‘Divide and conquer’: Vision Made Co names Youfoodz founder Lance Giles as CEO to drive growth

Brisbane-based contract manufacturer of health and fitness supplements Vision Made Co (VMC) has appointed Youfoodz founder Lance Giles as CEO in a major step for the company’s growth plans that will target revenue of $100 million in the next two years.

The appointment will see VMC’s founder Joshua Spurway, a former Youfoodz business development manager, step into a head of commercial role as Giles takes the reins to oversee the operational and finance needs of the fast-growing business.

The irony of the move is not lost on Giles, who more than a decade ago gave Spurway a chance to be part of the Youfoodz growth story from the very early years of the meal delivery service.

Giles founded Youfoodz in 2012 before listing the company in 2020 and then exiting following a $125 million takeover by HelloFresh a year later.

Giles brought on board Spurway, who was originally a supplier to Youfoodz, as business development manager. He notes that Spurway, who founded VMC in 2021, played a key role in the growth story that saw Youfoodz expand from a staff of 20 to 1,000 and annual turnover to more than $200 million.

“Josh was one of our first retailers at Youfoodz and I managed to convince him to come across and work for us where he was instrumental in scaling the retail division of the business,” Giles tells Business News Australia.

The food entrepreneur sees similar potential for VMC, a contract manufacturing business that produces health and fitness supplements for clients that are largely Australian, although some are from offshore.

VMC currently produces supplements for more than 45 different brands under their own labels, some that come with their own health and wellness formulas and others that get VMC to develop formulas for them.

“The industry presents so much opportunity as the health and wellness space is growing significantly,” says Giles.

“Currently we are in that transition phase where we are going from a small-to-medium business to being a medium and large business,” he says.

Giles reconnected with Spurway a couple of years ago, shortly after leaving Youfoodz following a three-year handover period to HelloFresh in 2023.

“I spent a bit of time at VMC and we joined forces after Josh got me across what he was doing and his vision for the company,” he says.

“Josh has done such a great job to get where we are over the past couple of months, and with this momentum we decided to divide and conquer with Josh focusing on the customer, the innovation and where we want to take the business, while I look after the operations and finances.”

Among the growth plans mapped out by Giles and Spurway is a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for Brisbane in the next two years to cater for growth and to meet the company’s vision to become “the most trusted and sought-after supplement manufacturer in Australia”.

“We are right on track for that,” says Giles who sees many similarities between VMC and the Youfoodz growth story.

“There are a lot of things that, if I had my time again, I would have done differently at Youfoodz and I am seeing that now with the opportunity at VMC.

“Manufacturing is at my core - I personally love manufacturing, automation, efficiencies, the team and finding ways to bring the product to the market as fast as we can. VMC is very much the same.

“There are many Youfoodz synergies with VMC and Josh has been instrumental in that from the start. It’s exciting to be in the same kind of market, but in the health and wellness space with a unique offering.”

While VMC is working with offshore clients and aims to grow its business internationally over time, Giles says the immediate focus is to expand its reach in Australia first.

“The three key areas we are focusing on are speed to market, innovation and service,” says Giles.

“That’s our point of difference in the market and over the next six months we will be really focused on that even though we also see good opportunities for international expansion.

“We’ve certainly compounded some strong growth over the past couple of years now and we are four times the size we were then.

“Our plans over the next two years are to get to $100 million in turnover and we are very well set out to achieve that with a custom manufacturing facility.”

Giles points out that Youfoodz set up a 13,500sqm production facility in Brisbane, adding that he has been across this process before.

“We want to put VMC into a custom-built facility that is very unique in the marketplace where we can take our level of service and product offering to a new step.

“Once we achieve that, we’ll look at taking it to the next level from there.”