. He said what led to opening the Park City location was two "business rockstars" who are now non-executive directors helping Gozney with growth.){kind=link}
Pizza oven maker Gozney has seen tremendous growth that has led them to opening a US location in Park City, UT. We covered their rise to a valuation over $120 million in a recent article.
Beyond their valuation, there was an interesting statement that Gozney founder Tom Gozney said in an interview with the New Milton Advertiser & Lymington Times (the A&T). He said what led to opening the Park City location was two “business rockstars” who are now non-executive directors helping Gozney with growth.
They were responsible for taking two businesses – headphone company Skullcandy and barbecue makers Traeger Grills – on a significant growth journey. After they bought Traeger they grew that in seven years from a circa $80m valuation to $3.5bn when it went public last year. With Gozney, we’re aiming to follow in their footsteps and go on a similar journey.
Tom Gozney, Gozney founder – Quote from the A&T
One of the people people that he’s referencing is likely Mark Kosiba. He was the VP of Operations at Skullcandy with Jeremy Andrus and came over to Traeger in 2014 when the company moved to Utah. Kosiba lists the board appointment at Gozney on his LinkedIn. He led a supply chain turnaround for Traeger and is a great board pick-up.
It’s speculation, but the statement from Gozney leads us to believe that Traeger CEO Jeremy Andrus is also a board member. There is a great Harvard Business Review case written by Andrus on Traeger. In it he talks about taking Park City, UT based Skullcandy from $500,000 in sales to $300 million before leaving and eventually ending up purchasing Traeger with Trilantic Capital Partners.
Andrus brought on people that he had worked with previously to turnaround Traeger (e.g. Mark Kosiba), but the circle of people that grew Skullcandy, grew Traeger and also bought Traeger is very limited. That leads us to speculate that Andrus is on the board of Gozney.
If he is, then Gozney has a really talented board that should help them do great things. It’s also interesting for the possibility of any partnership opportunities in the future. Traeger is releasing a pizza oven accessory for their new Timberline grill this year, but it would be exciting to see a stand-alone Traeger pizza oven.