565: From 3rd Grade Teacher to Beauty CEO: How Supergoop! Built a $700M Brand From ZERO! | Holly Thaggard (Best of Foundr) [VIDEO]

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Don't get into the beauty industry because you have a following on Instagram and you want to sell something and beauty is fun. If you're going to build something sustainable and long lasting and scalable. I think you have to have a real clear, game-changing, innovative idea that's going to make this world a better place. If you have that, do what every entrepreneur and founder has to do, which is have grit, because that is definitely the most important part of the last 18 years of my life.

1:19Holly Thaggard is the founder of Supergoop, the$700 million skincare brand that redefines sunscreen. What started as a mission to make SPF accessible in schools has grown into a global powerhouse stocked in Sephora, backed by Blackstone, and worn by celebrities and athletes worldwide. Solving a problem that the customer didn't know existed. What do you mean by that? We had to educate first and we spent quite a few years talking about why SPF before we could even talk about why Supergoop because people didn't feel like they needed to be wearing sunscreen every single day. You know, I was a teacher.

1:50Make the world a better place, my dad's advice. Don't do things that have been done before. All of these kind of checked the boxes on what I felt was going to be the real foundation for this brand. When you're building truly wonderful things, you have to be ready for the journey. You have to be ready for being completely inspired by those little wins along the way.

2:12Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

2:26Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today, Holly. The first question that 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? Oh, well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk all things supergoop and entrepreneurship and founder stories. Some of my favorite topics. And 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.

3:04And 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 I 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 twenties performing.

3:56And 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. For 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 in things and make the world a better place and do things that haven't been done before.

4:36And I looked at the category, and it was so incredibly sleepy, Nathan. And 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, dreaming 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. So 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.

5:22And 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 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. So you started Supergoop, was it 2007? Well, I started down this journey in more like 2004 or 2005. What I saw on 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.

6:12And 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. It was, you know, 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 chemist that I needed to work on this world's first chemical formula with no oxybenzone. Cause I know when kids are outside in sports and sweating and swimming, they really They needed a formula that would absorb into their skin and not trap the heat into their body.

6:57And 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 that's, we can talk more about that later. Yeah. Well, look, I'm curious because I think a lot of people would look at yourself and the success that you've had with Supergoop. You know, you guys, you know, recently now were valued by Black, for your deal with Blackrock, I think over 700 million.

7:41And so people look at the end product and - Yeah, Blackstone. Blackstone Private Equity. Yeah. How did it start? How do you create a beauty brand from nothing? How did you even bring that to life? Talk to me around the original idea and what happened and how long it took. Yeah. So you said you were kind of formulating in 2005. Yeah, I was formulating and I was writing a school curriculum. You remember I was a teacher, so I loved the eighth grade class of 17. I mean, the 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.

8:26And so I started by writing a curriculum and knocking on school doors and talking to parent councils 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. But 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.

9:14And, 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. And 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.

9:56I've never missed an opportunity to be on Capitol Hill and talking to the Congress and representatives that, and really it's 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. And 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.

10:38So 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? Like 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, you know, really pivotal moment, I think, in our brand is realizing that schools have oftentimes trouble buying pencils.

11:26And 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. The 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 I don't really say it failed because I think that, you know, this is important for founders to know.

12:10It'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 really doing great things, it happens drip by drip. You don't fill the whole bucket. And there are definitely little wins along the way that are inspiring. And they help keep things interesting and exciting. But 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 build this brand through retail, which, you know, at the time in 2005, 6, 7, DTC didn't really even exist.

13:04But I also was recognized by the American Academy of Dermatology for that school program that I wrote, which is tiny as it was, 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. So 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.

13:49And 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. And 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? I wanted, 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.

14:38And 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. And so, 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.

15:24They 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. And 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.

16:02And, um, but I also at the same time, and this is really an important thing to note is that I realized that kids and at this time I had had my daughter who is now 18. Um, 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 really model this good behavior. So the packaging, everything sort of took shape by keeping it sophisticated and clean and a white space and 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.

16:58And so when I thought about retail in that way, I thought, well, so we have Giggle, we have F.A.O. 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 all the major cities in America. 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.

17:52I 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 so that was kind of for 2007, I'd say 2007, 8, 9, 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. And so I had to focus on those retailers that were influential in every major city in the U.S., 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.

18:43Are you hesitating to take the next step in your e-commerce journey? Founder Plus has you covered. With proven frameworks tailored to your business needs for fast results, a supportive community of over 30 ,000 like-minded entrepreneurs, and weekly live mentorship sessions, Founder Plus is your key to success. Try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days and start building your dream business with confidence. You can visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. Talking about retail, tell me your Sephora story. What happened? My Sephora story.

19:18So it turns out, lucky me, the skincare buyer at Sephora was a new mom and 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 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.

20:03She 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. 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. I think you probably need to grow up a little.

20:42And again, the company was 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 in the back, you know, coming in the back door, trying to hide who I was to the, to the buyers in the front of, um, Stanley Korshak, I think it was. So I, I, uh, literally had to start thinking about, um, 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, um, most of what we know about that is in marketing today.

21:20So 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. 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.

21:58We 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 was, 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.

22:42And, um, and he, you know, he said they, they gave me the money that I needed at the moment. Um, 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, and, uh, and I had not been able to secure a PR firm. Um, 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.

23:24We were the first formula in the world without oxybenzone or parabens or propylene glycol or all of these controversial ingredients. We were clean before clean was kind of a thing. And, uh, and so I advocated to be in what was called the like organic natural section. Well, I got to this Vegas trade show and, uh, 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 where all these beautiful, clean, white brands that were like crushing it and everybody wanted to be upstairs.

24:05And 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. And at the end of the trade show, 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.

24:47And I, and I knew the name of course. Um, I was like, wait, what? And I didn't know that she was Roxanne Quimby. And then they were like, well, you know, the, the, she's the founder of Burt's Bees. And I, you know, immediately marched right over there. And I'm like, how did, how did you knit with me for 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 bee making her little knit socks and, and enjoying the conversation from, 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.

25:27But 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. If 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. um you know i would have never met roxanne and 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 to have the interest of a big beauty pr firm when i was still a pretty small brand and uh I mean, on the way to the airport in Vegas that day, I get a call from Nancy Berman, who was of Berman PR, the biggest beauty PR firm in New York.

26:25She said, I just got off the phone with Roxanne Quimby. I launched Birch Bees. And she said that I really need to spend some time with you. I'd like to come to Texas. Yeah. Wow. And then. And so then I said, 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 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.

27:10and 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 was 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 turned 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 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.

27:55And 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. Yeah. Wow. That's a crazy story. Thank you for sharing. So Holly, I'd love to 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. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, I think that nobody we've had to, you know, we had to educate first. And we spent quite a few years when I started building my team, talking about why SPF before we could even talk about why Supergoop, because people didn't feel like they needed to be wearing sunscreen every single day.