The Exchanges

Q So you decided to stay in Dallas after helping him move in?

A I did. Well, I knew that if I were going to propose a move to my parents, That I needed to have a job lined up. So I actually, during that brief weekend visit, I walked over to the Dallas Country Club and knocked on the door of the general manager's office and introduced myself and told them all about my music and, and that I was hoping that they might look to have some new entertainment in their, in their dining room. And I went back, convinced my parents that I could Make a living performing, and moved my harp to Dallas, found an apartment, and literally did the kind of back of the napkin math, like how many hours a week do I need to play the harp to pay for the rent?

AI assessment note: “I did. Well, I knew that if I were going to propose a move”

Q schools, and they're huge, you know, buckets of this stuff, and, and, and teachers and kids are, well, Constantly have access to this, this sunblock, and that strategy just didn't work. Like, anyone who's trying to deal with a public school district knows it's really challenging. Um, you eventually pivoted and started to focus on consumers, but that wasn't the plan, right? I mean, that wasn't the, the, the model.

A No, you know, first year out of college, I was a third grade school teacher, and it was later when my friend was diagnosed with skin cancer that I looked back at that time in the classroom and realized that we're not teaching our youth this healthy habit of wearing SPF every single day, yet we're telling them to wash their hands in the cafeteria, and we have fences around the playground, and so my original idea was to create this brand and this formula, then get it into school classrooms, and you're right, I had to pivot because at the time, Over-the-counter drugs were not allowed in schools, and, and, and they were thought of, like, you wouldn't send your kindergartner to school with Advil, and so it was a pivot, but I knew we still had a job to do in educating our youth, and over the course of these 20 years, I've also been a big advocate on Capitol Hill and been able to change these laws that are antiquated and that existed in schools today. We're up to, I think, 26 states that now allow SPF in schools for the, Reason of protecting our youth skin, our body's largest organ, and so what a blessing that I was not offered a contract after my first year of teaching in a school, because my world kind of came crashing down after that first year, and I was not offered a return contract, and I couldn't understand how I had just finished college to do this, and looking back, I'm so gr…

AI assessment note: “and you're right, I had to pivot because at the time, Over-the-counter drugs were not allowed”

Q the vast majority of us are not wearing sunscreen all the time, right? This is just not part of our, it's not like, it's like brushing your teeth. Most people don't, just don't do this. This is What, like, hey, maybe, maybe I can figure out a way to get people to wear sunscreen all the time, not just at the beach? Was that what you were thinking, like, immediately?

A Yes, so I found this study by Memorial Sloan Kettering that was talking about how most people knew sunscreen prevents skin cancer, but I think it was like, 70% don't wear it, just like you said, every single day, and the number one reason was because it didn't feel good on the skin. And I think just being a child of two entrepreneurs and always thinking about creating and building and researching, and this just was really interesting. I also think that I have always been a product person, um, which I think kind of goes back to with being with my mother and, and often, you know, critiquing other art and talking about skin tones and colors and, uh, the comp, the composition of things being so important.

AI assessment note: “Yes, so I found this study by Memorial Sloan Kettering”

Q San Antonio. You've got a New York office. You hired a president to, more or less, to run the company. And from what I understand, like, this was sort of a request from your investors. You're like, hey, Holly, you're great. You're really good at what you do, but like, You need an operations person. That's not your strength. Was that, is that true? Is that how it went down?

A Yeah, you know, so we had, um, our Series A followed our friends and family, and one of the former partners at TSG, John Kenny, was going off on his own to create what is now Cult Capital, and he asked to lead our Series A round, and he said, Holly, what is it you want to do for this next phase of Supergoop? And I said, John, I want to build a team. I want help. I want a presence in New York City. And we decided together that it was time to go on that search for a brand president who could be the perfect integrator for my vision. And she's been now with us for four years.

AI assessment note: “we decided together that it was time to go on that search for a brand president”

Q So you're like, and you're, you know, 22, 23 years old, living in Dallas, playing the harp, and that's, that becomes your business, Holly the Harpist?

A Holly the Harvest, yes. So I went from Dallas Country Club, uh, to the Petroleum Club, to Brook Hollow Golf Club, and, and did this, made the same introduction, and, and this is really when I realized that building this business of Holly the Harvest was when I lost all track of time, and creating, like, direct mail pieces, and, and looking into the book of lists. I often would read the CEOs and write letters to their home, you know. I'm from the South, so Writing letters has always been a big part of my upbringing and, but I got a really good response from, from just the jobs that I had and spent the next 10 years of my life actually performing and that's how I paid the rent.

AI assessment note: “Holly the Harvest, yes. So I went from Dallas Country Club”

Q So was your, this is 2005, was your idea to find an existing sunscreen brand and then just get schools to put that into their, like into the hallways? Was that, or did, did you already from the beginning think, I'm going to make a sunscreen?

A Well, so the first step was to, what is on, what is out there? And I really wanted to look, I did not grow up wearing sunscreen every single day. So I was thinking, What is that product that I should have been wearing? And so I, I looked on the market, and, you know, like you said, in 2005, SPF was an incredibly sleepy category, and it was owned by the mass channels of distribution like Walgreens and Target and Walmart, and what I found was that SPF was being promoted and marketed as an incredibly seasonal thing, and you couldn't actually even find SPF outside of May, June, or July. And when I did find it, I looked at the ingredients and found that 90% of what was on the market was just full of very controversial ingredients.

AI assessment note: “the first step was to, what is on, what is out there?”

Q whether you play around with a couple of interesting, like, just kind of weird options. Like, could you, could you play around with low sugar cookies or high protein cookies? You know, there's a lot of interest in like low carb, high protein, low sugar products, you know, just, just kind of play around with something like that. It's just a thought. I don't know. Holly, what do you think?

A Yeah, you know, I think that there is mention on the website of ingredients and processes from the South, and, and I don't think you even quite touch specifically enough about what is the special differentiator in the cookies that you're selling, and I think I would probably encourage you to maybe think about, like, lots is not always better, and so maybe, like, fewer but more differentiated, and then in your Product photography and everything. I think if these are the most delicious cookies anyone has ever put in their mouth, that doesn't come across as much in the photography from the website. Um, even from the leading discount copy about, you know, when I come to your website for the first time, I want to be sold on your cookie. I don't want to think about like, oh, I can buy more and get a If DTC is your model and if, or if that's just like a sidebar to your retail store and your, and your cookie truck, maybe thinking about the next three years as a shorter window of like, what do I want? Do I want to focus on grocery? Do I want to focus on my, my cookie truck? Do I want to focus on birthday parties? There seems to be a lot of areas that could be sucking the energy out of you and maybe just like think, Hey, for the next three Two to three years, I am going to crush it on throwing cookie truck parties or what, you know, whatever those are, but like really think about in shor…

AI assessment note: “lots is not always better, and so maybe, like, fewer but more differentiated”