Direct to Consumer Branding with VIVA Scandinavia’s Peng Lin

Leon sits down with Peng Lin, CEO and founder of VIVA Scandinavia, a consumer-centric glassware and accessories brand. Peng has a wealth of experience in manufacturing high-end products and managing consumer and sales data. Peng and Leon discuss Peng's unique background, his entrance into the glassware market, and why Kickstarter is such a powerful tool for product design and development.

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Episode Transcript

Leon Goren (00:00):
Special thanks to E and Y for helping us bring you
today's PEO Leadership SnippetPodcast. Welcome to our Snippets
Podcast. I'm Leon Goren, CEO andPresident of PEO Leadership,
North America's premier peer topeer network and leadership
advisory firm. We've been offthe air for a few months, but
we're back today. And I'm veryexcited to welcome Peng Lin CEO

(00:21):
and founder of VIVA Scandinavia,and the CEO of DKK Enterprises.
Peng joined us at PEO Leadershipin the middle of COVID, while
our meetings were in thebackyard of my home, and he's
been an absolute gem to not onlyour platform group, but to those
he's who he's been able tointeract with in the PEO
leadership community to date.
Peng, it's great to have youwith us today.

Peng Lin (00:41):
Thank you, Leon, thank you for being here.

Leon Goren (00:44):
So Peng, you have a very unique background coming
from overseas born in China,maybe just give our listeners
and our members a little bit ofbackground of where you grew up,
and how you ended up here.

Peng Lin (00:57):
Well, yeah, sure. So I was born in the northern part of
China and Siberian China, in acity called Handan being a small
city with 9 million people. Andwhen I was about 11 years old, I
moved to Denmark with myparents. So we emigrated there.

(01:22):
And I pretty much had a changeof my life, have come to learn
Danish and starting school overthere. So in Denmark, I studied
business and two years intouniversity, I unfortunately had

(01:43):
to drop out to run my ITbusiness back then, where we
make mostly integration betweenERP system and web applications.
So I did that for four to threeyears. And then one day, when I

(02:03):
went to China to visit mygrandmother, this guy from my
office building asked me to findthis small magnet for him for
Zwilling, it's a Germanknife-maker. And I went back and
they and found found the factorydoing that, and I saw this

(02:25):
margin is pretty good. This isback in 2001. So instead of
this, this is good businessbetter than this it thing. So I
got out of it, and started toimport from from China into the
market. And I did that for awhile until 2006, where I met my
wife, who's Australian. I havethree kids (5, 7, 9) here in

(02:50):
Toronto. So funny enough, I metthis Australian girl in in China
where I was traveling to see shehad apartment, so it was a bit
of opposite of normal. And wegot along really well. So we
decided that it's time for me tomove back to China. So I moved

(03:11):
back to China. And instead ofbuying from local vendors, I
started a factory over there.
And from then and I guess eventill now, we have been producing
for some of the biggest and mostknown houseware brands globally
and basically produced for themon a contract basis. So they

(03:34):
will give us drawings and wewill produce for resale

Leon Goren (03:42):
Peng, just to clarify that. So that's an- it's
a glass factory essentially, iswhat you're making, glass
product, which is-

Peng Lin (03:49):
We will be making glass. Everything from canisters
to water glass, the candles orpictures, when pictures, lights
and so on anything in glass. Ourniche is to make very high end
glassware combined with othermaterials, and we were really

(04:14):
not we never competed againstlocal Chinese we were competing
mostly against the Polish andthe Czech Danish manufacturers
so so for our customers thatcould come to China get a
European quality at half of whatthey will be paying in Europe.

Leon Goren (04:31):
So that- since so today, I mean, you're still
doing that for a bunch of luxurybrands. But really where your
heart is, I mean, you're I knowyou have a passion for tea. And
so you've launched your ownbrand on that. The other thing
that in our group, at leastwe're all very fortunate we got
these whiskey glasses that youyou make they're under the

(04:53):
LIITON brand which has just beenfantastic. Talk to us a little
bit because you did thingsdifferently in terms of building
your brand. You went, you'regoing straight to the consumer.
Well, you're doing both right,you're doing b2b, a little bit-

Peng Lin (05:06):
-direct consumer.
Yeah. So so like I said, wewe've been producing for global
brands, and retailers. And I'veseen, you know, most of these
brands will mark up our costs byup to 12, 18 times the
production value, so we'll beselling it for them for $2. And

(05:28):
they will be selling it for 20,or even more 25. So, so I
realized that the consumers arereally not getting a lot for
their money. So imagine thatyou're paying $100, but only 15
of it goes to the productitself. Everything else is just

(05:51):
what's around it, you know, Ihave a passion for tea. So we
saw a hole in the market of wellmade functional, designed tea
accessories. So we started thebrand, to fill that gap. And
it's also one of the reasonsthat we moved to Canada because

(06:16):
I wanted to be closer to thecustomers. When we lived in
China, we were 10 hours flightfrom my nearest consumer. So we
never had a good idea of whatpeople really wanted. So coming
to Canada, my mission was tosell to my neighbors, like I

(06:39):
said to myself, I want to sellto my neighbors, my next door
neighbor. And we said to myneighbor buys a lot of clothes,
whiskey, he drinks a lot ofwhiskey, so he buys. And so I
went really from being pulledfar from consumer to almost

(07:00):
obsessed, selling direct toconsumer. One, I want to give
the consumer most value formoney, but also just to get the
understanding so that we in ourdesign process are customer
centric.

Leon Goren (07:22):
Yeah. So you and I could talk for hours, there's so
many sources here. But one thingI wanted to bring to the members
was until I met you, you know,I'd heard about Kickstarter, how
people use it. But you've reallydeveloped a couple of products
in terms of how you'redeveloping your products and
bringing them to market. And Iwonder if you can share, you
know, one or two pieces of thatof how you do that? Because I

(07:45):
think it's just an amazing ideafor product development.

Peng Lin (07:48):
Yeah, I mean, Kickstarter is definitely a good
platform is part crowd fundinggenerator, it's a fantastic
platform, it's, it's a toughplatform, because you are facing
10s of 1000s, if not hundreds of1000s of consumer directly. So
the good thing is you get thetruth about your product. So bad

(08:12):
thing is also that you get tochoose about your product. So in
that process, in a we havedeveloped a process from finding
or scouting the product ideas,all the way to when they
launched get launched on Amazon.
And Kickstarter plays a big partin this entire process, where we

(08:35):
start validating the ideasthrough some of the technologies
that we have developed. And oncea product is validated, and we
know there's a good market fit,Kickstarter is ultimate
validator. Because you areselling an idea and ask people

(08:57):
to pay for your idea. Anythingis produced. Right? So So
Kickstarter. And another thingthat is very interesting with
Kickstarter is once you're donewith Kickstarter, you have
already sales data that you canshow to if you do retail

(09:20):
afterwards, you can show thebuyers down to the postcode, you
can say, you know In, in NewJersey, we sell this and this
many and the demographic that wesold to because on Kickstarter,
we do surveys, so we have dataon every single customer. In the

(09:44):
latest campaign. We reachedabout $1.2 million with about,
say 11,000 customers and forevery single of those 11,000 we
know exactly who they are. Andnot only where they live, we
also know where they work, theirjob, their income. And also we

(10:10):
ask questions like, How can weimprove? You know, what would
you like to see on the nextversion? So that we can we can
use that learning for, for forthe future products?

Leon Goren (10:26):
Oh, that's great.
You know, it's funny. I knowpeople listening to this will be
okay, can I reach out to Pengand understand it a little more.
And I know you're so busy. But Iknow you also respond to emails
once in a while. Peng if peopleare looking to hear your
products, if they're looking foryour products today, I mean,
shop VIVA number one, where arethey buying-

Peng Lin (10:50):
ShopeVIVA.com, LIITON.com, or just on Amazon.

Leon Goren (10:53):
All right, so and those whiskey glasses, we didn't
say what was so unique aboutthem. But the mountains that
you've put in those glasses iswhat really distinguishes it
from anything else. You've beenbuilding these mountain
collections within the glassitself. And if you get a chance,
I'd urge all of you to take alook at it. And they're
absolutely fantastic, Peng. LikeI said, we could go on for hours

(11:16):
here, but I really wanted tothank you for your time and
thank you for sharing some ofyour insights with us today. If
you're interested in any of ourlive webcasts, the way forward
live or any other snippets,please take a moment and visit
us at PEO-leadership.com. You'llfind on our site various
previous recorded webcasts whichinclude guests as Morgan Housel,
Professor Janice Stein, and theearly days, we had Harvard's

(11:38):
Rosabeth Kanter, Michael Beer,they're all still there, Dr.
Jason Selk, Mitchell Goldharlately, Vanessa Bohns was just
added early this year. As wecover such topics is mental
health, leadership, the newworld, and a host of others.
Thank you for joining us today.
Have a great weekend, and welook forward to seeing you again
shortly.