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DUDE Wipes, a product that has gone from a pitch on Shark Tank that drew interest from billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban to a hundred-million-dollar enterprise, faces challenges it must overcome to maintain its momentum. Like many other organizations, DUDE Wipes is working to avoid a growth plateau, navigate economic uncertainty and geopolitics, grow its brand in a marketing world of virality and risk-taking and manage the people within an organization uniquely centered on fun and innovative marketing ideas.
The company’s CFO and co-founder, Jeff Klimkowski, who was an investment banker before forming DUDE Wipes with his roommates, has been proactive in keeping the finance function flexible. With lots of confidence and momentum going into 2025, Klimkowski and his team aim to better leverage data in 2025 and address evolving consumer demands, retailer relationships, assortment configurations and pricing.
Through a hierarchy of metrics — including their “holy grail” figure — a formulated approach to FP&A, culture development and more, DUDE Wipes’ business trajectory provides CFOs with an example of navigating growing demand and growth ambitions simultaneously.
Though inflation, geopolitics and economic uncertainty remain uncontrollable factors, Klimkowski and his team are feeling industry-specific pressure from retailers regarding assortment and pricing. Stemming from inflation and a generally stingier consumer, the metrics and data Klimkowski’s team tracks are increasingly vital for navigating the economic landscape from both bottom- and top-line perspectives.
“From a top-line perspective, I expect 2025 to be a strong year, just like 2024 was in the [consumer packaged goods] space,” he said. “From a bottom-line perspective, there is a lot of uncertainty around things like tariffs because we source some components and parts from locations that may be impacted by tariffs, and that could ultimately have a negative effect on our bottom line.”
From the retailer perspective, Klimkowski noted growing tension between retailers and distributors regarding pricing. The pressure to reduce prices, despite high input costs, is both a financial and communication challenge for companies like DUDE Wipes and the large retailers that sell its products.
“We’re getting a lot of pressure to bring down pricing, despite the fact that our input costs have not receded,” he said. “They’ve stopped increasing like they did in 2021, 2022 and some of 2023, but we haven’t seen them come down. So now, there’s tension in the system as retailers push for lower prices, adding more uncertainty.”
“We’re very comfortable and confident in our top-line growth trajectory this year, but cautiously optimistic about our bottom line because of the challenges and headwinds,” Klimkowski continued. “Our product, in comparison to many others, is simpler and at a lower price, so it may not be impacted as much as other companies producing different types of products, but it is something we are staying aware of.”
Assortment is also a growing concern as the company expands its variety of wipes. With a proven ability to move products, growing relationships with retailers and a focus on strategic marketing, DUDE Wipes is now prioritizing product quality and aesthetics over quantity in retailers.
“We need to now focus on delivering the best solution for our consumers, and that means having a great assortment,” Klimkowski said. “Now that we have started to gain some scale, we’ve shifted away from broadening our brand block [via SKUs] and are working with existing partners to ensure our assortment aligns with our strategy. In 2025, our team will be digging substantially into developing a five-year road map of what we want our shelves to look like.”
Household penetration, the “holy grail” of metrics for DUDE Wipes, is a major focus for 2025. This figure hints at the company’s potential to dominate a niche but largely untapped market of disposable and flushable wet wipes.
“[DUDE Wipes] aren’t like razors or soap, where everyone is already using them,” Klimkowski said. “Right now, we have about 35% household penetration, and we believe we can get that to 70% — that is our North Star.”
This metric also drives marketing efforts. “This is what our marketing focuses on — developing and crafting the message that wet cleans better than dry and that our product cleans better than [traditional] toilet paper. Getting new consumers to try our products and develop a [purchasing] habit is a priority for us now and for the next several years.”
As the demands that encompass FP&A change with advances in technology and the importance of data, Klimkowski envisions the function as an “architect within a bunch of different departments.” While he says an efficient FP&A function requires delegation from the CFO, it also relies on strong cross-departmental communication.
“We have a couple of people here now who run point on FP&A, but my role is to ensure there’s strong communication between myself, the FP&A team and other areas of the company,” Klimkowski said. “Marketing and FP&A need to work together to understand what goals we’re trying to achieve, revenue goals at each retailer and what’s required to accomplish those things.”
He compared modern FP&A to building a home. “In a way, FP&A is the architect, marketing is the client telling us the home specifications, and FP&A can then determine how marketing’s requests fit into the big picture, identify rough edges, and help bridge gaps.”
On talent, Klimkowski said he has seen improvements both internally and externally on the talent front, as he says his team has been able to both find well-qualified candidates and retain them in recent months.
“Starting last year and continuing into this year, we’ve seen the talent market become relatively balanced,” he said. “It’s not like the pendulum has swung totally to the employer, but we’ve had a lot of quality candidates apply for open positions, and it’s been much easier to acquire talent recently.”
With the company’s inaugural one-year mass media campaign complete, Klimkowski said the process, though it required lengthy testing, paid off. “We’d never done anything like this before,” he said. “We did tests in 2023, and we thought it was a good idea that could work, but a test and the actual results are very different things. But it worked well, with returns slightly ahead of expectations, and it’s something we’ll emphasize again this year.”
Klimkowski said the organization is in “the second or third inning” of the flushable wipes industry. Despite marketing success to a previously untapped consumer base, the company has no plans to expand into other men’s products, such as razors or soaps.
“We have decades of growth runway within this category,” he said. “Our focus is on simplicity in our products. A consultant told us, ‘Simplicity equals velocity,’ so we are 100% focused on butt wipes and changing the game that way.”
