Matt WardBACKGROUNDER —
Matt is a trained Chemical Engineer that has used his expertise to traverse the worlds of engineering, business, and professional sports. He graduated from the University of Louisville Speed School of Engineering before moving to Newport Beach, California to run business development at a Private Equity firm. Matt is currently a partner at Bionatus LLC, the parent company of Luminas Energy and several other ground breaking technology companies in various global sectors.
THE CASE STORY —
I had always dabbled in the sports world even when I was in college at the University of Louisville, as I would help my friends who were prospective professional athletes in either basketball or football with their events and marketing. This kept the world of sports near and dear to me as I set about my business career. This passion came full circle when I became CEO of Luminas in 2017 and began to introduce the product and technology we had created to athletes. I was fortunate enough to get introduced after the initial success of the product to several of the top Trainers and Doctors on the PGA Tour, in particular Dr. Craig Davies, Dr. Stuart Love, and Dr. Ara Suppiah. Between the three of these gentlemen who had the respect and the credibility of the Pros who were their clients I was able to introduce the product readily to some big name individuals. Fast forward to the 2018 Masters and Tony Finau and the rest is really history for STAMINAPRO and being out in the world. More here on that story – www.staminapro.com/tonyfinau
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You wake up in the morning — what’s the driving passion?
To change the way we look at recovery, inflammation, and pain relief from physical activity.
What was the genesis for the STAMINAPRO product?
I was fortunate enough to have some professional athlete friends that I could share the consumer product with (Luminas Pain Relief) and the feedback from use was stellar. The only complaint at the time was that the patches didn’t stay on with moisture or sweat (which they weren’t designed for active use). The big moment came however when Derek Anderson (former NCAA/NBA champion) decided to utilize them proactively and noticed a dramatic reduction in post-workout inflammation and as a result, a much faster recovery. This is when we knew we had to create an athletic focused product meant for active use and proactive recovery.
How long a time frame in overall development — from concept to prototypes?
We were able to leverage a lot of the learnings that we had put into play with the consumer brand, so from first idea of an active use version to functioning prototype was a matter of months.
What separates STAMINAPRO from what your competition is doing?
Proactive use reduces inflammation before, during, and after activity by applying proactively, allowing for a much faster and more efficient “Active Recovery” versus traditional post activity products. Our products are energetic and contain no drugs, chemicals, and cause no side effects and have zero issues with any testing for professional sports because they contain no active ingredients, just energy.
In terms of sales and marketing — how much of a rough percentage is your efforts being applied to brick and mortar retail outlets, green grass shops and online sales?
99% of the current focus is online and direct to consumer and we will slowly start to add some other B2B and traditional retail channels to the efforts in 2020.
You’ve had a few key players on the PGA Tour use the product. How important is endorsements to the company’s overall credibility and success?
It’s extremely important and we also went about it in a unique way by giving the players the opportunity to partner with the company from an investment perspective. All of the relationships to date have formed organically and as a result of player feedback and successful use of the product, prior to any official involvement. Once the successful feedback was attained we then moved forward on formal involvement with the company. Having a true endorsement versus a paid advertisement has resulted in much more meaningful relationship with the players and a better story to share with the average consumer.
Do you have information on the split in terms of gender usage for the product and what the main age frames for usage is?
Gender usage is probably 65/35 male to female and the main age usage is pretty spread out from younger active person to older weekend warrior, very broad on the applicable audience.
The biggest challenges – short and long term — facing the company is what?
Short term big challenge is scaling efficiently to be able to maintain consumer demand while building strategic partnerships and long term is continuing to innovate and advance our products to the needs and feedback of the professionals and general consumer to keep our place as the innovation driver in the market
If you could change one thing in golf unilaterally — what would it be and why?
Normalize the proactive focus on recovery and how the sport is viewed from an athletic standpoint like most other professional sports
Best advice you ever received — what was it and who from?
Don’t let the thinking part get in the way of the doing part – David Novak.
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