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Hey, it's Guy here. So you know, we ask a lot of our guests on how I built this about the moment. When did they have an idea for something big? Or when did they know they had the talent to rise to the top? Well, recently I talked about this with Bjork, who told me about the time when she first understood that she had a unique singing voice. She was a kid in a pretty remote town in Iceland. And she'd sing at the top of her lungs, walking in the woods on her way to school.
But it took her a long time to convince herself that it was a voice to be shared with the world. Check out my conversation with Bjork on my other podcast. It's called The Great Creators. Just search for the great creators with gyros wherever you listen to podcasts or go to thegreatcreators.com.
Okay, on to the show. And this week we're re-running an interview from 2020 with Holly Thagard, who set out to create a sunscreen that people would actually want to slather on their faces every day. Hope you enjoy. I had created the sunscreen swipes and apparently the swipes were a huge hit. So I would go around to stores during that period.
And the swipes were always gone. They were just wiped off the shelf. But the problem was I knew that my sales couldn't be great if there were no products on the shelf. And so I'd go into as many stores as I could with swipes in my bag and literally like stock the shelves. Like I'd give them product. Which is crazy, right? Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Ross and on the show today, how Holly Thagard decided that sunscreen should be used every day and at every time of year. And how that idea grew into the multi-million dollar brand Supergoop. There's a concept in business known as product market fit. It was popularized by the well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist Andy Rackliffe. And the idea is pretty simple. You have a product. If there's a market fit, people will buy it. If not, they won't.
Sometimes there's no product market fit because the product solves a problem that no one really has. For example, Cheetos Lip-Bom. Did someone really think there was a market for Cheetos Lip-Bom? At other times, there's no product market fit because the idea comes too early before people are ready. Like pets.com, which fizzled out in 2001. But a decade later, Chewie.com, which basically does the same thing, took off.
And is now valued at more than $10 billion. But not having an exact product market fit doesn't necessarily mean your idea is doomed to fail. Think about Airbnb or Lyft. There was no market for those ideas at first. It took those companies a lot of time to convince consumers that it wasn't weird sleeping at a random person's house or popping in their car.
Airbnb and Lyft had to create the market for what they offered. And it's kind of the same story for Holly Thaggart and Supergoop. The vast majority of people think of sunscreen as something you use at the beach or you slather on small children before they go outdoors. But Holly wanted to convince people that they needed to use sunscreen every day. All the time, year round, like getting dressed or brushing your teeth or taking vitamins.
Her whole plan was to work with educators to create awareness around skin cancer, something thousands of people are diagnosed with in the US alone every single day. And Holly's business model would be based on selling giant sunscreen dispensers, kind of like those hand sanitizer dispensers, to schools.
But as you will hear, that whole business model was doomed from the start, and not just because there was no product market fit. So Holly had to pivot and completely rethink her idea of how to get people to use sunscreen every day. And in the process, had to basically build out a market for her product.
And although her mission is still very much a work in progress, Supergoop is now one of the top rated sunscreens in the market. The company did about $40 million in revenue in 2018 and became profitable last year. And as I often say when introducing the story of a founder, nothing about Holly's early life in Baton Rouge, Louisiana hinted at the career she would ultimately choose, except for one important thing.
Both her parents were entrepreneurs. Her dad ran a machinery business and her mom was an accomplished portrait painter. Yeah, she and my maternal grandmother, even her mother, they were both amazing artists. And I watched my mother's career go from when I was younger, she created a custom handbag brand that Niven Marcus could not keep in stock.
All hand painted and monogrammed and she went on ultimately to paint portraits, senators and judges and wow, she's very talented. I feel fortunate to have to have her as a mother because I have portraits now of my children and I didn't have to pay for them. Yeah, it's so cool. So as I guess as a kid, like as a little girl, you took up the harp. Is that is that right? What how old were you? I did, you know, but I'd even back up a little bit to that as I started on the piano.
And I played the piano for several years, gosh, I started in I think second grade. And by the time I got to fifth grade, I saw this bright, shiny gold harp that I didn't didn't see anywhere other than my grandmother's living room. And I thought, gosh, if I could switch gears and play the harp, it would, you know, there's not a lot of competition. You could be the best harpist because they're bright. They're probably weren't that many around you.
Yeah, and everything sounds beautiful on the harp. When even when you mess up, it's pretty. Yeah, by the way, as a, you know, a fifth grader, sixth grader, how did you carry the harp? Was it on wheels? It has a dolly and you learned how to handle it. It's not so much that it's heavy as that it has so many moving parts.
But you were not bringing the harp onto the school bus? No, no. And in fact, I played at home. And then for the talent shows, of course, I'd show up, but it wasn't really until high school that I began getting really excited about the harp because I saw it more as a business.
And the idea of creating a business around Holly the Harpist was exciting to me. Wow, wait. So you, as you sort of got better at the harp, you thought, hey, this could be my business. Like, you were thinking this in high school. I was. I was actually already working on the weekends and every Sunday for brunch at the local country club.
Like in the dining room, you would just be in the corner playing the harp. Yeah, be Holly the Harpist. Be Holly the Harpist. And I could kind of set my price because there wasn't a lot of competition. So I really started out playing for like $100 an hour, which was a lot when you're in ninth grade.
Wow. All right. So you are Holly the Harpist playing harp and for money, which is awesome. And you decide to go to school at Louisiana State University, which is not that too far from where you live, I guess. And what did you, did you study music there? Yes, I did. So I was never really that great of a student. I, I spent those first two years in college studying music.
I totally did not fit in with anyone in the music school. I realized how serious the musicians were in college. And I was more interested in doing what I was already doing, which was performing and playing. I was at the time, you know, still getting jobs in New Orleans at the Museum of Art. And I played a little backup for Rita Franklin when she came through. And what, what, wow, what did you, what did you play with Rita Franklin? Amazing grace. Wow.
I mean, if there ever is a song to play with a Rita Franklin, you run the harp, man, that's amazing. And look, that makes me sound like I was this great harpist, but like I was so winging it. I had no idea, but I knew I couldn't say no. And I had no business. I literally had to break down every measure. And I was that reading music type student, you know, but you keep in mind like I enjoyed the business of Holly the Harpist way more than I enjoyed playing the harp.
So if you, I mean, if you didn't enjoy playing the harp that much, what, like what did you decide that you want to do professionally? So I had also grown up because I think I'm such an organized person and I love pencils and supplies and things I grew up thinking that being a teacher would be really fun.
And I often, even when my little brother would get home from school and, you know, keep in mind he was seven years younger than I was, I would sort of start a new session in his room and get worksheets for him and pass out my sheets. And so I thought, well, maybe I should, maybe I should be a teacher. And, and I guess that's what you did. I read that you, you went on to study education and got your first teaching job. I think in Baton Rouge, is that right?
It was. So there was a private Episcopal school in Baton Rouge that was actually I later learned was quite difficult to get a job there as a first year out of college. And how was it? It was fantastic. So I had a wonderful year. I poured my heart into doing everything that I had learned in college.
I also kind of looking back now, I think I poured my heart into out doing every other teacher in the school and kept my eye on trying to impress the board that had given me the opportunity to be there. But I love to every second of it. And in fact, I still talk to those 17 students, many of them today. But from what I've read, you only, you will only a teacher for a year. I mean, you have this in promising career. Why aren't you a teacher today? What happened?
Yeah. So, you know, the end of the school year came when contracts are placed in the teachers boxes. And I didn't receive one. And the school said they were not offering me a return contract. And I later learned as a first year teacher, you're considered provisional. And they said, you know, this was due to problems and concerns that were brought up from my other peer teachers and not really fitting in well. What did that mean?
Exactly. I didn't know either. I did a lot of exploration at that moment, but I was devastated. Yeah, I had gone to college to be a third grade school teacher. And here, my career was seemingly ending very quickly. And you never got any more specific feedback. Like, what was it that you did or not do or?
I did. I did. And I learned, you know, I was sort of breaking rules. I wasn't eating lunch with the other teachers. I wasn't hanging out in the teachers lounge, talking and connecting. And I, if I was, you know, being completely honest with myself, I did feel a little claustrophobic within the four walls of a classroom.
And they were in a way right. I did constantly look for ways to sort of leave campus early or, you know, I'd say I had a hard job and double book myself. And, you know, there was, that wasn't in the cards for me. Yeah. But, you know, after a couple of months of exploring these things, I just decided I'm going to move on.
Yeah. I mean, it is amazing though that setbacks can actually be a blessing that you don't, you don't realize the time, right? Like, like, had you had this amazing year and they renewed your contract and you stayed there, you might not have ever done what you did.
Absolutely. I'm so grateful that that played out like it did because I don't think I would have been pushed to go and changed directions. I would have kept that push job and, you know, that that's not what was in the cards for my life's work. So, so what did you end up doing next?
Well, at the time my brother was starting college at SMU in Dallas and I had plenty of time on my hand so I went to help him move in the dorms and all I could do was look around at all the beautiful homes in a Highland Park and how they all really needed Holly the harpist in their lives. So, you decided to stay in Dallas after helping him move in?
Well, I knew that if I were going to propose a move to my parents that I needed to have a job lined up. So, I actually during that brief weekend visit, I walked over to the Dallas Country Club and knocked on the door of the General Manager's office and introduced myself and told them all about my music and and that I was hoping that they might look to have some new entertainment in their in their dining room.
And I went back, convinced my parents that I could make a living performing and move my harp to Dallas, found an apartment and literally did the kind of back of the napkin math like how many hours a week do I need to play the harp to pay for the rent? This is like 1996 I think. So, you're like in your, you know, 22, 23 years old, living in Dallas, playing the harp and that's that becomes your business, Holly the Harvest?
Holly the Harvest, yes. So, I went from Dallas Country Club to the petroleum club to Brook Hall O'Golf Club and and did this made the same introduction and and this is really when I realized that building this business of Holly the Harvest was when I lost all track of time and creating like direct mail pieces and and looking into the book of list.
I often would read the CEOs and write letters to their home, you know, I'm from the South. So writing letters has always been a big part of my upbringing and but I got a really good response from from just the jobs that I had and spent them the next 10 years of my life actually performing and that's how I paid the rent.
You are the harpist of choice or one of them I guess in Dallas and probably making a decent living. I was doing really well. My rates had gone up to I had a thousand dollar minimum for any party which often if a party was only an hour that's a great that's a great. That's great. That's a great money. That's like a that's like a part senior partner to law firm in New York.
Right. I just wasn't building the hours. Yeah. Yeah. And what about your personal life where you married where you single at the time? You know no I was just dating in Dallas and until my late 20s. Did I not meet my now husband and his very best closest friend in college I performed I played the heart for many rehearsal dinners and weddings for their family. And Mary Montgomery is the you know the person I worked that would engage me for these said you've got to meet my son's best friend.
And then so that's how I met Ty and we continued dating as I performed and played until I guess we were engaged when we were about 31. And so this is like what 2004 she got engaged around then 2000 more like to I think then to okay. But when Ty and I started talking about a family and being married and everything you know performing on Mother's Day and Christmas and Thanksgiving and continuing on that path just felt like it was time to retire.
And it's exhausting playing evenings and that's not a real great life or having a family and sure. So you're kind of done with the heart side of your life you're newly married and I guess you something happens in 2005 which is a friend of yours is diagnosed with skin cancer. Yes. And first of all this is I didn't know this but this is like one of the most diagnosed form of cancer you know full stop. When your friend was diagnosed what what was the prognosis.
Oh and he's fine now but you know I started thinking and a good college friend of mine was going through her residency in dermatology at the time and I was talking with her about my friend's skin cancer and and you know she said Holly it's not about the beach. It's about that every single day cumulative exposure that ultimately and usually much later in life becomes skin cancer but for your friend who has blonde hair and blue eyes and you know it happened at a much younger age.
It's not about going to the beach and not using some lotion, some tan lotion or sunblock whatever it's just about being outside every day and over time some people develop skin cancer and by the way most people who do develop skin cancer. It is it's generally highly curable if it's caught you know relatively early it's like a yes it found early. So you to hear this and and what and then you're thinking well my initial thought was this could have just as easily have been me.
I have blonde hair and blue eyes and I remember gosh my spring break in my middle school years I remember going to Florida and lying on the roof of this house we rented and I got so blistering sunburned that I was sick and swollen and it ruined my entire week. But then I also immediately thought about my 17 kids that I taught that year in the classroom and never once did I see a tube of sunscreen on the school campus.
Despite the fact that the children were on the playground in the middle of the day and often even staying and in sports in the afternoon no one was wearing sunscreen. And to be clear the vast majority of us are not wearing sunscreen all the time right this is just not part of our it's not like it's like brushing your teeth.
Most people don't just don't do this this is 2005 and you start to think what like hey maybe maybe I can figure out a way to get people to wear sunscreen all the time not just at the beach was that what you were thinking like immediately. Yes so I found this study by memorial Sloan Kettering that was talking about how most people knew sunscreen prevent skin cancer.
But I think it was like 70% don't wear it just like you said every single day and the number one reason was because it didn't feel good on the skin.
And I think just being a child of two entrepreneurs and always thinking about creating and building and researching and this just was really interesting I also think that I have always been a product person which I think kind of goes back to with being with my mother and often you know critiquing other art and talking about skin tones and colors and the composition of things being so important.
Yeah to the success of that and so I was thinking why don't schools offer sunscreen why don't children have access to sunscreen in schools and for me I just took it to this extreme of like gosh we wouldn't send the kids on the playground without a fence around the playground. Yeah but we're sending them out on the playground with a carcinogen above them.
So the original idea you had was let me figure out how to get sunscreen into schools like like you know we've got like hand sanitizer dispensers yes like you have those around schools and that would that would essentially be your business. Yes and in part I also knew the importance of education around this and you know I was a teacher and you know it's not really it wasn't a shortage of SPF products in the country that were causing the epidemic.
No. It was a lack of education around the importance of wearing SPF every single day. So was your this is 2005 was your idea to find an existing sunscreen brand and then just get schools to put that into their like into the hallways was that or did you already from the beginning think I'm going to make a sunscreen.
Well so the first step was to what is out there and I really wanted to look I did not grow up wearing sunscreen every single day so I was thinking what is that product that I should have been wearing and so I looked on the market and you know like you said in 2005 SPF was an incredibly sleepy category and it was owned by the mass channels of distribution like Walgreens and Target and Walmart.
And what I found was that SPF was being promoted and marketed as an incredibly seasonal thing and you couldn't actually even find SPF outside of May, June or July and when I did find it I looked at the ingredients and found that 90% of what was on the market was just full of very controversial ingredients.
What what's an example of that well so one of those that was often spotlighted was the ingredient oxybenzone which was being found in breast cancer tissue and what I also found is that every single chemical formula in the country relied on oxybenzone for its efficacy even the organic brand. So there were two types of formulas, there were the chemical formulas which are those that absorb easily into the skin and they're great for athletes and then there's mineral formulas.
And the mineral formulas just to be clear, those ones that are like really white on your skin like like the zinc sort of sticks and stuff. They feel real thick and pasty on the skin. Yeah sure and essentially you couldn't rub in the natural ones into your skin and you're thinking hey why isn't there a natural one that we couldn't do that?
Yes I felt like there was such an opportunity to do both chemical formulas which there are advantages to in a clean and healthy way and mineral formulas I felt needed an upgrade too because they didn't need to feel so thick and pasty because if there were options for people to wear sunscreen every single day that were beautiful and luxurious and felt great then that would be that first step closer to stopping skin cancer.
Alright I'm thinking if I'm you it's 2005 2006 and I'm starting to kind of you know sounds like you're kind of following this idea and thinking there might be something there and you're obviously learning as much as you can about sunscreen. But when I've read the backs of like comparator brands that I think are pretty great I don't understand any of the words.
Were you reading weren't you like looking at the backs of sunscreen bottles and like what is this and what like did you even know what what those things were? No there's a lot of research a lot of exploring I found that there was a national sunscreen symposium and I reached out to every chemist that was speaking at that event and I just picked everybody's brain and just became obsessed with learning.
You called them or you emailed them and said ask them what you said I'm Holly and I'm doing a so I'm starting a sunscreen brand like what was your pitch to them why would they give you the time. Well fortunately for me the chemist all the response was very kind to me and they taught me so much about ingredient decks and most of those chemists were not up for the challenge of the challenge that I gave was I'm interested in creating an SPF product that does not have oxybenzone.
Does not rely on parabens propylene glycol a handful of other ingredients that I just wasn't that fond of and most of what I heard was can't be done. It can't be done they were saying you can't make a sunscreen that is nonchemical that can be rubbed into skin. They were saying that you can't make a sunscreen that will test to a high efficacious SPF number without the use of oxybenzone and without the preservative system of a parabens which is what keeps your product healthy and clean.
It couldn't be done so parabens were needed. Why is some I had no idea that sunscreen was so complex. Well I think that what is so complicated is not necessarily having an efficacious sunscreen it's limiting yourself to a certain set of ingredients and then making it aesthetically so pleasing that it would make gyras want to pick it up and put it on his skin every single day. Got it.
Because now if you ask me like if you saw me on the beach in the summertime you would think I was a zebra because I just have giant white stripes all over my face because I'm fine but you can't do that every day right you can get away with the beach or if you're three years old. I remember like slathering on white zinc stuff on my kids face but you can't you're saying you wanted to do something that you could use every day and you can't you can't look at a zebra every day.
Well and the reason for that is that in my research I learned that there's UVA rays and there's UVB rays and UVB rays cause that burning on your skin that changes the color of your skin. But UVA rays are not only aging but they penetrate deeper into the skin than UVB and they're present in all seasons no matter what the weather is even on a cloudy day and their skin cancer causing.
So you clearly are starting to develop an expertise on sunscreen but like you're not picking you're not picking like cookies to bake you can't do this alone you actually have to go and find somebody willing to make you. You have to do a product that doesn't have the ingredients that you don't want it to have but that does what you want it to do.
And then I started with the first chemist that said that's interesting that's an interesting idea I didn't realize that oxybenzone was so controversial and he was willing to completely pro bono start working on a formula to see if we could rise to the challenge of creating something that felt great on the skin and was healthy and ingredient choices.
So I was just like, where were they and how did you get in touch with them? Yeah so through those conversations with chemists from the National Sunscreen Symposium is who I found that the first chemist in California and I'm in Texas and I think in a good way a lot of chemists are a little nerdy and up for challenging things like that and I just got lucky too I think.
But how did you convince this chemist to make your prototype? I mean putting on my hat as like a you know entrepreneur hat right and that's not enough right for I mean you just call you can't just call somebody to have this mission I want to do it and then the person says okay I'm going to devote all this time in my lab to working on building a prototype for you like it had to have been harder than that maybe it maybe it wasn't I don't know.
You know I think telling my story my my intention for this magic formula that we were going to create was to put it in every school across America and so I you know sold that story of gosh we're going to we're going to create this and every child in the country is going to be wearing this game changing SPF and that is when in the process of creating an SPF product takes a while and once I had that kind of off and running with the right hand.
I felt was up for the challenge I then sort of pivoted my time and attention to how are we going to do this in a beautiful way that's fun and playful and you know more of the the marketing and education side of the business and did you fly out to work with the chemistry
or were you just dealing with the person on the phone or the email or like how did that work. We had a lot of phone calls about what I felt like you know the characteristics of the texture the feel and then they started mailing FedEx we did mailing samples and then I'd give feedback on those samples and I just kind of passed them around in my family and asked what they thought of this group for that group and you already knew you're going to call it goop.
I did not I just actually called it goop because I didn't know the word lab sample I think yeah I wasn't good and it's your glove or whatever was yeah was goopy yeah yeah and in the meantime what were you doing you you're living in Dallas still at the time.
What were you what were you doing I was completely obsessed with this project I pulled my sister who's an excellent writer into helping me create an educational curriculum you know I'm changing consumer behaviors like one of the most difficult things to do right.
But I looked at campaigns like lady for Johnson's don't be a litter bug when she was first lady she started that don't be a litter bug campaign sure and it wasn't necessarily the children that were throwing the dike hoax out the window but it was their parents and so I thought this is really interesting because through a very playful way she's got the kids telling their parents not to be a litter bug which is going to ultimately change you know the parents behavior.
And so I thought if I could create this first formula and make it a fun and playful way that appeal to young children to then sort of bug the adults in their life there was something there.
So you've got this this product that's being developed and what are they making it with I mean if all these scientists were saying hey you got to use oxybenzo and that's the most effective way to protect your skin from UV rays and there's no other way to do it what I mean what yeah actually what I learned was oxybenzo not the only way it's the most inexpensive way.
And begin going back to most SPF was a mass product and mass products are you know as inexpensive as possible it turned out that there was a counterpart ava benzoan that could help achieve the efficacy needed but it just cost a little bit more. Ava benzoan. Ava benzoan and that's still today what we use in our chemical form. And where does it come from? It's a raw ingredient that you buy from the people that make I mean there's different brand names like parsole and that make that.
So you manage to work with this lab entirely remotely like they you never had to go and present to them or anything they just they just tell you. I didn't have the money to go and promote you know I I was bootstrapping this with my new husband and we were thinking about having a baby and he was thinking actually about going out on his own at the time he.
Has a background and he was practice law out of law school and he has a real entrepreneurial spirit as well and so we were both bootstrapping them all of the cost. All right so you're going back and forth and and you finally settle on what you think is right and how do you know like how did you know that they finally got it like the smell of it and the feel of it. What's it just you were just using your own your own judgment your own instinct.
You know it was probably the 15th or 20th iteration on a formula that we had tweaked many times over those two years that finally felt amazing on the skin and it tested because right it has to be efficacious and. And it was then that I literally said this is super and the name immediately occurred to me that I had I had also in that moment named name the brand super group super good and was it SPF 50 15 or 30 or what yeah it was a 50.
Which is exactly what we were aiming for and so you get the finally you get the one that works and would you like slathered on and go outside and just stand outside and son. I started wearing it every single day because I had to know over the long term if that was something that was actually a pleasant experience right and in fact I've always believed in no animal testing or anything so I often laughed and made my husband the guinea pig and say hey can you put some of this in your eyes.
And make sure it doesn't burn and had you by that point formed like an LLC and then all the formal stuff that people do to start a business. Yeah along the way I definitely relied on my husband he had I mentioned a background in law and he helped me with registering the trademark and forming an LLC kind of just put a few of the things that weren't too costly in place to start.
So you've got the formula you've got the name and now it's time to go to the schools and I'm assuming you know you kind of rip out your old playbook where when you contacted the CEOs of companies to play the harp or you called all these scientists I'm assuming you start calling school administrators.
You're right I've whipped out my playbook and started talking to the heads of schools and school boards and I very quickly learned that as an over the counter drug since green is actually prohibited in schools across America. So you just spent two years building this prototype only to discover that you have no market no marketplace right wow your whole business model is down the tubes exactly.
So when we come back in just a moment how Holly eventually pivots out of schools and into retail and along the way hires a publicist that she cannot afford and makes a connection at Sephora that she cannot afford to lose stay with us I'm Guy Raaz and you're listening to how I built this.
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Mirror is actually sponsoring this episode and if you haven't heard of it mirror is this incredible online workspace our team actually uses it for a lot of our own brainstorms and processes and it's super useful so if you're thinking of building something of your own you might try using mirror to create a pitch deck plot your customer journey map get feedback or whatever helps you hit the ground running it's kind of amazing how much you can do on your mirror board.
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Hey welcome back to how I built this I'm Gai Ross so it was 2007 and Holly Thagger had a big problem she built a sunscreen company supergoo with the goal of getting SPF into schools but at the time most public schools did not allow students to use sunscreen without a prescription or a doctor's note. So Holly thought well maybe I should try the private schools where the rules are in a strict and she actually made a bit of headway.
I did I launched five private schools all in Dallas and all this area no Dallas and Louisiana Baton Rouge where I'm from and Dallas. So how did you approach the schools did you did you just get like a directory or go online and just type.
I did I think I looked in the private school directories by city and I would call an ask for a meeting I've all you know dating back to sitting under my father's desk reading and listening to Zigg Ziggler tapes which is what I did my throughout my childhood and Zigg Ziggler was used like that like that guy who told you to like motivational speaker on sale like for sales right.
Yeah he was a sales and marketing genius I think guru like here they had these tapes in the 70s and 80s maybe is that right. Yes exactly I learned from Zigg so many things that I still reference today you know you have to have so many knows before a yes and attitude is everything being optimistic and thinking positively and I mean I spent weekends sitting under my father's desk listening and absorbing these neatly organized tapes that he would bring home from having been president.
Of the sales and marketing club and that really shaped how I approached things because you know those conversations with those schools I just I just kept going kept going if one said no I'd go to another one and so school would say no no interest and you say okay well thank you very much and you move on. I'd move on but I'd still keep them informed of everything I was doing because you know I also learned from those tapes that no is just tell me more right.
And so you know I'd hear no and I'd I'd realize that maybe they're just going to say no for another month and then they'll eventually say yes. So it's 2007 you've got this formula you're in a couple of private schools but that's not enough presumably to really sustain a business. And how are you dealing with finances I mean you had to get the product made from that I'm assuming that lab was making the product for you even for those five schools.
Yes they were making it in large pumps and we were really just coming up with every which way we could financially pay for it and how how was it well we had I know our amics was maxed out to the limit which was like $30,000 it wasn't a huge number but but it was always it was always about that and I also
convinced the people that were making this product that they needed to also I didn't have a warehouse or anything so I convinced them to to warehouse it for me and then let me pay as I pulled from the warehouse.
And then of course you know I could also go play the harp and you know anytime I started to get concerned about cash I'd take a harp job and use that to pay for the product it was pretty messy actually we didn't keep real good track of the financials at that point because we were just still kind of testing this whole model. And you're right that that soon became after one year of being in the school that year it seemingly became hard to scale.
And did you I mean I'm assuming you were not you're not packaging these into small bottles with the branding and the logo this was just like or were you like not yet they were still in 24 ounce containers they did have our logo which I had created in Photoshop and I sort of self taught how to make a label and how to make a barcode and and the logo that you even have to this day you created that in Photoshop.
I did and actually the logo today we just had a refresh on our brand about four months ago actually and tweaked a little bit here and there with my handwriting I'm I'm also obsessed with handwriting and so we digitally used my handwriting to tweak the original logo. So you've got the product and you are trying to you know mount a campaign and to get people to know more about this.
But it doesn't sound like you're really making a whole lot of traction the school thing wasn't doesn't sound like it was really working. So what did you how are you going to build this out into something bigger. Well so I started just looking at what retail look would look like and what is the world of prestige children's retail and how do brands go into what I thought were some of the best story tellers like
F.A.O. Schwartz in New York or the now defunct giggle was a very popular very highly curated store of just the best of the best things from San Francisco to New York and started down this path of going to trade shows and showing my line to buyers of little prestige mom and pop and retailers that could help support my vision until the story and they're in their location across the country.
Your husband was a lawyer so he had some income but were you like getting help from friends and family at this point and I mean could still like
you can't run the business on air and were you asking people for help. Yeah so my husband was not practicing law anymore he was actually going out on his own in real estate investing and so we were definitely depleting all of our savings and it really wasn't until I think Thanksgiving of gosh 2008 ish that we asked my dad for 25 thousand dollars I think so he kind of saved you he did it was that you know every entrepreneur has the Thanksgiving dinner story
and I had another trade show I wanted to go to in Vegas and asked you know my dad at the dinner table I think like if he be willing to give us 25 thousand dollars and that really forced this conversation of how are you planning to scale this because I think at this point we were like
really making 45 thousand in sales I want to say a year and how are you going to scale this Holly because even if you double tripled your trade show at this trade show that you want to go to you know that's still not much money
and did you need the money for that trade show to make product to bring to that trade show. No I needed the money for to actually pay for the trade show itself to like pay for the trade show itself to like pay for the booth and I had at that point also received a phone call from the skincare buyer Sephora so wait while all this other stuff is going on Sephora which is like a huge beauty company like retail company
they also reach out to you like how did the buyer even know about the product. Well she was a new mom and she had been shopping at Giggle which was that little boutique retailer that I landed at one of my other trade shows and she purchased it for her child and also took it to the Sephora corporate office and they started passing it around and having this conversation
apparently what they shared with me was that they felt most skin care today and this was you know 2008 nine was really highly clinical and built on Dr. driven brands and not fun and playful and they thought there was something
really interesting about a brand that was very serious in technology but doing it in a very fun and playful spirit. So all right so Sephora calls you out of the blue by the way I think at this time you had your phone number on the on the bottle right your personal number well and that was so that if anybody wanted to talk about supergoop they would reach me directly and she said we like what you're doing and we don't think that you're ready for a meeting
but we thought maybe we could be helpful and you know Sephora is known to really nurture indie brands and brands with strong founder of visions and she said you know I thought I would reach out and just share a few things that might be a good idea for you before if you're interested in us and then maybe you can get in touch when you feel that you've grown up a little bit.
And by the way what was her name Kim Holt and what did Kim suggest you do she said you need press. She said you need if you want to get into Sephora you got to start with getting some more press. Yes so in 2008 you know this is before Instagram and influencer marketing and it was all really about those press placements that you'd get in the magazine that showed your product they were very product driven
and that's what sold product in Sephora so I had none of that. So what did you do? Well so that 25,000 that my dad the next day left our home after Thanksgiving and he left a check on the counter and he said to me Holly go get your elephant and that was his way of saying stop messing with all these small little retailers and and go get a big account. And so I went to Vegas we put that booth together but what I found when I got to Vegas was was just like I could have cried.
I had really fought to be in the natural and organic and very thoughtfully curated selections of the show but what I found was I was smack dab in the middle of all of the granola and very home grown brands and all of the very cool modern beautifully aesthetic brands were up on the second floor.
And the lady in the booth right next to me had a brand called Happy Green Bee and she spent the whole show all five days knitting and and the show was so slow that I spent most of my time in her booth learning to knit. I thought this was going to tell me about how you found a publicist did you find them at the show?
Well, kind of the last day when everyone was breaking apart their booths and everything I was walking around and someone came up to me and said gosh you've really gotten to be good buddies with Roxanne. And I said oh I know you know we had too much time to talk during this show not not enough sales and they said well I would imagine she could really help you and I was like what do you mean and she said you know that is Holly it's Roxanne Quimbee the founder of Birds Bees.
Oh, do you saw Roxanne Quimbee who has been on our show we've had on our show she's amazing. So you did you go up to her? Yeah, so I went right back over there and I was like Roxanne how could you not tell me that you were the you were Roxanne Quimbee the founder of Birds Bees. She's super low key super low key and she said Holly I wanted to hear your story and your vision without you knowing that.
So what then what I mean do you like exchange numbers emails you go for coffee what do you do what do you do. No, it's the last day of the show she said very quickly how can I help you. I want to help I like what you're doing and I said I need a PR firm in New York and I can't get one to save my life.
And and an hour later Nancy Berman was calling me while I was in a cab to the airport and she Nancy is the founder of Berman Communications which was known as the Big Vegas Beauty PR firm in New York and she said I just got off the phone with Roxanne Quimbee and she says I need to fly to Texas to meet you. She says I got to fly to Texas to meet you you're doing 45,000 bucks a year in sales. Yeah and this this is like a big shot PR person and you're like great let's do it.
No actually I immediately kicked into well she needs to know there's competition because I know this is going to cost me an arm in a leg. And so I said well actually I'm going to be in New York next week interviewing several other PR firms and I'd love to schedule you in. Wow which was totally made up on the fly. Nice. So okay so then you like you fly to New York.
So well then I grabbed my sister my brother my husband you know the company was still just me so I had to put people in the room to look like we were doing something bigger than we were. And I did in fact get several other PR meetings with quite a few of her competitors based on being able to call and saying I'm coming to New York to sit down with Nancy Berman next week and I'd like to also I hear I should also be talking with your firm. Huh so Nancy I presumably you end up working with Nancy.
She did she rolled out the red carpet and I was very impressed with we were all very impressed with her pitch. But given that you only had 45,000 revenue for the year which is not profit. How how how much did Nancy come to be to bring around. Well that was the hard part because when it got to be the last page of her proposal was where we started talking about money and knowing that the world of PR wasn't going to talk about SPF outside of the summer months.
She pitched me on a six month contract that would go from January to June. And she felt in that time we could in January hit the long leads to make sure we were in the April May books. And she would charge us $12,000 a month but only six months out of the 12 so $72,000. And you thought. I think I might have said have you been listening to everything that I've been talking about because I'm trying to decisalize a category and it's never going to happen if I'm only talking to the beauty editors.
And I think you know everybody's going oh my gosh she's trying to like convince now Nancy to take a 12 month retainer. And I always credit my husband for this because that sounds crazy to pay 12 months of a retainer when we weren't even making an revenue but he was adamant about you've got to do this Holly. This is your path to Sephora and that's your elephant and we will figure out how to pay for this.
So you were going to pay basically you have to you decide we're going to get the best publicist because we this is our one this is our moonshot here. It's going to cost us two years of our revenue to get this publicist and you basically take the plunge. And I think she came down to about 8,000 a month because it was a 12 month retainer right when you signed on with her where did where was she able to place stories about supergoop in all the beauty magazines.
So a lure and you know just the traditional press and did that move the needle did you get did you start to get a lot of a lot of people inquiring. We did and and we also got that helped a lot with the launch in Barney's New York which Nancy set up an interview with the beauty buyer of Barney's and she actually was a skin cancer survivor. She really a very fair skin her name is Bettino Neal and she bought into the idea of building a skin care brand with a foundation and SPF.
And Barney's certainly at that time was really important a really influential place to be. Yeah we launched in show in their apothecary and you know there are things that came from that that were super inspiring along the way like being asked to.
I know we got a call once from Elon Musk's team to put supergoop into all of his roadsters that were taking a press tour down the BCH or something and I thought you know gosh if supergoop makes sense because the roadster was a convertible you know could be in every cup holder. Yeah a lot of a lot of cool people would see it I think that's the year that we also were asked to join the Ted conference and long beach and put our products into the hands of all the attendees.
And that's and by the way they don't pay you for that you could donate that that was a hundred percent donation and I had to create a custom box because I wanted my story to be on the box because I knew that if it weren't nobody would know what the meaning behind the product was so really kind of went out on a limb there.
Yeah and at what point do you feel comfortable to reach back out to Sephora and say hey look you know we've been we got in a couple of magazines and we get a little bit more publicity because I'm assuming you're still not really profitable at this point. No no we're not this was in a couple of years after that press and growing and my revenue went from 45 to I know 150 to I think 600.
So we were you know we were increasing and growing the business it was by no means profitable and I don't think I was even keeping quite good track of the finances like that. I just knew I had to keep going and it was actually in 2010 when I felt like I was ready to talk again to Sephora. You call the same person who originally called you.
I called her and left her a voicemail and told her that I was going to be in San Francisco the following week for I gave her a five or six day range because I wanted to make sure that she could find a minute for me on her calendar and she didn't call me back. When we come back in just a moment Holly makes a desperate last minute flight to San Francisco to try to get Sephora's attention stay with us you're listening to how I built this.
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Hey welcome back to how I built this I'm Guy Ross so it's around 2010 and Holly is trying to get a hold of a buyer she once talked to at Sephora but phone calls aren't working so without a plan Holly gets on a plane instead.
Well so I felt obligated to go to San Francisco because I said on her voicemail that I was going to be there on other business and I didn't I was afraid that she might eventually call during that week and then if I weren't in San Francisco she'd be calling me out and I didn't even have a hotel reserved when I got on the plane to go there I just knew that I had to be there and I cried the whole way there and found a
shoebox of a hotel and Union Square that I remember like going in and it didn't even have windows and the bathroom was down the hall and I was so upset because we we didn't have a lot of money and this was an expensive you know thing for me to go do when I didn't really have anything to do there does she call you back so I went to bed that night and at 11 30 myself and lit up and it said Sephora on it and that's how I had program
to her name into my phone was this Sephora wow and I don't know why she was up late at the office that night but she said I think you might be in San Francisco and she said well we would love to meet with you are you available tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Amazing she go to go to Sephora headquarters and did you have a bunch of product with you examples oh I was so prepared I had phone boards with each of my products the pricing you know and I had product with me and they just said tell me about
what you're trying to do here and I walked them through my story from teacher to to where we are today and why I needed their help and and why I felt like they could help put a megaphone to this message and they say all right we're in we we we we'll work with you they did not they just okay they just said we enjoyed meeting you I thought the meeting went really well it lasted you know a good hour and a half and and I felt
pretty good about the potential and they said they would be in touch and that was it yeah and I got to go home early so you go good back in the plane I'm assuming on the way back you were not crying well actually I the next morning woke up and you know my father growing up had this thing about doing things in twos and he always said to me the best time to accomplish something is after you've accomplished something you're on a high you feel optimistic you feel good about
yourself and so whenever I had done something well you'd say that's awesome Holly that's so great I'm great great to hear it now what are you going to do and so I felt like that next morning I had to figure out what the answer to like I felt really good you're right I wasn't crying but I felt like I had to know what was next.
Yeah I mean you you must have been feeling pretty confident because I think like maybe even the same day you you decided to reach out to the buyer of Nordstrom too right yeah so I said that I was in San Francisco talking with Sephora about a spring 2011 launch which was not totally true really yeah no I you were kind of bluffing bluffing hoping yeah willing it to be true yes okay and I would love to come through Orange County on the way back to Texas and share with her more about my brand
and was she in she sounded really interested and optimistic again she didn't give me any answers you know Johnny on the spot but she sounded really interested and and I felt good about flying home and and then doing the follow-up that was needed to to land both of these accounts and I feel like that was a real important for me was when I think about where I saw our brand I felt
like so the Sephora demographic the customer was young and they're playing with makeup they needed to understand how important it was to first protect their skin and for the Nordstrom customer I felt like that was the mom with three kids in tow and a stroller and she really needed to be instrumental in teaching young children these healthy habits so I felt like the two brands were the
ideal launch pad for me in the country together but how do you get into them what what convinces Sephora finally call you and say okay we'll do it and and then of course you know what kind of shelf space you're going to get it and how long so what what was the deal they offered you
yeah so well and to back up a little bit I got home and for several weeks didn't you know I sent my follow-up email my you know exactly as I should have posted a meeting but I didn't hear from either of them oh wow nothing not even like a great to meet you no not nothing and like the silent treatment for six weeks for the rest of that year actually and so that's when my husband and I were kind of tapped out on the money side
and and we went to my brother who after graduating SMU moved to New York started a business and has been super successful building it to several hundred people with his partners and we asked him if he would be interested in investing and he agreed and he agreed he said you know Holly I'm I'm think if he were here today on the podcast you'd probably say you know I was betting on the jockey not the horse
and he put in initially $750,000 wow so you're assuming that that in March of 2011 you're you're going to do a nationwide launch somewhere but you don't have any commitments I guess from Sephora or Nordstrom so when when do they call or when does Sephora call January 26th and I know the date because it's my brother's birthday and they they called you on the 26th it called me on the 26th and it was actually 2011
well and she called and said Holly it's Kim and I'm super excited to share that we are going to prepare for a summer launch in all stores and a big hit in the cap for the 12 weeks of summer so good news because Sephora is going to launch but only 12 weeks and only in the summer which kind of undermines your whole narrative because you don't you're not selling a summer product exactly so what you say
I said you know it's flattering as this is and I'm super excited and want this badly I need to scale my size down to whatever size makes sense that you can assure me 12 months of distribution you're talking about the size of the bottle the size of the space on the shelf so on the shelf yes I don't an in cap is that big fancy thing at the end of the aisle where you have five shelves and it's
a color product sure I didn't expect that they would hold that for a 12 month period so I convinced them and this is how I really knew that Sephora was the right partner for me they listened and they said you know let us take this back and think about how we could do this and assure you 12 months of distribution which I also didn't know that that's kind of crazy
really retailers don't want with any guaranteed one year of distribution right and how much shelf space do they offer you so they later called and said they were excited to share that they were going to open a new wall and Sephora called skincare favorites and they have secured six inches of space and to pick my two favorite products and is that is that pretty good like because I'm thinking six inches my God there's nothing in a big
store but is that is that were you happy with that I was ecstatic the sounded like a dream it sounded like something that I could manage again I didn't have a team I didn't have a marketing team I didn't have people in the stores to help sell it I I felt like that was positioning us in the skincare category which is how I've always seen our brand as not a sunscreen brand we are true skincare but all about protection
and that's our thing so I was just thrilled so summer of 2011 you debut at Sephora yes and I had nurtured the Nordstrom relationship along the way and keeping in touch and we launched in 47 stores so I had full distribution in Sephora and 47 Nordstroms and a lot of work to do right because you still even if you're in Sephora Nordstrom it doesn't mean people are going to go to your product and buy it you got it you got
explained you got to get them to buy it so how did you do that exactly well because of that 12 months of distribution I think that really shaped how I thought about product I thought I've always thought about innovation and SPF and how do I create products that are game changing that you will reach for in those shoulder seasons and I had created these sunscreen swipes that were a way to
reapply your SPF in a tallet and they were at the time pretty new to the world and I didn't really realize it at the time because I didn't know what success meant as Sephora but I would go around to stores during that period and the swipes were always gone they were just wiped out of the off the shelf hmm oh yeah what what what explained that apparently you know the swipes were huge hit and the world love them and the
problem was I knew that my sales couldn't be great if there were no products on the shelf and so I started what I I like later coined within my family as reverse stealing but I didn't know how to get product to the shelves and I knew I couldn't get make the numbers if there weren't products so I'd go into as many stores as I could with swipes in my bag and literally like stock the shelves like I give them product wow which is
crazy right I love that story by the way I've never told that story I just popped in my head which is so crazy but like I literally remember going into stores and pushing products onto the stores shelves all right so you are you're you're now you know in these brands by the way I was there immediate or fairly quick impact on your revenue I mean you've gone from what 150 went to like 600
in a year in that year 2011 wow so that was and then what about 2012 we kept doubling we've been doubling and sometimes more than that since so 2012 you pass a million dollars in sales yes what did it now start to become easier to raise money outside because it up until this point it was just family as your dad your brother you you and your husband yeah now to scale I'm imagining you want to go out and raise
more money because it cost money you got to make the product you had to make the bottles and distributions expensive or did you did you say you know we're just we're not going to raise money we're going to sell fun this thing no no and I've always known you know when you have this vision to change the way the world thinks about sunscreen scaling is super important and also I'm dealing with a category where we actually have to
convince people why they need to wear SPF and then why supergoop so you know I often say like imagine I was having lunch with the founders of MZ Wallace which is a handbag brand and I said you know imagine if you had to convince women everywhere to carry a bag with them everywhere with their water bottle and their wallet and their person their phone and their umbrella yeah you don't you just have to sell them on your bags but for me I've always looked at it like I have to
convince first people the why it's so important that they protect their skin and in secondary to that is why supergoop so yes it's been very expensive from a marketing perspective and I was still not profitable at that point so raising money was something that was just a necessary thing that we had to do yeah and so I guess you were eventually able to raise like like two million dollars from
from a combination of friends and family and even some some private investors and people the medical field and I should mention tennis star Maria Sharapova how did that happen yeah so that was just a phone call from her agent that said I'm Maria Sharapova's agent and I'm like Googling Maria Sharapova and see what's in the word sunscreen and she said she found
your product at Sephora and it's the only product she can compete in wow and it doesn't burn her eyes and so she's interested if you guys are they have ever thought about making an investment and actually this was a just about the same time as our friends and family was still open and I thought the first thing I need to do is get to L.A. to meet her because of course if we're going to have an investor come into the brand
she's becoming part of our family and so I want to make sure she could also be a brand ambassador or spokesperson presumably yeah so we we flew out there and spent a day visiting with she and her agent and you know honestly put the deal together really quickly wow
Holly as you grew and today I think that the latest public numbers of family are that you did like 40 million in revenue in 2018 and maybe more in 2019 I'm assuming but at a certain point you you decide to open up a New York office you are based in San Antonio you've got a New York
office you hired a president to more or less to run the company and from what I understand like this was sort of a request from your investors you're like hey Holly you're great you're really good at what you do but like you need an operations person that's not your strength was that is that true is that how I went down
yeah you know so we had our series a followed our friends and family and one of the former partners at T.S.G. John Kenny was going off on his own to create what is now cult capital and he asked to lead our series a round and he said Holly what is it you want to do for this next phase of supergoop
and I said John I want to build a team I want help I want a presence in New York City and we decided together that it was time to go on that search for a brand president who could be the perfect integrator for my vision and she's been now with us for four years and this is a man of Baldwin right yes and having had Amanda to help was a real turning point for me in realizing the time to put our foot on the gas and build the team that we needed to take this and make the magic of supergoop happen
2019 for supergoop was our year to get to profitability and double digit profitability this year do you do you think that what's happened to you and and the success of the company is because you of your skill and work ethic or do you think more of it has to do with luck I think it's a little bit of both guy you know if I think back was that was a skill that positioned me next to Roxanne quimbee in Vegas no but it was very strategic in that I was telling my story to everybody that would listen
and same is true with my launch at Sephora because gosh I was lucky the skincare buyer that year happened to be pregnant and shopping in giggle but you know I put my number on the carton and and so anybody could reach me and that was that was strategic this is something we you mentioned earlier I want to ask you this again I'm what what do you think how do you think being a musician playing the harp helped you be an entrepreneur
I think being a musician has really helped me in just learning those how to break it down and you know you can be overwhelmed if you open a picture opening a piece of sheet music and there's just notes everywhere and staff and it can look very jumbled and like how in the world am I ever going to learn this whole song but what you learn in music is to break it down and learn the first measure learn the right hand then learn the left and then put the right and the left together
and then once you've mastered that go on to the second measure and if you continue to break it down like that you eventually have a have a beautiful song and I think also though for for me because I started performing at such a young age it gave me so much confidence and if you think about you know playing here comes the bride to a church that's full of people that are everyone's dead silent and you are the music you're the only thing that anyone's listening to
and this is the sprites biggest day of her life it really gives you the confidence to think you can do anything and that helps me and has over the years as we've been fundraising and you've got to be completely confident to walk into any scenario
and and pitch your brand and sell them on evaluation that you believe in and I think the music really is what what gave me that that's Holly Fager founder of supergoop our conversation was recorded back in 2020 since then supergoop has kept growing in 2022 the company reached 250 million dollars in sales by the way since Holly got her start many states have changed their laws and now allow kids to use sunscreen in schools so supergoop has started a program where they give it out for free
hey thanks so much for listening to the show this week please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode and as always it's totally free this episode was produced by James Della Hussi with music composed by R emptying Everblueie
it was edited by Niva Grant our production staff also includes JC Howard Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Ramelle Wood, Alex Chung, Elaine Coats, John Isabella, Chris Messini and Carla Estevez I'm Guy Ross and you've been listening to how I built this Hey, prime members you can listen to how I built this early and add free on Amazon music download the Amazon Music app today or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus and Apple podcasts
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