The Exchanges

Q Yeah. Alright, so you, you're working at this, at the furniture store, and you're a young guy, and you're in your, like, mid-twenties, so. Yep. Did you start to think about what else you might want to do, or were you happy doing that and didn't have like a big plan or anything like that?

A Yeah, I wouldn't say I was happy doing that, but I was being successful. I was supporting my wife. We'd had a kid, and she was able to stay at home, so I was feeling good about that. Um, I was just learning how to sell, which was, it would end up be everything. There's a, I think his name's Ogilvy. Ogilvy and Mathers, he's like the father of marketing, I believe. He said something like, you know, in the modern world, you could be as creative as you want, but unless you know how to sell, you're just not going to make it. You know, you have to be able to sell your ideas. So, so I think those years, those five years at Art Van, it was called Art Van Furniture, were just hugely, hugely important for my career.

AI assessment note: “I wouldn't say I was happy doing that, but I was being successful.”

Q Yeah, would you send the display, like, Because you, you had, like, these plastic apes, and like, uh, a whole, like, sometimes there'd be, like, a life-size cutout of a, of an ape, or would you send it to every store that sold the product?

A I mean, a lot of it from the beginning was you had to buy the whole thing. We weren't, we didn't let you cherry pick. Michael helped us with that. No cherry picking, which means you can't just buy two bottles and put it on your shelf with all the other bottles, because we knew that wasn't going to do it. We knew we needed it to seem bigger than it was, so we, we went to Ikea and And got these big bookcases that they had on sale for like 50 bucks or something, these tall bookcases, and we redid the whole so they would fit our sunscreen bottles perfectly and stickered the side of them and put the ape on top, and that's what we showed at the trade show. So if, if somebody looked at it, they'd say, how much for this? You'd say you have to buy the whole thing, which included the, the footballs, the frisbees, the t-shirts, the sunscreen, the guy on top, the, and you got the display. So if you wanted to carry sunbomb, you had to carry this whole Big display, but then that's what everybody looked at. That's what drew everybody to it, because it seemed like something and not just two bottles of sunscreen on the bottom shelf.

AI assessment note: “if you wanted to carry sunbomb, you had to carry this whole Big display”

Q Yeah. Um, meanwhile, while you were working on the Christian videos with, with this nonprofit, I guess you met this guy who would wind up helping you with, with that project, and then who would become your next business partner? His name is Renee Kennedy. Who, who is Renee Kennedy? Or who is he?

A Uh, Rene worked at an agency, a little design agency that was a couple of doors down from a little office that we had. He had just gotten here from Copenhagen. He grew up in Copenhagen, and he was just an amazing brand designer, and he was, they were expensive. It was like 200 dollars an hour, which is a lot for a non-profit. But, you know, as I realized I couldn't afford to keep using an agency, And I was going to hire somebody, and he said, I'll do it. And I said, I can only pay X amount, which was half of what he was getting. And I was like, why would you, and he was, he was basically, he grew up an atheist. You know what I mean? He hated the church. He hated, he didn't believe any of it. And, and I was like, why would you want to come and work, do this? And he said, because I have never looked for God or looked for spirituality or anything, because there was no on-ramp for me, a person like me.

AI assessment note: “Rene worked at an agency, a little design agency that was a couple of doors down”

Q really nine years after its launch, um, Sunbomb was, was purchased by SC Johnson, and reportedly for four hundred million dollars. It's an amazing Incredible exit after just, you know, nine years that, from what I understand, that was, that was the plan all along, right? Like, like the tequila brand and the other brands that you worked on to, to basically build it and then eventually to sell it.

A Yeah, that was the idea. And I've, I'd made mistakes before with this, because I was basically running it, I was the CEO, and I'd heard about that Harvard business model that says, you know, creatives usually start companies, and then they, and they're really good at creative, that's why they make companies, and then they start hiring people, and doing the P&Ls, and managing people, and all the stuff they suck at, and by year three, the curve starts going down, and by year five, the company's over, and I knew that, Track, and so about, it was about year three or four, when I got called from Adam Francis, who was a guy in Australia, who's ex-pro surfer, he went to Harvard, his wife Teagan was a lawyer, and they had done a lot of good businesses, and, and he was getting ready to start a sunscreen business, and he saw a sun bum in Hawaii, and said, you know, I can't beat these guys, I gotta try to join them, so he called me. I knew who I was talking to, I was talking to my next CEO, so I said, will you be our CEO? And I got out of his way.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, that was the idea.”

Q Given that the branding was so terrible, and you already had a bunch of different accounts you were working on, or brands you were building, what appealed to you about this idea of working in sunscreen?

A It was local, so that made it easy. We didn't have to travel as much, and I knew the surf world, I knew the beach world, and I liked it, and, you know, I just didn't say yes right away. I looked at the industry, I looked at what was happening in the space, and I saw Just a gigantic hole that you could drive through. Playtex had just bought Hawaiian Tropic a couple years earlier, so it was just all these big players. There was no authentic sunscreen brand. Only thing that was out there was stuff that my kids didn't want in the car or on their towel. It looked like their mom left something in their car behind if, if it was, you know, there was nothing that fit their world, and I knew I could create that, and I knew, like I said, there was a space for it.

AI assessment note: “It was local, so that made it easy... saw Just a gigantic hole”

Q Tom, any last minute advice for Allison? Words of wisdom?

A I know how hard it is, Alison. Okay. I feel you so bad. I know it's so hard, right? I mean, I used to hawk t-shirts at Michigan games, like, and it's just so hard to keep going, but your product looks really, really, really great. And that's the bottom line. If you have a great product, you can make, you will make it. So it's really just hustling more and getting it in the right placement. And again, I would I would say because it's so expensive and because you don't have your margins, those resorts can go higher. They can have a 50 dollar trucker hat, you know what I mean? And you can make the money, but you gotta make the money, so you gotta go places where you can charge enough so you can stay in business and get these hats over the line.

AI assessment note: “you gotta go places where you can charge enough so you can stay in business”

Q that and the story of that really came together in designing The Sunbum brand. Um, I, Tom, I suspect that branding and design is going to come up in our calls today, but, um, but let me just start by asking you a general question about branding. Um, in, in your view, right, why does brand and design matter when you're putting out a product? Why is it that important?

A It matters because everybody buys on feeling, guy, like everybody. So if you don't give them the right feeling that they want, whether that be in your packaging, in your advertising, Wherever. If you don't give them the feeling that they're looking for, they're not going to buy. And it doesn't mean it has to be a cool brand, like a, you know, cool surfer brand, because cool is different to everybody. It could be, I want to feel rich, so I need to buy Louis Vuitton or Prada, because I think that's cool. I might want to feel, you know, like I'm an outdoorsman. If I was an outdoorsman, I want to buy Patagonia, and I want to, I want to drive a Subaru. Or whatever that is, and so you gotta give me that feeling, um, to know that it's gonna deliver what I want to deliver, and it may just be wanting to deliver a message that, you know, it's a smart brand, it's gonna actually clean my, the clog in my drain.

AI assessment note: “It matters because everybody buys on feeling, guy, like everybody.”

Q You know, Tom, this, this reminds me a little bit of something that you mentioned to me, um, before this interview started, um, called the Elvis principle that you, you mentioned. What, what's, what's the Elvis principle that you, what is it, and how do you use it to develop a brand?

A The Elvis principle is kind of similar to the mashup that I talked about, except this is more on the personality. I was watching an Elvis special or something about him, and, and I, then I got really intrigued with him. And he, he came out, when he came out on the scene in the fifties, he, he was, you know, rock and roll. He was dangerous. He's sexy, shaking his hips like crazy. Right. And then he got banned. Right. He was, he was just too, he was too sexual. You could have had to film him above the waist. Right. And so then he came out with a gospel album and the parents that had been, you got to burn the records or you can't go to an Elvis concert. Concert, which is, which made people want to go to the concert more. Once he did the gospel albums, and did, so showed that side, they were like, oh, he's a good boy. It's okay to listen to Elvis. He's a good boy. And so it's this juxtaposition of edge, sex, good, kind, humble, like mashing all of that together. It's kind of what people want. It's that combo is what's, what's a really interesting personality for brands, for people. So I was very conscious of that in, in using that. When I did ads and all that stuff, I was kind of making that personality type.

AI assessment note: “it's this juxtaposition of edge, sex, good, kind, humble, like mashing all of that together.”

Q Did he know about tequila? Like, was he experienced, was he a distiller?

A He, he wasn't, but man, he fit the bill, you know? It's all about feeling when you build a brand, right? Every, people buy things because the way they make them feel, right? You buy a Louis Vuitton because you think it makes you feel rich. You buy an old surf fan because you think it looks Cool. You buy athletic shoes, Nike, because you think you look more athletic or whatever the type might be. I know there's other things, but everything you do is based on how this product or brand makes you feel about yourself or think other people feel about you. So when it came to tequila and looking at the tequila business, when Brent called me, it was pretty easy. If you're, if you're ordering tequila at a bar, whiskey at a bar, just straight up tequila on the rocks, um, Um, you're trying to be a badass a little bit. You're, you know, you're not, you're not earning a cosmopolitan. And so he fit, he fit that bill. He was, he had just such a great aesthetic. He was, but he was big guy, tough. He's great in the clubs. He knew lots of people. Um, he was a great businessman.

AI assessment note: “He, he wasn't, but man, he fit the bill, you know?”

Q Right? Like, it's really hard to find anything about you. And yeah, And you'd been through this very public trial around Taco Bell, and why did you not want to be in the public eye at all?

A Uh, I grew up so probably insecure, poor maybe, not feeling accepted. Kind of like the furniture store, right? The furniture store, you know, is a hard place to work, and, and I kind of felt like maybe even my wife's parents were We're like, why'd you marry this guy? I'm not saying they thought that, but like, you were dating all these really rich guys, and then you married this artist guy, and he's like, works at this furniture store, and I just didn't want to ever make anybody feel that way, so I was very conscious about bragging, and I just didn't like braggers, or about being out in front of something, and this, quite frankly, the, I didn't think I could help in a lot of the circumstances, you know. I wasn't, I wasn't the brands that I was creating necessarily. I wasn't the big surfer. I wasn't the big tough guy for tequila. I wasn't the big Christian guy, you know. There were people like that that were better than me at it. I suppose if I would have done like a brand of t-shirts for tall skinny guys, I probably could have gotten out in front of it or something, or a picky eater food brand if I would have done that. I could have probably been that guy.

AI assessment note: “I grew up so probably insecure, poor maybe, not feeling accepted.”

Q How did you know it was perfect when you saw it?

A Because I loved it. I just, as soon as I saw it, I loved it. I knew how strong it was. I knew how powerful that logo mark was, you know. That's the other thing, you know, if you take Sonny, the logo, the Ape logo, and you put it next to all the other big brands out there, right, forget about the Coppertones and the Banana Boats, those are just names, but if you put it next to, you know, the Nike Swoosh, the Adidas mark, you put it next to the Disney mark, You put it next to the Ford logo, you put it next to the Apple logo, and then you put this badass ape in sunglasses staring at you, stone-faced. I knew it would be a great sticker, I knew it would be great everything, and we, we knew we were gonna graffiti market the shit out of this thing, so we...

AI assessment note: “Because I loved it. I just, as soon as I saw it, I loved it.”

Q Okay. Tom, um, any, any initial advice? Cause I have a piece of advice, but I want, I want to hear yours first if you, if you have it.

A Um, well, it's looking at it. It just seems like the messages are kind of a little bit confusing, right? They're kind of all over the place. There's some fun. You want to be like fun and live, laugh, scrub. And then it's kind of, then there's some other ones that are like luxurious and more spa seeming. I think for me, you know, you really gotta, you really gotta get some attention. It's so hard, right? Like hand lotions and all that stuff that's out there, and you know, the, the, all the organic stuff. Um, I did, I was doing probably, I don't even know that I've ever told anybody this. I'm certainly not on air. Uh, we, Baby Bum came out with a, was gonna come out with a nipple butter, a nipple cream.

AI assessment note: “It just seems like the messages are kind of a little bit confusing”