A Wuvit in every home.

That's our motto and mission statement for the future.

With this much quality at a price everyone can afford, what's not to wuv?

The Invention: Who knew that sewing feed corn up in a bag on a lark would result in retail outlets in all fifty states, with close to two million dollars worth of retail sales in just over two years? Certainly not me, Green Daisy Inc. President, Kim Lavine, who had to be convinced of my product’s prospects by industry experts who told me I had the “next big thing.”

I knew I was on to something when complete strangers started showing up at my door to buy them. It all started as a flash of inspiration one snowy November afternoon in 2000. My husband was feeding deer in our back yard with feed corn, and I heated it in the microwave and was absolutely blown away; I couldn’t believe that something so simple could produce such incredibly moist heat that lasted for hours. Overcome with an inexplicable passion, I worked on different prototypes of the product for over a month, experimenting with size, weight, fabric design and pillowcase, testing each result until I arrived at the final incarnation.

 The idea turned into holiday gifts for my kid's teachers, which quickly led to visits and calls from strangers who had seen them and wanted one of their own. Soon I was literally selling 100's of them a week off the back of my truck! I learned to keep a basket full with me at all times, because people would stop me everywhere I went--at the bank, the YMCA, school events, even my attorney's office--and tell me they wanted to buy one for a gift or for themselves! I guess the true litmus test was when a local high school hockey player showed up at my door in the middle of a snowstorm to ask if I was the 'lady who sold Wuvits.' He ended up buying one for himself, and eventually the whole team followed, seeing the therapeutic benefits of both hot and icy relief. Having won over the toughest demographic--teenage boys--I instantly recognized opportunity!

The Business Inception: This was a tough time. I was trying to put together the foundations of a business selling a product most people laughed at, while shuttling 2 & 4 year old boys to attorneys, insurance agents, and uncountable fabric stores. I unapologetically brought them to all my appointments in professional offices, committing to keep them my first priority, and giving myself the title of 'Boss Mom' long before assuming the current title of President.

Patent & Trademark: When I presented the product to my patent attorney, I could see their incredulity that I would think such a thing would be marketable, let alone worthy of a patent. But undaunted, I labored to write my own patent, only to have the same attorney later tell me it was better written than most of his junior attorney’s efforts. The name Wuvit came as a flash of insight to me one night as I held it against my chest during a blustery snowy day and just felt its overwhelming warmth and comfort soothe me. In a baby-like voice I said, “I Wuvit,” and a light bulb went off. I knew from years as marketing professional that having a funny, unusual name would make it memorable in the consumer’s mind. I registered my own trademark and soon everyone across America would be making fun of me with analogies to Elmer Fudd, but also asking, “What’s a Wuvit?”  

Breakthrough & Challenge: The real breakthrough came when my husband Dave, seeing the same opportunity, took a dozen Wuvits to a local gift store in town without telling me, and asked the owner if she would be willing to sell the product on consignment. She sold all of them in a week, and eagerly called to order more. This was an exciting breakthrough, but it was also tinged with more challenge as my husband was laid off from his job. With two small children and no regular income coming into the house, I had to face adversity and make the daunting decision to make a leap of faith and risk our life savings to invest in a product that many people were still laughing at.

Product Launch: My neighbor’s father, a former executive with the national chain Jacobson’s, told me unequivocally “I had something here and I had to take it to market in a BIG way.” I trooped off to my first tradeshow in Chicago, absolutely terrified about what the buying public might think of my quaint and novel invention, only to return 4 days later with thousands of dollars worth of orders from accounts in 5 states! After having sewn literally 1,000’s of Wuvits myself, it was time to take the product into major production, and I struggled to find a manufacturer who would take me seriously enough to do a first run of 5,000 pieces. I remember the meeting I had with them when I first presented the product. They too thought I was crazy to think the marketplace would embrace such an item. I frequently reflect on their comments to me that day with amusement from my current perspective of success. They warned me then, “don’t get too excited about this. We see people like you come and go every day. Almost all of them fail.” Very few people had the foresight to see the opportunity I had in front of me, and it was literally a leap of faith I had to make to realize the dream I held in my mind a reality.

A Better Mousetrap: Wuvits evolved from there, with the discovery of expensive seed corn and the addition of upscale fabrics. Seed corn costs up to $150 a 50lb bag, versus feed corn, which costs $5. The seed corn was an incredible breakthrough; it was cleaned, sized, graded, and specially dried to produce unbelievably long-lasting heat with very little smell. I recognized that I had created our own niche, merging home decorator accent with spa therapy, meaning it looked like a designer pillow, not a sock or doughnut! Our insistence on using top-quality designer fabrics in the hottest home decorator trends, is what really set us apart. That, and the unbelievable long-lasting superior moist heat that our product produced, created the sales phenomenon that Wuvits are today, attaining incredible success in the marketplace in only two short years. 

The Phenomenon: I decided to test the product in the retail marketplace myself in November & December of 2002. I leased four kiosks at malls in Michigan and one in Georgia, and ended up selling $250,000 worth of Wuvits in just 8 weeks! The phenomenon was born! Since then we’ve endured many challenges and achieved many great accomplishments, including winning honors including the a Best New Product in Show by LDB Interior Textiles Magazine at our New York debut in October of 2002,as well as leveraging ourselves into the nation’s premiere retailers!  

The Sak's Rollout: It was January of 2004. We were attending our regular tradeshow in Atlanta at AmerciasMart, where wholesalers like me come to sell to retailers from all over the country, and the world. I had never seen such a successful show in my life. I had four people in my booth writing orders, and still some retail customers were forced to write their own orders, we were so busy! Some retailers called me after the show just to complain that they weren't able to write an order in Atlanta because my booth was too busy! What a great problem to have, but still a problem. I wondered how many other orders I had lost because we couldn't possibly write orders fast enough on all our line: Wuvits, Fred & Daisy Bags. The whole show is a blur to me, but apparently a buyer from Saks, Inc. was in my booth during the frenzy. One of my salespeople handed me her card at the end of the day, and I filed it in my day planner, intending to follow-up when I got back home. Little did I know, she already had big plans for Wuvit. One week later she sent me a Purchase Order for 42 Parisian stores! This was for 1,000's of pieces, and she gave me a one-week window to fill it, or it would be canceled! It turned out that what I thought was a curse--holding excess inventory after the first of the year from overproduction--turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me! We filled the order 100% in record time and proved to the nation's premiere retailer that we were a vendor that could deliver! Even Saks, Inc. was asking us, "Who and what is a Wuvit and why are you going immediately to all our stores, instead of a test?! We've never seen anything like this before!" We just answered them that soon everyone would know 'What a Wuvit' was, and we proved them right, quickly bolting onto Parisian's "Bestseller" list with a fantastic Mother's Day sell-through. After a meeting in Birmingham with corporate management, I was delighted to hear that George Jones, the President of all Saks, Inc.'s 4 divisions, was the biggest Wuvit fan there was, and that even Vice Presidents at Saks headquarters used Wuvits at their desks during the stressful workday. 

Cold-Calling Macy's: Wuvits were becoming a regular fixture on Parisian's monthly "Bestseller List," and we were quickly invited to roll-out to all of their 55 store chain Proffitt's & McRae's, as well as 55 of their Carson Pirie Scott stores just months after we started at Parisian! Once entrenched in some of the finest department stores in the country, along with over 500 wholesale accounts in specialty retailers, I understood the power of having a product everyone wanted, and I set my sights on Macy's, or Federated, cold-calling the corporate headquarters in Ohio, explaining very politely who I was, what I sold, and if I could possibly get a contact number for a buyer who might buy my product. Of course, the woman on the other end of the phone was amazed and amused to hear I sold something called the "Wuvit," and that I had a company with a great name like Green Daisy. She was fascinated with my story and gave me simply a first name "Lorraine" and a number in New York and told me to call her, she would put me in touch with the right buyer. Unfortunately at this time, my dear mother-in-law was succumbing to the final stages of breast cancer. I was steeped in grief, and it was like working under water, where everything was incredibly difficult, and every task was a mountain to climb. I continued to persevere, and called the number in New York, leaving messages in Lorraine's voicemail religiously, determined that I would keep calling until someone told me "No." Maybe it's a miraculous coincidence that Lorraine was my mother-in-law's name as well. I continued to call Lorraine in New York, even as my mother-in-law passed away in peace surrounded by her family, and drove to New York with my family to bury her. When I returned home there was a message on my own voice mail. It was from Lorraine in New York. Apparently Lorraine was the Executive Assistant to the President of Federated Department Stores Janet Grove, the biggest big shot of them all, and I had been cold-calling her unknowingly for weeks! She said that they had been captivated and intrigued by my messages, had reviewed my website and discussed my product in their executive meetings, and proceeded to give me the names and numbers of Presidents down to Vice Presidents in the whole Macy's chain to call. One of the Presidents even called me to say he had never heard of anyone like me who was so persuasive, animated and passionate about my "clever product." He was sold! 

The Consumer's Passion: I guess you can say the rest is history. From the introduction at one local gift store in December of 2001, to over 200 fine department stores and over 500 specialty retailers across the country, the story keeps developing. We are constantly amazed at the popularity of this product. I frequently find myself telling others that it was the passion of the consumer for this product that made me buy into the dream; always at times of doubt, someone would call me from somewhere across the U.S. to tell me how this product had changed their life, helped them to live through pain, to soothe stress, to impart unbelievable comfort. 

The Birth of Fred: I had affectionately come to be known as"The Wuvit Wady" in the small town of Grand Haven where I live. In a community where everyone knows everyone, I suddenly started to receive late-night phone calls from desperate parents I didn't know, who turned out to be friends of friends. These parents kid's had misplaced their Wuvits and simply could not sleep without it. "Could I please make an emergency Wuvit delivery so their 3 or 5 year old could go to sleep?!" Another light bulb went off over my head. 'Hmmm,' I thought, 'puts kids to sleep. Could that be worth something to someone?' As the sleep-deprived parent of toddlers myself, I knew the answer was a resounding YES! Sleepy-Head Fred was born and instantly honored by the The Atlanta Journal Constitution as a Top 5 Gift Pick in the U.S. 

Giving Back: We're especially proud of our Faith Hope & Love line. I designed the fabric after seeing first-hand through family members the horrific demands of breast cancer. I knew we needed to raise awareness about early detection, and raise money for breast cancer research. I learned that it took faith, hope and love to get through the ordeal of breast cancer, and those words form the framework of our fabric and our philosophy." 

Update 2008 

In 2002, after her husband lost his job, Green Daisy President and Founder Kim Lavine, took her kitchen table idea, the Wuvit®--a designer spa therapy pillow you heat in the microwave--to $225,000 in sales in just 8 weeks. Since then she’s designed a kid’s Wuvit, called Sleepy-Head Fred, recognized by the Atlanta Journal Constitution as a “Top 5 Gift Pick,”and has worked with Waverly®, the nation’s premiere manufacturer of home décor fabrics, to design the nation’s first fabric featuring a pink ribbon motif celebrating breast cancer awareness, titled “Faith, Hope & Love.” In 2004, she rolled her Wuvit line out to 250 Saks Inc stores in just 4 months, quickly followed by Macy’s, Gottschalks, Von Maur, Bed Bath & Beyond, Whole Foods, and even Tabi International, a 90-store chain in Canada, taking her kitchen-table idea to millions in sales. Along the way she’s earned a nomination as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, saw her Wuvit product recognized as a “Best New Product in Show” at its debut in NY in 2002 at the Javits, and watched her kids’ Wuvit, Sleepy-Head Fred, placed in celebrity gift baskets for the Critic’s Choice Awards along with iPods and Ugg boots. In 2004, she was granted a license by the Collegiate Licensing Company to apply collegiate logs to her Wuvits, marking Green Daisy’s entry into the $3 billion a year collegiate market. Lavine accomplished these feats of design, sales, manufacturing and distribution with little more than determination, the equity in her home and personal savings. 

In 2006, Lavine realized that if she was going to take her successful product lines into greater distribution, she was going to need to raise serious capital. Without any former business experience and no business degree, Lavine penetrated the exclusive world of private equity, successfully raising angel capital and recruiting senior management to work for her company, having no idea at the time that what she was doing was groundbreaking as a woman business owner—let alone a woman who sold Wuvits. Among the new team that made up her board of directors was a former Senior VP with Kidder Peabody and a founding investor in Google, Inktomi, Napster, PayPal and Warehouse Club, and the retired President of Precious Moments, who had helped take that company from start-up to over $700,000,000 annually in sales. Kim researched, sourced and oversaw the design and overseas manufacturing of Green Daisy’s line of designer pajamas, which debuted that spring at Saks, Inc and Gottschalks, racking up record sell-throughs at Saks Inc and earning a prestigious spot in their sales circular, featured next to premiere brands like Chanel, Oscar De La Renta, and Betsey Johnson. With another winning product line in the marketplace and the opportunity to transition Wuvits from upscale retail into mass market channels of distribution, Green Daisy’s board of directors gave Kim and her creative team a mandate to expand the company from its beginning as a manufacturer of a single product into a true lifestyle brand. Within a year, Green Daisy had designed, developed and launched a home décor line in New York’s premiere showplace for home textiles on Fifth Avenue, offering consumers bedding collections featuring a youthful modern aesthetic, with a mission to bring extraordinary design within reach of the everyday consumer. Soon other opportunities presented themselves, including inspirational paper products  and innovative media properties. Just months after beginning the transition of her company from her kitchen table to the boardroom, Green Daisy was valued by an expert in the private equity market at just under $9 million. ”I've gained invaluable experience and insight the last year and a half working with investors and a board of directors,” says Lavine, “experience I intend to share with other women.” 

In 2007, Kim posted another bestseller with the release of her book Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea Into a Million Dollars and How You Can Too (St. Martins Press—Feb ’07), earning a coveted Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly,   and a half page review in USA Today.” The best-selling success of Kim's book identified her as the nation's expert on inspirational business advice, earning her appearances on The Today Show, Rachel Ray, NBC & ABC news, CNN, CNBC's "The Big Idea" with Donny Deutsch, NPR, Oprah & Friends Radio Network, LifetimeTV.com, and features in USA Today, Country Living, Guideposts, Women's World, and American Baby to name a few. Kim’s book has been called by Publisher’s Weekly in a Starred Review: “A top-notch, how-to guide on launching a business. Lavine’s human and authoritative story make this one of the most engaging and useful resources available for readers hoping to convert their passion into a healthy company…a rare gem.” USA Today says “Mommy Millionaire is loaded with resources for a fledgling business person…armed with a good idea and boundless energy.” Barbara De Angelis, PH.D.—#1 New York Times Bestselling Author says,“Mommy Millionaire is an inspiring gift and road map to success for anyone who’s ever had a dream.”  Kim's new mission was to encourage women to follow their dreams without compromising their need to be a great mom, inspiring them with hope, honesty and faith. 

That was then, this is now. Putting the brakes on the momentum long enough to change direction, Lavine is focusing the resources of her team on developing the publishing, media and social networking component of her lifestyle brand. “We discovered,” says Lavine, “that all of our product ideas were successful in the marketplace, each with its own potential to anchor a successful business on its own with a singular dedication of time, talent and money. Our real strength lies in developing innovative new ideas. We just can't do it all. Now we’re focusing our attention onto the most profitable areas of our business, while forging partnerships that will enable us to fully take advantage of the successes of our existing products in the marketplace. "It’s a natural step for us in our movement at the beginning from a one product company to a lifestyle brand.”  

Wuvits will continue to be sold online at www.greendaisy.com and at select retailers until the popular product makes its transition into mass market, while Lavine and her team move into the role of a think tank. Nobody could be happier about this change than Lavine, who still continues to work out of her home in-between making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for her boys, aged 10 and 8, while her Creative Director does the same for a daughter 6 and son 10.  “It’s time for me to direct my talents to what I really love—writing and helping other women realize their dreams without compromising their need to be a great mom.”  This new direction is being driven by a influential emerging trend of women entrepreneurship. There are 11 million women entrepreneurs in America and women are starting businesses at two times the rate of men. In addition, according to a recent poll by Oprah, two-thirds of the nation's 38 million women with children—the nation’s most powerful consumer group--are looking for a way to successfully blend personal and career aspirations with their need to be a great mom...a mission Lavine is passionate about. 

“As a creative person, working with a creative team, we’re never short of ideas and always have products in Research and Development. But making more of a meaningful connection with the consumer on key issues that are transforming work and family life in revolutionary new ways has become our priority.  This last year has brought us so many exciting offers that we couldn’t have even imagined a year ago, including innovative media properties, corporate sponsorships and a unique franchise concept; these are the kind of cutting-edge opportunities presented by a rapidly changing marketplace that we can’t ignore. All change brings with it new challenges that need to be tackled, but responding to opportunity is what business is all about, and in truth, things couldn’t be better.