Remembering 2020 & Some Thank Yous To Our Team

As 2020 comes to a close, I wanted to thank the members of the Venice Brands team, the amazing people at our brands who we work with on a daily basis, and some of our partners and agencies who have made everything that we do possible. This has without a doubt been one of the most unique years of my professional life and one with setbacks, but also one that has made me even more excited about what we are building and what 2021 has in store for us and beyond. There are many personal stories that I will not get into, but 2020 has been a uniquely challenging year for several members of our team and I appreciate their hard work and dedication despite this. I know the rest of our teams are equally appreciative.

I first wanted to call out the Joolies team and the amazing work that they have done. We created this company from scratch just over two years ago, and through the team’s hard work we now employ well over 100 people (many more during fall harvest), we own and farm over 25,000 date trees across 500 acres of land in the Coachella Valley as well as a 100,000+ square foot production facility, and we have built a sizable and profitable business with a global sales footprint and a European subsidiary. Our distribution continues to grow, and we have many new products (and even a second brand) in the near-term pipeline. This has not come without meaningful challenges that the team has had to resolve. Covid has made our supply chain substantially more complex, and we have had many employees get exposed to Covid this past year (fortunately they have all recovered). We are continuing to spend a huge amount of time working through these challenges (e.g., implementing PPE, barricades and social distancing) across our production and farming operations, as well as our external supply chain. And we had to move out of our office and figure out how to work remotely like so many other companies have had to do. Despite all of these challenges, the team has never lost sight of our focus on product quality and sustainability, creating new packaging that has over 90% less plastic than many of our competitors and becoming the first farm in the world to be certified glyphosate residue free. I am excited to further build out the date fruit category together over the upcoming years.

We co-founded Kinderfarms at roughly the same time as Joolies, spending the first six months figuring out our formulations, our branding / packaging and our supply chain before we did our first production run in the spring of 2019. Since then, we have hired an amazing team and have gotten our liquid and powder items into over 20,000 retail stores nationwide. I am amazed at our team’s ability to sign up new retailers on what seems like a weekly basis, and at their ability to work through what can be very substantial supply chain challenges related to Covid, to qualify new suppliers and co-packers to better manage risk or just to get a run done, and to figure out ways to get consumers to try our products when they want to touch as few items as possible at the store. There is now so much opportunity in 2021.

We provided much of the seed capital to launch Mayweather Boxing + Fitness back in 2018, with follow-on tranches thereafter, partnering with James Williams to develop a cardio boxing fitness concept that could be franchised across the country and eventually across the world. Fitness has been one of the most negatively impacted industries by Covid, with constantly changing government regulations that allow gyms to open one day only to close the next. This has been incredibly challenging for the team to manage, both at the flagship location in Los Angeles as well as helping out our franchisees. Despite these huge headwinds, James and the team have now sold almost 200 franchises, with 10 currently open and 11 more in pre-sale. As we hopefully start to emerge from the pandemic sometime in 2021, I believe that they have built a product and a team that will be very well positioned.

Osso Good was our first growth capital investment through Venice Brands, originally purchasing a sizable minority stake and then increasing our ownership over time to a strong majority position. With in-house production at the facility that we built in Fresno, CA there have been numerous challenges related to Covid that our team has had to deal with throughout 2020 (as anyone with in-house production has no doubt experienced). Plus less reliable supply chains, domestic and abroad. And we had to close our Osso Good retail café in West Hollywood, which was sad because it was a great place for people to try out our delicious products. But we ended the year on a high note, and we are incredibly excited to have had Matt Fuller join the team as our new CEO to lead this next chapter of growth.

Yellowbird, makers of what I believe to be the most delicious hot sauces out there, is another one of our growth capital investments. The company has continued to grow at a rapid pace despite similar challenges related to in-house production and an entire food service business line that was upended by the pandemic. The team did a fantastic job expanding its online business in 2020, and it also launched a new line of spicy dipping sauces that are now available at Whole Foods nationwide. Amazing job in this very challenging environment.

And while I am substantially less involved in them now than those brands that we started ourselves and/or acquired through Venice Brands, I would like to wish for the continued success of Country Archer (special call out to Eugene Kang and Jeremy White), Kidfresh, Ellenos, Healthy Spot, Chewy, Dig and our Planet Fitness franchisee platform.

Finally, I would like to thank a few of our partners and advisors who are critical to just about everything that we do. Tony Borrego at Spring Street Business Law has been an amazing corporate attorney and general advisor to Venice Brands since our founding. FactoryMade Ventures has been a great partner to work with over the past 2+ years as we get ready to launch Enroot together in 2021. Adam Scott has advised us on numerous financial matters and is our business partner in our MBF franchisee platform. Stephen Sheriff has made numerous valuable connections. Roya Soyyah has been an incredible formulator for us on the beverage front. January Olds has helped us develop what I believe are just amazing formulations for Only Skin. Here Studio has helped us create incredible branding for Only Skin. Hatch has helped us create incredible branding for Joolies. RKPR has helped us with public relations across several brands. MuteSix has helped us with paid search and paid social across several brands. Manufactur and 310 Creative have helped us with website development and optimization as well as with e-commerce and SEO execution.

As I look ahead to 2021, Venice Brands will continue to invest our time and resources to launch new BFY brands, make selective growth capital investments, and look out for additional acquisition opportunities of growing, profitable brands (we closed on our first $50mm+ acquisition this past summer). I hope that we are able to continue to expand our core Venice Brands team, which roughly doubled in size during 2020. I am incredibly excited about the recent launch of Arrive Market, the upcoming launches of both Enroot and Only Skin, and building out our Mayweather Boxing + Fitness franchisee platform across the State of California (check out our next location opening in Santa Barbara this spring).

Thanks again to everyone on our team, and have a wonderful (and safe) start to 2021.