Welcome!
Klosters - your competitive intelligence partner
Who we are     Media Articles     Bio Lutz Muller     Breaking News     Toy Space     Video Game Space     Services and Payment     Governance     Contact      
  

 

Lutz is a Swiss who came to the U.S. the long way around - from Switzerland to Thailand, then the UK and Belgium, then Australia and Brazil. His background can be summerized by three concepts - CEO, packaged consumer goods, turn-arounds.

 

Lutz is multi-lingual - he speaks fluently English, German, French and Thai. He was educated on three continents including North America at Harvard.

 

His skills include overseas sourcing, supply chain management, guerilla marketing and "big box" selling in addition to the normal skills one would expect from a senior manager of medium-sized manufacturing units.

 

He has his own column in the Toy News Magazine, Europe's most widely read toy industry publication, and he writes regularly for TDmontly, the toy and video game publication with the widest circulation in the United States as well as for MCV, Europe's most prominent video game publication. He has repeatedly appeared on Canadian TV - the Business News Network - where he was interviewed for his views on toys and video games.

 
 

  

He has since 1984 held the following positions:

 

1984 - 1987   CEO Diethelm & Keller USA -  Diethelm was the North American subsidiary of the Swiss trading giant of the same name. It was also a turn-around during which the activity kit concept was invented by Lutz. In the three years of Lutz' steward ship, the company went to the #1 market share position in the US in craft paints and activity kits and the #1 position in premium-priced hosiery in the US and Canada. The turn-around was successful.

 

1987 - now    President of Klosters Trading Corporation - Lutz founded this consulting company to achieve two things. One was to provide competitive intelligence to large financial institutions interested in the CPG space; and the other to assist companies in need of help in the areas of new product development, sales and marketing. Some of these assignments were:

 

CEO Pastime Industries Inc from 1997 to 2001 -

Pastime was a turn-around, a company that had been delisted by Wal-Mart, Target, ToysRUs and many others. Lutz' team invented the "Children make their own Candies" and then "Children make their own cosmetics" activity kit concepts and placed these in Wal-Mart, Target, ToysRUs, Costco and many others. This turn-around, too, was successful.

 

CEO of OSI International from 2000 to 2001 -

a small private label manufacturer of scents and perfumes which again was a turn-around. The company was successfully sold.

 

Court-appointed Chief Financial Agent [CFA] for a toy manufacturer in Chapter 11 from 2002 to 2003.