others are that LWAY is the only company that produces kefir and kefir cheeses, also no one has any kefir product like the Basics Plus antibody product, or the new medical foods that will be coming out co-developed with GalaGen, and several other kefir products in development right now that will be launched this year. He said that LWAY sells all of their products to distributors. It is more advantageous to produce a whole product line that the distributors can get from a single source so that they don't have to go to several producers to get all of the products. Also LWAY has the largest production facility in the U.S. that is devoted to the production of kefir and it is highly automated. Add to this LWAY's growing brand name recognition, their resources such as cash, profit margins and cash flows. The CEO's familiarity with Russia, which is a huge market for kefir. I'll also add the knowledge that the CEO has about kefir itself and his 11 year track record. LWAY is very busy right now and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The items they are working on right now that I know of are: 1) Produce both Yogurito and kefir in single size serving bottles. 2) Bring 'Basics Plus' out of the test market phase and into a larger scale distribution. 3) Export Yogurito to Mexico. 4) On going development of several 'In House' new products and launch them this year. 5) Complete and launch several new products in co-development with GalaGen. 6) Begin heavy advertising campaign. 7) Increase distribution for products. Mr. Smolyansky jokingly told me that there were a few things that he knew that I don't know. ie: more projects that he can't talk about. So 1998 should be full of new developments. Mark