Procter & Gamble

“The reason I was successful at Tom's of Maine is because I took market share away from Colgate, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. So when you can take market share away from the commodities by an alternative approach to that product development and that product …”

“Pepsi Cola was an early advertiser because they, the soft drink appeals to that market. Same way with Anheuser-Busch. They got exclusive rights to advertise their beer. But what you call the real revenue generators, the package good guys the Procter & Gamble, …”

“Procter & Gamble's been around for a 180 years, and I'm the first black CEO in the company's history.”

“Oh yeah, we have. you know, we're fortunate in our partnership with Procter & Gamble.”

“Procter & Gamble and Kimberly Clark, the two big diaper manufacturers that make Pampers and Huggies, they refused to sell us diapers. They said they'd Just don't want to waste your time on a business that's never going to work.”

“If you partner with those companies, you know, they have a similar type of storytelling and that's what allows you to become Mia Hamm, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan. It's the sponsors that do it, you know?”

“50, 60% of the effort in an organization like that goes to the political process, right? Positioning yourself well and all that kind of stuff. It's not just doing stuff, right?”

“Gillette who had dominated the industry had sold to Procter and Gamble for like over fifty billion dollars.”

“Gillette globally had, you know, 70% market share, like truly insane.”

“The vision really evolved from, hey, we're gonna build, you know, a next generation Gillette or a next generation Old Spice, you know, from a Harry's brand standpoint to, hey, we're gonna build a next generation, you know, Procter & Gamble. Like, we wanna, we …”

“Before they sold, they would report their, you know, kind of financials. They were like one of the most profitable CPG companies ever built.”

“We underestimated our competition, and we underestimated the consumer's desire for massive variety in cookies, and we had like five flavors of chocolate chip. So, we ended up exiting the business and we just, it was not our specialty.”

“We united the Pampers global team, and within about 12 years, this was a big brand when we started, P&G's biggest brand. We tripled our revenue. And improve the profitability, and set an example, frankly, for P&G corporately.”

“And so they ended up realizing that pick up and drop off was not the path. And then they went down the locker path. And for about three to six months, they competed with us head to head.”

“They're at 52% market share of Tide, and they can't push that much further. And so they've always organically had this journey where if they can't provide the goods for laundry, can they just do your laundry?”

“And ultimately, all of our partners except for one said no thanks.”

“I said, I would, but I'm not willing to pay much money. I'll give you ten million dollars for the whole thing, but I'll close next week. You know, everything else was, they were always waiting six months, you know, and then there would be due diligence. I said…”

“Because anytime you try to sell something, you get about one-tenth of what you get when they want to buy you.”

“Well, what happened is they, three years into it, they were trying to buy Gillette, and Gillette owned Oral-B and Braun. And the deal was being held up because the tooth, the oral B and the spin brush were a monopoly. It was well over 50% of all the toothbrush…”

“So they had told their board that they thought they could do as much as a 110 or a hundred twenty million dollars with this product. And I think after a year, they were doing over 300. A million with the product”

“And it turned out, and we didn't know this till later, that it was the highest testing product they ever did in the history of Procter & Gamble with consumers.”

“Selling this to, like, XYZ private equity firm doesn't tick it for me, and I have no interest in that. This needs to go to the right home at some point, and that needs to be one of the largest companies in the world in the CPG space. That needs to be a Procter…”

“Procter & Gamble and Kimberly Clark, the two big diaper manufacturers that make Pampers and Huggies, they refused to sell us diapers. They said they just don't want to waste their time on a business that's never going to work.”

“That was the problem in the early days, that you had a few incumbents that owned a bunch of brands and controlled all the space at retail. So you had L'Oreal, which was L'Oreal and Maybelline. You had P and G, which owned cover girl at the time. So there was n…”