Creating a sports drink from nothing, with a name that means nothing, all because powders and Gatorade was "just silly"
I guess I do have a good sense of who the customer is, whether that is the customer or not. I visualize that customer.
Kyle Duford, The Crux (KD): Today, we have Tim Moxey, the founder of nuun Hydration. If you haven’t tried nuun or used it on your last endurance run, or bike, or triathlon, you’re missing out. Electrolytes in a tablet, dissolves in water, it’s fantastic. But he didn’t start there and he didn’t end there. We’re going to hear all about it on today’s episode right here on The Crux Podcast.
I’m lucky enough to have not only one of my oldest friends, but somebody who I’ve always looked up to on the podcast today. This is Tim Moxey. Don’t let his fantastic accent full you. He’s not as good-looking as he sounds, but throughout our time together, I’ve known him when he was at Bain Consulting, to starting Ironman Wetsuits, to morph it into blueseventy wetsuits, to creating this juggernaut in active outdoor endurance sports nutrition with the brand called nuun, which I’m sure you’ve all heard of. And now, doing something completely different which will get into and I’ll let him describe that. It is absolutely and I mean this sincerely, one of my favorite people in the world, it’s my pleasure to invite Tim Moxey to The Crux Podcast.
Tim Moxey, founder of nuun (TM): Hi there, Kyle. Nice to see you. I remember seeing you in Denver, when I flew into New Zealand and showing you this first nuun product in his infancy.
KD: Well, want to talk about that, because one of my claims to fame, and I say that to my colleagues here that I was one of the first people, because if I remember correctly, you came right from the factory?
TM: Yeah.
KD: I was one of the first people in the US, maybe the first people ever to actually try a nuun tablet. Yeah, you’re right, it was in my apartment in Lakewood, Colorado.
TM: And it was awful, let’s be clear. That version one was really bad.
KD: Yeah. You were like, “What is this glob of gook that—
TM: —right?
KD: Well, we'll come on to the story there. It’s become a massive success. You sold the company. It’s been sold again recently, but we’ll come onto that. I want to talk to you and we talked a little bit just together off air a second ago about the importance of brand, the importance of how you’ve build companies. I remember, you were the first one who told me that it was a Bain thing to say, “What’s the so what? Why are you even doing this?” You ask a company or brand when you’d go and consult with them. When you and I first met, you were living in New Zealand, I think, right? You were doing triathlons. You were doing Ironman wetsuits. Talk to me about that time. What was that like? What were you doing? How did you go from a young guy at Bain to like, “Nah! I’m just going to be an entrepreneur.” What was happening there?
TM: Yeah. It was actually an accident on how that happened. I wouldn’t have the guts to be an entrepreneur. I went to an investment bank after I graduated, then I did an MBA at Dartmouth. At Dartmouth, I heard about consulting. I really want to be a consultant. Consultants to me are the smartest people, because they could take this road sort of problem and wrestle it into a really short, cohesive, clear message or sort of over problem. If you know sort of what problem is you now can come out with ways to solve it. I loved the way that they would do that, so I ended up going to Bain in Australia after my MBA. It was 9/11. Happened right around that time. Bain just hit re-counseling. We’re putting off the entire graduate intake by a year. I’m like, “What do I do?”
KD: So you haven’t been employed yet, you were just about to be?
TM: Just about to be. I’ve been there for the prior summer or actually come back to it. But yeah, I’ve just done my MBA, got all this knowledge in my head and then they say, “But you can’t start” and I was already in Australia. At the time, the Australian dollar was really weak relative to the US dollar. Basically, I was going to get paid, but in Australian dollars, so it’s limited on where else I could go. Didn’t have a lot of money. New Zealand had a worst currency than Australia, so that made New Zealand really cheap. Then they just started bombing Afghanistan, which is way back. I’m like, “You know. I need to do is, go to a safe country” and New Zealand is one of those safe countries, even sort of COVID and stuff.
We moved there and I knew a guy called Rob Dochety. Rob is the wet guy for this company called Ironman Wetsuits and they made wetsuits for Ironman. I was really into Ironman racing at the time, which is how we met each other. We landed in New Zealand, I got an apartment and I was instantly bored and said, “What do you think I should do?” Rob said, “Well, talk to these Ironman Wetsuits people because I knew the website for them.” I went down there, I popped in and said, “Hi! I’m, Tim. I’m really smart.” Really arrogant at the time. “I’m really smart. You don’t need to pay me. How can I help you?” or something like that. I just got in and making stuff up. Just pretty—
KD: —I’ve never known this story.
TM: Yeah. I accidentally ended up there, and then I found that I was just going off gut, I think there. So I had the MBA stuff, so you could do the spreadsheets and look at where the revenue could go and how we got inventory, right? One of the best things that I can do is figure out supply chain inventory management. We’re in that with [inaudible 00:05:54] as we grow. I did a brilliant job with wetsuits in blueseventy. I did a great job at nuun as well. That numbers stuff I would say is my history, my heritage, it’s what I’m great at, what I always thought I’m great at. The [inaudible 00:06:09] stuff is the thing that I said, I have no idea, I’m just making it up. I’m trying to change that narrative over time. I actually know how to do both well. One, I sort of got trained with, and the other one, I just instinctively know how to do.
After a year of being on my wetsuits, when I would have met you sort of around that time. After the year, I had to go back to Bain. That was part of the contract. A year was over in New Zealand, back to Bain in Australia and I hated it. After six months, I couldn’t do that. I left. I went back to Ironman Wetsuits. But had I not joined and seeing that I could do it, there’s no way I would have done this small company at all.
KD: Well, I had no idea. I mean, we’re talking 20 years ago. It’s been insane. We must have been kids in our 20s at the time. But even then, I thought you had something going. We started talking because Rob is a photographer, for those of you don’t know. Definitely very famous in the southern hemisphere, but covered the Ironman for years in Kona, Hawaii. Fantastic photographer. You had this partnership with him, which was great. But when you and I first started talking, you were just – maybe this was the entrepreneurship of you, but you are just so positive, and encouraging about the tiny little magazine that we were starting. I remember, we didn’t have money to go to Hawaii that year. It was our first year in business, we just launched it and I said, we couldn’t go. You said – do you remember those conversations?
TM: Nah!
KD: You said, “Could you spend some time in the US a little bit?” and you said in your Posh little accent, you said, “Kyle, you cannot not go to Hawaii.” I said, “What? We don’t have the money.” You said, “This is like owning a baseball magazine and not going to the world series” and I’ll never forget that. Your kindness, what you did was you actually paid for our ticket. We took the difference out of your next ad that you ran for Ironman Wetsuits. Still probably the kindest thing anyone’s done to me in business. I’ll never forget that. But it was during that time period, Tim that you – I think you started cutting your teeth on really, really key issues in regards to brand. Because Ironman Wetsuits was competing against the company called Orca, which is around the same location. They were sleek and they were all known for their kind of like – their advertisements – you were just on the nose.
I want to talk about how your – it might have been gut, but how your understanding of what the brand needed, especially in the northern hemisphere and things like in Hawaii? How did you know how to do the right things? You had these fantastic ads. We ran some of them. I wish I should have pulled some up before we started talking. What was that like? How did you understand how to do that?
TM: I follow the sport, so I like Ironman as a spart, or endurance, long distance triathlon. I love the glamour of it and it’s always sort of Hawaii was aspiration, and you think about the imagery that comes out of that. But when I was trying to create the brand identity I guess for Ironman Wetsuits, it was to regain the platform of being the expert from Orca who were in the lead. I looked at what Orca had done and how they’d become a good brand, because I was learning this. I don’t have background in any of this. I looked back at how it worked. I looked at what they done and I try to run the counter to them. It was things like –
KD: Like the opposite of what they were doing?
TM: Yeah. So if they were sitting on one side, I try to own the other side really well because I couldn’t compete with them. What they did was exceptional, but that who they were. I needed to find out who we were. They certainly come across this elitist or to fit super thin athletic people. That was where they sat. We embraced. We came out with the woman’s wetsuit, first company to do that. We did it in the bigger sizes, because there’s a market there and to celebrate that market. nuun followed the same thing. It’s not about your number one, it’s, “You did it! Yeah.” That’s really good to say. It feels good to celebrate people. We played counter to Orca.
Orca, one of the things they had was a suit. I can’t remember what it was. It had red in it, P-Flex or whatever it was called. Their suit had red in it. No suit had really color before, so we started – this was visible from the back, and I put rubber in the shoulders in blue. They were read, we were blue. I did it so when you are swimming, you could see the suit from afar, because I came at it from a photographer’s perspective. We just sort of went, and looked to where they did find the gaps and then opened it up. But all the brands that I do honest, they’re approachable, they embrace it and they celebrate the benefits of the products gives. We should be excited about what Ironman Wetsuits could do for the swimmer or nuun could do for the runner or something. I think you can be excited at brand about what you do for the people who use your product. That’s really authentic voice and a really good and happy one. That’s just food energy.
KD: Yeah. You were basically doing brand positioning without knowing you’re doing it. You’re looking at holes in the market, you’re looking at where the competitors were and you are creating a product to fill the brand gap. That’s remarkable that you were able to do that without that background.
TM: Well, it’s very sort of business schooling, it’s the reductionist approach, the clinical approach to it. I think what is different about what I done or do is I do the brand build as well. It’s not just working out the market gap is, it’s working out to communicate with consumer that sits within that market. It’s the messaging that goes with it, the branding that sits there. What do we stand for? It’s that. I really enjoy that bit. It certainly goes through the analytics of why we doing this and why is that a gap? Is that a gap that isn’t even there?
A lot of thought goes into that. But over time, I spend less time in the spreadsheets. It’s clear where the market gaps are or you float a test balloon up and see if something works. If it does, yeah, that’s a good idea. We’ll talk about, I guess, the cannabis company, but that was a good example of, how can you know where the markets are new? Let’s try this product and see if it works.
KD: In many ways, you and I both came into the triathlon market right when it was jot and it was – especially here in the US, I would imagine so. Even though it was a little bit more – you’re swimming in high school like we would do art class here. It’s a little bit different because you’re training outside from a young age. But the versioning boom of – it was kind of like the runner to boom in the ’70s that happened in the late ’90s and everything was swelling. Because it went from, “Wow! Who is going to do that crazy thing in Hawaii? Fat Bob and [inaudible 00:12:50] just did a triathlon last weekend, why can’t I?” I think we both entered the market the same time. You ultimately in a much better position. The result was, you’re talking about the brand, they had a brand in the marketplace.
You actually the license to be Ironman brand, which definitely helped propel you a little bit. Now, that’s kind of been devalued a little bit over the years, but that was still a very, very strong name by having that on the wetsuit and all of your collateral. That have helped jump start your thinking before you even positioned it. [
TM: It was a blessing, I guess. Because Ironman, and this is at the time Ironman was Ironman. Ironman was the distance. People, they wouldn’t even wear up. They would not buy our wetsuit until they’d finish an Ironman. It was a badge of honor.
KD: Really?
TM: Then it was a [inaudible 00:13:39] with them, the ITU, which is the short course, International Triathlon Union. There’s a huge fight between Ironman and the ITU, then all the ITU people refused to buy our branded suits, because it was really messed up. Yes, but I mean, if you have someone else’s brand and it’s on your product, then you’re beholding to whatever the hell happens to their brand, via in favor or out of favor. I think that Weinstein Corporate, he’s out of it but look at the effect on that. Ultimately, I try to get away from Ironman because of that and all the things that it, the [inaudible 00:14:15] brought with us. For certain people, this was the suit that they would buy. We made sure that we made the best suit that existed in that market and played off at being the absolute best out there.
KD: That brand then went away for lots of reasons, licensing and things in the US, but you ultimately then created blueseventy wetsuits. You brought that to the US, you moved headquarters to Seattle, you moved your family over here, you grew that business.
TM: Well, let me [inaudible 00:14:41], because it is a really in – when I look back at me those years ago, 15 years ago or something, I think we both mellowed over the years come, as is Rob, I should say. We were pretty spiky people. You said that we’ve had a few fights on the past on things. I know what they were.
KD: [Inaudible 00:14:59] when you said fights.
TM: The things, you with Rob as well, right? Rob would be, he throws handbag at you and all these things happen, right? I was in the habit of being fairly aggressive in how I approach things. I could be fairly confrontational until they’re executing that. That didn’t win me a ton of friends in certain places. But one of those areas was with Ironman. We had the Ironman wetsuits license. I wanted to do goggles because I was, “I just got Ironman wetsuits. What about goggles?” They said, “Well, we’ve got a license even. You can’t put the logo on goggles, because these people have goggles.” That’s stupid. “Why don’t you call it Ironman Wetsuits Goggles?” “Ironman Wetsuits Goggles, what the hell? I can’t.” It suddenly became this, I didn’t know I had to move forward with it. I came up with this concept, which his blueseventy, which is where the company moved to. The concept of blueseventy was 70% of the world is water and we embrace open water swimming. It was actually like 72%, but that didn’t sound so good, so blueseventy. We changed the name from Ironman Wetsuits to bluseventy and we put the Ironman logo on it because we were still the licensee. We did this for one year, and after the year, I just took the logo out. I took the Ironman logo out of it. The Ironman people went absolutely ballistic. They couldn’t believe that anyone (a) had walked away from them and (b), we didn’t owe them any revenue there. Because I pay – for every suit the seller – 5% I think is revenue. You know, there’s no doubt I need to pay you. It created an almighty level of conflict that in hindsight, I wish I hadn’t done. It was kind of – it’s fun to go through. I was actually banned from going to Hawaii one year.
KD: Really?
TM: And as a company banned forever having an expo there. I should have thought about the lasting effects of this when I was doing, but what was great was, I was able to spring broad blueseventy off of the back of Ironman, and then cut the cord and go forward. Now, I had a better teacher, do the things that I wanted to do, which prior to that I couldn’t because I have to approve it. Every [inaudible 00:17:08] they have to approve. It’s two hand in for that.
KD: Well, I mean, it’s still a remarkable story. I don’t know if I knew all that color. Maybe I did. I definitely don’t remember Rob throwing a handbag at me, but I’m sure it’s true. Interesting for me though is that you continue to just persevere through this. You knew – while you’re prickly or not, you knew what you are going to do. You are going forward, you had a goal and you’re like, “I’m going to sell wetsuits my way.” Now again, you can argue that maybe in our youth, we were a little bit unflexible. What I admired was that you said you are going to do it. Even the story of blueseventy, very thoughtful the name. Always with the intent of serving the end user. I find it fascinating that you’re not using the terms that we would use on a day-to-day basis in the office here, but we’ve talked about brand position already and brand gaps. I mean, we haven’t talked about architypes, but if Orca was the ruler, you guys were the hero that came in. There are so many different things that you – but you didn’t know you were doing it.
TM: So is the innocent architype for me.
KD: Is it really the innocent?
TM: Yeah
KD: Okay. I stand corrected.
TM: Yeah. That’s now knowing having gone through it a number of times. That’s the one I always get back to. [Inaudible 00:18:20] twist it back there.
KD: Talk about how you do that. We’re right around the time that you started birthing nuun
TM: Yeah.
KD: What came first, the idea for a product? The idea to fill a gap? Because if I recall, you were in London or some place, you were hangover, you found some fizzies and you said, which is what you’d call them over in the UK and you said, “Why can’t – if I can put vitamins in this thing and electrolytes, why can’t I just put electrolytes in and make water and electrolyte drink without the sugars.” You did it. I don’t know how you find the tubes or the sourcing or whatever and you just did it. Walk us through what you did.
TM: There’s probably a number of stories because I learned to explain things in a nice way because it’s [inaudible 00:19:06] to hear the name nuun. I was at my business school class, an entrepreneurship class at business school. My professor was Michael Horvath, founder Strava. Michael is one of my professors. We had this class. I was doing this idea for a hangover drink was the original sort of idea for nuun. We needed a name and Scott from our class is in my group. He said, “We’re going to name my pug, Nun." This ancient Egyptian for "primordial chaos.” I was like, “That’s nun, you can’t call it that. Stick another U in it then,” so he did. That was the name. It was just a class project, it didn’t mean anything. That’s just not a good story to explain to people. Why did you call it nuun? It’s like, “Well, you know, let’ me tell you..."
The language on the side was, people ask us where the name nuun comes from. We’ve heard it means – and if you Google "nuun," I think it’s an Island on the planets of Zelda. That would be at Zelda game. It’s Sanskrit for hydration or something. But to us, it means like that you’re properly hydrated when you go on a bike ride, which is just a long arch around. We really don’t want to talk about where the name come from. Let’s tell you what I want you to hear. It’s great, hydration, right? That’s sort of the story.
I use to cycle in when I was at Dartmouth. It was hot and humid, east coast of the US. I was fed out with running out of my drink, and you’d either have a bag of powder, which is stupid. If the bag split, you got powder everywhere. It was a mess. If it was windy, it blew at you. How much went in the bottle?
I use to cycle in when I was at Dartmouth. It was hot and humid, east coast of the US. I was fed out with running out of my drink, and you’d either have a bag of powder, which is stupid. If the bag split, you got powder everywhere. It was a mess. If it was windy, it blew at you. How much went in the bottle? You had to stop to get water, so I was already at the store. Then you’re like, “Or shall I get Gatorade?” The Gatorade was always, one bottle of Gatorade, one bottle I had to mix it 50:50 with water because it was too sweet, it was too sugary to have. I’m in this place in the middle of Vermont. I’m throwing these two honking great water bottles in the trash. I’m like, “This is just – this is silly.”
Berroca is an effervescent tab. It’s in Australia and the UK and stuff. You have it after drinking. I knew this effervescent were out there. I went out to try and make an effervescent. Actually, I got to the Schiff and stopper manufacturer through Airborne. One of my classmates, Gracie is on my – it was in my project. He knew the owners of Airborne because they lived in this town in Claremont in California. So I just called him up and said, “I’m a kid. Help me. Where do you get your stoppers from?” So he gave me his manufacturer, and the stoppers and the tube. Then I started to turn to figure out how to get this thing done.
KD: Wow! Then you’ve constantly done is just – I remember you telling me recently instead of – well, I mean, maybe five years ago. You said, I don’t know how to manufacture whatever you’re doing at the time. You just said, “I just figured it out.” You’re one of these guys who find sourcing in such unique ways. You don’t let up, like you don’t let up until you find the right one. One of the things you told me before we started recording was that, you always want to make sure you had the best and you be the best, because what’s the point otherwise. You said something that I’m hoping you can articulate it better than me right now, but you said something about – only if you have the best brand can you then have the best product and have a decent brand. How do you become so successful? I don’t see a blemish on your record. Now, I know you feel like there might be, maybe the way you attain them, but how do you do it? What was that thing you told me?
TM: I said and I’ve said in the past, which is, it’s a fairly self-deprecating statement anyway, right? But you make the very best product, because if it’s the best, then I need to argue with you about its efficacy, or its performance or anything else. You will have people who disagree with you, in which case, you can’t win everyone. You realize throughout the beginning, that because they’re wrong, not you. But if you make the best product and you wrap a half decent brand around it. Then, you give it to the people who know and you let them validate it. You let them become the fans, the early influencers, right? But back in the old day, where – especially in sports, if you’re making a sport product where they functionally use that product. We’re not talking about having a logo here for something that actually doesn’t matter But if you’re doing a sport, and Ironman, great example, right?
You’re doing an Ironman. If you’re consuming a drink, you are not doing that for sponsorship. Your only reason you’re doing that is because you believe that will make you the best athlete that you can possibly be. The same for wetsuits. The reason those products are so important to those athletes, because they help them win. It’s not something that just sit, goes on for the ride. This is a piece of technical equipment. The drink would be the same thing. They’re using that, that validates the product in a way that, I don’t care whether the Gatorade logo on that NFL guy, you don’t know. When they pull the water coolers, they got water in them, not Gatorade.
Getting these products that absolutely are the best for these athletes gives you the ability to then go forward and announce yourself, show it to the world. I want to point out, nuun as a brand, the only reason it stayed being called nuun is because my marketing professor at Dartmouth hated the name, Kevin Keller and I still go see him every time I go back and he was like, “You know, Tim. I can’t read it. You can’t say it. It doesn’t mean anything. It is terrible.” I’m like, “Yeah. But Kevin, here’s what I think.” There’s just the arrogance of that it’s absurd. I did it to show him that I thought that actually that didn’t matter. It was what you did with it that mattered more. It was the brand, not just the visual identity around it or the overall identity. It was what you did with it, which has conferred meaning to the brand and the product, right? I took the ugly logo, which I did at business school. I think that actually – where is it? I have some – I found this one. It’s one of the – this hasn’t been open, but there’s the original logo.
KD: We’ll put a link to this particular snapshot.
TM: It is. It is how to read, right? It’s a font. It’s Snap ITC. I took I think the U, I rotated it, I flipped it that way. Then for the Ns. The Ns are Snap ITC, I then rotated it. I’m like, “Yeah, that would do.” I took the oval from the Life is Good frisbee logo, which [inaudible 00:25:43].
KD: You’re a great brander. You’re not even near a good designer.
TM: Right. That was the early one and I did it. It was almost a testament to the product that it sold as well as it did. The way I saw it was, “If someone is going to by something that ugly, it is really good. Having the best people out there using it, because then you hear it. You go to the bike shop and you see the good people in the bike shop. If you see what they have, yeah, that’s good. You know that, the influencer network within outdoor sports, so within bikes or something. If the people who are selling the products really get behind the brand, because they use it, right? Patagonia or Arc'teryx, any of these leading brands that you know. You look up to the people in those stores. If they wear it, it will validate it. There’s consensus there. I as a consumer will look at them first and probably key off of them, right? I wanted products that could do the same thing and let them do all the heavy lifting for us.
Our job was to celebrate them, was to send them new products that we came up with. It was just to love them, and not just to them. It was to everyone all the way down. When someone came in and said, I’ve just done my first ever 5k, and I did it with nuun. We’re like, “That is awesome.” Because actually, it is and I think that was different in sport because sport was always about the best. It pointed to that best person and we embraced the effort to trying. That was pretty early to do that.
KD: I love what you just said and I happen to be working on something for the agency here on architypes. I have my little cheat sheet about the architypes. You mentioned that all of your brands are all innocent. We’ve tried to steer them all back that way you said. I just want to read some of these things here, because the innocence promise is that, life doesn’t have to be hard, just keep it simple. If you could put it in one world, it’s safety. The core value is to experience paradise. Some of these are little esoteric, but the strategy is to do things right. Display wholesome virtue and foster feel-good spirit.
I think if that’s the strategy, you just define how to execute that. Celebrate people, give them great product, be kind and continue to put them in front of others rather then the brand, which is why it worked with the original logo, because it wasn’t about the logo, it wasn’t about the look, it wasn’t about the name, it was about the feeling. That’s what we tell people all the time. Our brand is an emotional connection between a consumer and the business. That’s what you not only demonstrated but perfected. It’s remarkable.
TM: Thank you. I mean, I have this thing when I hire people, is that, at the end of the day, if there’s one thing that I care about that you can do for us, right? Is that you care. If you care about what you’re doing, “Okay. We’ll figure it out.” You’ll put your hand in the air anyhow, you’ll do whatever, you’ll apologize to the customer and say, “That is rubbish. I’m really sorry. I don’t have the answer for you. Let me come back.” You only say that because you car but that’s massive, massive attribute, especially for what you’re talking about there. Is having people that want to speak to you as a consumer, from the perspective of caring about you as a consumer, means a lot to a lot, but it certainly means a lot to me and to be listened to, be respected. It was missing – this is missing from so many companies. They’re selling you just because of your money, not because they really care about you. To me, it should be a circle. We should get it to them and it should come back.
We just started doing this NPS things for us [inaudible 00:29:26]. We got an NPS of – it dropped today, but it’s still 89. That is staggeringly high NPs.
KD: It’s very. For those who don’t know, the NPS is a net promoter score. Originated online. It was how likely are you to recommend this website to somebody. Now, it’s become known as just NPS and it’s publicly recommended brand or business, whatever. They only take the results from eight, nine and ten? Or nine and ten?
TM: They take the results I think from eight, nine and ten as a one.
KD: Eight, nine, ten. [00:29:55]
TM: Yeah.
KD: And they average it out. It is very difficult to get anything higher than, quite frankly, 60, 70.
TM: Yeah. If you’re 70, you’re off the charts. So we are 89. We just dropped to 89 today is absurd. But, we really care about the animals. I mean, Becky who runs [inaudible 00:30:14], she cries frequently in the day when people write in and say, “My pet has died and blah, blah, blah.” Becky is off again. That’s a really caring person that comes across in a way that she treats them. As a result, we give awesome customer service, we don’t always get it right. You can’t always get it right. You need to accept that. Some people just don’t want to like you for whatever reason. It is that day, so be gracious. Hear them but don’t try and make it work, like just take it and move on and get to someone who you can help. It means a lot to me to have a brand that you can respect at the end of the day if I was to stop and say, “What do you think of that company? That brand there? Whatever their revenue is, whatever it does, are you proud of that? Yeah, look at all the companies and say, “I’m really proud of how they operated, how they view their customers and the way they treated them.”
Even I’m not part of nuun now. I haven’t been for a couple of years. I’m immensely proud at how they nurture the spirit of trying, a typical deal. More than that, I love that they’ve gone back toward sport, because they drifted away from sport for a while. It got a bit –
KD: Yoga, lifestyle, [inaudible 00:31:27] [
TM: Big America use sort of sports, golf and stuff. To me, it should be about sweating. nuun is about effort, and sweating, whatever that looks like and they’ve gone back to supporting the sports that I sort of love, particularly the triathlon, the cycling side. That to me was the beating heart of endurance and where I wanted it to go.
KD: I love that. I love that and there’s so many things I just didn’t know. You mentioned Austin and Kat a few times. We can’t get to Austin and Kat and how successful that businesses with your wife Kat without talking about your real like bizarre jump from the sports industry to the cannabis industry. At one point, I think you might still be one of the largest bakeries in all of the state of Washington. You then moved into Oregon, and California and Colorado right as things were being legalized across the country. But you told me one time and I don’t think I’m bastardized in this, but you wanted to say, people had this idea of cannabis, and marijuana and so forth as kind of like this old-bearded dirty guy in a sofa. You wanted to create something that said, you can micro dose, you can do things for your health, you can do things that will just kind of calm you down, and you can do it in a really, really beautiful way.
Out of that came Seattle at first, but then Botanica Global. You created the brand Spot Seattle, and then eventually just Spot. You’ve done some really cool things in that space, including Mr. Moxey’s Mints named after yourself, incredible mints. Then eventually, yielding a CBD dog biscuit, which started the whole line of Austin and Kat, such a bizarre leap to go from one to the other. What happened there?
TM: it’s funny. It seemed very normal to me when I was experiencing it. But I’ve gone through this nuun thing, and built the company up. We’ve taken on investors and they had a different take on how it should be and moving it toward the non-sports right there and grocery sales, and sticking it in Costco. That wasn’t what I did it for. [Inaudible 00:33:35] I got excited, because I’m talking about something that I’m passionate about. I wasn’t passionate about grocery sales, it was [inaudible 00:33:42] and stuff and I want to do that.
I ended up stepping away from it. I worked on blueseventy at the same time. I went back to blueseventy. At the time, I went to Bain, Australia, I did blueseventy, I went back to Bain Reasearch, I went to blueseventy, grew up nuun up alongside it. Around 2006, ’07, I was doing both of them. I dropped out of I think blueseventy as the Olympics came up. I think it was ’08. I stepped away from blueseventy then. That was right around the swimskins coming. If you remember all that. You will remember what that means, all the swimskins and the chaos and all that. I’d stepped away to focus on nuun around that time. I then work on nuun throughout the next three or so years and then I went back to blueseventy after the investors come in with nuun.
Going back into a company that you said goodbye to, especially small company was a real dark thing to do. Because all the things weren’t working as well as they could, I now have to go back and fix, and figure it out. I just gotten this run of sort of creating things, I think and coming off all the things I’ve done at nuun. The back to blueseventy was kind of a step. It’s got the wrong way. I started – I move back to England in 2011, I think. I fly back to the US for blueseventy to see the office. When I was here, there was this pretty legalization, which was in 2014, but the vote happened I think 2012, right? You could smell the city changing when you lived in Denver, right?
You could tell that something was happening and it was different from London where I started my [inaudible 00:35:30]. Get out of London, get off in Seattle. Wow! This is – I had a way to see a market that was moving way faster than anything I’d experience. That to me was just interesting, and I remember sitting – I was sitting at a bar in Capitol Hill in Seattle. I remember looking at all the alcohol there, I’m like, it’s going to be like alcohol. You’re going to get brands. In next years’ time, it’s going to look like this, because we were trying to imagine what the legal market look like, then you had nothing to base it off of. There’ve been no legal market. Washington state and Colorado legalized at the same time. Colorado got allocated first, but they were both rubbish on day one, right?
I was trying to imagine, what would this be like. If I were going to create an alcohol, let’s say, “What would I do? Would I create single malt, a 15-year, like an 18-year and a 21-year? Would I have a whisky, a vodka, a gin? Yeah, I would do that.” Because I don’t know whether the bar is the ginger and king crowd or whether they’re into whisky. I don’t have the bar. I don’t know who the customers are. Who has cannabis anyway? That became this, it’s like, really interesting question. I was looking to do something else. I know Seattle. I can make a jump and take a bet here and figure it out. It was more the excitement of being able to see is test and measure. But going with a good view point and what the answer is, but don’t hold it to tightly because how can you ever know. That’s why the concept of Botanica wasn’t a product or a brand, it was the house of brands. It was the brands that will sit underneath it to get to different customers. That is how we’re positioning stuff, who were those customers be and what do they want. I had a ton of fun.
KD: And you did that. You did it with – I love that you’re – why don’t we talk this way 10, 15, 20 years ago, the house brands having a parent brand, but having almost a parent business, because not really any of them carry that branding with them at all. It’s almost like the parent bakery if you will. But then you came up with Spot. You had Mr. Moxey’s Mints like we said. You came up with the Journeyman mothballs. As you just said, each one served a different audience. They all looked drastically different. But to do that, don’t you have to know that particular customer. Didn’t you have to know the end user of Mr. Moxey’s Mints and the end user of Journeyman mothballs to know how to make them differently? Or did you just create it and then go to the market and say, like you had done in the past? Here’s the product, it’s the best. Therefore, have it.
TM: No. guess I do have a good sense of who the customer is, whether that is the customer or not. I visualize that customer. Then to me, there’s always a character that goes along with it, Australian, the Journeyman. I had this sort of lilt in the way that the Journeyman spoke and it’s laid back, somewhat jovial approach, taking life as it comes but enjoying it and being a bit crass, a bit loud, a bit wide perhaps. The Journeyman, when I write the Journeyman copy, I get into this character to be that attitude. There’s certainly something there. There’s certainly a group of people that like cannabis. They weren’t scared of it. They embraced it and they wanted it. They wanted it done well, but they didn’t want to be too [inaudible 00:39:02] or too upmarket. It was down where they were. It was done well, but have a bit of attitude. I sort of pull all this together and the Journeyman came.
The name as, my business partner, Chris and I, we’re driving back from Poland one day and it had been a bad day. I remember saying to him, “This is such a journey, man.” I’m like, “Yeah, I know. There’s something there.” This life is a journey, man. It is where that came from. It was really cool. In fact, I think it’s one of the biggest brands we’ve got now.
KD: That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Along the way, you met Kat, your now wife. She moved out to be with you and she wanted to spin up a business to help people with dogs who needed some help, or aging, or had some arthritis and whatever. She had lost her dog in Austin and she wanted to create something. You guys together created this brand, Austin and Kat, and walk me through that. Because now, that’s where you spend most of your time. You’re the chief operating officer there. You spend most of your time in that because that brand is just kind of lit fire and has, specially post-pandemic just taken off as people started getting back out, taking the dogs outside and so forth. Now you’re even in this other – you’re in this like subniche of a niche market.
One, you can send it anywhere in the country, which you can’t do with the other products that you have currently. But it’s a completely different beat. What’s the appeal for that? What’s the appeal for being in that world now when you have all these other brands, under these house of brands as you say and you could go at any different direction at any given day.
TM: That’s a really interesting one. Just to go back a little bit. Back to this product, when I met Kat, she had a dog, but it was called Brady and Brady was dying. Austin was the puppy that came along. They’ll probably come in in a minute. He’s older now, but her dog was dying. He was 14 or something. I’ve gone to this expo [inaudible 00:40:59] CBD, which by the way, no one had heard of. It’s just so coming out. People wanted THC, not the CBD stuff. Because it was in the industries to have a CBD coming in. I said, “Let’s try CBD on your dog.” She did. She baked cookies at home. The dog lived another year. Better eating, of walking around, all the – there’s your best product. If you had a product that can do that for somebody and give them their pet, we’ll give their pet a better quality of life as those years sort of close out. That’s really cool, to be able to bring joy to someone. But it’s more so through Kat. Kat move to Seattle, started this thing. I created the brand. She called it Austin and Kat ready, so I just took their names.
Working with her to spread the word that we could help you too, or can help you too – what is the approach that she did? But she did all of it. I was working away with Mr. Moxey’s and Spot and everything. Then about a couple of years ago, things were getting a lot – I was getting more involved in what she was doing because the problems are getting bigger like it was working. Toward the end of ’19, cannabis has moved so much from when it began, mean there are no brands, zero. No stores, it was not legal. We go forward five years, the market changed dramatically. Honestly, there was nothing new there that I wanted to do. I need to step away from it to then maybe come back, like it still interest me. I think there’s a lot in cannabis if you done in a much better way, because the acceptance of it, the social acceptance of it is still not where I thought it would be. I seem to think things would go back like a rocket right away, and they don’t – much, much earlier and seeing where it would go.
But there’s a long way for cannabis to go. There are way too many brands that don’t mean anything out there. It needs a complete overhaul of where things are. At the end of ’19, I thought, “Well, I’m going to join Kat. I love being with Kat. I can see what the company is doing. It’s in a very similar space to nuun, where that was, right? In culture, in growth, in using distributors and all the things that you get to have a scale of business with, which I did. Cannabis is different. You can’t do that with cannabis. You kind of shift into – I kind of joined Kat and that has been really cool. Maybe because I’ve got to be more confident in what I’m doing, particularly from a design side to build out the meaning of the brand at nuun. I did an excellent job with it, and put all the work in to the brand and didn’t put a ton into sales or culture as a company. We had bunch of scrappy people who were out there to make it work, but it went very organized. It just had a spirit, [inaudible 00:43:55] vinegar to go make it happen.
Then with Moxey’s, we had much more organized company, but we missed some of that spark. Then we get to Austin and Kat and Kat does all the sales and she’s the front person. She brings herself to the table there. Then the brand stuff, I got a really cool group around me that iterate off what I say. We change the brand a ton. We changed our logo twice I think in the last six months, which I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t do, but literally good. Glad we did it.
KD: You had one of the most premier agencies in the country work on it and then you changed it from that or I want to get that one right, or did you change it to what they did.
TM: We had an old logo. They modified it to a new logo. It looks like a lady kneeling down with a dog there. But it’s also is part of the packaging. One of the packaging, things they’ve done, they’ve got the character of Austin and Kat. Lots of different drawings of them doing different things. One of the, I’m like, “Actually, that’s much better than out logo. It’s still Austin and Kat. It’s a much fresher portrait of it.” I think we just changed. We put a flash page on the website yesterday. If you’d go there, you’ll see it once and then it goes away, but you’ll see where the brand is going for the next web iteration, which will come out in I think about two and a half months.
But it looked so much more interesting, and we’re using the characters to talk about the bits that make the product better, the ingredients, like fundamentally, it’s just the ingredients in the way they’re mixed. That’s it. But it turns out, that’s why edible products are better, it because of what, obviously what you’re eating and the sourcing, the supply chain, all of those things matter a ton. Another brand used to tell that story in a visually engaging way, which I like color. I want to make sure that’s very clear, but it’s also [inaudible 00:45:46]. And the way that it approaches it, the sincerity, the honesty around it. Fundamentally, that’s what the brand is. You’re buying a trust brand to help your pet, right?
For some people, they really want it to work and those are the ones that I want to get and they write wonderful reviews back to us. But that fundamentally is really fulfilling and I say that because I’m not a dog – I have three dogs now because Kat has three dogs, but I didn’t have dogs growing up. I’ve had to learn pet – to be fair, pet isn’t my passion. Making people happy would be my passion. I’m just in the pet industry and I’ve never gotten to a pet tradeshow. I’m not allowed to go. I figure I’m going to blunt what Kat does at these things. She’s doing great. She doesn’t need me there. I don’t actually get to the frontend ever, which is kind of interesting. I’m reading the [inaudible 00:46:39] and the noises back from the customers and going what I feel is good or what people calling on as nice. That’s sort of how we’re navigating it right now. It’s pretty cool to do that, but there’s something else I want to do next, but I got to get this one out of the way first.
KD: That’s great. It’s super successful. I mean, I see it when I’m out and about in a few different pet shops where I am. I think it’s fantastic. You guys got a great story. If I never told you this before and we don’t talk much these days anymore, which we should probably change. I mean, yeah, you’re just inspiring. You’ve just always – you’ve always just done what you felt was needed, not what necessarily what you wanted to do. I know you probably say that’s what you wanted to do, but you always did what you thought was best and I’ve just always admired that. I appreciate you spending some time talking. We could probably do another hour if we wanted to.
Tim, what’s next for you after today?
TM: This realization that I can leave work and work [inaudible 00:47:33] phone, riding my bike. That’s new and fresh. I’m trying to put all my effort into doing less work, which is hard. You know me? That’s a difficult proposition. But if I can make it better for me and the company, why would I want to do more of that. That’s my – everything transforms around that at the moment.
KD: Okay. Well, listen, if you guys are interested in what Tim is doing in his post-nuun days and if you have a dog, or know people who have a dog, go to austinandkat.com. If you find yourself in – where, Tim? In Colorado, California, Oregon or State of Washington?
TM: And Massachusetts now.
KD: Massachusetts, look at you. Then look for Mr. Moxey’s Mints. Can I tell you a quick story before we leave? I might embarrass myself a little bit, but you were very kinds as you were trying to figure out the right mixture of Mr. Moxey’s Mints. I’m in Portland at the time living there. You’re up in Seattle, and I had said, “My back was bothering me a little bit” or what not. You said, “Well, I’ll bring some of these Mr. Moxey’s Mints.” Now, I’d never had any kind of edible of any kind, never been any kind of recreational user of any kind of substance at all. You bring what – I didn’t know at the time but it was probably hundreds of dollars’ worth of your mints because you only put 20 or so, 10 or 20 in a tin. You brought all what you called rejects, which are really just – you couldn’t validate how much were in there or whatever.
Anyway, you said, “Just have one and take a glass of wine.” My back was hurting me so I had one. Fifteen minutes later, I felt nothing, so I have another one, fifteen minutes later, I had nothing. You can see where this is going, so I had another one. It was 15mgs of THC having none of these in my entire life. I couldn’t move for like a day and a half. But since then, I learned my lesson and of course, it was [inaudible 00:49:18] that was illegal. But listen, Tim, your branding is fantastic, your brain is amazing. I wish I could hire you to help us out, but thanks so much for being with us.
© 2021 The Crux Podcast. The Crux Podcast is a production of The Brand Leader out of Greenville, South Carolina. For more information on the show or to be a guest, visit us at thecruxpodcast.com.
Listen to the Podcast on 259°: Tim Moxey, Founder of nuun Hydration