When a family friend is diagnosed with skin cancer, Holly Thaggard polls a bunch a skin care chemists and comes up with the Unseen Sunscreen.
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick in business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients, so here’s one of those.
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Dave Young:
Welcome back to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple, and we’re talking about empires. And so Stephen said we’re going to revisit one. And I think really, Stephen, what you’re doing is just testing my ability to remember shit. Supergoop is what you told me, that it rings a bell, but help me out here.
Stephen Semple:
This is a rerecording because we did one recording, which didn’t work out so well, and here I am in a hotel and you immediately informed me, “Boy, the microphone doesn’t sound so good, so we might be recording it again in the future.”
Dave Young:
It’ll be Supergoop part three. Oh, dear. On the plus side, the listener doesn’t remember this episode because it was never released.
Stephen Semple:
No, that’s true.
Dave Young:
Okay, good.
Stephen Semple:
That’s true because we had some real recording issues that we could not recover from.
Dave Young:
All right, we get another mulligan on Supergoop.
Stephen Semple:
Supergoop, for those who don’t know, is a sunscreen and-
Dave Young:
Oh, that makes sense.
Stephen Semple:
… basically-
Dave Young:
Now it sort of rings a bell. I think probably.
Stephen Semple:
It sort of rings a bell, does it? And in 2022, Supergoop did $250 million in sales, so that’s-
Dave Young:
That’s a lot of goop.
Stephen Semple:
That’s a lot of goop. It was started in 2007 by Holly Thaggard who’s from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And she has no background in cosmetics or sunscreens or any of those things, so again, another one of these empires that came from somebody completely from outside the industry.
Dave Young:
She wasn’t a Nickelodeon child star or anything like that?
Stephen Semple:
No, she was none of those things.
Dave Young:
I’m looking for something goop related.
Stephen Semple:
Well, that’ll come. That’ll come.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
She started in 2007, and the inspiration started in 2005 when she had a close family friend who was diagnosed with skin cancer. And what she found out was that basically 70% of people don’t wear sunscreen regularly, and you really need to be wearing it, it’s not just about the beach, you really need to be wearing it all the time. And this whole issue with this skin cancer diagnosis sent her down this path of doing a lot of research. She had an entrepreneurial bent. Both of her parents were entrepreneurs, and she started a business when she was in high school.
Dave Young:
Oh, wow.
Stephen Semple:
She played the harp.
Dave Young:
That was a bigger reminder to me than the goop.
Stephen Semple:
She started Holly the Harp in high school, and she would go on weekends to country clubs and things along this lines, and she charged $100 an hour because there was no competition. Here she’s this kid in high school charging a hundred bucks an hour going around playing the harp.
Dave Young:
Cool.
Stephen Semple:
Now, at one point she went into teaching and there was a bunch of things that fell apart on that. And there’s a certain point where her brother moves to the Dallas area and she’s helping her brother move. And she looks around and she’s like, wow, this is a pretty swanky neighborhood and there’s all these country clubs around, maybe I should move to Dallas and do my harp stuff in Dallas, which she did. And she created these direct mail pieces and did all sorts of research. And she did this for 10 years, and she got to the stage where her minimum rate for doing a gig was a thousand bucks.
Dave Young:
Wow.
Stephen Semple:
Now, she got married and all of a sudden she found hard to do the harp gig when you want to start a family because it’s evenings and weekends, right?
Dave Young:
Sure, yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Again, 2005 happens, this friend of the family is diagnosed with cancer, and she also realizes she’s thinking about her kids and they’re never using sunscreen other than when they go to the beach. Her original idea was she wanted to get sunscreens into schools, and she felt that there was this real lack of education around SPF. And she looked out there, and what she found was the stuff was not being worn day to day and most of the channels of distribution for sunscreen were seasonal. Sunscreen would come up in the summer and disappear in the winter and all this other stuff.
Dave Young:
It would be an island in the big box store, there’d be a sunscreen display.
Stephen Semple:
Exactly, especially back in 2005. And there’s basically two types of sunscreen. There’s mineral and there’s chemical, and the mineral basically sits on top of the skin and the chemical is absorbed. And there’s a problem of both of them. The mineral one gives you that… It sits on the skin, so it gives that oily sort of feeling. But the chemical one which is absorbed, a lot of the stuff is not good ingredients. It’s things like oxybenzone and polypropylene glycol and all sorts of parabens and all sorts of other stuff that frankly is really not good for you. Now, Holly learns that there’s this national sunscreen symposium, and she reaches out to every speaker. She basically gets the list of the speakers who are all these scientists and whatnot, and she reaches out to every single one to see if she can pick their brains. What she found was, hey, these chemists like to talk, so she was actually able to talk to a lot of these folks.
Now, what she found was not many were really interested in working on a formula, but one of the things she does learn is that there is an alternative to oxybenzone, and it’s avobenzone. And I may be terribly mispronouncing it, I’m not a chemist, but here’s the issue. It’s a lot more expensive, so that’s the reason why it’s not used. And so she starts telling this story to these chemists about what she wants to do is improve the world and bring this thing for kids. And she manages to find a chemist who will help her out on working on this. Now, what ends up happening is they go through all of these different iterations, like they do 15 to 20 changes over a couple of years before they get something that she feels like sits nice on the skin and all this other stuff.
And when she gets it, she finally goes, “This is super.” Now, the funny thing is when she was trying this stuff, she didn’t realize there was actual technical names for samples. She would just give it to people to try and say, “Could you try this goop out that I’ve been working on?”
Dave Young:
This is this weird goop just lather it on.
Stephen Semple:
This weird goop. And then when she lands on the stuff, she says, “Oh my God, this is super.” And she’d been calling it a goop all of a sudden, Supergoop.
Dave Young:
Supergoop.
Stephen Semple:
The Supergoop name is born. And she tested out by, she starts wearing it every day. She starts having her kids wearing it every day just to see how much do you like it? Now, remember, her first goal was to get this into schools, so she’s now got a formulation that works-
Dave Young:
Now in schools, I remember trying to send some vitamin C with my kids one time, and oh my God, it was like I’d been identified as a cartel, like you can’t send a thing to school.
Stephen Semple:
Well, and this is where things screw up for Holly, because Holly didn’t do a lot of research on this idea because sunscreen, chemical sunscreen is classified as a drug.
Dave Young:
There we go.
Stephen Semple:
And basically, for a drug to be taken to school, you need a prescription or a doctor’s note.
Dave Young:
You can’t just print that on the back of the container, of the packaging?
Stephen Semple:
She thinks, okay, well, that’s the public schools. Maybe I can get this started in the private schools, so she approaches a couple of private schools, and she gets four private schools willing to do this. Now, at this point, her credit cards are maxed out. She’s done some harp jobs. Also, when she was getting this manufactured, she managed to convince a manufacturer to not only manufacture, but also the warehouse, this stuff for her, and give her pretty good terms. She really sold this vision of helping the world and got a bunch of people to really buy in and help her out on it. But she’s really struggling, and she’s burning through her savings. She thinks, you know what? The school thing’s not working, maybe I need to get it into retail. She was going to go to a retail trade show, and she sits down with her dad at Thanksgiving, remember her dad’s entrepreneurial, and she asks her dad for an investment. It’s Thanksgiving dinner, 2008. There’s this other trade show that she wants to go to, and she needs 25 grand.
Now, at this point she’s doing $45,000 a year in sales, and her dad looks at her and says, “How are you going to scale this? Because even if you double your sales it’s still not enough. It’s still not enough.” Now at this point, she’s been out doing a few things, and she gets a telephone call from a skincare buyer at Sephora, Kim Holt, and the buyers tried the product. Holly had started getting it into a couple of little boutique retailers. One of them was this one called Kiggle, and she got it into this retailer. And Kim Holt had tried it, loved it, loved it, took it into the office, everyone loved it. And because she looked at it and she said, most sunscreens are built by serious doctors and aren’t fun and all this other stuff.
Dave Young:
Sure, yeah.
Stephen Semple:
And Sephora supports a of small manufacturers, things like that. But she said, “You know what? I don’t think you’re really ready for a meeting, but I wanted to call out to help you out and reach out and share a few things.” And the big thing that she told her is-
Dave Young:
Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.
[Empire Builders Ad]
Dave Young:
Let’s pick up our story where we left off. And trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.
Stephen Semple:
She said, “You know what? I don’t think you’re really ready for a meeting, but I wanted to call out to help you out and reach out and share a few things.” And the big thing that she told her is, you need to get press. It’s 2008, and getting these things launched is all about magazine press. And so basically she’s got this Sephora person who called, they got to get press, they got to do all these other things. There’s this retail show coming up. Her dad saying to her, “How are you going to scale?” There’s all these things happening. But her dad said, “You know what? I’m going to give you the money, but go get your elephant. I want you to think about landing an elephant.” She goes to Vegas, and she fought to be put in the organic area because of the fact that this sunscreen doesn’t use the nasty chemicals.
But she ended up being put in the middle of the homegrown brands. All the cool brands are on the second floor, not near her. She’s basically in the mom and pop cottage industry area. And she’s like, “Oh my God, this is terrible.” There’s no traffic. There’s nothing going on. And there’s a lady sitting next to her, it’s a five-day show, and she’s sitting knitting the whole time. It’s so slow that Holly learns how to knit.
Dave Young:
Oh, wow.
Stephen Semple:
That’s how boring all this is. The last day of the show, everyone’s packing up and she’s walking around and someone says to her, “Gosh, you got to be friends with Roxanne. She could sure help you.”
Dave Young:
Roxanne.
Stephen Semple:
Roxanne, Roxanne Quimby from Burt’s Bees.
Dave Young:
Also, a homegrown brand.
Stephen Semple:
Go back episode 20 and listen to Burt’s Bees, and you’ll get what we’re talking about here. She runs back to Roxanne and says, “Roxanne, I didn’t realize who you are. Could you help me?” And Roxanne says, “Absolutely. I’ve been waiting for you to ask because I’ve heard your whole story, and I think it’s amazing. And what you really need to do is hire a great PR person. Here’s my PR person. This is the founder of Behrman Communication, the largest in this space. I’ve worked with her for years. Give her a call.”
Dave Young:
Nice.
Stephen Semple:
And Holly gives her a telephone call, and she agrees to fly out to see her in Texas, but Holly thinks to herself, “No, I shouldn’t do that.” She says, “I’m going to come see you in New York, because I’m also meeting with other PR firms,” which she’s not. She wants to feel more important, and she takes her family with her to fill out the room, so it’s not her. She takes her family to fill out the room, and basically what ends up happening is the PR firm initially pitches her on this six month, because it’s seasonal, “Let’s do this six-month contract.” But Holly’s like, “No, I don’t want this to be seasonal.” She pushes back and says, “We need to do a twelve-month contract.” But here’s the crazy thing is, the deeply discounted rate that they’re going to do a twelve-month contract for her is $8,000 a month. And they’re only selling like $48,000 a year, and they’re in debt and all this other stuff. But you know what? This is the moonshot, go get your elephant, so she agrees to do it. They get lots of press.
They get in loot bags at a Ted conference, and they create this custom box for giveaways with the whole story of the business. And they basically go from $45,000 in sales to 150 the next year to 600,000 but they’re still not making money. But they feel they’re now big enough, it’s 2010, they feel like they’re now big enough. She reaches out to Sephora, doesn’t hear anything back. She decides to do this. She calls again and says, “Hey, I’m going to be in San Francisco meeting with a bunch of other people this week, can I drop in and see you?” She books a flight to San Francisco, books a hotel in San Francisco, basically freaked out, cried the whole way on the flight in terms of how much money she’s spending and all this, and sits and crosses her fingers, got samples and everything with her in the folks from Sephora call and say, “Hey, just got your call. Can we meet tomorrow morning?”
Dave Young:
Nice.
Stephen Semple:
And she’s like, “Absolutely, I would love to.”
Dave Young:
Let me rearrange some of my other appointments.
Stephen Semple:
Now, she has the meeting with Sephora. It goes great. And her dad taught her something. Her dad said, when something good happens, you should always follow it up with another action, so what does she decide to do? She picks up the phone and calls Nordstrom and says, “Hey, I’m out here meeting with Sephora, would you guys like to meet?” She gets a meeting with Nordstroms. Now, she freaks out when she gets back because there’s a long time till there’s a follow-up. But she also talks to her brother, and her brother is all excited about it, and he invests. He has a successful technology business. He invests $750,000 with her.
Dave Young:
Nice.
Stephen Semple:
He says, “Look, let’s make this happen.” Sephora calls back, it’s January 26th, and I love Holly. Holly is so committed to her vision. Sephora calls back and says, “We’re going to do it. We’re going to do a summer launch in all the stores cap end, which is the primo space for 12 weeks.”
Dave Young:
No, not good enough.
Stephen Semple:
Not good enough, right?
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
She’s like, “We’re not seasonal. We’re not seasonal. We want to be in with skin care. We do not want to be in with sunscreens.” She says, no. How many people would say no?
Dave Young:
Not many. Not many.
Stephen Semple:
Not many.
Dave Young:
They would say, oh, at least I’m there, right?
Stephen Semple:
Yes. She says, no, as flattering as it was. Now what they end up doing is they end up scaling back the size in terms of the number of stores and the number of space, but they give her something for 12 months because Sephora is starting this new wall called Skin Care Favorites. And they will allow her to have three products on that wall, but it puts them into skin care, which is where she wants to be. Later she gets into Nordstrom’s, and they also create this sunscreen wipe, it’s like this new toilette, so it’s new at the time. And here’s the crazy thing is, you know what we’ve talked about before, when something gets into a store, you still got to go into the store and check on it?
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
You can’t just leave it to chance. How many times have we heard this with different people? Same thing was happening with Holly, and Holly did this thing that she called reverse theft. She would go into a store with a bag full of towelettes, she’d see that it’s out of stock, she’d restock the shelf from the stuff that she took with her. Because her thing is, fine the store is selling that, and it’s costing her money, but if it’s not on the shelves, it can’t be sold. If it’s not being sold, it can’t catch on.
Dave Young:
It’s so popular that it’s impossible to get.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
By 2012, she’s now doing 1.2 million in sales. Growth continues to double, still not profitable. She had to go out and raise some money, and all of a sudden she’s out raising money and she gets this telephone call from the agent for Maria Sharapova who asks, “Could Maria invest? She really likes your product. She uses it all the time when she’s playing tennis because it doesn’t get her hands all greasy and everything else. Would it be okay if Maria invests?” “Sure, can we say Maria’s an investor?”
Dave Young:
Well, I could probably kick my brother to the curb make room for you.
Stephen Semple:
They ended up getting a meeting with Maria. 2018 goes to $40 million. And basically at 2019, they got very profitable. In 2022, they broke through $250 million. And one of the other things is that she then cycled back with this profitability, she cycled back and in many states, got the laws to change around sunscreen to get it in the schools. And they actually now give away sunscreen to the schools for free.
Dave Young:
Nice. A little goop station in the back of the homeroom.
Stephen Semple:
Now what ends up happening, when you think about what her vision was at the beginning was, I want to get kids wearing sunscreen. She ended up going full circle, but Dave never forgetting that vision. All of a sudden, okay, it went retail, got profitable, making this money, with this money lobbied the laws, and now giving it back to the schools.
Dave Young:
Solves the original reason she started the business.
Stephen Semple:
Solves the original reason why she-
Dave Young:
I love that.
Stephen Semple:
… started the business. The more I heard about the story, the more I loved… I loved Holly’s moxie in terms of, no, I’m going to come see you flying out saying, “Hey, I’m going to be in town.” But the real moxie was when Sephora said, “Great, we’ll put you in the store, 12 weeks end cap.” And she said, “No, that’s not my vision.”
Dave Young:
I love this. I love this story. There’s so many things I love about it. Having good advisors, having a dad that can give you some sound, just strategic, tactical, getting meetings, all those things, just finding people that will go along for the ride with you. That’s great.
Stephen Semple:
And even the thing, when something good happens, and it’s sat in my head a fair bit lately, when something good happens, immediately do something. Because you’ve got that positive energy, you’re feeling confident. The phone call to Nordstrom was probably so powerful because she literally walked out of the meeting and is walking on cloud nine, right?
Dave Young:
Yeah. That’ll come through.
Stephen Semple:
I’m going to get another one. That’ll all come through. There’s a lesson we can all take something good happens, do something else. Ride that wave. But don’t be afraid to stick to your long-term vision.
Dave Young:
I love this story. I didn’t forget all of it.
Stephen Semple:
Only a little bit.
Dave Young:
The Supergoop saga. It’s great.
Stephen Semple:
And even the name of that I found interesting because she was calling it goop and decided to call it… Because a lot of people go, well, you don’t want to call it goop because goop’s not really a positive name, but Supergoop is a fun memorable name.
Dave Young:
Well, I hope this one sticks and we don’t have to do it a third time.
Stephen Semple:
Hopefully the second time’s the charm.
Dave Young:
Maybe we should release all three. Oh, I’m sorry. There’s not three yet.
Stephen Semple:
We release all three and let people vote on which one they like the best.
Dave Young:
Absolutely. Well, thank you for bringing the Supergoop story to the Empire Builders Podcast, Stephen.
Stephen Semple:
All right, thanks David.
Dave Young: Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big fat juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.
