Basel Nassar - Boss Nation Brands
The dog and cat food and product market is hot. More people entered the market as customers with pets over the past few years than at any other time in the recent past. All of these customers need food, leashes, treats and an endless array of products to show care and affection for their pets.
Basel Nassar is an entrepreneur at heart. He has lived the startup life a few times and helped get Boss Nation Brands started and growing.
Boss Dog, Boss Cat and a medley of other banners selling pet products under the Boss Brand is just what the market needs now. Listen as Basel details how the business started and what their growth challenges and success have been. It is a compelling and inspiring story of business that many entrepreneurs could benefit from hearing. Basel's experience is shared here for you.
Enjoy!
Visit Basel at: http://www.bossdogbrand.com/
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You have found
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Authentic Business Adventures, the business
program that brings you the struggles.
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Stories, and triumphant successes
of business owners across the land.
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Oh, my goodness gracious.
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I'm excited because we have Basel Nassar,
the owner of Boss Nation.
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I should let you guys know that we're
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locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
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We got to throw that in there.
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My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,
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author, speaker, and helpful coach to
small business owners across the country.
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But today we're going to learn about
Boss Nation, which is kind of exciting
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because as we can see,
this is all about dogs.
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And I'll just let you take it from here.
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Basel, how about you tell
us just what is Boss Nation?
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Sure.
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We launched Boss Dog was our first brand
pillar under Boss Nation in 2019,
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and it was my first venture
into the pet specialty channel.
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And in about 36 months,
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we introduced two brand pillars,
both Boss Dog and Boss Cat,
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where we focus on producing a line
of ultra premium meals, treats,
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supplements, and hard goods
for both dogs and cats.
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Oh, wow.
All right.
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I imagine you're a pet guy.
I'm a pet guy.
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I'm a serial entrepreneur by nature.
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I've been building brands
for over 30 years.
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Prior to Boss Dog and Boss Cat,
I was in the Greek yogurt segment
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for humans for about 20 years,
and we scaled a pretty large company.
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We were a little over 300 million
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in street consumption rate
by the time we ended up selling.
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Then I was acquired in 2010
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by Hain Celestial, and they were large,
natural, organic food concern.
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And for eight years, I was
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given the privilege of running
their refrigerated division.
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And what that afforded me was a lot
of expertise in learning how to infuse
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probiotics into foods, variety of foods,
from dairy bases to plant based.
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So I took that knowledge and all
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that years of experience in yogurt
and infusion, and we adopted what we're
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doing in human, and now we've
translated into pet solutions.
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So focused on digestive health mainly.
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All right, let's start way back when,
when you first started.
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So we're talking 30 plus years ago.
Sure.
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What made you decide to start your own
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business versus just
getting a typical day job?
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I think the common answer is I got
tired of making other people money.
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Yeah.
I had an accounting background initially,
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and then just by chance,
I ended up getting into operations
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and running a spice and soup
facility in Washington state.
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Oh, wow.
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I enjoyed it and decided that I
could probably do this on my own.
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So I ventured in a few different
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industries and learned everything
from finance, accounting,
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all the way up to plan operations,
and even his granular driving forklifts.
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That was 10-15 years of that.
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And I ended up partnering with a couple
of gentlemen in Washington state in early
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2000, and that's when we started
our first national brand build.
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And then at that point.
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Once you get the taste
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of entrepreneurialism, it's hard to go
back, especially if you're successful.
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Oh, very true, very true.
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So is this the first
business was in yogurt?
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First business was
actually in energy bars.
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Oh, really?
Okay.
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Energy bar venture a long time ago,
but my most recent was Yogurt for Humans.
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And we got in front of the Greek
yogurt phenomenon in early 2000.
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I was just going to say, you rode
that wave right at the beginning.
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Yeah, we were the second
Greek yogurt in the US.
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After the Greek supplied source.
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And there was a window of opportunity
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in early 2000 and we
didn't have deep pockets.
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It was just three young Greek guys
in their early 20s trying to figure out
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how to at the time, we were making
hummus, would you believe in?
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And then just pivoting into Greek
yogurt because it was much easier.
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Market segment entry,
and we just did that for years.
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We still look back on that is probably one
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of the more proactive and profitable
business we've ever run.
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It almost made not to say that it was
easy, but the timing was perfect,
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the margins were ideal,
and we didn't have a 400 SKU base,
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and so it was really easy
to manage the business to scale.
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Yeah,
I can't say the same about
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alcohol and spirits,
which I was in for about two years
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and then now pet some of the highest
barriers of entry I've ever seen.
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So it's really not for the timid.
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Yeah, the alcohol,
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I can see that being tough to get
into or at least tough to expand.
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A lot of laws seem pretty
archaic from what I've seen.
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That just prevent a lot of things
that to me seem logical from happening.
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But yeah, I guess I'm not in that business
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from other people I've interviewed,
it's challenging.
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I always tell people with liquor,
it's easy to sum it up with.
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There's 10ft of space on the wall
and you're trying to convince somebody why
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you belong next to Jim Beam
and Jack Daniels.
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All right.
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This market entry is very hard.
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Sure.
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Tell me so when you're starting
the energy bars sure.
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Are you just making those in your kitchen?
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Tell me about that business.
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That was a long time ago.
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I think we've evolved
from an innovation standpoint.
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Back in those days, it was kitchen
formulation, kitchen economics.
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Nowadays we have a regulatory team,
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great development group that I work with,
both internal and third party.
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And it's not easy because especially
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in the game I'm in today, everyone's
trying to romance protein for pets.
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Yeah, well,
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they romance protein for humans for long
enough, so they do expand a little bit.
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I'm trying to think where I saw that
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someone made a comment about
the protein craze for humans.
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Seem like we're all starving cavemen
and we just need protein somehow.
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There's people that aren't really doing
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anything to justify that protein intake
just sitting on the couch, whatever.
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Yeah.
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Interesting.
But that's been the challenge as you're
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trying to add value in a market
where there's a lot of me too.
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And so to be able to fill your innovation
pipeline with stuff that's really going
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to not necessarily be disruptive,
but bring value to either a segment,
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the popular segment,
that's the real challenge.
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And it takes time to get back.
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So I don't innovate any way today
like I used to 30 years ago.
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All right.
Now, why?
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Is it because it's more difficult or
because it's just you're tired, you don't.
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Want to get it wrong.
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I've been privy to, like,
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national survey studies where you send
your product and they give you a grade.
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I've seen highly successful products go
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into those survey studies with terrible
grades, and I would go into what you guys
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thinking, and then I've
seen him get it right.
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So I think any time you take a concept
to market, if you do it right, a,
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you're building inventory, b,
you're putting out a marketing program
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and a gotomarket strategy,
and it's not cheap.
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So I would say every entry for me is well
over a quarter million dollar entry point.
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So you want to get those things right.
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You want to do your trials, your studies,
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and things that you don't
think about 30 years ago.
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When you're just ambitious and you just
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want to get to work,
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