Technology exec's success has grown organically

Gulf Coast technology executive Dan Clarke, an engineer and the youngest of 10 kids who grew up on a northeast Ohio farm, is used to being a tad different.

In the early 1980s, he was part of a team at Intel that worked on something called a laptop computer. Intel’s old guard looked down at the young laptop team, recalls Clarke. They called them “crazy kids.”

Clarke worked at Intel for seven years. He ultimately ran two departments, including the $75 million video components group. The biggest lesson he learned from the $53 billion semiconductor chip manufacturer: It’s imperative to form business partnerships with competitors, large and small, in addition to peers.

Intel, says Clarke, called it ecology. It’s when the firm created a mission or objective, figured out which entities outside the firm to work with and simultaneously presented an opportunity to all potential partners — especially competitors.

“I like to align myself with giants,” Clarke says. “I feel the more competitors you can be friendly with, the better.”

Clarke recently brought his partnership theory to the Gulf Coast, where it has been a major boost for Lakewood Ranch-based Living Naturally.

Living Naturally provides mobile marketing, website management and software services. It also provides data-based loyalty and product-ordering programs for natural product stores, specialty groceries and independent pharmacies. Many functions are cloud-based.

Clarke was named CEO at Living Naturally in April 2012. The payroll has since doubled, from 40 to 80 employees, and the total value of products the firm processes through its software has jumped 257%, from $1.4 billion to $5 billion. The company has satellite offices in Phoenix and Chicago, but about 70 of the employees are based in the headquarters.

Clarke projects the firm, with 10 current job openings, will hire at least 40 people in 2014. Living Naturally doesn’t disclose revenues, but Clarke says it had positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the first time in the fourth quarter.

Living Naturally now partners with some of the leading wholesalers and distributors in the natural and organic-food industry, including Nature’s Best, United Natural Foods Inc. and KeHE Distributors. Those partnerships are wrapped around data-marketing projects.

And Living Naturally won a major business victory late last year when it signed up the $1.8 billion Phoenix-based Sprouts Farmers Market Inc. for its ordering, procurement and supplier programs.

Sprouts, says Clarke, is already one of Living Naturally’s largest clients. The business, he adds, only came after Sprouts tested Living Naturally on a few small projects.

Says Clarke: “We had to gradually prove ourselves over time.”

Living Naturally was founded in 1999.

Co-founder Jim Sheehan and some business partners worked at The Granary in Sarasota and wanted to open their own natural foods store. But they shifted directions after realizing there were few, if any, businesses devoted to helping the technology and marketing side.

Today, the current version of Living Naturally is far from Sheehan’s original vision.

The vision now is centered on its GeniusCentral software suite of services. The system uses tailored promotions and coupons, through mobile apps and email marketing, to drive customers into stores. Other Living Naturally products are geared to specific client needs in ordering and inventory.

The company’s growth comes at the right time. Total sales of organic groceries alone, for example, have surpassed $30 billion, up from $1 billion in 1990, according to the Organic Trade Association. Big industry grocers, from Walmart to Publix, have also expanded specialty and organic inventories in recent years.

Finding top employees, especially in technology, has been Clarke’s No. 1 challenge as he seeks to match the industry surge.

An executive-for-hire who has been a CEO or board member of more than 10 technology-related businesses since his Intel days, Clarke says he could stick around at Living Naturally longer than other stints. He signed a three-year contract, but “there’s so much upside here,” he says, he might stay at least seven years.

“Our success will be based on our ability to execute,” says Clarke. “And I love that. I like being able to control my own destiny.”