Philippe Girard | CEO of Nasta

After a decade in Swiss luxury watchmaking, Nasta CEO Geoffroy Lefevbre made an unexpected move into pet food — and quickly realized the two industries aren’t as different as they seem. In our conversation, he shares how luxury principles like craftsmanship and trust translate into pet nutrition, why the category is rapidly premiumizing, and how Nasta is building a vertically integrated pet food platform across Europe and North America.

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You spent years in Swiss watchmaking before stepping into pet care. When you first made that switch, what felt completely different, and what felt surprisingly familiar?

Watchmaking is reputedly a complex endeavour, with hundreds of miniature pieces to compose a mechanical movement. In pet food, the complexity is there as well, but different, for instance, in the variety of regulations you are exposed to as an international business, or simply the fact that it is not an exact science, and a recipe will, in the end, only be validated through palatability testing by actual pets!

Familiar, on the other hand, is the aspiration of customers for always better, more suited, and more sophisticated products, in an industry that is premiumising at a great pace.

In luxury, trust and craftsmanship are everything. Have any of those same principles shown up in unexpected ways while scaling pet food brands?

Of course, and maybe even more. The 400,000 parents who feed their pets with Nasta brands trust us every day to provide the best nutrition for their companion, in the most enjoyable moments. And our promise of quality comes from the fact that most of our recipes are invented and manufactured in our factories, by our own employees.

Was there a specific moment or realization that made you want to move into the pet industry rather than stay in luxury?

My passion for mechanical watches has been deeply ingrained ever since I was a child. I spent an amazing decade at Richemont, where I was lucky enough to grow from operations to general management, incl. 3 CEO roles of Maisons whose names made me dream as a kid. I moved to zooplus at 45, probably driven by an unconscious mechanism where half of my career was already behind me, and figuring if some change would not be good for the second half!

I was attracted to this great company at a particular moment of its growth journey, where I saw the continuity of my role at Yoox Net-a-Porter (leading an e-Commerce platform) and a new challenge serving a different type of customers.

When did you personally realize the pet category was entering a real premiumization phase?

The food my parents gave our dachshunds 40 years ago is very different from what lands in a pet's bowl today! I have had my own dogs for the past 13 years now, and already then, the product claims, the pristine packaging and the much better smell than I could remember from my childhood gave me an indication that things were changing. Then running Europe's largest pet e-commerce platform gave me a privileged perspective on the sophistication of recipes and the creativity of pet accessory manufacturers, especially in the wearable section.

For people who may not know Nasta well yet, how do you describe what the company is building and what makes it different from a traditional pet food group?

At Nasta, we are a group of passionate pet lovers on a mission to build a leading pet food platform across Europe and North America with a strong industrial DNA; the most lovable portfolio of brands based on Nature, Science, and Taste – the three pillars of our differentiation strategy –; and an incredibly exciting human adventure. This is what we call internally "moving pet food forward".

Nasta now brings together several brands that each have their own identity and positioning. When you look at them as a group, what’s the underlying philosophy or strategy that ties them all together?

We believe in the benefits of superior nutrition as a way to keep pets healthy and happy. This is why we strive to own and grow only premium brands that bring together the benefits of Nature, Science, and Taste. Because food should be made from natural ingredients that are respected throughout the transformation process, developed by specialists in pet nutrition obsessed with innovation, and above all, should taste amazing to provide the best moment for the pet.

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With the acquisition of FirstMate and its vertically integrated manufacturing model, what was it about that business that made you feel it was the right strategic fit for your North American expansion?

We saw in FirstMate a lot of what we saw in our other brands when they joined Nasta: an entrepreneurial story, a great team, and amazing products. Also, we were fully aligned with the philosophy of FirstMate, which is that "the best nutrition is simple" with Limited Ingredient Diets and recipes 100% manufactured in-house.

We are very excited about the opportunity to join forces with the FirstMate teams to support the growth of the FirstMate brands with our US online team, to leverage their expertise in North America for our European brands, and to develop FirstMate with our own teams in Export countries across Europe and Asia.

You’ve worked across Europe and internationally. What differences stand out most to you when comparing European and U.S. pet markets?

The US and Europe are the two largest pet food markets globally. The apparent simplicity of the US (one currency, one language, one regulation) is counterbalanced by the massive competition from established giants and the creativity of entrepreneurs developing new types of food, new distribution models, new customer experiences. Europe is a more complex market given its fragmentation, but in turn gives individual brands a higher chance of emerging as a national champion in a specific category.

With this acquisition strengthening your manufacturing footprint and commercial reach in North America, what new opportunities does that unlock for Nasta that simply weren’t possible before?

Time-to-market is an essential factor in our business, especially in high-growth situations like we are experiencing right now with Forza10 and Natural Code in the US. Having the opportunity, over time, to manufacture directly in North America will give us a decisive advantage. And to make things clear, given the volatility in tariff decisions in particular this week, duties is clearly not the main driver of this acquisition.

Looking ahead to the near future, what are you actively looking for right now - whether that’s specific types of brands, capabilities, partnerships, or market opportunities?

We want to double down on our development in Europe and the US, by continuing to bring on board brands that are a 100% fit to our value proposition, centred on Nature, Science, and Taste. Doing so, we like to consider brands that are complementary to us. Either in the type of food to support diversification (e.g., of ingredients, formulas, segments), or to expand our internal set of skills and know-how.

Conversely, we want to be able to leverage our own strengths, be it our manufacturing optimisation expertise or our ability to accelerate online sales fast, at the service of new brands in our family.