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I’ve spent enough years around athletes — as a manager, as someone who’s sat in the room while million-dollar deals were negotiated, and then sat in a different room while that same athlete quietly walked away from it — to know the difference between an athlete who’s promoting something and an athlete who’s building something. Most of the time, you can’t tell from the outside. The press release language is identical. “Proud to partner” with or “Excited to join the family.” Swap the logo, swap the athlete, run it back next quarter.
When Todd Meleney told me how his relationship with Christian McCaffrey actually started, I put my pen down, because it was the opposite of that language.
Christian and Todd were on Christian’s back deck in Charlotte. Early meeting, first real conversation, before anyone had said the word “co-founder” out loud. Todd handed Christian an early prototype shoe. Christian took it, bent it clean in half in his hands, and said, “This is a problem for me. I can’t find a shoe that gives me the support and stability I need for training.”
Try getting that out of an athlete on a standard endorsement call. You won’t. What you get is a version of that sentence with the edges sanded off, run past an agent first. Todd got one of the best athletes in the world showing him how the product could be improved, five minutes into meeting him.
A year later, a refined trainer built on control, stability and versatility has launched. It’s called The CMC, and it’s a training shoe built as a direct answer to what got bent on that deck.
I was in the room a year in, not on day one
I got the call to shoot with Christian and see the brand up close about a year after he signed on as co-founder and investor, after he let his nine-year Nike deal expire without renewing it. His wife, Olivia Culpo, picked the house. Her taste is unmistakable in the way the whole day felt — quiet, outdoors, nothing performative about it — and by the time I sat down with Christian, I wasn’t there to get him to explain why he left Nike. That story’s been told. I was there to find out what he’d actually built with the year he’d bought himself.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about athlete equity deals until you’ve watched a few of them up close: the title is easy to give. “Co-founder” costs a company nothing to print on a press release. What it costs is everything that happens after: the daily calls, the pushback, the arguments over things that seem small until you realize small is exactly where a brand’s identity actually lives.
Christian and Todd talk almost every day via voice memos, video calls, whatever is most efficient. It has not been a rubber-stamp relationship. On The CMC, they went back and forth numerous times on the colorway. Todd wanted something more tonal. Christian pushed for more contrast and a slight arch through the sole that he felt gave the shoe a faster, more athletic look. Dune won out as the hero colorway, as Todd and the team were focused on more people buying a shoe that would be versatile and aesthetically appealing.
Here’s what actually told me how “meaningful” Christian’s stake is: He didn’t just take an equity grant. He put his own cash in, too. That’s rare in this world, as most athlete deals are the company giving something to the athlete, not the other way around. Christian did both, asserting how much he actually wanted in.
The math behind the momentum
250% year-over-year, the number Todd gave me for while on earth’s growth, is a big claim, and growth stats like that get repeated in this industry more than they get scrutinized. What matters more is his frame of reference. He spent a decade at Nobull, where he ran growth from pre-revenue to $250 million in annual sales as CMO. He knows what a normal growth curve looks like for a footwear brand fighting for shelf space against Nike and Adidas.
while on earth, not even two years old, is moving faster than that. Product is inventory-constrained, with 30-to-60-day lead times on delivery, and more than 10,000 customers have joined the waitlist for restocks and new releases.
That level of demand is hard to achieve with a famous or well-known name alone, but the name is clearly doing real work. In post-purchase surveys, a meaningful chunk of new customers cite Christian by name as how they found the brand in the first place. Not “an athlete.” Him, specifically. As entrepreneurs, we’ve all seen the difference between a true influencer — someone customers actually trust — and a well-known athlete whose name doesn’t move a single unit, because people see right through it.
The company’s about to open its first wholesale relationship, with Sheels, after building almost entirely direct-to-consumer. Todd was candid that Christian changes that conversation before a single sample gets shown.
Todd said, “He gives the product a reason to exist.”
Scaling that kind of pull beyond a single retail partner is the real test ahead, but the timing of The CMC, dropping right before NFL season and back-to-school, is a smart strategy: turn a moment of maximum attention into a moment of maximum inventory turn.
Image Credit: while on earth
What actually makes this work
I’ve watched enough athlete-brand marriages to know the failure mode: one person needs the partnership more than the other, and eventually that imbalance shows up in the product, the marketing or the exit. What struck me about Todd and Christian is how flatly unsentimental they both are about it. Todd’s own words: no egos, just what’s right for the company long term. Direct conversations: here’s what’s working, here’s what’s not, what do you think? The only success metric either of them cares about is the company’s.
Todd said something that’s still sitting with me: “You never want to meet your childhood hero because you’ll be disappointed.” Then he said, “Not with Christian.” Coming from someone who’s spent over a decade building relationships with elite athletes, such as the one with his other co-founder, Brooke Wells, with whom he’s worked for 12 years, that’s not casual. Todd is someone who understands what it looks like when the person behind the brand doesn’t match the person in the room. I sat with Brooke and Todd for forty-five minutes, and I didn’t see a gap. I felt how close these two are, as friends first and business partners second, the kind of relationship where you can disagree on a colorway one minute, or on how a hoodie should fit off the rack, and mean it when you celebrate a win together the next.
I asked Christian how he actually juggles all of his responsibilities, including being a premier running back in the league, a founder building a performance wellness company and a father with a second kid on the way. He didn’t talk about time management.
He talked about presence. “The waves are coming, and you better learn how to ride them instead of trying to stop them,” he said. He’s careful about the mythology of loving something every single day and admitted that “to expect to love something every day is naive, football included.” What he’s watched happen to other athletes scares him more than the grind does: “I’ve seen guys who have been at the top of the mountain but weren’t really there. They may have missed it.”
While on Earth, literally
What he wants his daughter, Colette, to understand about what he actually does, once she’s old enough to ask, is where I felt his words the deepest. He didn’t reach for anything polished.
“I would just want her to learn from me, learn from the mistakes,” he said. “I would love for her to surround herself with good people.” Then, almost to himself: “while on earth is in the name.” He talked about her infectious smile, and then about the thing the name is actually about. “Time does run out one day,” he said. “In today’s era, there are so many distractions and things that can stray you off the best path. Time is limited and I want for her to enjoy it, work hard and stay true to who she is.”
His eye contact and body language did not translate as marketing language. They translated as a parent who actually thinks about this, especially now, with a second child on the way and a body that’s absorbed nine NFL seasons of collisions that most of us will never understand.
The real exchange Christian McCaffrey made is not just leaving one shoe company for another. He is creating a product and brand that reflects the intensity and commitment with which he lives life and plays football that will endure long after the pads come off.
The shoe just happens to be the proof.
I’ve spent enough years around athletes — as a manager, as someone who’s sat in the room while million-dollar deals were negotiated, and then sat in a different room while that same athlete quietly walked away from it — to know the difference between an athlete who’s promoting something and an athlete who’s building something. Most of the time, you can’t tell from the outside. The press release language is identical. “Proud to partner” with or “Excited to join the family.” Swap the logo, swap the athlete, run it back next quarter.
When Todd Meleney told me how his relationship with Christian McCaffrey actually started, I put my pen down, because it was the opposite of that language.
Christian and Todd were on Christian’s back deck in Charlotte. Early meeting, first real conversation, before anyone had said the word “co-founder” out loud. Todd handed Christian an early prototype shoe. Christian took it, bent it clean in half in his hands, and said, “This is a problem for me. I can’t find a shoe that gives me the support and stability I need for training.”
