From Three Olympic Golds to Taking on a $600 Billion Industry | #648

Bronte Campbell won three Olympic gold medals in the pool. Now she's taking on a $600 billion industry with a rule she swam by: raise the bar, then raise it again.

After four Olympics and a stint in corporate strategy at EY, Bronte co-founded Earthletica, a B Corp making high-performance activewear from recycled and organic fibres with none of the forever chemicals the industry runs on. She launched the world-first Bronte Jacket weeks before racing at Paris 2024, and she's building the whole business on the idea that sustainability only works if the product performs first.

We get into why she walked away from a cushy corporate setup for the uncertainty of founder life, why "your cleanest sweat yet" beat "better for the earth" as the line that actually sells, and how an athlete's relationship with discipline and recovery shapes the way she runs a company. Bronte's honest about what's still not solved, the pricing maths on sustainable fibres, and the deliberate choice to grow through community and equity crowdfunding rather than take the easy celebrity cheque.

In this episode:

• Why performance has to come before sustainability, and how "your cleanest sweat yet" reframed the whole brand around the customer
• How building a sustainable supply chain from scratch beats retrofitting one, and what it took to find manufacturers who'd say yes to tiny order volumes
• What an Olympic athlete's approach to discipline, recovery and two million minutes of work teaches you about building a brand

Connect with Bronte Campbell
Explore Earthletica

Subscribe to the Add To Cart newsletter 
SMS us to Suggest a Guest
Connect with Nathan Bush
Join the Add To Cart Community