Supergoop!: Holly Thaggard (2020)

27:40It can't be done. they were saying you can't make a sunscreen that is non-chemical 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 paraben, which is what keeps your product healthy and clean, it couldn't be done. So parabens were needed. Why is sunscreen? I had no idea that sunscreen was so complex. Well, I think 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 Guy Raz want to pick it up and put it on his skin every single day.

28:27Got 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 with that. I don't care. But you can't do that every day, right? You can get away with that at the beach. Or if you're three years old, I remember like slathering on white zinc stuff on my kid's 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 like 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.

29:01And 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 there's skin cancer causing. So you clearly are starting to develop an expertise on sunscreen, but like you're not picking cookies to bake. You can't do this alone. You actually have to go and find somebody willing to make you 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. Correct.

29:43That is the joke around our family is you had to do sunscreen, Holly, because it's very difficult to formulate. And so where do you go? 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 in ingredient choices. And wait, who was this lab and 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 first chemist was in California and I'm in Texas.

30:29And I think, you know, 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. Right. I mean, you just call you can't just call somebody up and say, I have this mission. I want to do it. And then the person says, OK, 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 maybe it wasn't.

31:03I don't know. um 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 gonna we're gonna create this and every child in the country is going to be wearing this game-changing SPF and that is when and the process of creating an SPF product takes a while And once I had that kind of off and running with the right chemist who 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 marketing and education side of the business.

31:50And did you fly out to work with the chemist 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 to my family and asked what they thought of this goop or that goop. You already knew you were 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.

32:25You know, I wasn't from the beauty industry. It's a goop. or whatever. It was goopy. And in the meantime, what were you doing? I mean, you're living in Dallas still at the time? 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 mean, changing consumer behaviors, like one of the most difficult things to do, right but I looked at campaigns like uh Lady Bird 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 Diet Cokes 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 appealed to young children to then sort of bug the adults in their life, there was something there.

33:36So you've got this product that's being developed. And what are they making it with? I mean, if all these scientists were saying, hey, you've got to use oxybenzone. 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 oxybenzone is not the only way. It's the most inexpensive way. And again, 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, avabenzone, that could help achieve the efficacy needed, but it just costs a little bit more.

34:20Avabenzone. Avabenzone. And that's still today what we've used in our chemical formulas. 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 Parsol and that make that yeah so you managed to work with this lab entirely remotely like they you never had to go and present to them or anything they just they just I didn't have the money to go and promote you know I could 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.

34:58He has a background and he was practiced law out of law school and he has a real entrepreneurial spirit as well. And so we were both bootstrapping all of the cost. All right. So you're going back and forth 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? Was it just, you were just using 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.

35:44And it was then that I literally said, this is super. And the name immediately occurred to me that I had also in that moment named the brand. Super Goop. Super Goop. And was it SPF 15 or 30 or what? Yeah, it was a 50. It's a 50, okay. Which is exactly what we were aiming for. And so finally you get the one that works. And would you slather it on and go outside and just stand outside in the sun? 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.

36:27So I often laughed and made my husband the guinea pig and would say, hey, can you put some of this in your eyes and make sure it doesn't burn? Yeah. Had you by that point formed like an LLC and done 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 creating this business. So you've got the formula, you've got the name, and now it's time to go to the schools.

37:11And I'm assuming, you know, you kind of rip out your old playbook 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 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, sunscreen 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.

37:48Exactly. 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 Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. You know, one of the most surprising things about How I Built This is just how many pitches we get every year. tens of thousands of businesses reach out hoping to tell their story. Now, while we do try to read most of those pitches, we can't possibly read all, but we choose most of our guests through our own deep research.

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42:29Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it was 2007, and Holly Thaggard had a big problem. She'd built a sunscreen company, Supergoop, 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 aren't as strict. And she actually made a bit of headway. I did. I launched five private schools. All in Dallas, the Dallas area? No, Dallas and Louisiana, Baton Rouge, where I'm from, and Dallas. So how did you approach the schools?

43:10Did 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 and ask for a meeting. I've all, you know, dating back to sitting under my father's desk, reading and listening to Zig Ziglar tapes, which is what I did throughout my childhood. Zig Ziglar, was he just like that guy who told you that motivational speaker for sales, right? Yeah, he was a sales and marketing genius. Like guru, like he had these tapes in the 70s and 80s maybe, is that right? Yes, exactly. I learned from Zig so many things that I still reference today.

43:51You know, you have to have so many no's 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 kept going, kept going. If one said no, I'd go to another one. So a school would say no, no interest, and you would say, okay, well, thank you very much, and you'd move on.

44:24I'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 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. Right. And how were 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.

45:00Yes, 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 was it? Well, I know our Amex was maxed out to the limit, which was like$30 ,000. It wasn't a huge number, but 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 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.

45:43It 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 packaging these into small bottles with the branding and the logo. This was just like, or were you? 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.

46:24The 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 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 schools thing wasn't doesn't sound like it was really working. So what did you how were you going to build this out into something bigger?

47:08Well, so I started just looking at what retail 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 storytellers 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 and tell the story in their location across the country. Your husband was a lawyer, so he had some income.

47:53But were you, like, getting help from friends and family at this point? I mean, because 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 ,000, 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.

48:43and I asked my dad at the dinner table, I think, if he'd be willing to give us$25 ,000. And that really forced this conversation of, how are you planning to scale this? Because I think at this point, we were literally making$45 ,000 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 to actually pay for the trade show itself, to like pay for the booth.

49:30Yeah. And I had at that point also received a phone call from the skincare buyer at 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 2008-9, was really highly clinical and built on doctor-driven brands and not fun and playful.

50:25And 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. 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 bottle, right? Your personal cell 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 visions.

51:04And 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 this. 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.

51:40They 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 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 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.

52:28But what I found was I was smack dab in the middle of all of the granola and very homegrown 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 the show was so slow that I spent most of my time in her booth learning to knit. I thought this was, you were 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, you know, walking around and someone came up to me and said, gosh, you've really gotten to be good buddies with Roxanne.

53:13And I said, oh, I know, you know, we had way too much time to talk during this show, 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 who that is, Holly? It's Roxanne Quimby, the founder of Burt's Bees. You saw Roxanne Quimby, who has been on our show. We've had her on our show. She's amazing. So 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 Roxanne Quimby, the founder of Burt's 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.

53:53So then what? I mean, do you exchange numbers, emails? You go for coffee? What do you do? No, it was 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 Nancy is the founder of Berman Communications, which was known as the biggest beauty PR firm in New York. And she said, I just got off the phone with Roxanne Quimby and she says, I need to fly to Texas to meet you. She says, I got to fly to Texas to meet you.

54:35You're doing 45 ,000 bucks a year in sales. Yeah. And this is like a big shot PR person. Yep. 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 and 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.

55:17And 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, 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 much did Nancy cost you to bring her on? 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.

56:05She 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 de-seasonalize a category and it's never going to happen if I'm only talking to the beauty editors and my 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 in revenue, but he was adamant about, you've got to do this, Holly.

56:59This 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 decide, we're going to get the best publicist, because 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. 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 was she able to place stories about Supergoop? In all the beauty magazines. So Allure and just the traditional press. And did that move the needle? Did you start to get a lot of people inquiring?

57:43We did. And we also got, that helped a lot with the launch in Barneys, New York, which Nancy set up an interview with the beauty buyer of Barney's. And she actually was a skin cancer survivor, and very fair skin. Her name is Bettina O 'Neill. And she bought into the idea of building a skincare brand with a foundation in SPF. And Barney's, certainly at that time, was really important, a really influential place to be. Yeah, we launched 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.

58:34And 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 in 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 got to donate that. That was 100 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.

59:09So I 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 gotten in a couple of magazines and we're getting 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.

59:50I 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 called 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. 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.

1:00:48Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. 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.

1:01:30And I cried the whole way there and found a shoebox of a hotel in 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 didn't have a lot of money. And this was an expensive thing for me to go do when I didn't really have anything to do there. Did she call you back? So I went to bed that night. And at 1130, my cell phone lit up. And it said Sephora on it. And that's how I had programmed her name into my phone was as 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.

1:02:12and she said, well, we would love to meet with you. Are you available tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.? Amazing. So you go to Sephora headquarters and did you have a bunch of product with you, like samples? Oh, I was so prepared. I had foam 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 where we are today and why I needed their help and why I felt like they could help put a megaphone to this message. And did they say, all right, we're in. We'll work with you.

1:02:50They did not. They just said, we enjoyed meeting you. I thought the meeting went really well. It lasted a good hour and a half. 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 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.

1:03:30And so whenever I had done something well, he would 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.

1:04:10Yeah. No, I... You were kind of bluffing. Bluffing, hoping. Okay, 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 interested and I felt good about flying home and then doing the follow up that was needed 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.

1:04:53They 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 convinces Sephora to finally call you and say, okay, we'll do it. And then, of course, what kind of shelf space you're going to get and how long. So 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 post a meeting, but I didn't hear from either of them.

1:05:40Oh, wow. Nothing. Not even like a great to meet you? No, not nothing. 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 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 think if he were here today on the podcast, he'd probably say, you know, I was betting on the jockey, not the horse.

1:06:21And he put in initially$750 ,000. Wow. So you're assuming that in March of 2011, you're going to do a nationwide launch somewhere, but you don't have any commitments, I guess, from Sephora or Nordstrom. So when do they call or when does Sephora call? January 26th. And I know the date because it's my brother's birthday. They called you on the 26th. They 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 and 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're not selling a summer product.

1:07:16Exactly. So what'd you say? I said, you know, as 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 end cap is that big fancy thing at the end of the aisle where you have five shelves and it's full of products. And 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.

1:07:54They 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 launch 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 in Sephora called Skincare Favorites. And they have secured six inches of space. And to pick my two favorite products. And is that pretty good? Because I'm thinking six inches. My God, there's nothing in a big store.

1:08:33But were you happy with that? I was ecstatic. This 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 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 a 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.

1:09:11So 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 or Nordstrom, it doesn't mean people are going to go to your product and buy it. You've got to explain, you've 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've always thought about innovation in 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 towelette.

1:09:50And 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 at Sephora, but I would go around to stores during that period and the swipes were always gone. They were just wiped off the shelf. Oh, yeah. What explained that? Apparently, you know, the swipes were a huge hit and the world loved 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 later coined within my family as reverse stealing, but I didn't know how to get product to the shelves.

1:10:28And I knew I couldn't 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 stock the shelves. I'd give them product, which is crazy, right? I love that story. By the way, I've never told that story. It just popped in my head, which is so crazy. But like I literally remember going into stores and pushing products onto the store shelves. All right. So you are you're now, you know, in these brands. By the way, was there an 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.

1:11:10Wow. So that was and then what about 2012? We kept doubling. We've been doubling and sometimes more than that since. So 2012, you passed a million dollars in sales. Yes. Did it now start to become easier to raise money outside? Because up until this point, it was just family. It was your dad, your brother, you and your husband. Yeah. Now, to scale, I'm imagining you wanted to go out and raise more money because it costs money. You've got to make the product. You've got to make the bottles. And distribution is expensive. Or did you say, you know, we're not going to raise money. We're going to self-fund this thing.

1:11:43No, no. So 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 purse and their phone and their umbrella. Yeah, you don't.

1:12:16You just have to sell them on your bags. But for me, I've always looked at it like I have to convince first people why it's so important that they protect their skin. And then 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. And so I guess you were eventually able to raise like$2 million from a combination of friends and family and even some private investors and people in the medical field. And I should mention tennis star Maria Sharapova.

1:12:56How 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 seeing 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 have ever thought about making an investment. And actually, this was 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 LA 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.

1:13:35And so I want to make sure. And she could also be a brand ambassador or spokesperson, presumably. Yeah. So 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 I found 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 decided to open up a New York office. You were 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.

1:14:17You'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 it went down? Yeah. You know, so we had our series A followed our friends and family. And one of the former partners at TSG, John Kenny, was going off on his own to create what is now Colt 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.

1:15:04and she's been now with us for four years. And this is Amanda 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 think that what's happened to you and the success of the company is because 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 it skill that positioned me next to Roxanne Quimby?

1:15:56In 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 so anybody could reach me and that was strategic. There's something you mentioned earlier, but I want to ask you this again. And 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.

1:16:39And, 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 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 this bride's 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 a valuation that you believe in.

1:17:49And I think the music really is what gave me that. That's Holly Thagger, founder of Supergoop. Our conversation was recorded back in 2020. Since then, Supergoop has kept growing. In 2022, the company reached$250 million 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.

1:18:23Hey, 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 Delahousie with music composed by Ramtin Ereblui. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Ramel Wood, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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