The Alchemy of Branding

Summary

Podcast Title: From the Ground Up
Host: Diana Ransom & Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
Episode: The Alchemy of Branding
Release Date: December 16, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of From the Ground Up, Inc. Magazine’s Executive Editor Diana Ransom and Editor-at-Large Christine Lagorio-Chafkin sit down with Tom Rinks, a seasoned serial entrepreneur renowned for his expertise in branding. Tom shares his journey from humble beginnings in a furniture store to creating iconic brands like Sunbum and the infamous Taco Bell Chihuahua. The conversation delves deep into the nuances of branding, the challenges of building and protecting a brand, and the insights he's garnered over decades in the industry.

Tom Rinks: A Branding Savant

Tom Rinks’ introduction paints him as a multifaceted entrepreneur with a knack for creating memorable brands. Known primarily for founding Sunbum, a successful sunscreen brand, Tom has also made significant contributions to other ventures, including the creation of the Taco Bell Chihuahua mascot and his branding agency, Rinks Kineti.

Notable Quote:
"I really trust my instincts. If I think somebody's cool or authentic, and if I see something I really like, I go after it." — Tom Rinks [24:27]

Early Lessons in Branding and Sales

Tom’s foray into branding began in an unexpected place—a furniture store in the 1980s. Faced with the need to make sales commissions to support his growing family, he honed his ability to read people and tailor his sales pitch accordingly. This early experience was foundational, teaching him the importance of understanding consumer motivations and leveraging that knowledge to build strong brands.

Notable Quote:
"The most important, probably the most important experience I've ever had was just sales experience, learning how to get people to buy something that I needed them to buy, to put food on the table." — Tom Rinks [04:00]

Creating Sunbum: Authenticity Meets Surf Culture

Sunbum emerged from Tom’s recognition of a gap in the sunscreen market: a lack of authentic, surf-oriented products made by beach enthusiasts for themselves. By immersing himself in surf communities, particularly in St. Augustine, Florida, Tom ensured that Sunbum resonated with genuine surfers, lending authenticity and credibility to the brand.

Notable Quote:
"There was no sunscreen that was being made, that was... made by beach people for themselves, for their family, to protect themselves... making it for yourself, it changes everything." — Tom Rinks [20:37]

The Taco Bell Chihuahua Saga: Triumph and Turmoil

One of Tom’s most notable branding ventures was the creation of the Psycho Chihuahua, which caught the attention of Taco Bell. Initially, the collaboration promised to elevate the brand significantly. However, unforeseen challenges arose when Taco Bell chose to partner with another agency, leading to a legal battle. Despite the setbacks, Tom and his partner Joseph Shields emerged victorious, securing a $30 million judgment plus interest.

Notable Quote:
"Sometimes there's no second chances... if I see something I really like, I go after it." — Tom Rinks [24:27]

Transition to Branding Agency: Rinks Kineti

Post the Taco Bell incident, Tom co-founded Rinks Kineti, a branding agency focusing on creating authentic and resonant brands across various industries. Partnering with talented individuals like Renee Canetti, Tom emphasized the importance of collaboration and leveraging unique talents to build brands that stand out in saturated markets.

Notable Quote:
"Finding people with magic, they bring people with magic. That's the game." — Tom Rinks [24:27]

Made by Dentists: Revolutionizing Oral Care

Expanding his branding prowess, Tom ventured into the oral care industry with Made by Dentists. Identifying a significant gap in the market for authentic, dentist-founded toothpaste brands, he aimed to make toothpaste "cool" by infusing it with surf and skate culture aesthetics. Despite initial setbacks with unconventional flavors, Tom's commitment to authenticity and quality helped the brand gain traction in mass retail environments like Target.

Notable Quote:
"If you have a great product, it's going to be great and it's going to work... if it's not great, it's just not going to work." — Tom Rinks [53:44]

Branding Philosophy: Product Over Marketing

Highlighting his core philosophy, Tom advises entrepreneurs to prioritize product quality over marketing expenditures. He believes that a superior product will naturally attract customers and generate word-of-mouth promotion, making excessive marketing investments unnecessary.

Notable Quote:
"Put all of your money into the product, all of your money into the point of sale, how you look on the shelf... the product itself is really, really, really great." — Tom Rinks [53:29]

Advice for Entrepreneurs

Tom emphasizes the importance of authenticity, leveraging instincts, and surrounding oneself with talented individuals who share a visionary outlook. He encourages entrepreneurs to trust their gut feelings, act decisively, and focus on creating products that genuinely meet consumer needs.

Notable Quote:
"Sometimes there's no next time, there's no timeouts. Sometimes it's now or never... if I see something I really like, I go after it." — Tom Rinks [25:31]

Conclusion

Tom Rinks' journey underscores the delicate balance between creativity, authenticity, and strategic execution in branding. From navigating legal battles to pioneering authentic brands in diverse industries, his insights provide invaluable lessons for entrepreneurs aiming to build enduring and resonant brands.

Final Thoughts:
As Diana Ransom aptly summarizes, Tom’s emphasis on product quality over flashy marketing remains a timeless piece of advice in an era dominated by noisy digital channels. His career serves as a testament to the power of authenticity and the relentless pursuit of excellence in branding.

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Notable Quotes Compilation:

1. "I really trust my instincts. If I think somebody's cool or authentic, and if I see something I really like, I go after it." — Tom Rinks [24:27]

2. "The most important, probably the most important experience I've ever had was just sales experience, learning how to get people to buy something that I needed them to buy, to put food on the table." — Tom Rinks [04:00]

3. "There was no sunscreen that was being made, that was... made by beach people for themselves, for their family, to protect themselves... making it for yourself, it changes everything." — Tom Rinks [20:37]

4. "Sometimes there's no second chances... if I see something I really like, I go after it." — Tom Rinks [24:27]

5. "If you have a great product, it's going to be great and it's going to work... if it's not great, it's just not going to work." — Tom Rinks [53:29]

6. "Put all of your money into the product, all of your money into the point of sale, how you look on the shelf... the product itself is really, really, really great." — Tom Rinks [53:29]

7. "Sometimes there's no next time, there's no timeouts. Sometimes it's now or never... if I see something I really like, I go after it." — Tom Rinks [25:31]

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This comprehensive summary captures the essence of Tom Rinks' insights on branding, his entrepreneurial journey, and the valuable lessons he imparts to aspiring business leaders.

Transcript

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[Diana Ransom]

Diana Christine.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

It is a great day here and I am wishing I was at the beach. What's your most memorable beach story?

[Diana Ransom]

I'd have to say it was the time I went camping with my family at the beach and I remember my mom getting horribly sunburned. Like horribly where her entire body was red and then she had to spend an entire week in a tent with no air conditioning. Oh, right. No, like she got sunburned the day one and it was just like she was just fried the entire week. And I just won't forget that I felt her pain in a way that still sits with me today.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

So you don't forget your sunscreen now?

[Diana Ransom]

Oh no, totally. I'm all aboard on the sunscreen train. This is from the ground up. I'm Inc. Executive Editor Diana Ransom, and.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

I'm Editor at Large Christine Ligorio Chefkin. Today's Episode the Alchemy of Branding.

[Tom Rinks]

So.

[Diana Ransom]

Christine, for today's episode, I spoke with Tom Rinks. He's a serial entrepreneur, but you might know him best as the founder of Sunbum. But he's also done a bunch of other things. Like he's like the branding savant behind the Chihuahua dog, the Taco Bell Chihuahua dog, Yokiro Dog, yo quiero Taco Bell. He has another company called Made by Dentists. He's also consulted with many other companies along the way, helping them build their brands.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

How do you become a branding whiz? How do you get into that?

[Diana Ransom]

Well, I Think it's true for a lot of people that he kind of fell into it. But what's interesting about Tom is that he ended up basically cutting his teeth in this branding world by selling furniture, which was pretty bizarre. But if you actually hear him talk about it, it was in 80s, he was in his 20s, he had a growing family and he worked at this furniture store and he was just trying to raise money to like, you know, basically survive. You know, he made money on sales commissions, so he was really motivated to sell a couch to whoever walked in. Sure. But that helped him kind of like get a read of people and helped him understand, like, who the person is, what their motivations are, how people tick in a way that was, I think, foundational for his entire branding career. And so he still like leans back on that experience. And though some of his terminology or maybe some of his methodology today might seem dated, it was helpful for him just learning how to basically build a brand and to sell going forward.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

That's great. I can't wait to hear it.

[Tom Rinks]

It's really the most important, probably the most important experience I've ever had was just sales experience, learning how to get people to buy something that I needed them to buy, to put food on the table. And so you really, it was a desperation of, okay, I gotta figure this out.

[Diana Ransom]

So what did you do? You like, learned how to read people?

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, yeah, Learned how to read people. Learned what certain words they wanted to hear, certain buzzwords that would click their mind to say, okay, this is something I want. So if I use the example, if they were sitting on a leather sofa, if, you know, I ended up being the manager there and kind of being the architect of who goes in for what person.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. Oh, wait, so like one salesman would go talk to the consumer who. Depending on who it was.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. So if it was salesperson. Yeah. So if it was a girl on a leather sofa, I would have a guy go over there, pretty good looking guy over there, and he would use words like, you know, the leather is soft and supple and sexy and all those kind of buzzwords. I'm going to try to remember some of them. But if it was a guy sitting over there, I'd send a woman, she would talk about how strong it is and rugged, tough Bud's words that he wanted to have a woman say about his sofa. So that was kind of going to be a reflection of him in his house. And if it was a family, I would send an older guy or older woman in and they would talk about how you know, where it's like iron and it's a great investment long term and all those kind of things. So I kind of quickly figured out some of that, some of the way people's feelings were, and I turned that into consumer products throughout my career.

[Diana Ransom]

Gosh, that's fascinating. And what a great lesson to learn so early. So how did you end up with T shirts in a T shirt company?

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, I was selling furniture and I was at the beach in Holland, Michigan and saw some surfers out there on the lake. And there was really no waves on there. There's some winds.

[Diana Ransom]

There were people surfing on a lake.

[Tom Rinks]

Well, they get wind, swells and actually there is a surf community out there. When the wind is right, there's some breaks. All my kids learned how to surf on Lake Michigan.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, wow.

[Tom Rinks]

I saw that, thought it was funny. I had done some cartooning, so I went home and drew some cartoons of people trying to surf on Lake Michigan. And then I didn't know what I was going to do with it. Put it on mugs or make a calendar. I had no idea. But I ended up putting it one on a T shirt. And then from my furniture store place on my break, I called a company called Myers, who was like a Target before Target.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh.

[Tom Rinks]

So they carried groceries, but they also carried a lot of everything else. A lot of apparel. And so they had about 100 stores. So I told them I was a surfware rep and I wanted to show them the spring line and they gave me an appointment.

[Diana Ransom]

Nice. Fake it till you make it. Right?

[Tom Rinks]

Total fake it till you make it.

[Diana Ransom]

So you got the appointment, the buyer bought the shirts, but like 1800 of them, right? Yes.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

Some gargantuan number. We're not going to get into details about, like how you were able to manage that, but basically, how did that one shirt turn into a whole company?

[Tom Rinks]

I did a couple seasons of that and then I just got really lucky that the Fab Five, who were the Michigan five freshmen, it was that era and they all went on to pro basketball careers. So they were all there as freshmen. It was the biggest thing. They were changing college basketball as we knew it. They had the longer shorts, they had the attitude, they had the black socks. And I saw that and I was looking around at Meijer and saw all they had was Michigan basketball shirts with an XXL in the middle or clipart ball going through a hoop. And I was like, why isn't anybody doing something with them? So I went to University of Michigan on a day off, talked to the Athletic director, who at the time handled the licensing, got the license to do a shirt like that. I'm still working at the furniture store. Made a shirt called Slam Dance that had a guy that looked like Chris Weber hanging on the rim. And I took it into a couple of stores down there, Moe's and Emden and Orick's Bookstore. And they all loved it and bought it. And I sold about 10,000 shirts that season. That gave me enough to quit the furniture store. And then I started getting other licenses. And I ended up with about 450 college licenses. But it took some time. It was just me.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. You ended up working with Joseph, right? Joseph Shields.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, I found him. I mean, that's part of the thing I've been super lucky about is finding really, really talented people and spotting them and wanting to work with them. I've never really done a whole lot by myself. I've always just pulled up next to somebody that I saw that was a super talent, whatever field they were in. And one day, few years into New Agenda was the name of the company. It's still around. I saw this guy's artwork being printed on one of the presses. And I was like, what is this? Who is this? And it was amazing cartooning. And they said, the guy that just walked out of here. So I chased him into the parking lot and said, hey, man, can I come by your office and talk to you? And so I went to his office, saw the stuff he was doing, and it was like, okay, this guy's a superstar. And I knew how to sell. He knew how to draw. Okay, let's work together. You draw the T shirts and all that, and I'll get them sold.

[Diana Ransom]

So you too came up with the idea for the psycho chihuahua?

[Tom Rinks]

Yes.

[Diana Ransom]

That one idea sent you on a path that is so outrageous that I'd love to have you talk about it for a bit.

[Tom Rinks]

Okay.

[Diana Ransom]

What happened?

[Tom Rinks]

He had a couple of other lines that he was doing. And I kind of, as an artist, I wanted to participate. I knew I couldn't draw it as good as he could. But I wanted to come up with the idea. Cause I was always really good at the creative part. One day I saw Madonna holding, I think it was Chiquita was the name of her dog. And it was the first time. I mean, now, you know, after Legally Blonde and Paris Hilton's Chihuahua. They later became an accessory at Beverly Hills Chihuahua and all that. But at the time, Chihuahuas were just hated dogs. Nobody liked them. They were ugly and yappy.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Tom Rinks]

And it wouldn't really think of it as a mascot or something anybody would want to wear. But I saw what was happening in the industry and it was all bigness. It was big dog sportswear. It was no fear. It was a lot of tough talk. And I thought it's about to shift. And it usually shifts after the dads start wearing it. You know, the cool kids start wearing it, the younger brothers try to copy, and then when the dads start wearing the brand, it's over. And so I was seeing that across the board on a lot of these big aggressive shirts. And I thought it's going to go small. And so I told him about it. He loved it. He drew up at Chihuahua. We printed a bunch of T shirts and took a few lines out of some of his stuff and some of my stuff. We got some reps across the country. They grabbed it, tested it, and Psycho Chihuahua was just. Everybody wanted it. You know, it was really on the point.

[Diana Ransom]

So you ended up at a licensing show and then you met a rep from Taco Bell.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

And then, I mean, I feel like our listeners probably understand what's about to happen next. So this became the Yokiro Taco Bell.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, like right away they were looking for a mascot. Everybody at the time, all the other fast food places were selling merchandise. Jack in the box was selling merchandise. Believe it or not, there was a line called MC Kids in Target that was all McDonald's branded clothing and it was selling a lot. So they. Everybody was looking for a way to make extra money in their merchandising. Ed was there scouting around, looking for an idea for a mascot. Came across us, Psycho Chihuahua. You know, we had a lot of demographics. We were in a lot of big retailers and our demographics were his demographics, you know, 18 to 24 year old boys. And we gave him a bunch of merchandise and he took it home on the plane with the President, who was actually at the show as well. I didn't meet him, but he talked to him about it. And then we got a call back that said they wanted to talk to us some more. They didn't want it originally because they thought, you know, a Chihuahua hooked to food would be bad and they didn't really see the trends. But then they tested it with some of their audiences and it really blew up. And from the beginning, ours was a cartoon. But from the beginning, we know when we started writing the commercials for them that it had to be a live dog. A cartoon would not be funny. So we took all the characteristics and mannerisms of our character that was a lot of particular things. Put that into commercials for them and wrote the first three commercials and storyboarded them and traveled back and forth to Irvine. They came to our place in Michigan. It was amazing time. Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

You were sort of thinking at the time, I'm sure, that, like, this is going to be it. Like Taco Bell is going to be a client and this is going to be huge. And then next thing you know, nothing. Radio silence.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. I mean, it was talk of super bowl commercials and it was. They gave us the schedule, we designed all the packaging, we designed all the toys, we had designed the tray liners and the uniforms. So it was a big deal, especially for two guys, two black sheep like Joe and I, who are still trying to prove our worth, probably creatively. Joe came from a really successful family and he was the artist, you know, who went off to be a cartoonist. His brothers, I think, were lawyers and doctors. And I kind of felt the pressure too, to do something big. So we were really excited. And it was scheduled to come out right behind that first Batman. I forget who was in it, but. And then we just, you know, the phone just stopped ringing and they wouldn't pick up our calls anymore. We had an agent out of New York that was handling everything, thank God. So she had been tracking everything and had the contracts and everything, so. But then they just stopped calling.

[Diana Ransom]

Right, so then you sued.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, yeah, we thought they weren't gonna do it. And then we saw the commercials.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, right, right. They went with another agency and they got the commercials done. Yeah, with the Chihuahua and everything.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, everything. I mean, there were our commercials and fast forward, you know, in the court, you know, everybody was saying. And all the documents and all the discovery, all of our stuff was in the offices of the other creative agency. And they had memos. And the guy that actually met us the first time, he was a. His name was Ed Alfaro and He was a 25 year veteran at Taco Bell. And he ended up quitting over it all in a letter to the President saying it was because he couldn't believe we were stealing it from these two guys in Michigan. So it was a crazy wow. And then we never thought we would get through to trial, but.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah, you thought you'd settle?

[Tom Rinks]

Thought we'd settle, but they never offered us anything. We would have settled for sure because we didn't really have any money to fight it. But a local law firm, Warner North, Kristen Judd, took it on contingency, so we didn't have to pay anything. And they saw the Evidence and knew if they could get to court, they would win.

[Diana Ransom]

Great.

[Tom Rinks]

We would win. So it was an amazing experience. So just all the great lawyers that Taco Bell had from New York and Chicago. Chicago. And I got some really amazing lessons of how federal court and trials like that work.

[Diana Ransom]

Wow. Flash forward. You got the judgment. It was, you know, I think you ended up with the judgment was 30 million. And then they. The judge tacked on like an extra 12 million for interest payments. So well deserved. And I think it was like five years. You had to sort of endure this, right?

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, it was brutal, but it was super good experience. And yeah, we just got the contract. There was no, like damages for hurt feelings or anything like that. It was just what the contract was that we originally had through our agent.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay.

[Tom Rinks]

That's what they awarded us.

[Diana Ransom]

So if they gave the money they said they were going to give you. That's.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. But yeah, we had no idea because we got a little percentage of the toys. And I think they sold like 90 million of those dogs.

[Diana Ransom]

I mean, it was toy dogs. It was a real. It was a real thing. Like the Chihuahua was everywhere.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, it was a big deal.

[Diana Ransom]

So anyway, congratulations for getting through that. But you also, in the interim, met Renee Canetti. Your father was a minister.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

Right. And so you were making these Christian films for in that World. And then you met Rene. How did that all work out? And how did you start a branding agency from that?

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, I had stopped listening at church a long time ago, but my ex wife wanted us to have our kids to go there, and she wanted to go. So we were at a church and she. This pastor came and started speaking. He was opening up his own church. He was probably late 20s. And he just was the first time somebody was like me that was actually speaking that was living in my world and knew about the Beastie Boys and knew about skating and all that.

[Diana Ransom]

You mentioned Beastie Boys while you're in his sermon?

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

That's cool.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. So it's just like, okay, if I'm gonna. If we're gonna go, we need to go with somebody like this. I want my boys listening to this guy. So he started a church and I kind of became friends with him. And then he was wanting to clean up, like his cassette ministry. So he was going to hire this guy to get rid of the ums and the ahs. And it was that moment that came through the window. It was just like, no, you do it, man. You could do it. And so I sold New Agenda, the college sports apparel company. And then I spent a couple of weeks, a couple of months that summer behind Steak n Shake parking lot on 28th street, gazing out my car window, trying to figure out, okay, I know.

[Diana Ransom]

This is what you're doing.

[Tom Rinks]

What am I going to do? How am I going to do this? You know? And there was no itunes or. Or any of that yet. But I knew the attention span was really short, so we made little. We ended up making on film, shooting film, little 10 minute videos of some of his sermons. And Renee, I was using him because he was a couple of doors down at an agency. He was helping me with the packaging. And again, it was like, wow, this guy is a superstar. He was incredible. He was working for Adidas back in Copenhagen and other big brands there. I was just head and shoulders above any designer I'd ever seen. But we couldn't afford him because it was a nonprofit. So I told him, this is it. I'm. This is my last time I can use it because I can't afford $400 an hour for an artist. And he said, you're going to hire somebody? I said, yeah. He said, hire me. And it was like $40,000 a year, so it was a cut in pay. And I said, what in the world would you. He was an atheist. He grew up hating. Hating Christians. You know, it was a joke, making fun of them.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Tom Rinks]

And he just said, you know, I like you, I want to work with you. And if there was an on ramp for me to spirituality of some sort, I know how to do that. So he was super great to have him in there as an atheist helping us make these things because my instincts wouldn't have been the same as his.

[Diana Ransom]

Right, right. It's sort of a good yin and yin yang, I guess. So that ended up. You all started this Rinks Kineti branding agency. Yeah. And you were working with brands like Rock and Republic, even Dileon Tequila, which probably wasn't called De Leon at the time, or maybe it was.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, we. Yeah, yeah. That was from the very beginning. We. We started that. I started that with Renee for a friend, Brent Hawking, who asked us to. He wanted to get into the tequila business, and so he asked us to help him build a brand. So we went with him to Mexico and figured out.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Tom Rinks]

What we could do to make it go. And it was very successful. And Brent was really smart at the business side of it. So again, he knew that world. He was kind of a mobster himself. Kind of. So he fit the bill for a tough.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, for the tequila.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, for A tough brand like that.

[Diana Ransom]

How did Sunbum come into existence?

[Tom Rinks]

Sunbum again was a. We were traveling a lot. Yeah, To Los Angeles, back and forth for Rock and Republic and like, what year was this? It's like 2007, 2008. Somewhere in there. We were traveling a lot and I had little kids, so. And he had a little. Couple little kids. Somebody from my kids elementary school knew what we did and asked me to come in and check out this business they were trying to start. And it was a sunscreen business and. But that was not working and they were losing a lot of money. He wanted me, he was the owner of it, and he just wanted me to look at it and say if there's anything there or if you should just dump it. So I looked at it, then looked at the market and saw the big gaping hole for sunscreen, for an authentic sunscreen brand and told him we could build one for him if he wanted it. And usually we would build a brand and then we'd get a little piece of it and then move on. You know, they'd pay us for the work and then we'd get a piece of the company. And that was what we did. And most of the companies, if not all the companies sold. So it was really a smart way to do it in retrospect. But so they asked us if we do it. We built a line for them, we got a piece of it, and then we took it to surf expo in January 2010. And it was. Flew right from day one off of it.

[Diana Ransom]

And Sunbum's whole ethos was more like surf culture first. And I think that that was probably important. Right. While you're trying to build this brand, you wanted to tap into kind of this subculture.

[Tom Rinks]

Totally, yeah. There was no fubu, if you will, you know, for us, by us. Damon, the guy from Shark Tank, right. Started for us by us. But there was no sunscreen that was being made, that was. That was made by beach people for themselves, for their family, to protect themselves, and everything was being made for somebody else. So when you do that and you're not making it for yourself, it changes everything. So if you're making it for your own kids, you care about the ingredients, you care about everything about the brand. And so that really shines through. And so the first thing I had to do was find a group of beach people who were living that lifestyle.

[Diana Ransom]

You found some beach people.

[Tom Rinks]

So I found them and they became the authenticity. I wasn't the cool surfer guy, they were. So that's Why I wouldn't be out front because nothing that I did surfing.

[Diana Ransom]

In Michigan doesn't feel authentic.

[Tom Rinks]

No offense, Michigan surfers, because they're cool crowd. But it didn't need to come from Michigan, it needed to come from Florida.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay, so you went to Florida to find your surfers?

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

How'd that go?

[Tom Rinks]

It was amazing. It was amazing. It was just.

[Diana Ransom]

What'd you do? Were you just like, I'm going to go to a beach and find some?

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. I mean, surfing has so become, you know, what was so attractive about surfing, at least to me growing up, was the counterculture. The long hair, the skinny, the tats, the van life, all that kind of thing. Not the sport, it was just the life that was surrounding the freedom, the free love of that lifestyle that they didn't sell out, they weren't accountants. They just worked as waiters or waitresses or just made enough money so they could surf and be on the beach. And they didn't care about houses or cars or any of it. Luckily, I found that group in St. Augustine, Florida. I saw a photo that a wedding photographer took of one of her friends surfing. She was 19. Hayley Welsh was the name of the photographer. I loved it so much. I was like, who is this person? And do you know more people like this? And she said, yeah. I said, okay, rent a house in St. Augustine and bring those people and we're gonna have to do a photo shoot. And she brought all the characters that everybody has seen in Sunbum since day one. And they all work for the company now still. They all just rose in the ranks and they're amazing.

[Diana Ransom]

Sunbum's also carried at surf shops. There's a surf shop in where I go with my family in Duck, North Carolina. And I think that that's the only brand that they carry is Sunbum Sunscreen. So it seems like legit surfer oriented sunscreen.

[Tom Rinks]

It is. I just put the pieces together. But they are the ones that are testing it. They're the ones who are calling all the shots that are doing the events. They know what's authentic and they really care.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay, so the surfers knew where the surf shops were and that's how you tied into the distribution.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, you see surf reps that carried other brands and then they, you know, pick up your brand as well. So when you're at the surf expo in Florida, any trade show, you're looking for reps. And so the reps see a line they like and they have a bag of stuff they're already going to that surf shop or all the surf shops in their area. And so they pick up another line so they can make a little bit more money. So we were at the beginning. You're at the bottom of the bag. You know, they've got Hurley and O'Neill and all the big brands where they're making their money, and you're just this little thing to maybe give them a few extra bucks for gas money or food, especially at sunscreen at the time. And then slowly it just blew up.

[Diana Ransom]

You mentioned the idea of, like, basically finding good people, you know, people who are kind of have this magic and kind of leveraging those people and that expertise in a way throughout your career. How do you do that? Like, how do you know somebody's magical? How do you create that magic together?

[Tom Rinks]

Well, the first part, how do I see it? I don't know. I just trust my instincts, you know, kind of like Rick Rubin's great book. And when he talks about, he just has a aesthetic and an ear that other people also really like, you know what I mean? So he just trusts if he likes it, there's a lot of people that are going to like it. And that's proven true. And I guess through my career, it's the same way. I really trust my instincts. If I think somebody's cool or authentic. And cool doesn't mean surfer, you know, just in their category. If they're unique and. Or super driven, I really trust my instincts on that. And so when I see them, I just don't hesitate. Just like Joe chasing them out to the parking lot or any of them. One of my favorite quotes that I look at all the time is, sometimes there are no second chances. Sometimes there's no next time, there's no timeouts. Sometimes it's now or never. As a kid, I had some points in my life where I didn't move, and that was my only chance to move. And I really regretted it. So if I see something I really like, I go after it.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah, I think that's true. You can't sort of second guess yourself.

[Tom Rinks]

No.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

Can we stop here for a moment? I want to explore a little more deeply that comment that Tom made about putting the pieces together and finding authentic people to work with.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. So you could hear from his answer, he's all about trusting his instincts and not hesitating and, you know, finding these people and, like, realizing that this person or this audience or this. Whoever he's working with has the stuff, like, has the magic. And then from there, it's no second chances. There's no redos. There's just go. Yeah.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

These sound like lyrics to rock and an old rock and roll song. It's just go, no second chances. But anyway, it's interesting. I mean, he's kind of remained behind the scenes so much and let others represent the brand, even though he's played such a major role behind the redesigning of the piece.

[Diana Ransom]

Well, he'll be the first person to tell you that he himself is not co. Which I totally admire. You know, like, he knows he's not cool, even though, you know, probably he is. But in the end, like, he finds the cool person or like, he finds the magic. And that's kind of how he's been able to cultivate such a branding career.

[Stephen Marsh]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

It seemed like with Sunbun, though, he did have more of a personal stake.

[Diana Ransom]

Well, he was very interested in surfing, like, so he was a surfer in Michigan. He grew up surfing. I didn't know that one surfs in Michigan.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

There are big sand dunes in Michigan.

[Diana Ransom]

Well, you learn something new every day.

[Tom Rinks]

Cool.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. Yeah. So surfing was a big deal in Michigan, and then from there, you know, obviously there's surfer culture everywhere. There's in, you know, Florida, obviously, you know, he went there and found some folks in Cocoa beach and just made the magic happen. But of course, surfers in California, surfers in North Carolina, surfers on Long Island. Like, there's definitely surfing culture. And what I think he did really successfully was just find that group of people that were, like, leading edge and that would. That really loved the product in a way that. In the way that kind of like, spoke volumes.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

Yeah. But he did eventually let it go, right?

[Diana Ransom]

That's true. He eventually did sell the company in 2019. But we'll get into that after the break.

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[Diana Ransom]

So obviously Sunbum worked out pretty famously. The company was acquired by SC Johnson in 2019. What happened to the business? What did you do after it was acquired?

[Tom Rinks]

I helped put a brand book together for them, a style guide, because they were so great at basically promising. Out of all the big companies that were looking to buy us, they were the ones that were like we'll take care of it. You know, they're family owned so they weren't worried about short term, they were worried about long term brands. They were going to keep our crew going the way it was going. And I know people promised that, but they've really lived up to that. Kept all the crew grown, it kept the core group of surfers and beach people and added to it and it's just become a really great company. So I just put a brand guide together for them for a year and a half so that they would know how to carry it. Because it's my baby and some of my babies have been ruined after they sell. Yeah, and then I don't even want to talk about them anymore. But they were really beautiful at the time. And then somebody buys them and then wrecks them because you want to make.

[Diana Ransom]

Sure there's a good steward.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, they don't understand what's, what's behind the public's interest in the company.

[Diana Ransom]

I mean, that's happened a lot. Like, Honesty was a good example of a company that was acquired by Coca Cola, and then they ended up closing it a few short years later. So it definitely happens, and it's sad.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. So I did that for 18 months, and then I moved on because I was too big there, too, a little bit, because I was the founder still. Still standing around, the leader. And there was new leadership. There was starting to be some grumblings of, you know, tom wouldn't do it this way. Did you ask Tom? It's like, I don't need to ask Tom. I'm the boss.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Tom Rinks]

So it was time for me to go. I needed to go.

[Diana Ransom]

So after that, did you go back into the parking lot and, like, stare out at the abyss again?

[Tom Rinks]

No, I went to my house and stared out at the water, relaxed a little bit, started writing a book, which is some of my experiences, and thought that would be cool. But then I kind of met somebody in a group of people that was like, oh, crap, I gotta do this now.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. So let's talk about what you're doing now. Made by dentists.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. So everybody. Everybody asked me that, like, toothpaste, really? Like, oral care. You went into oral care?

[Diana Ransom]

Well, I mean, sunscreen, oral care. I mean, it's not that shocking.

[Tom Rinks]

I mean, sunscreen wasn't cool when we got there. Sunscreen, now sunscreen is pretty cool.

[Diana Ransom]

So you're making toothpaste cool.

[Tom Rinks]

I think cool is probably. Yeah, I think so. Making it. Making it accessible, Breaking down some of the barriers. Like, maybe I did. Maybe I did in spirituality, Maybe I did in some of the other brands that I've created is breaking that down. So people. People that don't normally want to talk about it will talk about it. One of my old sun bum reps put me down as a reference for this oral care company that was looking to, you know, open up in America. And they. She got the job. And then they asked me to be on the board, and I was like, sure, four meetings a year. That's fine. I can do that for a tiny, tiny little piece or whatever. And then I met them.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Tom Rinks]

And then I met the two sisters, and it was like, so they're the.

[Diana Ransom]

Sisters who are dentists?

[Tom Rinks]

Yes, dentists. Who are dentists. And then I met them and heard what they were wanting to do and just saw the magic again, you know? And if you find. You were talking about magic, if you find people with magic, they bring people with magic. So when you hire a magical person, then they attract more magical people. And that's kind of the game. That's how you do it.

[Diana Ransom]

So what is this? I mean, let's try to define the magic here for a second. Is it charisma? Is it the fact that they can comfortably speak in front of a room full of people that they don't know? Like, how do you determine that?

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, it's for sure.

[Diana Ransom]

It's ineffable for sure.

[Tom Rinks]

It's for sure talent. But it's also, I like them. You know what I mean? Like. And I. I don't like too many people. I hate to say that, but everybody who knows me is like, yeah, you don't have too many friends, and you're kind of don't. Don't like everybody. Even though I don't know.

[Diana Ransom]

That's a horrible present company, excluding horrible.

[Tom Rinks]

Things to say about myself. But. But. So if I really am engaged with somebody and what they're doing and they're, you know, they catch my attention and I want to spend time with them and want to keep listening, and they're teaching me something that I don't know. The pastor guy was telling me stuff that I didn't know, and I'd been in church my whole life, you know.

[Diana Ransom]

Well, you weren't listening.

[Tom Rinks]

I was. That's true. But the same goes all the way across. And Joe brought stuff that I'd never seen before. And Renee was telling himself about design and how you do these mashups and all this stuff together, and was just like, okay, okay, I can learn something. And if I can learn something, I can help get that message out to other people. So. So Lisa and Vanessa Craven were the women, and they had a practice, a really successful practice, and they sold it to take on the industry of oral care. I was like, you gotta be kidding. So I really like that too, because going after. I would have wanted to go after Coca Cola or Pepsi, try to take Pepsi a big challenge. And oral care was a really big challenge. And they really had the magic.

[Diana Ransom]

So let's talk for a second about this a minute. You know, we talk about magic as though it's like this thing that everybody understands. But, like, how do you define magic? Is it charisma? Is it being able to speak in front of an audience that you don't know?

[Tom Rinks]

No, it is likability. It's vulnerability. It's the things that I think people want in. I won't say most brands, but what they want in people. So I think it's Being vulnerable, it's being humble, being confident, being kind and super driven. It takes a lot to be an entrepreneur. It takes a lot to take on big companies. You know, there, I know from Taco Bell and sunscreen and some of the stuff that the big companies were doing to try to keep us away as we got popular. And so I know I knew what it took. I knew the energy that it took and the drive and the never quit attitude. So you've really got to be driven on top of the being kind and humble and super smart and super talented and that combination in people. If you can do that for a brand, I think that's kind of the magic. Like, it's being the best, but being humble about it and still be really vulnerable, that's great.

[Diana Ransom]

Also, just, I get the impression that you've had success with bringing this outsider energy to anything you do. Frankly, it's subculture. It's counterculture. It's like, we're gonna topple the big dudes and we're gonna win and kind of finding other people that have that energy, too, that kind of want the same thing.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, exactly. And I think. I think, you know, living in Michigan for so long, I was. I was raised in Southern California, but I spent 30 years in Michigan and flying to. I mean, we designed the Rock and Republic flagship store on Robertson in Beverly Hills, and we had no business, but because we were coming at it from a different place. And I think all of the brands that I've done. I don't really know anything about her. Don't really have any business doing it. But that. That has been a benefit for me because I'm not in the trade magazines seeing what's popular in that industry. So I'm not following what everybody else is doing. I'm bringing surf into religion, or I'm bringing street wear into sunscreen. I'm bringing, like, different genres in that. Most people that just do one thing their whole life. So I. You know, we did an algorithm for Joe Richie that sold to Sun Guard for Wall street, which is crazy that we would do something like that, but we bring something.

[Diana Ransom]

I don't even understand that, but we.

[Tom Rinks]

Bring something fresh to it from the culture that's not in the culture that the brand is in currently.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay, so the algorithm was something outside of Wall Street.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, it was on Wall Street. It was Fox River Execution Systems. Joe Richie, he was the guy. He died about six months ago. He's the guy that invented the hand signals. Oh, you know.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, no way. Oh, wow.

[Tom Rinks]

And so he came up with an algorithm that would save you, like, pennies because he was closer, but the people that would be closer to Wall street, so the button just got pushed a little bit faster. So he would save you a penny here and there, but a penny and people are investing billions of dollars. Was a lot. It was millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars. So he eventually. But there was. He had no brand for it, so he asked Rene and I to help him do that. So we went down to Chicago, put a brand together for it, took it to a trade show on Wall street, and at the. Maybe was it Javits or, I don't know, remember where it was? And we sold it for him.

[Diana Ransom]

Wow.

[Tom Rinks]

So, yeah, it was called the Fox, but the look and feel of everything, compared to what was out there, it was just a sexy, cool brand in that space. And so people actually wanted it. They wanted to own it. That's part of the magic. You know, it's making them want to buy what you have.

[Diana Ransom]

How do you know what somebody else wants or needs? I mean, you kind of talked about this back in the furniture store, where somebody walks in, they're obviously looking at a leather couch. You have an inkling that they need a leather couch or a couch. So how do you know that they want a really durable couch? Or what are the things that. Like, how do you know what somebody wants? Like dental, toothpaste. Like, how do you know that somebody wants toothpaste that doesn't have toxins in it, for instance, or plastics or, you know, whatever it is, whatever it ends up being like, how do you know what the consumer wants?

[Tom Rinks]

I just studying it a little bit and thinking about myself and why I would do it.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. What's your process?

[Tom Rinks]

My process is watching some of it. You know, like when we did cosmetics, standing in Neiman Marcus for hours and hours, just watching people's eyes. What they looked at, what they touched, how far away they stood from the counter, and then just what they were leaning towards, what they were wearing, what their purse was. All the little intricacies of studying that particular customer. Some come really easy. Some come really hard. The tequila was easy. That was. If you're ordering straight tequila, it was really expensive. I think it was 120 a bottle, up to $800 a bottle. So it's. You're just sipping it. You're just ordering. You're not putting it in a margarita. So anybody that's ordering tequila straight, I thought you're trying. Or whiskey. You're trying to be hard. You're trying to be tough. You're trying to. You know, I used to drink strawberry margaritas when I was younger, you know, and everybody used to say, you know, you want to put. You need an umbrella for that, Tom. And so you kind of like, oh, yeah, this is girly drinking that. So all the way to the other end. I actually drink tequila now. I'm not trying to be tough, but I got a great taste for it by doing the business. But that's what they wanted. So you make a tough brand. You make a skull and crossbones.

[Diana Ransom]

But do you. Do you create, like, the customer archetype, for instance? Like, do you have, like, a Target customer in your mind when you're developing a brand?

[Tom Rinks]

I just don't have a demographic as much as a psychographic. Right. A mentality of what they want, how they feel, what their mindset is. They could be a hippie at 80 or a hippie at 17.

[Diana Ransom]

So can you be a hippie at 80? I love that.

[Tom Rinks]

I'll bet. Yeah, I'll bet you can.

[Diana Ransom]

Well, speaking of. Speaking of sort of like surf culture and, you know, being hippies or whatever, I did notice that the packaging on Made by Dentists has like the sort of, like the vans, like, black and white checkered on the sides. Maybe it's not vans in particular, but I wondered, are you trying to capture the similar kind of ethos in the branding? Like, are you trying to capture, like, the Sun Bum counterculture into Made by Dentists?

[Tom Rinks]

Oh, that's a good question. Target asked us to do. We were doing only adult at the time for Target, and they were. They bought our adult line, but then they ask if we could try something in kids. Cause they were not doing super well in kids, and they wanted us to take a crack at it again. It's always a mashup of aesthetics that I pull together. Rene and I used to pull together. I haven't worked with him since Sunbum, but me and another designer pulled together. And for this kid's line, you know, looking at it all, it was all Disney and Star wars and Paw Patrol and My Little Pony, and there was just nothing that I would have gotten necessarily for my kid. Right. Who skates or surfs or all of that. So, yeah, pulling from. Again, from the surf world over into toothpaste sounds really weird. Pulling in from the skate world, there was a brand called Toy Machine that I've always loved and been a fan of. And they have really sketchy, like, children's almost art. But it's become cool. I mean, we Saw a skate deck. It's cool no matter what.

[Diana Ransom]

It's like kid robot, right?

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, yeah. So pulling all that together and putting it in, I knew I would get the. The people who liked that, they would recognize it. So, yeah, I mean, obviously the Checkerboard isn't owned by vans, but a little hit of that just, you know, you may not know why you're attracted to this brand, but you're attracted to it because you recognize that pattern or you recognize that style of art and you know your kid's gonna like that. So. And it's trying to get the cool kids first and the cool kids generally, you know, I don't want to say.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah, this is diffusion of innovation. Right. So, yeah, this is not just the cool kids, but like the early adopters.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, exactly, the early adapters. And that's usually the people that have a little bit more money and are a little. Are willing to take those risks. So, yeah, it's hard to do that at Target, which is why they're being super cool with us to give us time. Because generally you got to do that before you go to the mass. As you know, in the diffusion of innovation, you got to. You gotta get over that tipping point, as Gladwell says, before you can get the masses. So to launch a brand at Target.

[Diana Ransom]

It'S really the one to ask you, how did you end up launching the brand at Target? I mean, this is like an upstart.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, it's really something you really should not normally do. But, you know, surf shops had, you know, had. We were in 8,000 surf shops. So you can kind of learn and make mistakes as you kind of learn what people want and don't want at a smaller scale. And then by the time you get to mass retail, you're ready. You're not going to have these major recalls or any problems. Your brand is set. Tequila. You have restaurants. You could just sell one restaurant at a time. And you're learning. And if the bottles are breaking, oh, we got to fix that before we go to the next step. But if you go straight to these huge mass people, you don't have time. You gotta learn right there. And being an entrepreneur, starting your own companies, you gotta be really flexible and change your change really fast, change your mind really fast.

[Diana Ransom]

Right.

[Tom Rinks]

And be able to be quick about it. So launching at Target was really tough, but there wasn't really any other little boutiques that you could go into.

[Diana Ransom]

I guess there used to be like corner pharmacies and used to be a lot more independently owned and not so much anymore.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. And my old buyer from Sunbum, who was the Sun Care buyer, just so happened to have moved into oral care. So he was the oral care buyer. So he.

[Diana Ransom]

Good timing.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. So he really trusted me to be able to do it. So we did it. And it's just crushing it. And kids. Is kids a little bit easier to break into because it's. You're buying it for your kid. And what do you think they would like? Almost like a toy as opposed to adult. Something that they're really used to buying all the time.

[Diana Ransom]

Right, right. So obviously you're selling to mass market chain. You make a mistake. Mistakes can be bigger. What was the mistake you made by dentists?

[Tom Rinks]

It was a lot.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Tom Rinks]

Ye know, like there isn't. There isn't every brand. Okay. We. I thought it would be really cool growing up. Creep. I loved Creepy Crawlers and I think it was one of Mattel's biggest male toys ever of all time was Creepy Crawlers. You. You had a little metal plate. It was like easy bake oven for boys almost. But you put this goo in and it bakes them and you have these little rubber worms or sponges and they.

[Diana Ransom]

Like, they squirm, right? Yeah.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. So I loved that and I saw that part of it and I drew the art kind of. I almost keep saying toy machine style. Just like graffiti a little bit like a kid might draw it. And then I thought we should have really wild flavors because everybody, all the big companies that were selling at Target had strawberry. They all had strawberry. They all had watermelon or bubblegum. And I thought, okay, one of the characters we had was we had an alien, a shark and a monster. So we did. The flavor was monster slime. And on the monster, the shark was eyeball juice and the alien was alien blood.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, wow.

[Tom Rinks]

And they were, they. Everybody's like, we should put the flavor somewhere. Moms want to know. No, no way. We're not going to do that. We're going to just leave it like this. They're not going to know what the flavor is. And we ended up picking caramel for the purple alien, which everybody thought was probably gonna taste like grape. And we love the taste and it's really a great taste, but just not on toothpaste. So everybody hated it.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, no.

[Tom Rinks]

So we thought we were gonna do okay. Take the alien blood challenge. Do you love it? Can you take it? You know, are you a strawberry kid? Are you alien blood? I was trying to be really edgy and we went too far.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, no.

[Tom Rinks]

Everybody hated it, and so we had to discontinue it. We didn't discontinue it. We just had to change the flavor.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay.

[Tom Rinks]

And then we started putting the flavor name in little parentheses underneath it because we were just too smart for our own good, thinking we could do that at a mass scale like that.

[Diana Ransom]

So now it's like eyeball juice, watermelon. Exactly in parentheses. Yeah, I get it. That's funny. And what's up with the guinea pigs?

[Tom Rinks]

The guinea pigs?

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, my gosh.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. We do this thing called Save the Guinea Pigs, and we're going to have a big Save the Guinea Pig week or month coming up in June, I think.

[Diana Ransom]

Is that Save the Guinea Pig Month?

[Tom Rinks]

It is. It's when National Guinea Pig Day or something is. And that was one of the things that I learned from Lisa and Vanessa was all the big guys, besides having microplastics and all these other elements that they shouldn't have in their toothpaste, a lot of them, which are banned in Europe, and dyes and artificial dyes, artificial flavors and stuff like that, they also aren't recyclable. And they all test on animals still. And it was. And the guinea pig, when it comes to toothpaste is the one they want. You know, that's the one that's most used on toothpaste, happens to be guinea pig. So we started to Save the Guinea Pig campaign. We're going to do some really wild stuff to try to bring attention to that and try to get the big guys to maybe make some changes. So, yeah, it is about that. Lisa and Vanessa, the dentist who started this. Right. So they're authentic. They're my surfers. They're the authority. But everybody hates dentists. You know, I don't say hate.

[Diana Ransom]

I don't know. I mean.

[Tom Rinks]

I mean, most. I trust dentists I know, but most people don't like going to the dentist. If you ask most people, that's the least favorite thing they want to do. And. And because they cause pain, they had childhood trauma or it's expensive or whatever it is. And, you know, I think dentists are one of the top, if not top suicidal occupations in the world.

[Diana Ransom]

Oh, Jesus.

[Tom Rinks]

In the world. That's because of. Nobody really likes them, and they just cause pain all day.

[Diana Ransom]

Poor dentist. Hug your dentist, everyone.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah, hug your dentist. So they were going to try to take on, you know, that. The industry like that. I thought, okay, I can. I think I can bring a voice to it and give them a voice that would be relatable. To people like me. And they just. Again, they. I thought I knew everything about toothpaste, and I knew nothing about toothpaste or how to brush or what I should be doing. And it's just like, you gotta be kidding me, right?

[Diana Ransom]

And you think if I don't know. Yeah, most people probably don't know.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. I'm 62. How do I not. How come nobody told me that I'm not supposed to rinse after brushing?

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Tom Rinks]

Like what? I always rinse after brushing. How are you not supposed to rinse after brushing? You got a mouthful of foam. What are you supposed to do? And they're just supposed to spit. No. You know, you're supposed to have foam in your mouth because foam is sls, and people are putting SLS in their mouth every day and swallowing it. Or your mouth is the most absorbent part of your body, and everything goes through your bloodstream through there. And so they don't want to put it on their heads, and they don't want it in these products. They don't want parabens in any of these products, but they're putting parabens in SLS and DEA and all these other products in their mouth every day. Toothpaste is the only product that everybody uses every day in America. Everybody. Every day. Everybody doesn't drink milk. Everybody doesn't drink bottled water. Everybody. Hate to say it. Everybody doesn't go to the bathroom every day. So toilet paper. No. You know, what other product is everybody in every house using every day? And that's why it's such a huge industry that's now been kind of monopolized by these guys who don't change and who won't change because, you know, they're investors. It'll cost them more money to put better ingredients in.

[Diana Ransom]

But they also maintain this, like, chokehold on the toothpaste aisle, for instance. Like, they're everywhere.

[Tom Rinks]

It is a chokehold.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah.

[Tom Rinks]

And in every aisle that I've ever been into. And in big retail stores, there's mandatory. You gotta use recycled this. You can't have this ingredient. You can't do that. You have to guarantee you're gonna move towards this. And in the oral, Carol, you just can't do it because the power is in the big three. And they decide what they're going to do. And they're so huge that they don't have to change because you're not going to not carry them, because they have to carry Crest, they have to carry Colgate, they have to carry Sensodyne. So not to name names, but they have to, so they don't have to change. And like I say, there's such a battle of cost. If they stopped doing what they were doing overseas, if they had to make recyclable packaging, if they had to use a better filler than the cheap fillers and the stuff that's not even. You shouldn't. You can't even use in Europe here, their costs would go too high and they would lose money, and then that's all about that for them. So it is a huge thing. I mean, we're just really taking on.

[Diana Ransom]

And that's what you saw when Lisa and Vanessa came to you. It was like, wow, there's a huge amount of, I guess, potentially white space here or opportunity to potentially take market share. Or maybe you thought this is batshit and I shouldn't do it because taking on the Giants could be pretty hard.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah. But I have, you know, with Taco Bell.

[Diana Ransom]

That's right.

[Tom Rinks]

Against them and even the Tequilas or any of that, you're kind of always going after somebody bigger. And the good news is nobody roots for Goliath, you know, So I. I like that.

[Diana Ransom]

So, as we kind of wrap up, what would be one piece of advice you would give fellow entrepreneurs? It could be branding advice. It could be just generally advice that you would give entrepreneurs starting up a company, or it could be something that maybe you heard along the way that helped you.

[Tom Rinks]

Okay. I just learned this along the way is to put all of your money into the product, all of your money into the point of sale, how you look on the shelf. Don't spend your money on marketing or any of that kind of stuff, because ultimately, if you have a great product, it's going to be great and it's going to work. Ultimately, I could make the coolest restaurant from the outside and has an amazing logo and amazing name and amazing servers, and it's just the greatest mood of all time. Right. Great music playing, it's got a great vibe. But if food sucks, I'm not going back. It's not going to work. So, same thing with brands. You work so hard on the looks and the feels and all that, but every product that I've ever done, the product itself is really, really, really great. And that is the focal point, because if it's not great, it's just not going to work. So. And if it is great, you can have a really bad brand give a really bad logo, and it's still going to work. So the product has to be there and. And you'll never have enough money to get people's eyes on anything to have. Oh, I remember seeing that in that magazine or in that ad or whatever. You're never going to get that. You're going to be right there at the point of sale. Here's my choices. Which one do I want? And if you can get them at the point of sale, if you've got a great packaging, if you've got a great product, when they get it home, they'll tell their friends and they'll do all the work for you. I would just not waste your money too much on marketing.

[Diana Ransom]

Sweet. That's great advice. Tom, thank you so much for your time today.

[Tom Rinks]

You're welcome. Thank you. Super pleasure to be here.

[Diana Ransom]

So after our chat, it was Tom's last point that really resonated with me. For a man that has made his career in marketing, commercials and branding, it is a little surprising for him to say, put all of your money in product. But if you think about it, he's 100% right. If Tom works in collaboration with a company, it is because he believes in the product and the people the product represents. Like Sunbum. In an era like the one we're in, when marketing is costly and the channels are noisy, you really can't beat word of mouth and the drumbeat of repeat customers. So before you create an Instagram page for a clothing line or a TikTok video from a restaurant with the hottest grilled cheese pulls, make sure the quality of your product is great so customers keep coming back.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

That's all for this episode of from the Ground Up.

[Diana Ransom]

Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your podcast platform of choice. Also, if you liked this episode or have topics you'd like to hear about, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or reach out to us on Inc's social channels on LinkedIn, Bluesky, or Instagram.

[Christine Ligorio Chefkin]

From the Ground up is produced by Maryam Kyparowice and Avery Miles, Editing by Blake Odom. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres. Our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.

[Glenfiddich]

Hi listeners. I'm Blake Odom, producer of from the Ground Up. Today we have a special segment brought to you by Inc. In collaboration with our partners at Glenfiddich. Single Malt Scotch Whiskey. This year at the INK 5000 gala, Glenfiddich presented the inaugural Legacy Award to Stephen Marsh, founder of smarsh. This award recognizes a trailblazer, an individual who has graced the Inc. 5000 list multiple times embodying the spirit of innovation, boldness and a relentless drive to defy the ordinary. Much like Glenfiddich, a brand that has pushed the boundaries of excellence throughout its 130 year history to become the world's most awarded single malt scotch whiskey, Stephen Marsh exemplifies the courage and brilliance it takes to redefine industries and elevate the game. Inc. Editor in chief Mike Hoffman spoke with Stephen Marsh about his remarkable journey the legacy has and the honor of being the first recipient of this award presented by Glen Fiddick. Here's that captivating conversation. Enjoy and be inspired.

[Mike Hoffman]

Hi, I'm Mike Hoffman, editor in chief of Ink. And I'm delighted to be here today with Steve Marsh, the founder of Smarsh, a multi time Inc. 5000 honoree and the recipient of the inaugural Inc. 5000 Legacy Award presented by Glenn Fiddick. So Steve, thanks so much for joining me.

[Stephen Marsh]

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Mike.

[Mike Hoffman]

Oh yeah, this is great. So let me get this straight. You've been on the Inc. 5000 list 17 times so far?

[Stephen Marsh]

I think that's correct. I think 17 times.

[Mike Hoffman]

We double checked it. So you've been on the list 17 times. And how many years has the company been in business?

[Stephen Marsh]

Since 2001, so about 23, I guess.

[Mike Hoffman]

So you've been on the list more than you've not been on the list in the 23 years of your corporate life?

[Stephen Marsh]

I think once we finally made the revenue threshold, we made the list and have been on it since.

[Mike Hoffman]

Well, congratulations. It's amazing to make the Inc. 5000. It's amazing to make the Inc. 5000 a couple of times. And to make it 17 times puts you in really rare error. Only a few companies have made it more than 15 times. Congratulations. You started the company in 2001, is that right?

[Stephen Marsh]

That's right.

[Mike Hoffman]

Your name is Steve Marsh and the name of the company is Smarsh. Do I have it right that your original email address had something to do with the ultimate name of the company?

[Stephen Marsh]

I incorporated to do consulting work, never thinking that the business name would see the light of day. It was just incorporated as Smarsh Inc. Because Marsh was taken by the large insurance company, so we couldn't use that. My friends at the time that my coworkers had all called me Smarsh because that was like my email handle. So I said, hey, let's just go with that. The domain name was available and many years later, with a larger marketing department and more resources available to us More domain names available to us. We still decided to keep the name Smarsh, but that should serve as proof that I never had intention of building this business into anything.

[Mike Hoffman]

So who was your first client?

[Stephen Marsh]

My first client was a small brokerage out of Boston, Massachusetts and a friend of mine had worked there and had told me about this need to archive communications for regulatory compliance. And I knew virtually nothing. I mean I knew absolutely nothing about that. I knew that I needed to make some money to pay rent and that I had some technology skills. So I set out to actually help them implement a solution that I thought I would source from another vendor and quickly found that there weren't other vendors out there doing this, at least to service the small and mid sized companies. The business at that point pivoted from being a consulting business to being the archiving and communications intelligence business that it's become today.

[Mike Hoffman]

When you started on the hockey stick like trajectory of growth, what was the sort of first moment, if you remember, where you kind of knew, oh, this is not just a consulting business, this is a real business, a technology business. And actually it's a fast growth technology business.

[Stephen Marsh]

One moment that comes to mind is we had a large competitor in an adjacent space. They weren't archiving the way we were. They did data backup or something and they made an offer to buy the company, really in our first year of effort in trying to sell the archiving service. And it was hard as a founder to turn down. I think it was like a million dollars. But it was complicated but we passed on it. That was a great decision. But that really validated for me that we had built something that was at least perceived to be of value to someone else. And of course making the Inc. 5000 list for the first time after applying earlier that year and not being able to apply the year prior to that because we didn't meet the. We weren't big enough, we didn't meet the revenue thresholds. Anyway, when we made that list, that was fantastic validation for all the hard work that we had done. It gave us a sense of credibility when we would go out to our customers by being able to put the Inc. 5000 recipient logo on our emails and on our website. And that actually helped us grow to the next level.

[Mike Hoffman]

Beyond that, you at some point took growth capital, private equity, is that right?

[Stephen Marsh]

We did. It wasn't until 2007.

[Tom Rinks]

Yeah.

[Stephen Marsh]

First investors were minority investors in 2007 and ironically the point at which they became interested was a point at which we no longer needed money. I think many founders probably go through this when you're trying to raise money. It's a lot harder than when you don't need it. When you don't need it, everybody seems to come out of the woodwork, and then they try to convince you why you should take money. I think that was a key moment where we realized we needed to significantly upgrade our technology infrastructure if we wanted to win bigger and bigger customers. We were making incremental changes every year. You know, the rip and replace that you hear technology companies go through, where every six months or so we were taking out old equipment, replacing it with new, bigger and better equipment. And that really just wasn't scalable. It was becoming a distraction to have to keep going through those projects every six months or so. By raising capital, we were able to get off that hamster wheel, and we were also able to start making some acquisitions. Became a part of life from that moment forward.

[Mike Hoffman]

What did you learn about business ownership and business leadership going through the process.

[Stephen Marsh]

Of acquisitions, you know, we gained access to people who had operated at the level beyond where we were, which is a pattern, you know, we'll see occur over and over in our business. But there were smarter people who had more experience in a variety of areas, and they presented some of the reasons why we would want to do some acquisitions. They also educated me and the rest of my team on how to do them. But it taught me that there are a variety of ways to help grow the business. You probably don't want to grow your business just doing acquisitions, although that does create value for a lot of companies. But for us, it was a combination of organic growth through innovation and product development and serving our customers with different products and services and making some of these acquisitions to bring in new technology, to bring in additional competitors, to bring in more expertise than we otherwise would possess. And today that trend continues. We're trying to bring in more AI expertise. For example, we might look to do an acquisition there.

[Mike Hoffman]

Can I ask, where are you guys at revenue now?

[Stephen Marsh]

We are about 500 million.

[Mike Hoffman]

And what's the fastest growth part of the company right now?

[Stephen Marsh]

There's a lot of focus on leveraging the data that we have stored on behalf of our customers. If you think about the initial use case, for those that don't know, is that we help customers by storing their electronic communication so that they can meet regulatory requirements. You have to have this stuff. You have to be able to produce it. That's kind of the baseline service. But what we've found is that over the years, you start to amass More and more really valuable information on behalf of our customers. So we have years and years worth of emails, text messages, zoom calls, you know, whatever it may be. In a world where artificial intelligence is taking over and people are trying to find ways to harness the value of data, we're sitting on what we think is one of the biggest goldmines out there in terms of data. It's employee communications that were captured initially for a different reason, but now can be turned into sales opportunities, customer service opportunities, new product ideas. I think we're seeing a lot of growth.

[Mike Hoffman]

So an archive can become a large language model.

[Stephen Marsh]

Yeah.

[Mike Hoffman]

So this is obviously the Inc. 5000 Legacy Award brought to you by Glenn Fiddick. As you think about the legacy of the company and your legacy as a founder or what do you still hope for? What is your idea of what the legacy you want to leave is?

[Stephen Marsh]

We have a very unique culture, I think one that reflects what I wanted to create many, many years ago. I want it to be an organization that hopefully my kids one day look back on and say, wow, dad must have built something pretty interesting here. It's still around, it's still relevant. Our customers still find value in what we're doing. I just want to see it reach its maximum potential. Not every company, even, you know, not every company that is started or that I'm involved in or that I invest in has the same opportunity to persist through time. Some companies are better as a short term product that maybe gets sold to someone else and they integrate the technologies. Some technologies have a shorter lifespan where maybe it's two to three years and then you have to move on. This is a business that I believe truly has the opportunity to exist for many, many years and to be relevant by just listening to customers and adapting and finding or addressing use cases that we found many years ago.

[Mike Hoffman]

Steve Marsh, the founder of SMARS half billion dollar company founded in a Brooklyn apartment that's been on the Inc. 5000 list 17 times. Thanks so much for joining us today.

[Stephen Marsh]

No, thanks for having me.

[Mike Hoffman]

And before I let you go, we have these glasses of Glenn Fiddick here you are the inaugural recipient of the Inc 5000 Legacy Award, presented by Glenfiddich. So let's cheers to your success.

[Stephen Marsh]

Cheers.

[Glenfiddich]

Congratulations again to Stephen Marsh. And I couldn't end this episode without getting a little taste of Glenfiddich myself. And since I got a bottle right here. Cheers to you listeners with Glen Fiddick, the world's most awarded single malt scotch whiskey. Drink responsibly, Glen Fiddick single malt Scotch Whiskey is copyrighted 2024 and imported by William Grant & Sons, Inc. New York, NY.