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The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
565: From 3rd Grade Teacher to Beauty CEO: How Supergoop! Built a $700M Brand From ZERO! | Holly Thaggard (Best of Foundr) [VIDEO]
00:45:20
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- [00:00]
Holly Thagrid
Don't get into the beauty industry because you have a following on Instagram and you want to sell something and beauty is fun. If you're going to build something sustainable and long lasting and scalable, I think you have to have a real, clear, game changing, innovative idea that's going to make this world a better place. If you have that, do what every entrepreneur and founder has to do, which is have grit. Because that is definitely the most important part of the last 18 years of my life. Holly Thagrid is the founder of Supergoop, the $700 million skincare brand that redefines sunscreen. What started as a mission to make SPF accessible in schools has grown into a global powerhouse.
- [00:40]
Nathan Chan
Stocked in Sephora, backed by Blackstone and.
- [00:42]
Holly Thagrid
Worn by celebrities and athletes worldwide.
- [00:45]
Nathan Chan
Solving a problem that the customer didn't know existed. What do you mean by that?
- [00:49]
Holly Thagrid
We had to educate first and we spent quite a few years talking about why SPF before we could even talk about why Supergoop, because people didn't feel like they needed to be wearing sunscreen every single day. You know, I was a teacher. Make the world a better place. My dad's advice, don' do things that have been done before. All of these kind of checked the boxes on what I felt was going to be the real foundation for this brand. When you're building truly wonderful things, you have to be ready for the journey. You have to be ready for being completely inspired by those little wins along the way. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
- [01:38]
Nathan Chan
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today, Holly. The first question that I ask everyone that comes on is how did you get your job, AKA how do you find yourself doing the work you're doing today?
- [01:50]
Holly Thagrid
Oh, well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk all things Supergoop and entrepreneurship and founder stories, some of my favorite topics. And the truth is I've always loved to create. I've always loved to build. My parents are both entrepreneurs and I thought though out of college I wanted to be a schoolteacher. So it was actually doing a very different job and it was very short one year in the third grade school classroom. And I guess if I could tell myself something now, it would be that I'm still teaching. I just have a much larger audience than 178 year olds. But it was actually I felt very claustrophobic in the classroom and I really questioned at the moment like what I went to school to be a teacher. I loved education, and I couldn't believe my career was over almost before it started. But I spent the next 10 years pursuing HARP building, the business of Holly the harpist. I had a maternal grandmother that was a harpist. And I played from fifth grade up. And I made a living throughout my 20s performing. And it was then that my friend was diagnosed with skin cancer. My college roommate was going through a residency in dermatology. And she said, holly, it's not about beaches and bikinis. It's about that every single day, a little bit of exposure that's cumulative. And for your friend, it happened at a very young age. For most people, it doesn't happen until much later in life. But the truth of the matter is this was in 2001-2003, and people weren't wearing sunscreen every single day. And because I had parents that were entrepreneurial and they always sort of taught us to look for the white space and things and make the world a better place and do things that haven't been done before. And I looked at the category and it was so incredibly sleepy. Nathan. It was like there was no innovation at all in SPF and UV broad spectrum protection in particular. And it was then that I literally started, you know, dreaming about SPF and figuring out crazy ways to get it into everyone's routine so that it became a luxurious experience and not a chore, not something that they had to do when they were headed to the beach. So I really, you know, it's for me a lot about the journey of, you know, starting that moment in the third grade classroom and then later reflecting when my friend was diagnosed on the concept of we were not teaching our youth to wear spf. And never once did I even see a tube of sunscreen on the school campus. Yet we were out there in the middle of the day under the sun and often staying in after school spring. And so it was that one short year, those eight months in the classroom that, you know, 10 years later almost inspired me to create a new category in the industry.
- [04:59]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, there you go. So you started Supergoop, was it 2007?
- [05:06]
Holly Thagrid
Well, I started down this journey in more like 2004. 5. What I saw on the market at the time was no innovation and every chemical formula had Oxybenzone in it. So my mother's a two time breast cancer survivor, and through my research, I learned that Oxybenzone was actually found in breast cancer tissue. And so if every chemical formula in the country had Oxybenzone in It and I wanted everyone everywhere to wear SPF every single day. Know I couldn't with good faith encourage that with an oxybenzone derived formula. So I really spent several years back in 2004 and five finding the chemist that I needed to work on this world's first chemical formula with no oxybenzone. Because I know when kids are outside in sports and sweating and swimming, they really needed a formula that would absorb into their skin and not trap the heat into their body. And I did a lot of just research online. It was really very self taught. And the original idea, truth be told, was to put this magic formula into school classrooms across America. And that didn't work out. But at the moment it didn't work out. Very proud of our ounce by ounce giving program now. But that's, we can talk more about that later.
- [06:34]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, well look, I'm curious because I think a lot of people would look at yourself and the success that you've had with Supergoop. You know, you guys, you know recently now were valued by black, through your deal with BlackRock, I think you're over 700 million. And so people look at the end product and Blackstone.
- [06:57]
Holly Thagrid
Blackstone Private equity. Yeah.
- [06:59]
Nathan Chan
How did it start? Like how do you, how do you create a beauty brand from nothing? Like how did you even bring that to life? Talk to me around the original idea and what happened and like how long it took and yeah, so you said you, you were kind of formulating by like in 2005.
- [07:13]
Holly Thagrid
Yeah, I was formulating and I was writing a school curriculum. You remember I was a teacher. So I loved that eighth grade class of 17, I mean that third grade class of 17 kiddos. And the original idea for this brand was to first formulate a product. And I knew it had to a product because the product didn't exist that I felt good about encouraging everyone to wear every single day. And so I started by writing a curriculum and knocking on school doors and talking to parent counsels and trying to convince everyone that children needed access to SPF in the school day. And I quickly learned that SPF is an over the counter drug as it should be regulated by the FDA because it's actually doing something for your skin. But because of such it was prohibited on school campuses across America. And so I, I, I taught. My one year teaching was in a private school and I knew that the private schools didn't really have to follow the same rules and regulations that public schools did. So I started knocking on private school doors and talking to everyone that would Listen, about how badly supergoop was needed in the classroom. And you know, it, it. While that program took off and I had six schools throughout Louisiana and Texas in the United States, it became very obvious to me that it was going to be difficult to scale. And I've always had this vision to literally change the way the world thinks about sunscreen. And I knew that if I was going to accomplish that in my lifetime, I knew that I had to figure out how to scale this brand in a different way than knocking on one by one school doors. And, you know, along the way too, my passion project has definitely been in changing the state laws that exist around SPF in schools in America. I've never missed an opportunity to be on Capitol Hill and talking to the Congress and representatives that. And really it's bringing awareness to this because nobody until supergoop actually cared about SPF in the United States. And so everyone's always shocked to actually learn that it is prohibited on school campuses. And knowing that SPF, no matter how generously you apply it at 7am by noon and especially after school at 5pm in sports, it's ineffective. So sun damage is inevitable. We're putting our children on the playground with a carcinogen above them and no means of how to protect. So that was really the early, early days. And when I realized that that wasn't scalable in my lifetime and I had this strong vision to change the way the world thinks about sunscreen, I had to pivot and then learn the business of retail.
- [10:03]
Nathan Chan
So I want to talk about that Sephora story, but before we get to that, let's talk about kind of how much did it start? Like, how much it cost to start and do your first batch? And like, how did you even get your first sale? Was it, was it through that, that program that you talked of for schools, or was it actually through retail and the Sephora?
- [10:28]
Holly Thagrid
Yeah, well, and that was also another, you know, really pivotal moment, I think, in our brand is realizing that schools have oftentimes trouble buying pencils. And so convincing schools to actually fund a program like this, where not many people even believed we needed to wear SPF during the school day was. Was going to be a big challenge. And it was also going to be a challenge that I hadn't built the expertise in SPF yet as a brand to allow parents to feel comfortable with their children putting a product called Supergoop onto their children's skin every single day. The brand had no reputation, yet we had, we. We were not known as the experts in spf that we are today. So there were many reasons why that program failed. And, and I, I don't really say it failed because I think that, you know, this is important for founders to know that said all about the journey, right? It's about the little single things that happen across a long period of time that are cumulative. And when you're, you know, when you're really doing great things, it happens, happens drip by drip. You don't fill the whole bucket. And you know, there are definitely little wins along the way that are inspiring and they, they help, they help keep things interesting and exciting. But when you're building truly wonderful things, you have to be ready for the journey. You have to be ready for just being completely inspired by those little wins along the way. So when, you know, when I realized that I had to change directions in my school program and build this brand through retail, which at the time in 2005, 6, 7 DTC didn't really even exist. But I also was recognized by the American Academy of Dermatology for that school program that I wrote, which is tiny as it was, with a nice award. And it's those little wins that kind of keep you inspired to keep going and figure out which way you're going to pivot to continue on with your vision. So, so yeah, it was probably 2007. So then I started thinking about, and you know, the brand name at the time. If I took you back to 2005, there were no fun, playful skincare brands. Everything was really serious, doctor driven. The packaging had how big your molecule was and how high your clinicals were and what doctor's name was on the packaging for credibility. And so the name Supergoop was a first in its kind. And now, you know, you look at the world and there's all kinds of crazy names in skincare and beauty industry. But it was truly that we were the pioneer in delivering efficacious, serious, science backed formulas in a fun, playful spirit. And the reason behind that was that I knew that with children you had to, I wanted this to be their ticket to get outside. Right. And it's definitely easier to form healthy habits with young children than it is to teach consumer behavior change in an adult. Something, you know, for example, a 45 year old's never been wearing SPF. Trying to get them to change their attitude and wear SPF every single day is much harder than when you're talking to a class of kindergarteners and you say we wash our hands, we wear our helmets, we put our seatbelts on and we wear Our spf. So I knew that the reason behind my name being playful was totally laddering up to, you know, raising a generation of children that understood this was a non compromising, healthy habit that they needed to partake in. So, you know, it was really, it was really for me, a natural first step at retail to look at those children's boutique retailers that could help tell my story and could help really explain what we're all about. And at the time, and now defunct, of course, but Giggle in the US was this big, beautiful, curated children's boutique retailer that had a dozen or so stores across America. They gave me the national distribution for the press that was needed. And I had learned through my research that it's hard to hire a PR firm in New York if, if you don't have that national distribution. And, and FAO Schwarz was another big influencer in the kids space in New York City. And they loved inviting me into the store on the weekends to literally stand there and talk with every person that would come by about, hey, I know you' your stroller and your little kid's piano. But like, have we figured out the SPF they're going to wear their entire life? And so I started learning the business of retail through kids boutique retail. But I also, at the same time, and this is really an important thing to note, is that I realized that kids, and at this time I had had my daughter who is now 18, but she, you know, I knew she was kind of watching everything that my husband and I were doing. And so I knew that if we were going to inspire children to start embracing this habit, we had to also, we had to also really model this good behavior. So the packaging, everything sort of took shape by keeping it sophisticated and clean and a white space and keeping protecting the image of the brand and the packaging so that dad could pull it out of his golf bag on the golf course or mom could have it on her beauty counter and children would see the same sort of look of packaging that they were trying to instill in their children. And so when I thought about retail in that way, I thought, well, so we have Giggle, we have FAO Schwartz, we have these beautiful Pottery Barn kids, we have these beautiful children's retailers that are behind us in our mission. But how do we balance that with retail in America? That's going to reach that mindful explorer, that dad, that mom that's willing to do skin care a little bit differently. And at the time I thought about that being the Barney's consumer. And unfortunately, Barney's is no Longer anymore today. But. But Barney's had a wonderful presence in, you know, all the major cities in America. And yet it was still small enough for me to be able to go every week and spend my weekend standing on the floor in those nine or ten Barney's New York stores and talking to those parents that were willing to think about things differently. I mean, in America you didn't really go to Barney's if you wanted to buy what was at every department store, you went to, like, find something a little different. And so that was kind of for 2007, I'd say. 2007, 8, 9, 10. I was really focused on those retail partners that I could personally, the company was still just me at the time. I was do. I was head of everything. And so I had to focus on those retailers that were influential in every major city in the US but that also weren't so large that it prohibited me from being able to show up, tell my story, take everyone in the skincare beauty department to lunch and bring on an army of people that were willing to spread my message and get behind the brand itself.
- [17:55]
Nathan Chan
Talking about retail, tell me your Sephora story. What happened?
- [17:59]
Holly Thagrid
My Sephora story. So it turns out, lucky me, the skincare buyer at Sephora was a new mom. And she stumbled upon my brand at Giggle in San Francisco where their corporate headquarters are, and she thought it was really interesting. And everyone in the Giggle store knew my story. They knew how passionate I was about this and, and did as I had hoped and shared that story with her. She took my products back to Sephora corporate and passed them around. And she said, this is interesting. This is a brand that's very different. Nothing like it in Sephora at the time. Everything was serious science, doctor driven brands. And yet this is a playful brand with serious science backed technology behind it, doing something good for the world. She passed it around, called the number on the packaging, which happened to be my cell phone, of course, because I wanted anybody anywhere to be able to reach directly to me, to talk about, to talk about. And I still, it's funny, Nathan, I still sometimes get phone calls on my cell phone, which has not changed. And I'm like, throw that away, it's expired. If you tell me you found my number on the packaging. It's not been there for a very long time, but yeah. So she called and she said, you know, I think that what you're doing is really interesting, Holly. And she said, we're interested. I think you probably need to grow up a little. And again, the company still, I was packing the boxes. I was doing all the stuff. I was even delivering to some of our retail in Dallas with baseball cap in the, you know, coming in the back door, trying to hide who I was to the, to the buyers in the front of the, um, Stanley Korshak, I think it was. So I, I literally had to start thinking about, you know, the harder things. How are you going to get press if you're going to survive in Sephora? You have to be in the books. And this is before social media, this was before influencers, this was before most of what we know about that is in marketing today. So it was all about, how much press are you going to get in the magazines? And I didn't have a PR firm at the time. And she said, you know, but when you're ready, when you feel like you're ready and you can, you know, the numbers are pretty high, the inventory is pretty expensive, the packaging's expensive, everything. My husband and I were just self funding. I was taking harp jobs whenever I could to pay for Supergoop tubes. And, and, and so, you know, we, we started, we started, you know, thinking about how we were going to actually continue to scale this business. Now the business was still growing aggressively. We were doubling, tripling in size. So those numbers were small at the time. They were like. We went from, I think, gosh, well, I think our first year when we were only in those handful of schools, we did like 45,000. The second year we did like 150. Then we scaled that to 500, then that to 900. Then we hit the, you know, so we were still pretty small. But knowing that a launch in Sephora was going to cost us something, you know, I, I went to my father, I went to my brother who was, was had moved out of college to New York and had started a pretty successful business and had seen my passion and dedication to the brand and, and he said they gave me the money that I needed at the moment, but we had to have that. I think every founder's terrible Thanksgiving story where I'm like, I want to do one more kids trade show before I call Sephora back. And I had not been able to secure a PR firm. And so that was kind of on my list that I couldn't call them back until I had. And I went to that trade show, ended up, this is the craziest story. I ended up advocating to sit in the natural and organic section of this trade show because I felt like we're so mindful of our ingredient choices. We were the first formula in the world without oxybenzone or parabens or propylene glycol or all of these controversial ingredients. We were clean before clean was kind of a thing. And so I advocated to be in what was called the organic natural section. Well, I got to this Vegas trade show and the entire floor of organics and was like, really granola. And very, like, everything was vanilla looking, and it was just very, like, homegrown knitted socks and all kinds of, like. And then upstairs at the trade show were all these beautiful, clean white brands that were, like, kept crushing it. And everybody wanted to be upstairs. And I was, you know, kind of moving through this trade show for five or six days and thinking about how important it was that I, you know, scale and bring home a bigger account. And at the end of the trade show, it was really slow, especially on the natural and organics department. And. But I learned to knit from this lady next to me. And she, you know, it was also a real slow show for her. And so we sat there and knitted when nobody was walking the show. And on the last day, someone walked up to me as we were, like, breaking down the booths and everything, and they said, wow, you've gotten really close to Roxanne Quimby. And I knew the name, of course. I was like, wait, what? And I didn't know that she was Roxanne Quimby. And then they were like, well, you know, the. The. She's the founder of Burt's Bees. And I, you know, immediately marched right over there, and I'm like, how did. How did you knit with me for five days and not tell me that you were the founder of Burt's Bees? Who, of course, later sold earlier sold to Clorox. And she was a happy green bee making her little knitted socks and. And enjoying the conversation from me. And she said, well, Holly, I really just wanted to hear about your vision and your brand without you knowing who I was. But I love what you're doing, and I want to help you. How can I help? And, you know, I always say this to founders, too. I'm like, you've got to put yourself out there and be the places. If I hadn't been in that natural and organics and realized that instead of beating yourself up for, like, that was not the right place, I should have been. I should have been upstairs with all the beautiful white brands, you know, I would have never met Roxanne. And she said, how can I help you? And I said, I need a PR firm. I can't get anybody's attention in New York to save my life, because I need to launch in Sephora. They're interested. And it's just really hard for me in Dallas to have the interest of a big beauty PR firm when I was still a pretty small brand. And, I mean, on the way to the airport in Vegas that day, I get a call from Nancy Berman, who was of Berman pr, the biggest beauty PR firm in New York. She said, I just got off the phone with Roxanne Quimby. I launched Burtch Bees. And she said that, I really need to spend some time with you. I'd like to come to Texas.
- [25:17]
Nathan Chan
Yeah.
- [25:18]
Holly Thagrid
Wow.
- [25:20]
Nathan Chan
And then.
- [25:21]
Holly Thagrid
And so then I said, well, I said, actually, I'm going to be in New York next week interviewing PR firms because I didn't want her to think she was the only show in the game. I needed her to understand there was competition, even though there was not. But I felt with that meeting that I had secured, I could actually get a few more meetings. And I did. I called her ex partner, Trachtenberg. I called like every other beauty publicist and said, I'm going to be in New York next week interviewing for a publicist, and I'd love to set up a meeting. And I ended up getting five or six different meetings over the course of a few days. I grabbed my brother, my sister, my husband, anybody, because it was still just me kind of trying to figure this all out and just so that we had people to sit in the room and listen and help kind of weigh in on things. It turned out that Nancy Berman just really rolled out the red carpet and. Or I should say yellow carpet, because she was completely on brand and. And right for my vision and really excited to take us on. Like none of the other firms that I interviewed were. And willing to take a chance on a brand that really just at the time had, you know, nine or ten Barney's New York stores, FAO Schwartz, and a few kids, Giggle Boutiques. And so. So it was a really exciting time because that allowed me then to build my press book, which was, I guess, like 2009, 10, so that I could go back to Sephora.
- [26:50]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. Wow. That's a crazy story. Thank you for sharing. So, Holly, I'd love to talk a little bit more about product development and also solving problems. Something that you've spoken about before is solving a problem that the customer didn't know existed. What do you mean by that?
- [27:10]
Holly Thagrid
Yeah, I mean, I think that nobody. We've had to, you know, we had to educate first and we spent quite a few years when I started building my team, talking about why SPF before we could even talk about why Supergoop. Because people didn't feel like they needed to be wearing sunscreen every single day. So, you know, education, you know, I was a teacher, make the world a better place. My dad's advice, don't do things that have been done before. All of these kind of checked the boxes on what I felt was going to be the real, the real foundation for this brand. And so, yeah, I had to. I had to. For many years we were talking yspf. And now as we enter other countries, we're going in, gosh, into Dubai in the fall. We just launched 19 countries in Europe. We're finding that every country is even in a different stage of what they know and what they feel healthy habits are. And so we have to really look closely at where they are in their journey so that we can then help them realize the importance and then we can talk about why Supergoop.
- [28:21]
Nathan Chan
So when it comes to, I guess starting out, what, what advice would you give to founders, especially when it comes to product development? Like because you talk about dtc, you said that it wasn't what it nowhere what it is, it wasn't even really a thing. Now it seems like there's so many direct to consumer brands out there in the marketplace or launching. What would you say to founders when it comes to product development? Even in the beauty brand space?
- [28:50]
Holly Thagrid
You know, I think you can't manufacture authenticity and you should have a reason for being. Don't get into the beauty industry because you have a following on Instagram and you want to sell something and beauty is fun, you know, really need a big point of difference if you're going to, if you're going to build something sustainable and long lasting and scalable and that a brand that Blackstone's going to be interested in or, you know, you really have to do something different. And so always creating ways in which to get SPF into everyone, everywhere, every single day routine, literally changing the way the world thinks about sunscreen. Help waking up in the morning to help build an enviable SPF wardrobe in everyone's routine. I mean, still today my favorite days are spent in stores talking to Sephora, talking to Ulta, talking to the people that are working in the store, talking to people that are coming in through the door about our brand, our point of difference, why we exist. I think you have to have a real, real clear, game changing, innovative idea that's going to make this World a better place. And if you have that, I think you can do what every entrepreneur and founder has to do, which is have grit. Because that is definitely the most important part of, you know, the last 18 years of my life. If I had, in fact right up here I have the Grit award at Sephora that was given to one brand in their entire store over the years. But you know, when we launched in Sephora, we were offered this fancy end cap, 12 weeks of summer Holly, after I, you know, rewind. And I went back to them and said, hey, you know, I'm ready, I'm ready, I've got the press, I want to talk. And they came back to me and said, you know, we're going to build this out. And you know, I had to fly back and sit down and have that seriously hard conversation because I needed that account. And I said I need to make sure our products look as beautiful in the dead of winter as on the 4th of July. And if, you know that meant scaling down to six inches of space, let me show you how I can be productive. Because Nathan, when you're trying to de seasonalize a category and all the retailers are blowing it up in the summer and then pulling it all back off the shelf in September, you're never going to get this year round. And that's why it's so helpful I think too for founders to have their values on paper. I mean, if we're about every single day, that means we are going to look as beautiful on the shelf at Christmas as on the 4th of July. And so I needed retail partners that believed in that, that believed that over time, drip by drip, step by step, we were going to get there. It was just going to take the grit and, and you know, like I always say to my team, can't stop, won't stop. And, and, and you know, I needed those retail partners that would believe in that. And it's actually how I, I knew Sephora was the right first big national partner for us because they said, come on back out. We sat down and they built a new, an entirely new space on the wall called Skincare Favorites. And they gave like 25 brands, 2 SKUs, 6 inches of space. Exactly what I had kind of alluded to asking for. And pick your two favorite SKUs and Holly, you're promised 365 days. We will not take you off shelf. Which I kind of know now. I don't think many retailers will give you a one year space on the shelf, but that's what I felt like I needed to show them our productivity as a brand. These were not formulas that I was dreaming about that women would start wearing in the summer. While that's an easy time to come into our brand and adapt that product, they weren't going to put them in the drawer come fall. And that was really our start to the Sephora business. And one of the most rewarding things I think now going into Sephora is just seeing walls of yellow and multiple, you know, six, eight shelves. And as we've been able to continue in that product innovation. And so I bring that up because you asked me about what it means for, you know, what is somebody that wants to get into the beauty industry. You have to have that point of difference, because if you're just doing another cleanser and you're just doing another moisturizer, there's too many of them already on the market and you won't stand the test of time. Find out what that point of difference is for your product and then grow it slowly and be ready for the journey. I mean, I mentioned my daughter. I was pregnant when I started dreaming about spf. She's going to college next year at smu. So she's been a part of this from. From day one, literally. And. And I think that it's only when you have that. That really major point of difference and that grit and determination to not stop that really great things are built. And ultimately, you know, we know for our consumer, our biggest competition is people not wearing sunscreen, right? They're. They're still not wearing it every day. They're still only thinking about it when they're at the beach. And so, you know, we really. But we also have done our research today as our team's grown to. I think we're at about 160 between New York and San Antonio, our office in Singapore, and we have an office, small office in Paris now. But as we've grown and scaled, we've done our research, and we know that Supergoop customers, 100% of our Supergoop customers that buy from our products, 75% of them wear it every single day. And I think it's even like a little larger than that, where two or three of our products layered every day. So, you know, we really are seeing the change happen. We just have to keep going.
- [34:59]
Nathan Chan
So that's incredible. So I'm curious as well. Can you tell me around how you met Maria Sharapova, how she came into the fold and is part of the business, too?
- [35:10]
Holly Thagrid
Oh, absolutely. And Maria and I still text quite a bit. She's still involved when she can help out. But it was really authentic and organic. She competed in Australia at the Australia Open and spent a month there every January. And the only product that didn't burn her eyes or itch or irritate her skin and get in the way of her game was Supergoop. She found it at Sephora. She asked her agent to call. He got in touch with me. He said, Maria is smitten with your play sunscreen. Your play Supergoop, which means it's literally named so that you can get out for a hard day of play. And he said she's never been able to wear any other sunscreen and not be concerned that her game wouldn't be compromised. And she wants to get involved. And you know, I at the time, you know, had to literally google her name and I googled her name with the word sunscreen. And she had for years been talking about how important SPF was. Her mother started teaching her at a very young age that if she was going to be on the courts every day, she had to protect her skin. And now if you Google her name and sunscreen, Supergoop comes up all over the place. But we were actually doing our friends and family round of capital raising that year and so we had a capital raise that was going on and she wanted to jump in and she said, how can I help? And you know, she's helped me along the way and in many different ways. But so have so many others that we have so many, gosh, from Lady Gaga to Brooke Shields to Katie Couric to Martha Stewart. You know, we have so many celebrity fans that have just stumbled upon our products because we're solving a problem in this world. We're giving people a beautiful, luxurious experience in wearing spf. And it doesn't feel like traditional spf. It doesn't burn your eyes, it makes your skin glow. It, you know, we're doing something different. And I think that's why we have organically found so many celebrities that have just really embraced and been along for the ride and, and, and wanted to help, honestly. And so many of them, I mean, I'm sitting here, if you could look under my desk here. I have over 170 letters I'm writing for this summer because I am just so grateful for all of the help that we're getting from people like Jenna Lyons and Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. And you know, they're all just very happy to help grow a brand that's this authentic. And so, you know, I think another you know, real key to our success is that has been that grateful spirit that I have. I'm from the south and, and I have just as many letters that I write to the people on my team because it is not lost on me that now I did it for so many years alone and I needed to lay the groundwork and the foundation in education and get the world caught up a little bit before I could start building a team. But it's that team in the last, I'd say five, six years that has really catapulted this brand to this level of global recognition and, and allowed us the interest in other parts of the world. From, like I mentioned, Dubai, we're launching. I'm going to Dubai in September and I'm, you know, we're just Singapore and Malaysia and Thailand. I mean, I think the brand has just resonated globally because of our spirit, our innovation, our can't stop, won't stop mentality, and our ability to withstand, stand the test of time. You know, it. Most things great don't happen in the shark tank world of like, you know, overnight success.
- [38:54]
Nathan Chan
So you talk about dreaming. I've heard on record that some of your ideas you actually dream about and bring them to life, like literally from sleep, like dreaming, like, not wish, like kind of, yeah, sleeping dreams.
- [39:09]
Holly Thagrid
I wait, I wake up my husband. If my husband was in here, he would say, I can't tell you how many times my wife has woken up, looked over at me and said, what if we could do this? And I just think that's a gift that I've been given to be this advocate in this world for what was an incredibly sleepy category. And I don't know who God's controlling my dreams, but I am one that comes to mind right now. We launched Lipshade, which is putting, literally, I've never understood why SPF and broad spectrum UVA and UVB protection is not found in every lipstick in America. And I looked back at my pictures, my first swatches on my hand were from 2015. So I don't always dream about them. And they happen immediately because you have to wait for the world to be ready for whatever it is you dreamed about. And you have to wait for the innovation and the product to be in a good place. And of course, you know, launching lip shades in the pandemic wouldn't have been necessarily the best timing when everyone was wearing masks. So you sometimes you have to look at the world and decide what the right timing is for that. But, you know, I know that skin cancers are often found from my conversations with dermatologists and oncologists. They're often found on the lips and around the eye area and in the most vulnerable thin skin of our body. So, you know, creating this dreamy, balmy, 100% mineral SPF protection in this wide range of colors is super fun because now we don't have to compromise a bold lip color in an easy, easy to apply shade that, you know, nourishes and hydrates, but we don't have to compromise the SPF broad spectrum protection that we can deliver for it and have it be a wonderful experience. So that one was a long one in the works, but, but it's, it's definitely one of the more exciting and as we've been able to grow our business at Sephora and Scale to have more shelf space and more shelf space, we certainly have a place for it there with them behind us.
- [41:16]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, that's really cool. I just think it's. Yeah. I've never heard of a founder that kind of dreams of things in their sleep and then brings them to life. Because dreaming is an interesting thing. Like, I suppose there's, I haven't ever looked into it, but supposedly there's all these meanings behind your dreams, right?
- [41:34]
Holly Thagrid
I, I believe there are. And there's definitely a meaning behind every one of our formulas that we've brought to life from even the bioretinol. I mean, now that came from a lot of conversations I had with doctors about if you could combine the benefits of SPF with bioretinol in a plant based, 100% mineral, you know, formula, a serumy formula, it'd be fantastic for women and men to get the benefits of a bioretinol during the daytime. Because at the current, prior to the launch of that sku, you could only wear retinol products at night when you were completely shaded from the sun. So, you know, some of the, some of the formulas have come from the conversations that I've had with the relationships that I've built over the years. So I would also say to the younger founders that ask that question, what can I do? You know, take the meetings, take every meeting, whether you're raising money or not raising money or, you know, if somebody's interested in having a conversation with you, fly to San Francisco, fly to New York, fly, get on the road, you know, and have that. Share your passion for your brand with everyone. And it may not come to fruition for what that conversation was for. For, you know, six, seven years. In fact, our first private equity encore consumer well, Colt Capital was our Series A, and Encore Consumer was our Series B. And those both came from very early conversations, even pre Sephora launch. And they were interested in what we were doing, and we kept in touch and had those calls. And it turns out that everybody in private equity is really nice when they're talking to young founders and they want to hear what's on your mind and what you're doing. So there's no better person to be sharing those, you know, having those conversations with, because it may not be at the moment that you need their help, but eventually you will if you're doing your job and, you know, continuing to grow your brand.
- [43:36]
Nathan Chan
Awesome. Well, we will wrap there. Holly, thank you so much for your time. And this was an incredible interview. It's going to help a lot of founders in our community. Community. So congratulations on all your success thus far. And, yeah, thank you again.
- [43:49]
Holly Thagrid
Well, thank you for having me, Nathan. This has been so much fun.
- [43:53]
Nathan Chan
If you love this episode, make sure to check out my interview with Emma Greed on how solving a problem she was so passionate about led to the creation of Skims and Good American.
- [44:03]
C
And so I do think it's so much of it starts with, like, addressing things that bother you that you find, you know, you've got to create a solution for, because, you know, at the end of the day, you've got to be passionate enough and sometimes crazy enough to go round and round and round to actually solve a problem.