Venice Brands Evolves With New Launches, Acquisitions

According to founder Greg Willsey, Los Angeles-based consumer brands holding company Venice Brands has always had a “unique business model,” launching in 2017 with a plan to found and incubate its own brands while also investing in others. But the firm is narrowing its focus, with a plan to outright acquire majority stakes or build out its own companies, such as its latest venture, online CBD marketplace Arrive Market.

Founded by former Monogram Capital partner Willsey, Venice Brands focuses on brands spanning food, beverage, fitness, pet and personal care industries, with a focus on health, wellness and sustainability. The company has founded brands such as Joolies dates and Kinderfarms electrolyte beverage, acquired bone broth company The Osso Good Company and The Flavor Chef and taken minority stakes in brands such as Yellowbird Foods, Country Archer and Ellenos. Willsey said he counts The Wonderful Company, where he served as director of strategy and M&A before moving to CFO and COO at its Pom Wonderful brand for three years, as an inspiration for Venice Brands.

Venice Brands’ latest venture, Arrive Market, is the company’s first foray into launching a retailer, though Willsey said he previously was a partner at Monogram when the firm invested in petcare marketplace Chewy. The impetus to launch Arrive Market came after speaking with CBD brands, Willsey said, many of whom were seeking investment. The conversations led him to realize that while the CBD category has significant potential for growth, it was difficult to determine which companies could become the category leaders. Instead, taking a lesson from the success of Chewy, Willsey said he saw an opportunity to launch a “vertical specific” marketplace.

“I wanted to make more of an investment on the category as a whole, as opposed to on a specific brand within it,” he said. “We decided that it made a bit more sense for us to try to build a marketplace, to demystify it and try to basically offer something we didn’t think was effectively out there.”

Arrive Market, he said, will draw shoppers by taking “the Wild, Wild West out of CBD for consumers,” offering a curated selection of products across beverages and mixes, tinctures and topicals (with food brands to be added soon). Each item has been vetted by the Venice Brands team and through third party lab testing. The marketplace also offers an education component through its blog, The Daily Dose. On the brand side, Arrive will help amplify its brands’ marketing message through joint blog posts, emails and social media giveaways.

Beyond the platform itself, the launch also speaks to Venice Brand’s evolved strategy to focus primarily on ventures it founds itself or can acquire and control. While it still remains “open to” making minority investments in brands, Willsey said going forward Venice Brands’ main goal is to launch or acquire a few companies per year.

“There’s so many funds out there right now that are seeking to do almost exclusively [growth capital investment],” he said. “And I personally enjoy getting very involved in the brands. And it’s just much easier to do that when you start them or buy them versus when you invest in them.”

Since its launch, Venice Brands has quickly diversified into several business models, launching food and beverage brands, purchasing a farm for Joolies, and also operates a Mayweather Boxing + Fitness franchisee platform. Still, Willsey said Venice Brands does not want to “bite off more than we can chew” and will focus on profitability in any of its ventures, regardless of category or type of business.

“We’re trying to find opportunities where we can build real sustainable businesses that become profitable. If we started it, within a couple years, if we buy it, we want it to be meaningfully profitable to start,” he said. “And we want it to long term [have] headroom to grow, but also to increase profitability over time.”

Willsey said he is also focusing on businesses that can eventually be built into platforms, through bolt-on acquisitions or sub-brands. For example, look to holdings The Flavor Chef and Osso Good; Venice Brands recently brought on former PROBAR president Matt Fuller to lead Osso Good as CEO, and now owns the domain bone broth.com. Willsey said Venice Brands is looking at further opportunities to build out a platform focusing on “food as medicine.” Venice Brands will also be adding a new brand under Joolies that will launch soon, Willsey said.

“It’s easier to manage and honestly, I think the synergies can be very powerful if we bolt on brands or launch new brands within an existing company or an existing platform,” he said.

According to Willsey, the company also plans to announce soon a $50 million acquisition that it closed this summer.

As Venice Brands continues to expand its portfolio, Willsey said he ultimately hopes to follow in the footsteps of The Wonderful Company’s founders Stewart and Lynda Resnick, which he said supported its brands while also allowing them to “stand on their own.”

“I think the Resnicks are great people and what they built is so impressive that in the next 50 years, it would be exciting if we could do something maybe not on the same scale, but that feels somewhat similar,” Willsey said.