How Venerate Supplements found its focus on athlete recovery
Imogen Cookie-Bailey is the founder of Venerate Supplements, which makes sports performance and recovery formulas, training apparel, and men’s grooming essentials. The conversation explores how a focus on experienced athletes shaped the business, how word of mouth brought its first customers, and why the founder says sales deserve more attention.
A clear understanding of the customers a business is built to serve can shape its products and direction. Imogen Cookie-Bailey also reflects that product development can become a comfort zone, and that growing through word of mouth does not remove the need to focus on sales.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
I founded Venerate Supplements after seeing fellow athletes deal with old sports injuries. We want to equip seasoned athletes with a complete recovery and personal care experience that honors their resilience, supports their longevity, and reminds them that taking care of themselves is just as important as pushing their limits.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
We started at the grassroots level. Our first customers were friends and fellow athletes in our immediate network who tested the products and saw real results. That early word-of-mouth laid the foundation. Today, our main driver of new growth is online—people discovering us through our website after hearing about us from other athletes or searching for full-spectrum recovery products.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
The biggest decision was realizing my target consumer was my peers. I’d always focused on the prevention side of health and fitness, not recovery. But as I got older, the creaks and groans got louder — and I kept watching friends and idols walk away from their gyms and their trainers because of old injuries. Everything on the shelves felt aimed at new athletes. Then one day, deep in product development, another friend texted to say he was retiring from training. That was the crystallizing moment — it set the direction of the company.
The mistake was spending all my time in my comfort zone. I still focus more on developing the product line than on sales. Our growth has been organic, primarily through word of mouth. It’s slower, but it means every customer comes from trust, not a targeted algorithm.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
People don’t just buy a label anymore, they want something they can connect with. A small brand can reach people without heavy third-party distribution, but it also means transparency matters more than ever; people want to know who’s behind the brand. I built Ven around that. We’re very up front about who we are and where we came from.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
The most important thing anyone can do when starting out is know themself. Every endeavour takes a lot of work, so understanding your own limitations lets you plan the path to beating your own records — and resetting your own limits.
Ignore anyone telling you there’s only one right way to do it. The goal is yours and the path is yours to plan.
Thank you to Imogen Cookie-Bailey and the team at Venerate Supplements for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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