Pascal Hänle
ABOUT THE TALK
Unit economics first: How Pets Deli went from insolvency to exit, and scaled along the way.
In 2017 Pets Deli was insolvent. In 2026 the company had a successful exit. In between, we rebuilt the business while scaling it into a profitable, mid-eight-figure omnichannel pet food company with around 130 people.
Two honest lessons from that journey. First, fixing existing structures was harder than starting from scratch would have been. Broken unit economics do not improve with growth, they get more expensive. Second, we opened the marketing valve too early. We spent millions on customer acquisition while our contribution margin could not yet carry it. Had we fixed the unit economics first, we would have grown faster, not slower.
What eventually worked was rebuilding the company one margin lever at a time, from recipes and suppliers to fulfillment and pricing, until the contribution margin before marketing was strong enough to fund scale. It is the sequence today's D2C winners like AG1 or Holy follow: unit economics first, then scale.
After this session you will understand why unit economics are the foundation of a scalable business rather than its result, be able to apply a lever-by-lever turnaround sequence to your own P&L, and rethink when marketing spend has earned its place in your plan.