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Rawvelo | Jason & Duncan - Co-Founders
90 Plays2 years ago
In episode 67 of the UKRunChat podcast, I speak with Jason and Duncan the co-founders of our nutrition partners Rawvelo.
Jason and Duncan have created a range of plant-based sports nutrition that helps to sustain the planet as well as your performance.
This is the first of our podcasts with the team from Rawvelo.
If you have any comments or would like to get in touch you know you can on info@ukrunchat.co.uk
Follow Rawvelo on:
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 67
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to episode 67 of the UK Run Chat podcast. I'm your host, Joe Williams. And in this episode,
Meet Jason and Duncan of Raw Velo
00:00:06
Speaker
I speak with Jason and Duncan, the co-founders of our nutrition partners at Raw Velo. Jason and Duncan have created a range of plant-based sports nutrition that helps to sustain the planet as well as your performance. This is the
First Collaboration with Raw Velo
00:00:19
Speaker
first of our podcasts with the team from Raw Velo, so do look out for more. If you have any comments or would like to get in touch, you know you can on info at ukrunchat.co.uk.
00:00:30
Speaker
Enjoy this conversation with Jason and Duncan, and we will see you on the next episode. Welcome, Jason. Welcome, Duncan. Thanks for coming on the podcast. It's great to be here.
Partnership Origins and Introductions
00:00:41
Speaker
Thanks, Joe. Yeah, thanks for having us, Joe. Thank you very much. So we've started our partnership in January. Thank you very much for joining UK Run Chat from Raw Velo.
00:00:52
Speaker
It's a privilege to be part of UK Run Chat and to be partnering up with you guys, so I know we're super excited for the relationship. Good, thank you. Thank you very much. Shall we start with an introduction to you both for everybody? Yeah, my
Raw Velo's Operations and Locations
00:01:07
Speaker
name is Jason. I'm the co-founder of Raw Fellow and Duncan is my... Partner in crime. Partner in crime.
00:01:19
Speaker
We started the business, we started thinking about starting the business in about 2017. We've been working together for a while now. Whereabouts are you joining us from? We have offices in Dulston, in central London. Well, east London,
Weather and Shropshire Charm
00:01:40
Speaker
shall we say. Is it snowy down there today?
00:01:45
Speaker
Not today, but we had a fair dusting yesterday. You know, as you know, even if you get a sprinkling down south, it's considered to be heavy snow, but it was it was garment in two hours, so it wasn't exactly that bad. Just lots of rain. Usual, frizzly rain. Well, I'm up here in Shropshire in Shrewsbury and we've got quite a bit today and we're quite low line actually for Shropshire. So if we get it, then the rest of the counties
00:02:16
Speaker
got it quite heavy
Jason's Cycling Journey
00:02:17
Speaker
so yeah but it's it's beautiful yet a little inconvenient sometimes yeah well a very nice part of the world to be in so thank you very much have you been have you been up i have yeah i've got a friend he's got a house up there very nice very nice yeah it's a nice part of the world we're a little bit lost we're west of the west midlands um we yeah it's a bit of a
00:02:42
Speaker
It's been off the beaten track that way. It is, yeah. There was actually an article about you being the Guardian last weekend and they were just saying that it's undiscovered and it should rival likes of York and places. Yeah, very nice place. Yeah, I 100% agree. I've spent a reasonable amount of time there. I've done some cycling around there and it's, you know, I would say it's a slightly undiscovered gem and I would keep it quiet if I was here.
00:03:11
Speaker
The locals are probably quite pleased at the lack of traffic going through. Yes, yeah. If
Duncan's Athletic Background
00:03:19
Speaker
they do come through, they tend to go just right the way around us and up into North Wales. Yeah, there's some lovely routes for cycling. Sorry, that was Jason, you gave us a little bit of an intro, but to your background, the two of you in terms of sports, so recycling your sport, is it?
00:03:37
Speaker
Well yes, so I come from prior to starting the business as well as having a completely alternative career to the one that I now have. I was a keen cyclist and I used to race at kind of well up to national level in the UK.
00:04:00
Speaker
So,
Formation of Raw Velo
00:04:01
Speaker
you know, it took it reasonably seriously, but it was still very much for fun. But I've always somehow rather been involved in cycling since I was a kid. So I literally, you know, I was riding a bike at three and, you know,
00:04:18
Speaker
off around the woods in the park from as young as I possibly could be. And that being back in the 70s, it was very much, my parents didn't mind me going off and doing that on my own. So it was like, have a lunch, be back before it gets dark.
00:04:34
Speaker
back me out in the door on a Saturday morning and off I'd go with my mates. So, you know, it was always part of my life. And then I did some BMX racing when I was a kid and then some mountain bike when mountain bike was first coming around. So that was back in 80
Career Transitions to Raw Velo
00:04:49
Speaker
something. And then kind of a hiatus during university for
00:04:59
Speaker
other recreations took over and then yeah kind of rediscovered it again in my late 20s and I got very into road cycling so that was my thing for a long period of time. Now it's a little bit more leisurely
00:05:19
Speaker
Partly due to the fact that I am, I have a young daughter and, uh, and obviously business to run that takes up most of my time. So I can't really train to be competitive anymore. Um, but also now I just very much enjoy, I enjoy the ride, I guess, as they say. So, and I've got more and more into kind of, you know, off-road riding, some kind of more adventure based stuff, longer distance stuff, you know, kind of multi-day and, you know, um,
00:05:44
Speaker
So yeah, just enjoy, I guess almost going back to my childhood of enjoying the ride and the idea of being able to explore by bicycle is now very much kind of key for me. Yeah, that's what it should be for everybody, shouldn't it? At its core, it's definitely whether that's on first tour on a bike or in a pair of hiking boots, that's exactly what it should be.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's about being out there enjoying the world around you,
Need for Better Sports Nutrition
00:06:11
Speaker
taking it all in, seeing as much as you can, and having adventures. How about you, Duncan?
00:06:18
Speaker
So I was brought up in South Africa as my accent can attest to, obviously a sports imagination, so you try everything. Sport was also compulsory at school, so you had to play a summer and a winter sport. Being South Africa, you pushed into rugby, so I played, you know, that more so in junior school than senior school. When I got to senior school, I discovered surfing because we lived on the coast. That kind of took
00:06:48
Speaker
preference over everything else. And then when I moved to the UK in the sort of mid 90s, I was looking for alternatives because I didn't live near the coast.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, it was a lot of gym work. And that kind of led to cycling, I've always been sort of anatomically challenged when it comes to cycling, because I'm quite large. So cycling was more a sort of an alternative, you know, an endurance activity, yes, opposed to the weight training and stuff, and also sort
Sustainability and Organic Practices
00:07:21
Speaker
of weight control and that kind of thing. So I got into it. But
00:07:25
Speaker
Um, you know, my physique won't ever sort of allow me to be a competitive cyclist as such. So I never, I never really pursued that path, but I love the endurance aspect of it. Um, I've done a fair amount of running in my time. So, you know, a general spectrum of sports for me. Um, yeah. I think I'm just going to interject there. Duncan's underselling himself here.
00:07:50
Speaker
He's a super competitive South African who happens to be one of those annoying people that's good at every sport he does. Oh, he's one of those.
00:08:01
Speaker
If you asked him to take up tiddlywinks, he'd be pushing for world championships in three months. It's that kind of level. I'd put myself in a sort of 10 handicap category for all sports. So, moderately good at most of them, but not excellent at any of them. Probably a good way of describing it. Very good. So, how did you two meet?
00:08:27
Speaker
It's a slightly convoluted story through my wife, who knew Duncan before we married, in fact, before we met. She's a member of a tennis club and well, Duncan can tell you the rest of the story.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's a central London tennis club. And I used to run the gym facility there, so I used to train Jason's wife as a personal trainer. And the bit that he's missing, which is where the kind of the cycling link comes in, is that he
00:09:06
Speaker
He trained her, basically, to get through doing the ETAQTA Tour, which is a event that they run every year in France, which is essentially amateur riders riding a leg of the Tour de France. And she'd previously done some triathlon, and for some reason decided to sign up to it, and then realized that she had absolutely no idea what she was doing, and never walked in the mountains before.
00:09:30
Speaker
Duncan, who at that point in time was already quite a competent cyclist, took over training her up and got her through it in flying style. Very good. As a consequence of that, when we met, she realized I was a keen cyclist, she was like, you should meet Duncan. He cycles as well and you guys could go out together, which we did. It came from there. There was a friendship first and then a business after that.
00:09:59
Speaker
Okay, so talk
Brand Philosophy and Audience
00:10:01
Speaker
me through then, to your friends now then, you're going out on your rides at the weekends and chatting away. How do you go from that to starting a new brand, starting there or Velo? Well, I guess that it was a...
00:10:24
Speaker
It was the coming together of several, I think it was a point in life more than anything. So both of us were at a point with our current careers where we wanted to change something, wanted to do something different.
00:10:40
Speaker
My previous career actually was in the media industry. I worked in film and television and I was a documentary filmmaker. And as a consequence, spent a lot of time away from home traveling.
00:10:57
Speaker
quite often overseas and for extended periods, three months, sometimes even six months, which is absolutely fine when you're younger and single and have no commitments. In fact, it was amazing. It was a fantastic lifestyle. But as I got slightly older and then met somebody that I married and then we were talking about having kids, this isn't sustainable in the long term.
00:11:25
Speaker
And so at that point, I was starting to think about trying to find something else to do. And and well, Duncan can pick up from there. But yeah, I mean, I was some of the thing to Jason, I was kind of
Environmental Initiatives
00:11:41
Speaker
I felt like I was reaching the twilight end of my personal trading career, having done it for a while. Yeah. You know, it's
00:11:50
Speaker
it's all well and good but it's one of those jobs you work a sort of split shift scenario you're always chasing the numbers because you know you have to fill a diary every day to make it a successful career path yes I was just I don't want to say I was looking to slow down but you know
00:12:10
Speaker
the thought of having a Saturday off. Yes. It was quite good after 20 years, I've never had one and, you know, and yeah, I just wanted to change a pace and just something different. But again, I think what Ravello did offer was the opportunity to stay connected to sport, which was, which was important to me. So, yeah.
00:12:30
Speaker
And yeah, and really, a lot of the impetus actually came again, I have to take my hat off to to the better part of my relationship, which is my wife who pushed us for a bit of background. She's actually from the US. And, you know, as you can imagine, has a slightly different attitude towards risk taking than than most people in the UK have. She was very much of the of the of the idea that
00:12:59
Speaker
we should do something and we should go for it. In a very American way, said to me, why don't you follow your passions? I've always been passionate about cycling, I've always been passionate about sport, but I've also always been passionate about food and nutrition. They are very key things to me. I was actually brought up
00:13:22
Speaker
in food industry. My parents were publicans. They ran very successful restaurants. So I had that background knowledge of understanding food and it being something very important and integral to my life. But also in terms of the health aspect of that and maybe having, say, a slightly alternative view to what healthy diet is and how to approach that.
00:13:50
Speaker
And so for me, it was how do I find something that kind of fits into that space? And it is actually the idea of sports nutrition is something I thought about in the past because when I was actually competing as a cyclist, one of the things that I always found, the circle that I could never square was the idea that I did look after my health pretty well in terms of nutrition. I ate well.
00:14:21
Speaker
trained pretty hard most of the time, took things reasonably seriously. But when it came to actually doing hard training sessions or competing, the options left open to me for nutrition, I felt were pretty poor in terms of
00:14:41
Speaker
the ingredients in terms of the philosophy behind them, in terms of how they were delivered. And I just kind of felt there was a disconnect there. You know, people generally do spore, even if they do it at quite a high level, you know, there's an element of that, which is about trying to be healthy, but also being the best you can. And for me, being the best you can is very much about, you know,
00:15:09
Speaker
nourishing your, your body in the best way that you can. That's how you're going to get the best out of it. And I just felt sports nutrition just didn't do that. It served a purpose. It was a quick fix, but it had no thought about long-term implications of using it or.
00:15:24
Speaker
of recovery or it was just purely like, okay, here's something, take this and you'll get through the next half an hour or whatever. And to me, it just, there was a disconnect. So when it did come to thinking about a business and trying to find things that align my passions, it seemed like a really obvious place to start looking. So early on, it was very much doing research. I think one of the first things we did was we went out and bought
00:15:52
Speaker
40 or 50 different kinds of sports nutrition, supposedly kind of energy bar, taste tests with groups of people, friends that we got together. We had a party one night where we got people together and taste tested and ranked all of these bars, some athletes, some weren't.
00:16:15
Speaker
And the overriding result of the whole thing was that people just didn't like any of them. There was like a couple that people were like, like, I could tolerate that. But the majority of them, people were like, this isn't very nice. And there were quite a few that people actually just spat out. So this is disgusting. Yeah.
00:16:34
Speaker
That's really interesting from that many, 40 or 50. Yeah, absolutely. And we were like, so there has
User Feedback and Health Discussions
00:16:41
Speaker
to be space in the market. There's something going on here that's not right. So the next step then was to start looking at making products. And that process literally started in my kitchen.
00:16:55
Speaker
Okay, brilliant. So you started out then looking at those things that you've just said then in terms of your kind of brand origin, if you like. So you were looking at ingredients, you're looking at the philosophy behind the business and how you could connect. Yeah, I mean, it was about joining out the dots of...
00:17:13
Speaker
You know, the kind of the pillars, I guess, of what we base the brand on is that, you know, sports nutrition should be it should be holistic in terms of an approach to health and nutrition. So wherever possible, it should have added nutritional benefit and it certainly should think about the long term implications of its use. It should taste good because ultimately, sports nutrition is just
00:17:42
Speaker
food source that's fit for purpose. And then thirdly, it should be fit for purpose in terms of the functionality of the product. So if it's a bar, it should be something that you can carry, that you can actually eat, digest, that you can open easily, all of these kind of functional things.
00:17:59
Speaker
And then the last part of that is bringing it all together and understanding that if you're going to start a business in this day and age, you have to base that business on a philosophy of sustainability. And again, that was underlying, underpinned everything we did from day one as a brand. It was like, we're going to start a brand. Ultimately, most athletes I know, not all athletes, but most athletes that are in the endurance space,
00:18:29
Speaker
particularly those that aren't competing at the highest level because it's a different game. But part of the reason they do what they do is to be outdoors and to be often out in the natural environment, as it were, running in the woods, trail running in the hills, mountain biking, using their road bike to get out of London at the weekend so that they can actually see some countryside. That's all about nature.
00:18:57
Speaker
So we felt that the brand had to, you know, there was no other option for us to set a brand up that was based on those ideas of sustainability and the long term health of the planet as well as the long term health of the individual. Yeah, you mentioned on your
00:19:14
Speaker
on your website, sports nutrition that's better for you and the planet too. So give us a little bit more about that. I am going to go back and talk about a couple of other things with the actual brand as well, but just tell us a little bit more about that and sustainability at Royal Velox. It's something you hear a lot now. It's interesting to hear what that actually means. Yeah. So I think, you know, from what Jason said,
00:19:40
Speaker
And again, referring to the statement about being good for you in the planet. If we look at conventional sports nutrition, it has, well, there's a sort of prescriptive nature about it. It's almost seen as a medicine as such.
Raw Velo's Industry Involvements and Future Plans
00:20:01
Speaker
There's a lot of instances where, you know,
00:20:07
Speaker
things have been overemphasized like particular sugars or metabolites or and I think the whole movement has gone away from the whole food principle and all these components in an energy source you know working in synergy I think
00:20:27
Speaker
We know now from, you know, things like the talk about sort of gut microbiomes and things like that, that, you know, these things need to work in synergy and whole foods are whole foods for a reason and the body
00:20:41
Speaker
you know, accept them willingly for the reasons that they are more complex than a lot of the stuff that's out there, you know, that is now sold as energy food. And then sustainability wise, being an organic brand, obviously sourcing of ingredients is important to us.
00:20:59
Speaker
regenerative farming is an important practice and you know the organic certification looks into that and basically makes sure that your ingredients come from credible sources and then you know things like
00:21:18
Speaker
you know the movement around plastic and packaging I mean that in itself creates huge problems yes so that's yeah you know that's why we we take the approach we do with our recyclable policy on all our packaging okay so we just yeah we're just trying to sort of
00:21:36
Speaker
close the circle and offer what is a complete sustainable offering in terms of ingredients, packaging, and the actual quality of the product. Okay, great. I'll dig into that a little bit more in a moment. I just want to go back and ask you a question about, in terms of the brand itself and the name, did you start specifically to be four cyclists?
00:22:05
Speaker
So we did in the sense that that was the sport that we both shared in common, that we both knew and understood in terms of how nutrition is used. But having said that, we also
00:22:24
Speaker
We also realized very early on, or we knew very early on, that sports nutrition for endurance athletes is the same regardless of what sport you do. Your requirements are the same. And that a name doesn't define the product. And although we were appealing initially to cyclists, as I said, because that was the space that we knew. It was the sport we knew.
00:22:50
Speaker
We had early uptake from triathletes, runners, rowers, pretty much from day one, people looking for a healthier alternative to the nutrition that they were currently using. And as the brand grew, so we really launched properly in 2018. As the brand grew, we took a step back and we were like, is this the right name? Is this gonna work?
00:23:20
Speaker
Is there an issue with that? Will it appeal to people across all sports and disciplines? And the interesting thing that we found was when we asked people within the industry, i.e. retailers, particularly, they wouldn't always say it was an issue.
00:23:40
Speaker
But then when we asked the people that were using the products or the people that might buy the products, they really didn't care. And they either understood that raw Velo yet had a cycling connotation, but that didn't mean that it wasn't for them if they weren't a cyclist or they just didn't really know what Velo was anyway. So it just became an agnostic name. Yes.
00:24:05
Speaker
So we made the decision quite early on that we would just stick with that name because it's part of the identity of the brand, it's part of who we are as individuals and why the brand started.
00:24:22
Speaker
And now we just talk about that, you know, that's, that's, you know, for those people that are interested or do see it as a barrier, you know, we talk about it and we're open about it. And that's, yes, we understand that it has a root in cycling, but ultimately.
00:24:37
Speaker
good endurance sports nutrition works for all endurance sports. It's for everyone. Yeah, I completely agree. I had a little bit of a Google this morning of the word Velo. Obviously, I know it's roots in cycling. It's Latin for speed, rapid or swift, and early bikes were called Velo Cipides. Did you know that? Yeah, yeah. I did know that. Yeah, Velocipides.
00:25:03
Speaker
But then interestingly, so I didn't know that, and then interestingly, in brackets, are the words speed hyphen foot. Speed foot. That's what, yeah. Velo speeds. I assume mean speed foot. So actually, if you think about your speed of foot, it's applicable to pretty much all sports. Well, I really didn't know that.
00:25:29
Speaker
Thank you very much for doing that research, Joe. That will certainly be, we'll certainly be writing something about that. That's fascinating. Yeah. And it's great to know.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's very, very interesting. Speed foot. Yeah. I think we feel even more justified now than in making that decision to stick with that name. Yeah, yeah, you should. Tell me a little bit more then, Duncan, you mentioned about the ingredients being from credible sources and the whole foods. Tell us a bit more about your products and what's different about lemon. I mean,
00:26:12
Speaker
We're obviously in a very competitive space in the market and one of our USPs or the biggest one is the organic certification.
00:26:25
Speaker
So it obviously gives the end user some sort of guarantee that what they're purchasing is the best quality product available. What is that? What is organic certification? So it's a stringent certification process that involves audits. We are registered with a recognized organic body in the UK, of which there are three.
00:26:53
Speaker
And it's European wide and worldwide to an extent. So America has their own organic standards. We align ourselves with the European organic standards, which means that 95% of the product has to come from organic sources. And no ingredients that you use can be from non-organic sources unless it cannot be sourced organically.
00:27:22
Speaker
So as I said, that just guarantees that we are only using the best quality ingredients in all our products. I think another thing to say about organic farming for people that don't know really what that means. I mean, I think most people do in this day and age.
00:27:38
Speaker
But it is very strict and particularly at the point of production. So where the ingredients are grown when you're talking about natural whole food ingredients, there's regular inspections, there's audits.
00:27:59
Speaker
But effectively what it means is that everything has to be grown completely chemically free, chemical free. Sorry, I'll start that again. Everything has to be grown completely chemical free. So that means zero pesticides, zero man-made fertilizers.
00:28:16
Speaker
zero fungicides, in terms of meat it means that you can't be using antibiotics. So effectively it's the least polluting way that you can farm, but it also promotes sustainable farming methods and regenerative farming methods, although that's not strictly one of the criteria for being organically certified,
00:28:40
Speaker
what you tend to find is most farmers that sign up to be organically certified will also be using that those those farming techniques which we are now coming more and more to understand are actually not only the most sustainable actually in the long term the most productive farming methods that we can use so the idea of kind of
00:29:03
Speaker
mass scale agriculture that's turbocharged through GMO crops and the high use of pesticides and fertilizers. Although it produces a large quantity of crop, that production isn't sustainable.
00:29:22
Speaker
As we're already seeing around the world, you're seeing the loss of topsoil, you're seeing this mass agriculture becoming less and less efficient and producing lower and lower yields. And not only that, producing yields of far, far less nutrient quality than before and that can be achieved through organic farming.
00:29:48
Speaker
So, you know, at the end of the day, if you want to do something sustainably, if you want to build a brand on something that's sustainable, then trying to source organically, if it's a food brand, that is, or a clothing brand. If you, you know, if you want to do it sustainably, really, you kind of need to be looking at organic wherever you can, as far as we're concerned. Yes.
00:30:12
Speaker
Tell me more, you mentioned plastics as well earlier Duncan, tell me about that in terms of plastics at Rauvella. Yeah, so we've been looking at solutions for packaging for years and
00:30:27
Speaker
the market the first ones to come round was sort of the home compostable wrappers on for argument's sake bars and that was a trend for a while but we never really bought into that because we actually had a an audit done on our packaging and suggestions made as to what the best solutions would be and we were advised that
00:30:53
Speaker
the plastics industry would evolve to an extent that actually the packaging would become recyclable.
00:31:01
Speaker
So we just, we hung on for that. And then last year we, we put all our products into, well, we have a recyclable solution for all our products. So the bars in general are quite easy because, you know, it's a bar wrapper. There's not a massive requirement for sort of high moisture barrier on the bars, but things like the gels pose their own problems. So what you have with a gel is a, is a plastic,
00:31:30
Speaker
which is lined with an aluminum foil, which obviously has very strong fluid barrier qualities. And that is a complex product to recycle.
00:31:42
Speaker
However, there is now a company in the UK that does recycle gel wrappers. So we have a post-bac system, which I see is being introduced. Quite a few of the brands are starting to introduce this. So we work with a recycling partner.
00:32:02
Speaker
you collect your gel wrappers, you send them free posts to our recycling partner. They have a process that uses, I think, what is termed microwave technology, which separates the aluminium from the plastic. The aluminium is then collected and sent to metal recycling and the plastics are
00:32:24
Speaker
made into either new plastic products or you know there's a process of recycling for the plastics too. Yeah that's really good, that's excellent. Events should be getting involved in that as well as brands like yourself.
00:32:39
Speaker
Obviously there's lots of gels, used a fence, isn't there? Yeah, especially the running game. So that's something else actually that we're looking to start running. Something else that we're starting to look at rolling out this year, working with event organizers to offer
00:32:59
Speaker
our recycling solution to them. So becoming a nutrition partner with events, but rather than doing the classic old school nutrition brand trick of just delivering a palette full of gels for everybody to eat and then chuck on the roadside and forget about. We actually provide the recycling solution for the gel wrappers themselves from any brand.
00:33:23
Speaker
So we provide bins, drop bins along the course and at the start and finish where people can put the wrappers from their gels or bars. And we then carry on, we then make sure those get correctly recycled and genuinely recycled using this technology that Duncan's been talking about. There are some other
00:33:48
Speaker
There are some other companies out there that say that they can recycle these products, but it's a very gray area as to whether they do. The company that we work with have a genuine solution. And as far as we're aware, they're the only genuine solution in the world, actually, that provides this bespoke technology. Very good. But what is, before I move on, because I do want to ask you more about your gels, but what is, I saw on your website, 1% for the planet. Can you explain that?
00:34:19
Speaker
Um, so 1% for the planet is, um, so it's a, it's a charitable organization. It's a not for profit that was set up, um, in the U S, um, by Patagonia, the clothing brand. Um,
00:34:38
Speaker
And the idea behind it is that, and it's because they as a brand have always done this. So they take 1% and they have done since day one. They take 1% of their profits and they put that back into funding organizations that do work that protects the planet in one way or another.
00:35:03
Speaker
and supporting that work. So it's a way of giving back. So they have always done that. So they then decided that that could be an interesting solution for other companies to be involved in that process. So they set up the foundation and the idea is that any business that is part of that foundation
00:35:27
Speaker
then pledges to give 1% of all of their revenue from each year to causes that support issues around sustainability, you know, regenerating the environment. In some areas, you know,
00:35:51
Speaker
helping sport in the natural environment, those kinds of things, very much about protecting and sustaining the natural environment. And the reason why it's so interesting is because it also allows you as a donor
00:36:09
Speaker
You can give the money to them directly to distribute to the causes that they work with in the local area to you as well. So it's very fundamental to them. The money goes into funding.
00:36:24
Speaker
funding work that is within the locality of the businesses that are putting the money in. So if you're in the UK and you're putting money into 1% for the planet, that money then doesn't just go to the US to be used on causes in the US. It will be used on causes within the UK.
00:36:41
Speaker
But it also allows you to have some choice over that as well. So you can either put forward organizations that you want to work with that aren't already covered by them, or you can work with organizations that they already support within that locality. So you can decide to work directly with different organizations. So it's a very interesting way of working.
00:37:09
Speaker
It also then means that you get a lot of support and then there's a big network. So you're part of a network of all of these businesses that have the same ethos as you do. And through that, we've kind of got other relationships with other businesses now. And so it's a community as well. It's very much about building a community of like-minded businesses that all believe that we should be putting the planet first in business.
00:37:35
Speaker
Excellent. Let me come back to your gels. What's the feedback you get from your runners and cyclists about your gels? The reason I'm specifically asking about this product is if a gel doesn't agree with you, it can be interesting, can't it? Should we put it that way? Tell us about your gels. Well, again,
00:38:05
Speaker
It aligns with our principles. So we use the best quality ingredients in our gel. Most of your conventional gels that you find in the market are based around a maltodextrin heavy recipe. What is maltodextrin? Explain that for us.
00:38:23
Speaker
So maltodextrin is a sugar sauce. It's a starch that's extracted from corn. Okay. And it was first used in the food industry to bulk foodstabs. So you'd find it in sauces and
00:38:45
Speaker
a lot of processed food. It's not sweet as a sugar sauce, so it has a pretty neutral flavor to it, so it can be easily manipulated. And yeah, I mean, we chose not to use multidextrin in our products simply because it's over-processed. I mean, it's often... So in sports, nutrition and literature, it's often
00:39:14
Speaker
held up as being a very good, simple source of carbohydrate. So it's a, it's a mono, what's it mono? Monosaccharide. It's a monosaccharide. Yes. Single chain carbohydrate. Um, which, uh, yeah, has, has been for a while,
00:39:40
Speaker
held up as being a very good source of fuel, which the body can assimilate very easily. However, when you look at it, actually, glucose, which is a much less processed form of that, is actually... You know, that's...
00:40:03
Speaker
glucose is the naturally occurring sugar that the body actually wants to ingest. So I'm not making a lot of sense here. You're quite sure what I'm trying to say. The reason I'm being caged is because I don't want to start
00:40:23
Speaker
I don't want to upset the apple cart too much. Effectively, maltodextrin is, it's been used in the food industry widely. It was pioneered in the US, a similar time to high fructose corn syrup, as a food additive for all kinds of foods. And it's extremely cheap to produce, extremely cheap to produce.
00:40:51
Speaker
And it does work in sports nutrition. I would never argue that it doesn't. It absolutely definitely works in sports nutrition. But so do other products. Other ingredients can work equally as well.
00:41:07
Speaker
And I would say will be healthier for you, particularly in the long term and in the short term, because they're less likely to cause you digestive issues, which actually quite a lot of people get from multidextrin.
00:41:28
Speaker
But its continued use is, I feel, I don't want to point fingers, its continued use is very much due to the fact that it is just a very, very cheap bulk filling ingredient, which allows you to produce
00:41:42
Speaker
sports nutrition products at a very low price and make a very good profit on, which doesn't give any thought to the end user of that product and the long-term health implications from them using that product and the short-term health implications of them using that product. And it's something that, for both of us, it's a personal bugbear. And it comes back to this whole idea of why we started the brand.
00:42:10
Speaker
Sports nutrition should actually be about your health and not just your performance. And an ingredient like maltodextrin is purely about performance and it doesn't take into account the health implications related to it. So we don't use it in any of our products and as a consequence, anecdotally,
00:42:36
Speaker
We have feedback from athletes that we support, ambassadors and our customers, that using our products has greatly reduced or completely got rid of any gastrointestinal issues they've had using sports nutrition for training and racing. Very good. Very good. It's interesting. These things do need to be spoken about and if that
00:43:02
Speaker
ingredient is ultimately not aligned with your values as a business. It's important to talk about it for me. I would agree, but it's also a slightly contentious topic, as a lot of things are around nutrition, full stop. As I said, I think very early on, my ideas around nutrition are quite contrarian to what have widely been long
00:43:29
Speaker
long-term, long-held beliefs and we're now seeing that that's coming full circle and that you know some of the most basic principles that we probably were brought up with as kids around what's healthy
00:43:46
Speaker
actually tend to be well certainly not us maybe not us as kids but maybe our parents and grandparents as kids yeah turn out now to be the right things so you know eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and you know
00:44:03
Speaker
Things like, you know, higher fat products aren't necessarily bad for you because not all fat is the same and actually just low fat diets are not healthy at all. You know, all of these kinds of things that we're starting to realize actually have scientific merit and foundation as opposed to just being, you know, the kind of the way things were done. Yes.
00:44:26
Speaker
But they still can be quite contentious. You try and explain to somebody that eating low-fat yogurt isn't necessarily particularly healthy for them. Most people are drinking skim milk or semi-skim milk even. A lot of people are going to bulk of that idea because that's not what they've been led to believe. And the sports nutrition is very much the same. And a lot of that is because the science behind it is often
00:44:53
Speaker
funded by the sports nutrition companies themselves. Yes. The research is often funded by the sports nutrition companies themselves. And we also need to remember that it is an unregulated industry. Yes, very important point.
00:45:12
Speaker
So let's tell us what else you're up to then in the running industry. You mentioned that you're looking to work with events, which is a brilliant initiative on making sure those gel wrappers are picked up. I organize an event and going around and picking those gel wrappers up is interesting. It takes a while.
00:45:36
Speaker
But to have recycling points on the course from an event organiser's perspective is really very good. What else are you up to in the running industry?
00:45:55
Speaker
As you're aware, because we actually met and spoke there, we were involved in the Running Industry Alliance and we were one of the early founder members of that as well, which we were introduced to them and instantly thought it was a great idea and couldn't understand why it didn't already exist. And we
00:46:19
Speaker
very proud to be the nutrition partner and to be involved with the Running Industry Alliance and to be a member of the Alliance. And I think it benefits everybody that's involved. And to be fair, if I had a business in the running industry, I can't imagine why I wouldn't want to be part of it. Again, it's also a great community.
00:46:40
Speaker
interesting like-minded people, lots of interesting debates. So that, you know, that for us, we also, our ambassador program is expanding all the time. And we are bringing on board some, you know, you know, we now have a nice, should we say we have a balance, we have a balanced roster of ambassadors, which is much spread across different sports now as well. And we, you know, we've made a
00:47:10
Speaker
a concerted effort to ensure that that isn't skewed to one sport or another sport because we believe that endurance sports nutrition works for all sports.
00:47:26
Speaker
And in terms of our partnership, we've got quite a lot planned, haven't we? Your social media team are already getting involved every time that there's nutritional discussion coming up on social media. This is the first of our podcasts. We'll be doing a few more across the year. As well as, I know your team's gonna be producing content for our community as well, which will be able to be shared far and wide for the running community.
00:47:56
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and providing information wherever possible. I mean, a lot of what we've talked about today in terms of nutrition, you know, again, is valid for all sport. And, you know, we're keen to, you know, we like having discussions and debates and talking about these and, you know, these issues.
00:48:19
Speaker
And I think it's important and healthy that that happens. And also, you know, helping people that just want to learn more about nutrition or want to take a different approach to their nutrition is something that, again, is really important to us. It's very much having conversations and, you know, debates around these things.
00:48:41
Speaker
And also, most of our ambassador pool come from what we can probably term everyday athletes, you know, so these are people that juggle careers with their passion. Yes. And I think, you know, having a few of those on the podcast would be good just so that, you know, people can relate to them. And, and they obviously have a wealth of experience and an advice to offer on, you know, how you can do both things successfully.
00:49:09
Speaker
And then obviously we would love them to chat about, you know, how Ravello has helped them with performance, potentially overcome a few issues, especially things like
00:49:23
Speaker
go through intestinal issues and just generally talk about what they like about the products and also how they use them. I'm going for an exclusive here. Is there any hints of new products coming soon? There are, yeah. Excuse me.
00:49:48
Speaker
Yeah, we do have some new products coming out this year. There will be, I can say in April, we'll certainly be launching something in April and then there should be another product following soon after that towards the end of May or June.
00:50:11
Speaker
Okay, we're not far away from April. Yeah, they'll be launching towards the end of April. Yeah, we're not far away. So we look forward to finding out what those new products are. Just remind us before we finish up, then where can people buy Ravello? You know, in stores and online and where to follow and your web address and all that good stuff, please.
00:50:32
Speaker
Well, the web address is easy. It's rawvelo.com. Anybody that's interested can order direct from the website. We pride ourselves on our customer service. We look after our customers that come to us direct online. We're free postage on all orders over £20.
00:50:56
Speaker
You know, pretty speedy delivery, which is generally quite reliable, although not always in the stay in age, but I think that's the same for everybody. And yeah, we're in a number of retailers in terms of ones that people might know on a national basis, up and running. We're in most up and running stores. Alpine Trek up in Scotland. I think I don't know how many stores they've got now.
00:51:25
Speaker
five or six stores in Scotland. We're just launching with them. We're online with XMiles. We're also online with XMiles. And then there's a number of local shops that we're in as well. So, I mean, what I would say to anybody listening is if we're not in your local shop and you are interested in us as a brand and have tried the products and like them,
00:51:47
Speaker
please go into your local shop and tell them about us. And, you know, we would love to supply them and find ways to make it work. I mean, again, one of the things that we hold, you know, that we believe in very strongly as a brand is that, you know, all of our retailers that we work with are partners and that we want to support them. And we do go for the approach of being
00:52:15
Speaker
I don't want to say selective, but we want to work with retailers that understand what we do and buy into the brand because it isn't just another sports nutrition brand. We do do things differently and the retailer needs to understand that because, you know, if people are comparing us to SIS or high five or any of the other kinds of major brands on the market, you know, the
00:52:40
Speaker
they need to understand the differences. So the retailer kind of needs to understand, to want to do something differently as well and buy into that. And we support them very closely. We love doing events with the shops that we work with, we support their running clubs.
00:53:02
Speaker
send ambassadors to do talks, you know, so again, it's very much about, you know, we kind of see our customer base as a community, you know, and our retailers are part of that community because they effectively are, you know, the voice of Rauvello to whoever walks into their shop. Yeah. Well, and you certainly supported us in terms of the launch, we did the giveaway of all the taste of packs, didn't we? Yeah. And again, you know, we, you know, we love doing that kind of thing because it's, you know,
00:53:32
Speaker
It's great to get products out there and to get people trying it. They haven't tried it before. And to get people's feedback. It's why we do what we do at the end of the day.
00:53:46
Speaker
Particularly with the products like the gels in the running community, one of the things that we often find when we do events is that we'll have a steady flow of people coming up and probably nine out of 10 of those people will go.
00:54:03
Speaker
don't really like gels and it's either I don't really like them but I have to do them or I don't really like them and I can't stomach them so I don't do them but I have problems when I do longer runs because I don't have any nutrition. And then they try hours and to see the kind of the expression and the
00:54:21
Speaker
Oh, this is actually quite nice. Oh, oh, yeah. And just that in itself is like, that's that's such a reward for knowing that we're kind of trying to do the right thing. And actually, I think we are doing the right thing. It's working. You know, it's not, you know, we're making a product that people enjoy. Yeah. It's not, you know, I think as Duncan alluded to earlier on, you know,
00:54:42
Speaker
As far as we're concerned, sports nutrition is not a pharmaceutical product, much as many of the other brands out there would like to lead you down a different path and make you believe differently. It is actually just food that's fit for purpose and it should be enjoyable in that sense. It should be a food product and it should taste as natural as possible. It should taste like something that you've eaten and would want to eat.
00:55:05
Speaker
that you used the word reward, then it must be very rewarding because that's what you set out to do. It's very good. Very good. Well done. If you want to follow listeners, if you want to follow Raw Vello, then it's at Raw Vello Sports on Twitter and at Raw Vello on both Instagram and Facebook. Duncan, Jason, thanks ever so much for coming on the podcast. It's been great to have a chat for almost an hour and I look forward to doing more over the coming 12 months.
00:55:35
Speaker
Thank you very much indeed Joe, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.