My guest today is Matthias Metternich, one of the co-founders and CEO of Art of Sport. Art of Sport is a complete line of daily essential body and skin care products made for athletes. Some of the things we spoke about were his approach to building a world class skincare business, how he partners with Athletes, and his thoughts around fundraising and investing in CPG businesses.
A couple books that inspired Matthias - Arrow In The Blue by Arthur Koestler and American Colossus by W.H. Brands.
You can follow Matthias on Twitter Here. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.
Here are some questions I ask Matthias -
- What was the insight that led you to found Art of Sport?
- How did you approach building a superior product from day 1?
- There's a ton of DNVB brands in the market since it's become very affordable to start a brand. How did you think about brand differentiation and building something that was compelling in the early days?
- Building off this, what was your approach to online growth?
- How did you seek partnerships with athletes?
- How do you think about brand authenticity?
- How were you able to build a story and construct a brand that retailers wanted and what was your approach to retail / omnichannel strategy?
- How were you able to get into Target nationally? Since you entered retail right before COVID, has COVID been a huge headwind for you this year?
- When it comes to building DNVBs, you no longer have those growth arbitrage opportunities like you did in the late 00s/early 10s, so your customer acquisition costs are much higher. How do you think about capital efficiency?
- What was your fundraising strategy?
- This is now your fifth company you've started and all your companies seem to be in different verticals - enterprise SaaS, consulting - what were some of your takeaways from those experiences that impacted how you are building Art of Sport?
- What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you personally?