Jeunesse Global - Founding Team of the Year

Company: Jeunesse Global, Orlando, FL
Company Description: Jeunesse is a billion-dollar global direct selling company with a mission to positively impact the world by helping people look and feel young, while empowering each other to unleash their potential. The company’s exclusive skin care and nutritional products make up a comprehensive Youth Enhancement System (Y.E.S.). Jeunesse operates in 146 markets worldwide.
Nomination Category: Entrepreneur Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Founding Team of the Year - Consumer Products Industries

Nomination Title: Jeunesse® Founders Pivot to Reimagine Success

When you think of a family business, you tend to think small. Not the family behind Jeunesse. When husband and wife Randy Ray and Wendy Lewis launched Jeunesse in collaboration with Wendy's son Scott Lewis in 2009, the goal was to build a billion-dollar company. That impressive milestone was reached in just six years when Jeunesse achieved $1.3 billion in worldwide annual sales, becoming the fastest company in direct selling history to reach the billion-dollar annual sales mark.
http://www.jeunesseglobal.com/

Randy Ray grewup in such deep poverty that at times he didn’t own shoes and ate mud pies to stave off hunger pains. Despite this impoverished youth, Randy held a strong belief that he was destined for success. This belief helped him break free from poverty to attend college and later design a computer system used to launch NASA space shuttles. As a Founder and CEO of Jeunesse, Randy has commanded the helm of Jeunesse since its inception.

Wendy Lewis started down the entrepreneurial path at age 8when she launched a summer camp from her parents’ back patio, charging neighborhood kids to make arts and crafts projects and participate in lawn games. Later in life, as a single mother who started her career as a math teacher, Wendy faced countless challenges on her entrepreneurial path. However, her work ethic and unrelenting determination have successfully seen her through many challenges. As a founder and COO, Wendy applies her analytical and problem-solving skills to overseeing the day-to-day global operations of the company, including overseeing IT, Customer Services, Human Resources, and Logistics.

Growing up the son of a serial entrepreneur, Scott was sure to learn a thing or two from his successful mom. However, it’s his visionary leadership and out-of-the-box thinking that has contributed so generously to the success of Jeunesse. Taking the road less traveled, Scott believed in a “reverse by design” strategy.When the Jeunesse launched, Scott promoted a diversified market strategy, growing several international markets early on, creating a stable global footprint.Today, Scott keeps his eye on the future, while overseeing worldwide events, marketing, and communications as well as working overseeing international markets.

It’s abundantly clear — 2020 was a year no one imagined. COVID-19 upended the way the world does business, and Jeunesse was no exception. The virus caused major disruption in world markets and challenged the ability of the company’s relationship-marketing business model to connect people in a world locked down and socially distanced, resulting in unprecedented challenges for this award-winning executive management team.

Live, in-person events are key revenue drivers for the company. Worldwide, Jeunesse holds approximately 300 events annually, with attendance ranging from 100 to 15,000 per event. With the pandemic putting a halt to in-person events, Randy, Wendy, and Scott had to quickly reimagine this critical aspect of their business.

The result was Jeunesse LIVE — a global virtual events platform designed to connect people from around the world in real-time. The platform was constructed within 30 days and supports simultaneous translations in up to 21 languages, in high-quality 1080p resolution broadcast on a gated viewing platform integrated with the Jeunesse ticket holder database. The platform also integrates with the Jeunesse mobile app.

In addition to creating the Jeunesse LIVE platform, the executive team decided to invest heavily in product development, launching 20 new product concepts with award-winning branding and marketing assets, as well as localized another 20 products for global market distribution.

All these efforts were supported by a workforce of 775 employees who were transitioned from 32 offices around the world to working remotely.

The company’s success would be meaningless without considering the effect it has had on its mission to have a positive impact on the world. In 2020 Jeunesse Kids donated $2.4 million to 13 charities, funding 14 projects on 6 continents, including $1 million given to build the WE College School of Entrepreneurship in Kenya.

-Achieved $8 Billion in cumulative worldwide sales
-Experienced significant growth worldwide, with average growth of 70% among the top 3 markets, and 25% to 84% growth in the top five markets.
-Jeunesse LIVE virtual events platform reached more than 2.7 million people and has forever changed the way Jeunesse does business.
-The Jeunesse EXPO 2020 Vision: Global Virtual Event reached more than 330,000 people. In 2019, the in-person EXPO tour stopped in five international cities and attracted an audience of approximately 50,000. All were fee-based events.
-Maintained top 20 ranking on the Direct Selling News Global 100 list of the industry’s top companies
-Ranked No. 14 onDSNGlobal 100 and was selected as one of the “Best Places to Work in Direct Selling” for the 4thtime
-Celebrated 11thAnniversary
-The company’s nonprofit foundation Jeunesse Kids gave $2.4 million in grants
-Garnered 184 corporate awards