Matthias Metternich (Art of Sport) - Building the Nike of Body Care, The Power of the Athlete, and How to Build a Compelling Story for Retail

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 -

1. What was the insight that led you to found Art of Sport?
2. How did you approach building a superior product from day 1?
3. 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?
4. Building off this, what was your approach to online growth?
5. How did you seek partnerships with athletes?
6. How do you think about brand authenticity?
7. How were you able to build a story and construct a brand that retailers wanted and what was your approach to retail / omnichannel strategy?
8. 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?
9. 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?
10. What was your fundraising strategy?
11. 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?
12. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you personally?