Earlier in the summer, MBS and Active Partners hosted an evening that brought together some of the UK’s most thoughtful founders, operators and investors from across the consumer sectors. The purpose was to explore the hard-to-measure qualities in business: what are the ingredients that create a scalable and sustainable consumer brand?
Having had the personal pleasure of working closely with Active Partners for nearly 15 years, I have seen how they intuitively know which brands, concepts and behavioural shifts to back long before they are “made popular” by the market, how they have committed to spotlighting visionary founders and their genuine personal interest in the sectors they are investing in.
Our evening focused on unpacking the stories of three Active-backed founders who are building, or have built, industry-disrupting brands: Simon Mottram (Founder and former CEO of iconic cycling brand, Rapha), Russell Welsh (Founder of scaling vet business, Creature Comforts) and Lestat McCree (Co-Founder of Healf, a leading marketplace for health and wellness brands).
Our discussion highlighted a common thread that the founders shared: brand value isn’t created just through strategy, product or capital, but through a passion for their product, real drive to deliver and disrupt, and creating an authentic, meaningful culture amongst the entire team.
Simon explained that at Rapha, every early employee was a committed cyclist. Like Simon himself, cycling was a passion for these employees, and it allowed them to best understand, serve and delight their customers. The team at Rapha lived and breathed cycling, and this translated into a market-leading proposition and product that led to the eventual sale of the business to RZC Investments, a fund linked to the Walmart Family Office, for a reported $200m.
At Healf, Lestat explained his approach to building a high-performance culture at the company as one which is centred around high-ownership and prioritises wellbeing without compromising on intensity. He explained: “It’s not about rules, it’s about rhythm. Expectations are high but so is care, and for those who are aligned, it’s energising…. but this isn’t for everyone: if we’re not the right place for you, that’s fine, don’t join us”.
“The team at Rapha lived and breathed cycling, and this translated into a market-leading proposition and product.”
The team at Healf lives and breathes a fitness and wellness lifestyle. Lestat himself used to be an amateur boxer and takes part in Ironmen and triathlons. He and his brother have built their business on the principles of eating clean, moving intentionally, being mindful, and sleeping deep – and it is clear that they are passionate about these philosophies.
In the same way that it would with an elite sportsperson, this focus on health and wellness instils a deep work ethic. “We work harder than anyone else,” Lestat says. “Our hours are long, they’re hard, and they’re smart – but they are not for everyone. Working crazy hours, being very healthy, and just being good people are not contradictory”. Their approach is already showing huge success. In just three years, Healf has grown from zero revenue to £65m annualised sales.
How you build a culture – and the cost of cultural drift – was a common experience around the room. When thinking about the wrong fit at the senior leadership level, an experienced PLC Retail Chair commented on one of his key learnings over a 40-year career: “If you think they are the wrong person, then you have to take them out. I’ve only really learnt to do that in the latter part of my career. If you’re sitting there saying ‘I don’t know’ on someone, they are the wrong person… and you’ve got to act quickly”.
Our guests concluded that hiring correctly means considering more than just capability – it’s about understanding how every talent decision impacts the culture of the business. While Rapha was growing, hiring strategy changed, and Simon reflected on how their instinct to hire “the right experience” started to outweigh cultural fit and passion for product. “The culture frayed, and energy dropped,” Simon explained. “The connection to what made Rapha distinctive began to blur.”
He continued: “The culture was so important for the brand. As Phil Knight said, Nike was a cult but a good one, and I think Rapha was a cult and a good one. I still think it is. But, at a point in time, we lost sight of that a little bit, and it’s easy to crack that culture if you have the wrong person showing up, particularly in a senior role.”
This learning was reiterated by one of our other guests, a hugely successful health-tech leader, who added: “Culture can unwind very quickly. Our business is about 35 years old now, but the same founding team is still there. I think there’s been a big effort to replicate the culture of those leaders, and although that cohort is now in their mid-50s to early 60s, there’s still a huge amount of energy in that founding team – it still feels like day one.” His company also ensures that this is replicated wherever the business is set up around the world. “The culture is very present,” he said. “We make a huge effort when we start in a new country or form a new partnership to make the office look the same and build the culture in the same way.”
“Hiring correctly means considering more than just capability – it’s about understanding how every talent decision impacts the culture of the business.”
It is stories like this that have made it clear how critical the founder and founding leadership teams are in setting the culture – and it is no coincidence that Simon, Russell and Lestat all started their companies from a place of community and passion for their sector and product.
At Creature Comforts, Russell and his team sought to reimagine what pet care would look like if it were designed from an animal and owner perspective. What would it feel like if medical records were accessible to customers, pricing was fixed on a subscription basis, clinics felt more like homes than surgeries and team members were recruited not just for clinical skill but also empathy and care? He explained: “We designed everything around trust and transparency. The result is clear for both the customer and the business.” It is – that community and purpose are at the centre of their business rather than simply expansion and growth.
Similarly, Rapha’s brand was built on a genuine passion for cycling, made by cyclists for cyclists. It was one of the first in the space to build community, something that drew Active Partners to the business in the first place. Spencer Skinner, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Active Partners, said: “Rapha was one of the first brands that was famous for building a community of obsessive, like-minded people. It has become the blueprint for many other brands that have followed in its footsteps.”
One successful retail CEO took this one step further, highlighting the importance of rituals in order to hold culture at large organisations. He said: “Rituals and habits are really important. The rituals of our democracy were the key essence of our business.”
However, he also noted how important it is not to get bogged down in this and to ensure that the culture is continuously evolving. “As we hire people into a business, culture moves fast because you are representative of the society from which you hire, which will change over time. So, it’s crucial to consider how we keep that strength of culture and democracy when what people want from work is changing,” he said.
“Unless companies reflect that in their systems and culture, they risk falling behind not just commercially, but socially.”
As a business scales, its evolution also needs to encompass customer connection. Simon explains: “The danger of any business getting to any scale must be the lack of connection to the customer. You become vulnerable when all you’re doing is operating the process. Here, the smaller company always wins because the speedboat would always get there faster.”
“Rituals and habits are really important. The rituals of our democracy at John Lewis were the key essence of our business.”
Russell agrees, explaining that at Creature Comforts an unwavering focus on building trust with the customer underpins everything. “My founding principle is don’t do anything you wouldn’t do on your mother-in-law’s dog, and from that base you can build trust. We’re bringing joy and making it fun. We’re enjoying people and their pets.
“If you build trust and do the right thing, then everything else will follow.”
Culture is something that is built early on in a business, exemplifying why it is so central, and it takes those leading to have confidence in their convictions to find success. However, how you evolve a culture is key. One of the hospitality CEO’s in the room shared how she maintains a culture, while not allowing culture to hold her business back. She said: “You know the corporate rules, and then you just break them. You learn how to break every single rule there is. But what I think is clever is to know which rules to break. Trust your judgement.”
“Building something meaningful takes more than simply vision – it takes authenticity, discipline and the ability to act on instinct.”
Reflecting on the evening’s conversations – whether from a start-up founder or a seasoned CEO – my key takeaway is that culture is not an “add-on” but the thread that runs through every successful consumer brand. It’s what shapes how decisions are made, how teams behave under pressure, how customers experience the brand day-to-day, and, possibly most significantly, it is what is most vulnerable when growth takes hold. It was a reminder that building something meaningful takes more than simply vision – it takes authenticity, discipline and the ability to act on instinct, even if that decision is uncomfortable. And in a world where customers and employees can see behind the curtain, doing what you say isn’t just good business – it’s the only kind that lasts.
One of the elements I respect most about Active Partners is that they back exceptional, visionary, founders. They understand a brand is nothing without talented leadership behind it, which is one of the reasons why Active launched its Early-Stage Fund a couple of years ago, to back the next generation of consumer leaders. One of the things that Nick Evans, the other Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Active Partners, told me many years ago was that what Active seeks to do is to ‘amplify entrepreneurial flair’ – and this is a philosophy I love. Without that flair and without that passion for the culture and product the founder brings, brands of the future that will follow in the footsteps of the likes of Rapha, Creature Comforts, and Healf couldn’t exist.
