470: Why Passion Is Your Advantage with Holly Thaggard of Supergoop!

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2:42Today we're speaking with Holly Thaggard, founder of Supergoop, which is the first protective skincare brand that put SPF at the forefront. In 2007, she started Supergroup on the side to share the importance of skincare and solve the problem of incorporating SPF products in makeup. And in our conversation, we discussed bootstrapping a skincare business before Instagram, how to develop an incredibly successful physical product, and really a ton of other advice on founders in their early stages starting a physical product business. So please welcome to the Founder Podcast, Holly Thaggard. First question I ask everyone that comes on is, how did you get your job, aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today?

3:30You know, the truth is I've always loved to create. I've always loved to build. My parents are both entrepreneurs and I thought though out of college, I wanted to be a school teacher. So it was actually doing a very different job. job. And it was it was very short, one year in the third grade school classroom. And I guess if I could tell myself something now, it would be that, you know, I'm still teaching, I just have a much larger audience than 17, eight year olds. But I it was actually, I felt very claustrophobic in the classroom. And I really questioned at the moment, like what I went to school to be a teacher.

4:10I loved education and I couldn't you know I couldn't believe my my career was over almost before it started but I spent the next 10 years pursuing harp building the business of Holly the harpist I had a maternal grandmother that was a harpist and I played from fifth grade up and I made a living throughout my 20s performing and and it was then that my friend was diagnosed with skin cancer. My college roommate was going through a residency in dermatology. And she said, Holly, it's not about beaches and bikinis. It's about that every single day, a little bit of exposure that's cumulative. And for your friend, it happened at a very young age.

4:53For most people, it doesn't happen until much later in life. But the truth of the matter is this was in 2001 to 2003, and people weren't wearing sunscreen every single day. And because I had parents that were entrepreneurial and they always sort of taught us to look for the white space and things and make the world a better place and do things that haven't been done before. And I looked at the category and it was so incredibly sleepy, Nathan. It was like there was no innovation at all in SPF and UV broad spectrum protection in particular. And I was then I literally started, you know, about SPF and figuring out crazy ways to get it into everyone's routine so that it became a luxurious experience and not a chore, not something that they had to do when they were headed to the beach.

5:44So I really, you know, it was for me a lot about the journey of, you know, starting that moment in the third grade classroom and then later reflecting when my friend was diagnosed on the concept of we were not teaching our youth to wear SPF. And never once did I even see a tube of sunscreen on the school campus. Yet we were out there in the middle of the day under the sun and often staying in after school sports. And so it was it was that one short year, those eight months in the classroom that, you know, 10 years later almost inspired me to create a new category in the industry. Yeah, there you go.

6:28So you started Supergoop, was it 2007? Well, I started down this journey in more like 2004 or 2005. What I saw in the market at the time was no innovation and every chemical formula had oxybenzone in it. So my mother's a two-time breast cancer survivor. And through my research, I learned that oxybenzone was actually found in breast cancer tissue. And so if every chemical formula in the country had oxybenzone in it, and I wanted everyone everywhere to wear SPF every single day, I couldn't, with good faith, encourage that with an oxybenzone derived formula. So I really spent several years back in 2004 and five, finding the chemists that I needed to work on this world's first chemical formula with no oxybenzone, because I know when kids are outside in sports and sweating and swimming, they really needed a formula that would absorb into their skin and not trap the heat into their body.

7:37And I did a lot of just research online. It was really very self-taught. And the original idea, truth be told, was to put this magic formula into school classrooms across America. And that didn't work out. But at the moment, it didn't work out. I'm very proud of our ounce-by-ounce giving program now, but we can talk more about that later. How did it start? Like, how do you create a beauty brand from nothing? Like, how did you even bring that to life? Talk to me around the original idea and what happened and like how long it took. And yeah, so you said you were kind of formulating by in 2005. Yeah, I was formulating and I was writing a school curriculum.

8:22You remember I was a teacher, so I loved that eighth grade class of 17. I mean, that third grade class of 17 kiddos. And the original idea for this brand was to first formulate a product. And I knew it had to be a product because the product didn't exist that I felt good about encouraging everyone to wear every single day. And so I started by writing a curriculum and knocking on school doors and talking to parent counsels and trying to convince everyone that children needed access to SPF in the school day. And I quickly learned that SPF is an over-the-counter drug, as it should be regulated by the FDA because it's actually doing something for your skin.

9:05But because of such, it was prohibited on school campuses across America. And so I taught my one-year teaching was in a private school, and I knew that the private schools didn't really have to follow the same rules and regulations that public schools did. So I started knocking on private school doors and talking to everyone that would listen about how badly Supergoop was needed in the classroom. And, you know, while that program took off and I had six schools throughout Louisiana and Texas in the United States, it became very obvious to me that it was going to be difficult to scale. And I've always had this vision to literally change the way the world thinks about sunscreen.

9:49And I knew that if I was going to accomplish that in my lifetime, I knew that I had to figure out how to scale this brand in a different way than knocking on one by one school doors. And, you know, along the way to my passion project has definitely been in changing the state laws that exist around SPF in schools in America. I've never missed an opportunity to be on Capitol Hill and talking to the Congress and representatives that and really bringing awareness to this because nobody until Supergoop actually cared about SPF in the United States. And so everyone's always shocked to actually learn that it is prohibited on school campuses.

10:33And knowing that SPF, no matter how generously you apply it at 7 a.m., by noon and especially after school at 5 p.m. in sports, it's ineffective. So sun damage is inevitable. We're putting our children on the playground with a carcinogen above them and no way, no means of how to protect. So that was really the early, early days. And when I realized that that wasn't scalable in my lifetime and I had this strong vision to change the way the world thinks about sunscreen, I had to pivot and then learn the business of retail. So I want to talk about that Sephora story. But before we get to that, let's talk about kind of how much did it start?

11:17Like how much did it cost to start and do your first batch? And like how did you even get your first sale? Was it through that program that you talked of through schools or was it actually through retail and the Sephora? And that was also another really pivotal moment, I think, in our brand is realizing that schools have oftentimes trouble buying pencils. And so convincing schools to actually fund a program like this where not many people even believed we needed to wear SPF during the school day was going to be a big challenge. And it was also going to be a challenge that I hadn't built the expertise in SPF yet as a brand to allow parents to feel comfortable with their children putting a product called Supergoop onto their children's skin every single day.

12:09The brand had no reputation yet. We were not known as the experts in SPF that we are today. So there were many reasons why that program failed. And and I don't really say it failed because I think that, you know, this is important for founders to know. It's all about the journey. Right. It's about the little single things that happen across a long period of time that are cumulative. And when you're you know, when you're really doing great things, it happens. It happens drip by drip. You don't fill the whole bucket. And, you know, there are definitely little wins along the way that are inspiring and they they help they help keep things interesting and exciting.

12:54But when you're building truly wonderful things, you have to be ready for the journey. You have to be ready for just being completely inspired by those little wins along the way. So when, you know, when I realized that I had to change directions in my school program and and build this brand through retail, which, you know, at the time in 2005, six, seven, DTC didn't really even exist. But I also was recognized by the American Academy of Dermatology for that school program that I wrote, which is tiny as it was with with a nice award. And it's those little wins that kind of keep you inspired to keep going and figure out which way you're going to pivot to continue on with your vision.

13:41So, yeah, it was probably 2007. So then I started thinking about, and, you know, the brand name at the time, if I took you back to 2005, there were no fun, playful skincare brands. Everything was really serious, doctor driven. The packaging had how big your molecule was and how high your clinicals were and what doctor's name was on the packaging for credibility. And so the name Supergoop was a first in its kind. And now, you know, you look at the world and there's all kinds of crazy names in skincare and beauty industry. but it was truly that we were the pioneer in delivering efficacious, serious science-backed formulas in a fun, playful spirit.

14:26And the reason behind that was that I knew that with children, you had to, I wanted this to be their ticket to get outside, right? And it's definitely easier to form healthy habits with young children than it is to teach consumer behavior change in an adult. Something, you know, for example, a 45-year-old's never been wearing SPF, trying to get them to change their attitude and wear SPF every single day is much harder than when you're talking to a class of kindergartners and you say, we wash our hands, we wear our helmets, we put our seatbelts on, and we wear our SPF. So I knew that the reason behind my name being playful was totally laddering up to, you know, raising a generation of children that understood this was a non-compromising, healthy habit that they needed to partake in.

15:15So, you know, it was really, it was really for me a natural first step at retail to look at those children's boutique retailers that could help tell my story and could help really explain what we're all about. And at the time, and now defunct, of course, but Giggle in the U.S. was this beautiful curated children's boutique retailer that had a dozen or so stores across America. They gave me the national distribution for the press that was needed. And I had learned through my research that it's hard to hire a PR firm in New York if you don't have that national distribution. And FAO Schwartz was another big influencer in the kids space in New York City.

15:59And they loved inviting me into the store on the weekends to literally stand there and talk with every person that would come by about, hey, I know you've got your stroller and your little kid's piano, but like, have we figured out the SPF they're going to wear their entire life? And so I started learning the business of retail through kids boutique retail. And but I also at the same time, and this is really an important thing to notice that I realized that kids and at this time I had had my daughter who is now 18. but she you know I knew she was kind of watching everything that my husband and I were doing and so I knew that if we were going to inspire children to start embracing this habit we had to also we had to also really model this good behavior so the packaging everything sort of took shape by keeping it sophisticated and clean and a white space and keeping protecting the image of the brand and the packaging so that dad could pull it out of his golf bag on the golf course or mom could have it on her beauty counter and children would see the same sort of look of packaging that they were trying to instill in their children.

17:15And so when I thought about retail in that way, I thought, well, so we have Giggle, we have FAO Schwartz, we have these beautiful Pottery Barn kids, we have these beautiful children's retailers that are behind us in our mission. But how do we balance that with retail in America that's going to reach that mindful explorer, that dad, that mom that's willing to do skincare a little bit differently? And at the time, I thought about that being the Barney's consumer. And unfortunately, Barney's is no longer anymore today. But Barney's had a wonderful presence in, you know, all the major cities in America.

17:52And, and yet it was still small enough for me to be able to go every week and spend my weekend standing on the floor in those nine or 10 Barney's New York stores, and talking to those parents that were willing to think about things differently. I mean, in America, you didn't really go to Barney's if you wanted to buy what was at every department store, you went to like find something a little different. And, and so that was kind of for 2007, I'd say 2007, eight, nine, 10. I was really focused on those retail partners that I could personally, the company was still just me at the time. I was head of everything.

18:33And so I had to focus on those retailers that were influential in every major city in the US, but that also weren't so large that it prohibited me from being able to show up, tell my story, take everyone in the skincare beauty department to lunch and bring on an army of people that were willing to spread my message and get behind the brand itself. Hey, FounderFam, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students for a while now because it just works.

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20:04And she stumbled upon my brand at Giggle in San Francisco, where their corporate headquarters are. And she thought it was really interesting. And everyone in the Giggle store knew my story. They knew how passionate I was about this and did as I had hoped and shared that story with her. She took my products back to Sephora corporate and she passed them around. And she said, this is interesting. This is a brand that's very different. Nothing like it in Sephora at the time. Everything was serious science doctor driven brands. And yet this is a playful brand with serious science backed technology behind it, doing something good for the world.

20:43She passed it around, called the number on the packaging, which happened to be my cell phone, of course, because I wanted anybody anywhere to be able to reach directly to me to talk about to talk about. And I still it's funny, Nathan, I still sometimes get phone calls on my cell phone, which has not changed. And I'm like, throw that away. It's expired. If you tell me you found my number on the packaging, it's not been there for a very long time. There you go. But yeah, so she called and she said, you know, I think that what you're doing is really interesting, Holly. And she said, we're interested.

21:19I think you probably need to grow up a little. And again, the company is still I was packing the boxes. I was doing all the stuff. I was even delivering to some of our retail in Dallas with baseball cap and, you know, coming in the back door trying to hide who I was to the to the buyers in the front of Staley Korshak, I think it was. So I literally had to start thinking about, you know, the harder things. How are you going to get press if you're going to survive in Sephora? You have to be in the books. And this is before social media. This was before influencers. This was before most of what we know about that is in marketing today.

22:00So it was all about how much press are you going to get in the magazines? And I didn't have a PR firm at the time. And she said, you know, but when you're ready, when you feel like you're ready and you can, you know, the numbers are pretty high. The inventory is pretty expensive. The packaging is expensive. of everything. My husband and I were just self-funding. I was taking harp jobs whenever I could to pay for super goop tubes. And, and, uh, and so, you know, we, um, we started, we started, you know, thinking about how we were going to actually continue to scale this business. Now, the business was still growing aggressively.

22:37We were doubling, tripling in size. Um, so those numbers were small at the time. They were like, we went from, I think, gosh, well, I think our first year when we were only in those handful of schools, we did like 45 ,000. The second year, we did like 150. Then we scaled that to 500, then that to 900. Then we hit the, you know, so we were still pretty small. But knowing that a launch in Sephora was going to cost us something, you know, I went to my father, I went to my brother who had moved out of college to New York and had started a pretty successful business and had seen my passion and dedication to the brand.

23:22And, you know, he said they gave me the money that I needed at the moment. But, you know, we had to have that. I think every founder's like terrible Thanksgiving story where I'm like, I want to do one more kids trade show before I call Sephora back. And I had not been able to secure a PR firm. and so that was kind of on my list that I couldn't call them back until I had and I went to that trade show ended up this is the craziest story I ended up advocating to sit in the natural and organic section of this trade show because I felt like we're so mindful of our ingredient choices we were the first formula in the world without oxybenzone or parabens or propylene glycol or all of these controversial ingredients.

24:12We were clean before clean was kind of a thing. And so I advocated to be in what was called the like organic natural section. Well, I got to this Vegas trade show and the entire floor of organics and was like really granola and very like everything was vanilla looking and it was just very like homegrown knitted socks and all kinds of like. And then upstairs at the trade show were all these beautiful, clean, white brands that were like crushing it and everybody wanted to be upstairs. And I was, you know, kind of moving through this trade show for five or six days and thinking about how important it was that I, you know, scale and bring home a bigger account.

24:56and at the end of the trade show um it was really slow especially on the natural and organics department and uh but i i learned to knit from this lady next to me and she um you know it was also a real slow show for her and so we sat there and knitted when nobody was walking the show and and on the last day someone walked up to me as we were like breaking down the booths and everything And they said, wow, you've gotten really close to Roxanne Quimby. And I knew the name, of course. I was like, wait, what? And I didn't know that she was Roxanne Quimby. And then they were like, well, you know, she's the founder of Burt's Bees.

25:37And I, you know, immediately marched right over there. And I'm like, how did you knit with me for the five days and not tell me that you were the founder of Burt's Bees, who, of course, later sold, earlier sold to Clorox. And she was a happy green bean making her little knitted socks and enjoying the conversation from me. And she said, well, Holly, I really just wanted to hear about your vision and your brand without you knowing who I was. But I love what you're doing and I want to help you. How can I help? And, you know, I always say this to founders, too. I'm like, you've got to put yourself out there and be the places.

26:14if I hadn't been in that natural and organics and realized that instead of beating yourself up for like that was not the right place I should have been, I should have been upstairs with all the beautiful white brands. You know, I would have never met Roxanne. And she said, how can I help you? And I said, I need a PR firm. I can't get anybody's attention in New York to save my life because I need to launch in Sephora. They're interested. And I, you know, it's just really hard for me in Dallas to have the interest of a big beauty PR firm when I was still a pretty small brand. I mean, on the way to the airport in Vegas that day, I get a call from Nancy Berman, who was a Berman PR, the biggest beauty PR firm in New York.

27:00She said, I just got off the phone with Roxanne Quimby. I launched Birchbees and she said that I really need to spend some time with you. I'd like to come to Texas. Yeah. Wow. And then it all ended up working out. Well, I said, actually, I'm going to be in New York next week interviewing PR firms because I didn't want her to think she was the only show in the game. I needed her to understand there was competition, even though there was not. But I felt with that meeting that I had secured, I could actually get a few more meetings. And I did. I called her ex-partner Trachtenberg. I called like every other beauty publicist and said, I'm going to be in New York next week interviewing for a publicist and I'd love to set up a meeting.

27:46And I ended up getting five or six different meetings over the course of a few days. I grabbed my brother, my sister, my husband, anybody, because it's still just me kind of trying to figure this all out. And just so that we had people to sit in the room and listen and help kind of weigh in on things. It turns out that Nancy Berman just really rolled out the red carpet and or I should say yellow carpet because she was completely on brand and and right for my vision and really excited to take us on like none of the other firms that I interviewed were and willing to take a chance on a brand that really just at the time had, you know, nine or 10 Barney's New York stores, FAO Schwartz, and a few kids' giggle boutiques.

28:31And so, so it was a really exciting time because that allowed me then to build my press book, which was, I guess, like 2009, 10, so that I could go back to Sephora. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this episode and learning a ton. As you know, in this series, we interview some of the greatest founders of our generation to find out how they did it. However, if you're thinking of starting your own business and you want to hear from some incredible stories from everyday people like you or I who are actually in the trenches, only been building their business for maybe one year or two years, like they're building right now and they're really in the early stages, but they're getting success.

29:15You should come and check out our new podcast from zero to founder hosted by our community manager molly flynn these are in the trenches stories from our very own successful students that have gone through some of our programs people just like you who are deep within the process of building their very own successful business these are the founders of tomorrow you can find the from zero to founder podcast on all platforms and remember it's founder without the e all right so holly i'd love to talk talk a little bit more about product development and also solving problems. Something that you've spoken about before is solving a problem that the customer didn't know existed.