Dave Letele explains why he walked away from NZ Muscle one week after being appointed chief executive
Dave Letele says “a perfect storm of hatred” drove his decision to abruptly leave embattled supplement retailer NZ Muscle one week after he took over the top job.
The former professional boxer resigned as NZ Muscle’s chief executive on Monday after an intense online backlash to the move, including death threats and the leaking of his home address and number plates.
Appearing on Ryan Bridge TODAY, Letele clarified that he’d “walked away” from NZ Muscle rather than quitting, saying he “learned a lot in that one week” as chief executive.
“I learned who my friends were. I also learned that I’ll never ever go into politics, that’s because I can imagine that’s what it’s like,” he said.
“It was like the perfect storm of hatred. Even though ... I didn’t make the mistakes, and I was just trying to fix them.”
Letele wrote earlier on his Brown Buttabean page: “I came in with the best of intentions, to help a business front up and fix things properly.
“I’ve realised I can’t help in the way it needs, and the right thing is to be honest about that.”
NZ Muscle was unwittingly thrust into the spotlight last month when the owner of a rival supplements brand released a YouTube video raising concerns about the supplement brand’s packing, labelling and regulatory processes.
An internal review subsequently confirmed that several whey protein and creatine products had been sold in “non-compliant” packaging, while others were found to have been “relabelled inappropriately”.
The company was forced to recall products due to an undeclared milk allergen, coinciding with a New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS) investigation into public complaints.
Letele conceded today that NZ Muscle handled the fallout “really poorly”, which he’d made known to them, and soon realised he wasn’t the right person to turn things around.
“Once I left, I felt instant relief, and I knew I’d made the right decision.”
He said an appearance on Raniera Rewiri’s Planting Seeds podcast made him realise what decision he needed to make.
“It ended up being a therapy session where he said to me, ‘Dave, why are you doing this?’ And I said, ‘I can’t, I can’t quit. I don’t want to let these people that are hating on me win’.
“And he said, ‘Well, they are winning, look at you’.”
Founder Dion Roosenbrand, who started NZ Muscle in 2006, took responsibility for the company’s failures and announced on July 13 that he would “step back” from the role to “work through regulatory issues”.
Letele took his place, vowing to review operations and earn back their customers’ trust.
“The people who buy from NZ Muscle, they deserve a fair go,” he said at the time.
“The staff who rely on NZ Muscle to pay their rent, put food on the tables, they deserve a fair go, and that’s what I’m about.”
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