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Melloul recognises the questions about whether loyalty really exists in mass-market brands, but his experience tells him this is different:
“We’re not talking about mainstream brands here
– you need to avoid extrapolating what we do here to a big mainstream brand. But in the case of
our recent investment successes such as Oatly, VitaCoco, Mutti, Hint, Sir Kensington – when I see someone talking positively about a brand like that
to their friends, relatives... when I see them being less sensitive to price than they normally would be in buying a commodity or a staple... when I see them buying this product day in and day out...
when I see, as in the case of Oatly, them travelling
5 or 10 kilometres to find a store selling the product, then I’m saying to myself there’s something there that can be nurtured and accelerated.”
The next criterion is the quality of the brand’s management. Philosophically, Verlinvest believe
in letting the management team run the business; Verlinvest describe themselves as ‘hands-with’ rather than ‘hands-on’ because they are available
to help, rather than sitting in with the management team day in, day out. So they combine the discipline of a comprehensive psychological assessment of potential management with a broader sense of what works best in a challenger management team: in a group or two or three, for example, Melloul likes at least one to have come from outside the category.
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