By T.J. Prieur
Xooma Worldwide is a Hampton Roads Company with a global mission to “Change the Health of a Generation.” Its flagship product, X2O, is fulfilling that mission by helping tens of thousands of people around the world enjoy better health. Surprisingly, X2O is a simple little product you just add to your water—but it offers some amazing health benefits.
Zack Howell, Xooma’s Chief Operations Officer, proudly holds up an X2O “sachet” (the size of a small teabag) and says, “It is a unique product that’s 100% natural and provides the body with vital minerals and electrolytes, increased hydration and a healthy alkaline boost. It’s extremely affordable, easy to ship worldwide and, best of all, it works!”
Everyone around the world drinks water, but X2O “transforms that water into a powerful health beverage with no change in taste or color. It’s a global product,” says Zack. Indeed, the company markets and ships to 60 countries.
Xooma is a direct marketing company with more than 35 health products, including vitamins and minerals, functional health beverages, weight loss products and skin care.
“Xooma was launched on May 5, 2005,” Zack says. “It grew out of our original parent company, Health Thru Nutrition, which began in 1993. We decided to rebrand ourselves in 2005, which triggered rapid expansion internationally. Xooma soon became the global brand that people recognized, and quickly surpassed the growth of our parent company.”
Zack credits much of Xooma’s success to its exhaustive efforts in formulating a solid business plan and software program.
“Direct marketing is a volatile industry and a lot of businesses start and go out of business in the same year,” he says. “Those companies typically don’t fail because of their marketing. They fail because of poor infrastructure and inefficient software. Delays or mistakes in paying commissions to distributors, or not shipping products out on time, are the mistakes that take most companies down.”
Zack continues, “Most successful companies in our industry design their own software. We did a great deal of planning when we were designing our own platform. We wanted our distributors focused on selling Xooma’s products, and we have created the infrastructure to help them do exactly that.”
The majority of Xooma’s distributors are home-based and market the company’s products using both online media (websites, videos, social networks) and offline media (catalogs, brochures, audio materials). The company is designed to give distributors the ability to tailor their marketing to suit the needs of their individual customers.
“We’re more like Starbucks in this way,” Zack says. “In Starbucks, there are not many things on the menu board, but each customer can request a completely customized drink. Our distributors can create and customize their own websites to market the products of their choice and they can tailor that offering respective of their audience.”
Coordination and communication are essential at Xooma, as at any business.
“We developed a Project Priority Matrix, which allows us to prioritize each project based on such factors as its urgency and how much time it will take,” Zack says. “This allows us to constantly deliver more value and support to our distributors – while always remaining focused on the big picture.”
The matrix, by ranking each task by priority based on its scores in the areas of strategic fit, financial impact and execution risk, organizes the IT workflow at Xooma in a manner consistent with overall goals of the business. According to Zack, “Too many companies are held back by the limitations of their software. At Xooma, technology is viewed more as an enabler to marketing than a crutch. It’s a very different ‘can-do’ approach to IT.”
He adds “We’re not great multi-taskers, but we are great uni-taskers. The matrix enforces accountability for everyone, while letting everyone on the team know what everyone else is doing. It also insures that we are always getting the best balance of those three core factors involved in any project: time, quality, and cost. With any given task, you can only have two at any given time. For example, if you want it quick and cheap, it’s probably not going to be the best quality. But when you focus on delivering visually apparent results (those components or phases of your project that the members care most about), then you can usually find a way to have all three components.”
Xooma also developed information-sharing networks through Ning.com, so its distributors and product users can stay connected. Ning is a popular social networking platform that allows site creators the ability to brand their own community networks.
“Each member can create their own rules and post whatever they want on the Ning networks,” Zack says. “They use the networks to get involved, communicate and network with each other. They post videos and photos of what’s going on. They are constantly sharing. It really creates a great sense of community and bonding for us and for them.”
While Xooma’s health products are what create the passion that fuels their mission to change the health of a generation, they’ll be the first ones to tell you that their technology solutions are what allow them to empower people around the world to help them in fulfilling that very important mission.
