Obvi Wants to ‘Infiltrate’ Midwest with Expanded Coffee, Pet Brand Platform

Last month, collagen powder mix maker Obvi made its first acquisition, purchasing ground coffee manufacturer Coffee Over Cardio. The deal is just the first step, the company said, in its mission to become a CPG portfolio with a deep presence in the Midwest by way of its New Jersey HQ.

Founded in 2019, Obvi launched as an ecommerce focused brand making flavored collagen powders as an alternative to the unflavored mixes that co-founder and CEO Ronak Shah said dominated the collagen category. According to Shah, Obvi surpassed $40 million in revenue within four years as an online only brand and now, as it establishes a brick-and-mortar presence in retailers like Walmart, it is seeing sales rise past $55 million.

With the Coffee Over Cardio acquisition, Shah told NOSH that Obvi is now looking to transform itself into a platform business with five to seven different brands over the next few years. Most recently, the brand launched its first new brand developed in-house, a pet supplements business called Paw Rangers, and Shah said the company is also looking at adding clothing to its umbrellas with plans to launch an affordable athleisure wear brand.

All of this, Shah said, is aimed at appealing to the same core consumer: middle-aged women in the Midwest.

“If you take our core demo, which is a 50-year-old woman in the Midwest, we’re trying to infiltrate her entire home,” Shah said. “What I mean by that is I want to build everything she has. So she usually has a pet. That’s why I’m building a pup brand. She has tons of different coffee grounds in her cabinet – I wanted a coffee company. In her cabinet she also has some supplements, I want to replace every supplement and have them be Obvi branded.”

While Obvi didn’t intend to focus on this consumer demographic when the brand launched, Shah said the business doubled-down on appealing to this female shopper as its online sales and advertising data showed these shoppers were the most likely to purchase Obvi products.

That strategy has now painted Obvi’s long-in-the-works retail rollout this year, which includes 4,300 Walmart stores nationwide.

“We were relentless about getting into Walmart,” Shah said. “Over the course of four years we did about 40 cold outreaches, via LinkedIn, email, contacting the buyer, sending them gifts, whatever it may have been.”

With Coffee Over Cardio, the acquisition was a mix of opportunity and strategy, Shah said. Launched in 2017, Coffee Over Cardio is a brand of flavored ground coffees, functional creamers and hydration powders focused on female consumers. The small company has created co-branded products with Dippin’ Dots and largely sells online.

However, Shah said Coffee Over Cardio suffered a setback when its husband and wife founders divorced, leading co-founder Mike Scott to approach Shah about an acquisition. Though he didn’t disclose the exact details of the deal, Shah said the deal was within Obvi’s “six-figure” budget for M&A.

According to Shah, Coffee Over Cardio has earned over $10 million in sales and a subscription base of over 10,000 women.

Looking ahead, Shah said Obvi will look to grow Coffee Over Cardio cautiously, rather than attempt to quickly expand – especially as it manages its flagship’s new entry into brick-and-mortar. With all its expanded products, Obvi will continue with its online first strategy, especially as it faces competition from Nestlé-owned Vital Proteins and Primal Kitchen on the collagen front.

“The main thing that we’ve focused on is just being really, really, really careful about wanting to understand – can we own the lever that we’re looking to pull?” he said of the company’s digital marketing strategy. “If we want to spend a million dollars this month, do we own the ability to do that instead of handing it to an influencer or trying to get into a bunch of retail stores and not knowing how to control the velocity?

“We thought being really obsessed with understanding advertising and being able to really learn Meta and investing a lot of money into content and social media would be the best way to do that. So that’s kind of what we focused on and what we’ve built our entire brand off of.”