After selling his $200m startup to Alibaba, an entrepreneur’s back with a pet food venture

Like certain diseases and a sense of humor, weight issues can run in the family, according to studies. Scientists have found that overweight or obese parents tend to have overweight or obese children, and the same goes for pets, apparently.

As it stands, the worldwide prevalence of pet obesity lies somewhere between 22 and 44 percent, and there are many reasons for that. For example, pets are being fed a lot of snacks and table scraps. Food, more than anything else, is also used by pet owners as a reward for good behavior.

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Attempting to curb the tide of overweight pets – canines, in particular – is Léo & Léa, a Japan-based startup that delivers healthy, premium dog food to pet owners throughout the country. And if things go according to plan for co-founder Alexandre Monteux, Léo & Léa products will soon be reaching the doorsteps of even more customers across Asia.

US$200 million exit

This is not the first time that Léo & Léa has made the headlines. In early March, Tech in Asia reported that the startup raised close to US$1 million in a pre-series A funding round. Riding that momentum, the company is preparing for a further US$5 million series A funding round to bankroll its international expansion.

Monteux, along with his founding partners Alain Soulas and Olivier Chouvet, are veteran entrepreneurs. Their previous ventures include the luxury flash-sale platform, Glamour Sales, which is known as Gladd.jp in Japan and Mei.com in China. In 2015, Mei.com was snapped up by Chinese tech titan Alibaba in 2015 with a valuation of about US$200 million. Gladd.jp is also a dominant player, with an 81 percent market share among all Japanese flash-sale platforms.

Going from luxury goods and flash sales to premium dog food might sound like a huge jump. However, according to Monteux, the leap was calculated. After the Alibaba deal, he and his co-founders “made some cashouts.”

As he recalls, “We knew that we needed to capitalize on our experience there and continue in ecommerce. In 2015, we saw a rise in consciousness around the world about pet health and the issue of junk food for dogs. Pets were becoming a real part of the family, just like children. So we thought maybe there’s something to do around this as the common expertise we have developed in our different businesses is the know-how of the luxury and lifestyle customers and how to communicate to them.”

Bringing in the experts

Growing up in southern France, Monteux had pets of his own, but that’s the extent of his knowledge in pet nutrition – at least before Léo & Léa became a reality. “I was in no way a specialist,” he confesses.

However, Monteux is bringing his own expertise to the table. For one, having founded and exited an ecommerce platform before, he knew the importance of optimizing customer acquisition costs and the role that social media plays in putting products out in the market.

“A good repeat rate for customers” is also necessary, Monteux explains. “You pay a lot of money to get customers, and you want them to come back as much as possible. So you want to maximize their lifetime value.”

Lastly, there’s gross margin. “You have the logistics cost, the marketing cost, so you need the gross margin to be good. You want to break even as soon as possible,” he adds.

Made in Japan

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