The Ledger
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Mauzé: Sound investment decisions require repeated team discussions, not rapid IC votes
“I think we've made good decisions as a team because we talk about the deals many times. I'm always amazed by firms that can have, like, an investment committee meeting, and people are seeing it for the first or second time, and they are saying yes or no. It's …”
Mauzé: The consumer shift toward healthy living is only at midpoint
“So I still think we're in the midpoint at best. One is, I think we're seeing more people get onto that journey than ever before, and I think that's what really scares CPG”
Mauzé: LMM Consumer Investing Faces Unprecedented Competition From Funds and Strategics
“I think we're seeing more firms that are dedicated to the lower middle market consumer space than ever before. We're seeing strategics set up their own investment arms to try to participate. I think we have international buyers coming into the market.”
Mauzé: VMG Prioritizes Brand Quality Over Category Diversification
“In general though, I think what we try to do is to go after the best opportunity And not get worried about the portfolio construction from a diversity of different categories. We're very much interested in finding the right brand with the right entrepreneur.”
Mauzé: Big CPG evaluates backwards while startup entrepreneurs look forward
“As we say, big CPG is always looking backwards. They're looking at categories and how they have performed. These entrepreneurs are really looking forward, and I think they're discovering these new niches in these very large categories that can be large over ti…”
Mauzé: Investors must avoid backing bad brands in great categories
“One thing we've always been conscious of is making sure that we're not investing in bad brands in great categories. So we don't want to talk ourselves into a category. We want to talk ourselves into a great entrepreneur and a great brand.”
Mauzé: Prioritizing Founder Energy and Resources Is an Investor's Best Value Add
“One thing about entrepreneurs is they have a ton of energy and they want to go a million miles and a million different ways. And I think what we can do is help them think about what is the best use of their time and the best use of their resources to build wha…”
Mauzé: VMG avoided mega-fund creep to remain focused on lower-middle market
“We also believed that the lower middle market have been a very attractive place for people to invest ever since I've gotten out of college, but many firms decided to use that as a launching pad to create much larger funds, and we thought that we love this. Thi…”
Mauzé: CBD will become an ingredient adopted across traditional brands
“My general view of it is that CBD is going to be an ingredient, and I think a lot of brands will have it over time. And if it's effective, you're going to see those traditional brands incorporated.”
Mauzé: VMG builds relationships for at least a year before investing
“Probably a year is probably the shortest. I can't think of a deal we've done where all of a sudden somebody walks in the door and we say, okay, great, we'll do it.”
Mauzé: Half of VMG's recent transactions involved women founders or leaders
“Over the past year, half of our transactions have been with women founders and women leaders of businesses there.”
Mauzé: KIND Snacks Was a Sub-$20M Brand When VMG Invested
“No, I mean, it was a sub-twenty million dollar brand, it was a sub-twenty million dollar category, and I don't think any of us knew how large that category could be”
Mauzé: VMG Partnered with Hillhouse Capital on Cross-Border Consumer Deals
“We formed a partnership with Hill House Capital, where we have invested in certain brands that they've identified over in China, And they've invested with certain of our portfolio companies here in the U.S. That we could bring over to China.”
Mauzé: Passionate niche consumer followings create strong opportunities for mainstream brand expansion
“What we're really looking for are for brands that have a real passionate consumer, because we think if a brand has a passionate consumer with a small group, there may be a very good opportunity to expand it to a larger group.”
Mauzé: VMG exited 20+ brands in 10 years, almost all strategic
“So we've exited 20 plus brands over the past 10 years, and all but one has been to the strategic buyers.”
Mauzé: VMG targets $5M to $10M in sales for investments
“So we do have a kind of a minimum size parameter we like to see. We like to see five to ten million dollars of sales building out there, strong gross margins, but it really comes from meeting with the entrepreneur.”
Mauzé: VMG's $325M debut fund was the largest first-time consumer fund
“We started off with a three hundred and twenty-five million dollar fund, which at the time was the largest first time ever consumer product fund. We raised that fund with no track record in our book. It took us almost two years, start to finish, to kind of go …”
Mauzé: VMG's Lantana investment failed due to excessive operational changes
“A good example of that would be a brand like Lantana. We saw it was an alternative hummus business. We needed to rebrand it, come up with a new name, come up with a new packaging, come up with a new supply chain, and it had just too much complexity for us in d…”