143. Holly Thaggard: The San Antonio Founder Behind Supergoop!’s Global Success

Bob Rivard [00:00:04]:
Welcome to Big City, Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Rivard. I have waited a whole year to get today's guest on the podcast. And ever since I came across her story and found myself dumbfounded that such an interesting and important entrepreneur had built this amazing skin care and sunscreen company in San Antonio and New York with products used all over the world and I didn't know about it. Welcome Holly Thaggard, founder of Supergoop, the prestige line of skin care products and the company that you created to protect us from skin cancer.

Holly Thaggard [00:00:42]:
Thank you, Bob. Thanks for having me today.

Bob Rivard [00:00:44]:
Thanks for coming on. I assumed that because I didn't know about you that you and Supergoop were San Antonio's best kept secret, but boy, was I wrong. I started asking around in my travels and I can now confirm that almost every woman on the planet knows all about Supergoop. Many are users. People love Supergoop. And as I told you minutes before the podcast started, one of the startup engineers for a small tech company here came in. And as soon as I said you were my guest, he started going on and on about how much his wife buys your product at Saks Fifth Avenue.

Holly Thaggard [00:01:21]:
I love hearing that, because that's what's ultimately going to stop a cancer epidemic. Is everyone everywhere wearing sunscreen every single day?

Bob Rivard [00:01:28]:
It never gets old hearing that, does it?

Holly Thaggard [00:01:31]:
Not at all. I dream about spf, Bob.

Bob Rivard [00:01:34]:
Well, we're going to talk about the relationship of cancer and your startup and all that in just a minute, but I want to start with a few words of congratulation because next week in Houston, you're going to be inducted into the Texas Business hall of Fame. You'll be the only woman and the only San Antonian to be inducted in this year's class. So congratulations.

Holly Thaggard [00:01:52]:
Well, thank you so much. I'm incredibly honored and oh, so flattered to be among such inductees, former inductees. And it's just really exciting. I'm looking forward to next week.

Bob Rivard [00:02:03]:
Yeah, you're joining Peter Holt and Graham Weston and Kit Goldsberry and so many other, like, distinguished leaders of our community over time. And it's great that you're in there. The Texas Business hall of Fame doesn't only look at business success, which obviously is an important factor, but also at each individual's impact on the community or the world or the, the people they serve. So it's a, it's, it's a real honor. Congratulations and have a great time there. I'm sure you will.

Holly Thaggard [00:02:31]:
Thank you. I'm excited. Janet Garwich is going to introduce me, who is another former Texan inductee. And she was the founder of Laura Mercier. So she's a legend. Houston.

Bob Rivard [00:02:43]:
Houston.

Holly Thaggard [00:02:43]:
And she is an absolute legend in the beauty industry. And, and, and I'm, I've enjoyed getting to know her even better over the last few months and I'm looking forward to speaking, spending more time next week with her.

Bob Rivard [00:02:54]:
Well, that's great. I'm doing my small bit today to make sure we men are paying attention because I think this is important. And as soon as you say something like skin care, that might turn off a lot of men, and I'm certainly from the baby boom generation where we didn't know we had to take care of our skin growing up, if we were trying to tan at a beach or something, we put on some ridiculous Hawaiian cocoa butter product or something and inevitably got sunburned and didn't have any idea what skin cancer was or any of that. But now I'm a buyer, a user of sport, which is in your line of products. I might not define it properly, but I consider it the active play.

Holly Thaggard [00:03:33]:
You call it Play, get out and.

Bob Rivard [00:03:35]:
Play, the active lifestyle sunscreen. It might be late in life for me to be adopting it, but I've become a convert. And I think probably one of your messages is it's, it's never too late for everybody to start protecting themselves against, against skin cancer.

Holly Thaggard [00:03:52]:
Yeah, you know, that's right. And in fact, it was a young man, a friend of mine when we were 29, almost over 20 years ago, that was diagnosed with skin cancer that inspired me to change the way the world thinks about sunscreen. And he had blonde hair and blue eyes, still a dear friend. And he's joining me as well next week in Houston. But his name is Cullen Childress and he's a Texas boy, too. And, you know, I looked at my childhood and I'm blonde hair and blue eyes as well. And I spent quite a bit of time in the sun as a child. And so, well, I learned that skin cancer doesn't normally show up that early in life at 29, for him it did.

Holly Thaggard [00:04:28]:
And I thought it could easily have been me. And that's when I started thinking back about my time in the classroom. And my first year out of college. I taught third grade. Very few people know that I had that year in the classroom. And I never remembered once seeing a tube of sunscreen on the school campus. Despite the fact that kids were going outside in the middle of the day. In the peak hours of sun exposure.

Holly Thaggard [00:04:52]:
Often they were staying after school and partaking in baseball and tennis. And never once did I see sunscreen on the school campus. And I realized and thought back to that time in the classroom. When we're teaching children young, healthy habits. Like washing their hands before lunch and going onto the playground. We sure provide a fence around the playground to protect them from ongoing traffic. And yet the sun in the sky is the number one carcinogen in this world. And while we love it and embrace it.

Holly Thaggard [00:05:20]:
And want to encourage everyone to enjoy their time outside. We weren't doing our job as teachers in protecting our youth from that danger. And it was that danger that's cumulative over time. That turns into skin cancer. And like I said, for my good friend Cullen Childress. It happened at a pretty young age. And for most people, it doesn't show up until much later in life. And that's really when I began to think and dream about SPF and figure out how to deseasonalize that sleeping.

Bob Rivard [00:05:48]:
Give us spf.

Holly Thaggard [00:05:49]:
That's sun protection factor. And it actually is a little misleading. I think it's also a rating system that needs to be updated. It's a little antiquated. Only protects from UVB burning rays. So the rays that change the color of your skin are protected based on the SPF number. It used to be that there was a race to how high your number could be. But what people also don't realize is that the minute you're exposed to sun.

Holly Thaggard [00:06:14]:
It starts to break down that spf. And it does so disproportionately to the number. So our sweet spot at Supergoop has always been between a 30 and a 50 SPF. And why I say it's misleading is the use UVA rays, which are more. They're tested by critical wavelength. And it's the ratio of UVA to uvb. Not to get a little too nerdy here, but it's that we're gonna keep up with you here that protects from the UVA rays. And those A rays.

Holly Thaggard [00:06:42]:
I always say UV aging or UV burning. It's very important because those aging rays penetrate deeper into the skin. They really cause the signs of aging. Everything we don't like about our skin, from loss of elasticity to the fine lines and wrinkles. They all are caused by UVA RA. And it really wasn't until even in the last three decades. That it was actually in the last 15 years. That the FDA has established a rating system for the UVA protection in a product.

Holly Thaggard [00:07:11]:
So the whole category just needed disrupting and de. Seasonalizing and it needed some energy behind it. So that's what.

Bob Rivard [00:07:19]:
And UVA is the ray that leads to cancer, am I right?

Holly Thaggard [00:07:24]:
Exactly. Both. Both do. And it's important to have that perfect ratio of UVA to UVB protection so that you can claim a broad spectrum sunscreen. And while many sunscreens in the mass market 20 years ago would claim broad spectrum, there was never a test that was acknowledged in the United States. There was a PA rating system in Japan that was spearheaded. And that's really the rating system that Supergoop has used from day one to establish and give credibility to the broad spectrum protection that our formulas meet.

Bob Rivard [00:07:58]:
So before we get too deep into Supergoop as a startup, I want to share a little bit more of your origin story with our audience. Most third grade teachers, Holly, don't pivot to become entrepreneurs who risk all and take that obsessive compulsive leap that you've got to take to build a company. So, first of all, I'm wondering whether or not you have a little bit of entrepreneurship in your DNA, because I know you grew up in Baton Rouge and that your parents were both independent. I think your father was a small businessman and your mother was maybe an artist. So they were not corporate people that were coming home that worked at big companies. And maybe that somewhere planted in you the idea that you too could be the master of your own destiny and not necessarily spend an entire career in, oh yeah, 100%.

Holly Thaggard [00:08:47]:
My mother and dad are both very entrepreneurial. And I think, you know, one of the things I'm most grateful for is they taught my younger brother and my older sister that we could go anywhere and do anything. And I always, you know, I think I'm glad I ended up going to Texas. And I think that it's always that creativity that I think I got from my mother's side of the family. She was an artist. She has paintings in the Smithsonian. She's incredibly accomplished. But what I learned from that is growing up was that I liked the idea of building her business.

Holly Thaggard [00:09:22]:
And many artists are also not entrepreneurs. But my father was head of the sales and marketing club, and I'd sit under his desk and listen to Zig Ziglar tapes on the weekends and play with the liquid paper. That kind of ages me a little bit. But I loved organization and I loved building things, and so I think I've always had that. And when my friend was Diagnosed with skin cancer, I began thinking about the problem that there was to solve. And I think looking at the white space is something my mother taught me and do things that haven't been done before. When I stopped teaching, and what I know now is that I never stopped teaching. This brand is built on a foundation in education.

Holly Thaggard [00:10:04]:
I just did not have to stay confined to the four walls of a classroom and seventeen screaming eight year olds. I have literally taken a global stage in education and so I didn't go far from teaching. It just wasn't going to be limited to a classroom.

Bob Rivard [00:10:21]:
And you know, I've heard so many wonderful founder stories where the notion in the beginning was to address X and then you pivot to Y and find your success. And so your original mission was why are we not protecting school children's skin? And why will schools, they actually wouldn't let sunscreen in over the counter products into the, into the classroom in school, which was a little befuddling I think when you found out. But your original mission was trying to advocate for let's start protecting children's skin at an early age. And the place to do that is at school.

Holly Thaggard [00:10:56]:
That's right. And it's actually, you know, when you think back 20 years ago, skincare was pretty serious. It was doctor driven brands. How, you know, how many clinicals do you have? And Supergoop was really the first playful, skill, spirited brand to be considered highly efficacious in skincare. And the reason behind that was because I wanted to turn that frown upside down on that child when her mother said, you know, don't forget your sunscreen. And so it was much more fun to say Supergoop. And I knew that if we were going to teach and educate a new generation to protect their skin every single day, it had to come from a playful, fun, spirited brand. And it also had to come from a brand because I actually thought a lot about a non profit for education around this idea that nobody's wearing sunscreen every day.

Holly Thaggard [00:11:45]:
There was no innovation in the formulas. It was just like how high the SPF number went. And I thought about how everyone's skin is very different. Your skin is different at age 10 than it is at age 50. And so, and the climates are very different around the world too. What's right in Hong Kong may not be right in New York City. And so formulas needed to evolve and they needed innovation if we were really going to inspire people to wear it every single day. And that, you know, was just an early perspective that I had and realized that Many.

Holly Thaggard [00:12:16]:
When I evaluated the drug facts box on all of the sun care on the market, I noticed many controversial ingredients. My mother's a breast cancer survivor and every sunscreen had oxybenzone in it and multiple parabens for preservative system. And I knew from my research that these ingredients were controversial. And how could I encourage everyone to wear something as a nonprofit if I went that direction, that could possibly be another cancer causing ingredient or formula. So I knew that this had to this brand and this in this idea and my journey had to be a product driven business that could be sustainable to continue the education that's needed in this world.

Bob Rivard [00:13:03]:
Well, how did you get your start? You're in Dallas by now, and I haven't mentioned that you were Holly the harpist because you're an artist yourself, you're a musician, you were a harp player. And because you're entrepreneurial, you moved to Dallas and started making your living by playing harp at weddings and other events. And you met your husband in Dallas, got married, and did you just come home one day and tell him, you know, I'm going to start my own company? And he presumably said, you're crazy and something else happened and then you did it?

Holly Thaggard [00:13:35]:
No, he was actually super supportive. He was used to my entrepreneurial spirit and my problem solving and look for the white space. Right. I was a harpist, not a pianist. The world had plenty of pianists. And so I love to perform. And people often ask me, how do you tie all this together? And I think they're actually very closely related because building the business of Holly the harpist, which I thoroughly enjoyed, even maybe more so than performing, teaches you to break things down. Right.

Holly Thaggard [00:14:02]:
And the musicians that are listening in, you know, you open a piece of sheet music, it's completely overwhelming. You see all these notes. It sounds crazy that you're going to turn that into a beautiful song. But you do so by breaking things down measure by measure. And so you learn to play the right hand first, or at least this is how I learned. You play the right hand, then you play the left hand, then you put it together for a measure, and then you go to the second measure, you play the right hand, the left hand, then you put the first measure with the second measure. And it's very much like an entrepreneurial spirit because you have to learn to break things down and you have to like, what do I do first? And so when my friend, and this was 10 years into building Holly the harpist was diagnosed with skin cancer, I started just doing that Same thing. And breaking things down.

Holly Thaggard [00:14:46]:
Like, gosh, the world needs better sunscreen. What does that mean? Who do I call? And, you know, I found the National Sunscreen Symposium was having a conference.

Bob Rivard [00:14:56]:
Who knew?

Holly Thaggard [00:14:57]:
You know, and the chemists that were speaking, I felt like they should be probably the smartest chemist to talk to. And so, you know, you call them up and you, and you introduce yourself and you say, I want to change the way the world thinks about sunscreen, but we have to create a formula that's healthy and clean. This was kind of before skincare clean was a thing. So they were like, what do you mean clean? And I'd say, well, we have parabens, propylene glycol, there's oxybenzone in every formula. I can't get out there and advocate for someone putting this lotion all over their face and body every day if it's ultimately going to cause another kind of cancer. So we have to create something. And yes, my idea was to put this into school classrooms. So I convinced these chemists to work pro bono for me and I did it by saying, this magic sunscreen that we're going to create together is going to be put in every classroom across America.

Bob Rivard [00:15:47]:
Wow, that's ambitious. And you found some chemists that were willing to listen to you. Someone who had no background in science or chemistry or lab work.

Holly Thaggard [00:15:58]:
They said, tell me what you want, Holly. And we made a list of everything. You know, my father's a golfer and I had to have a no slip grip. I had to have a clean formula for the youngest of babies on the changing table so that the mother could give sunscreen massages to the baby and make it a pleasant experience. Sometimes I'm asked by my 17 year old, hey, mom, when it's time to reapply, can I have that sunscreen massage? But, you know, I think that's the whole thing about changing consumer behavior. You have to do it with a fun, fun and playful spirit. You have to do it not through scaring the world. You often do not hear Supergoop as a brand talk about the scary cancer word, because I think if you truly want consumer behavior change, you have to come about it from inspiring the world.

Holly Thaggard [00:16:42]:
And we were only going to do that if there were beautiful formulas that felt amazing on the skin and that were luxurious and, and people actually wanted to wear them whether it was cold and rainy or hot and sunny.

Bob Rivard [00:16:54]:
Well, I think that puts your finger right on something that separates men from women in traditionally in skin care products. Because my, my wife Monica who's, you know, obviously a boomer too. She's early on adopted, you know, fastidious skin care practices, but I never did. And one of the reasons I didn't is I don't like the way it made me feel. It was goopy or icky, sticky, and I just found myself not real comfortable with it. It wasn't something I put into my everyday processes. But your product addressed that as well. I don't know how it did it chemically, but I remember actually one of my first experiences was reading about one of my favorite professional athletes, Maria Sharapova, the tennis player, saying that she adopted your sunscreen because she found it in a Paris duty free or something and used it on the court and found out it didn't burn her eyes when she was playing.

Bob Rivard [00:17:46]:
And it was the only time she had ever found a sunscreen product that didn't interfere with her sport.

Holly Thaggard [00:17:52]:
Yeah, that's right. In fact, I was texting with Maria this morning. We went out to visit with them last week. She and her fiance Alexander have become very close with our family and they're doing some really cool things in entrepreneurship and looking at the white space and health and wellness and longevity and supergoop she found at Sephora. And she found it on the shelf and she, she picked up the number on the packaging, which happened to be my cell phone, because I sure wanted anyone, you know, that wanted to talk SPF to reach me directly. And she said, you know, this is the only sunscreen I can wear in Australia at the Australia Open that doesn't burn my eyes. And that her mother taught her at a very young age how important if she was going to have this career. In fact, she was just inducted into the tennis hall of Fame last month.

Holly Thaggard [00:18:38]:
And she said, if we, you know, you're going to build this career as a young, young woman, you have got to wear sunscreen. And so she was always searching for that one formula that felt amazing on her skin. And I do think that men, there's something to that, that men have either picked up their SPF in a fishing shop somewhere or a place that isn't particularly mindful, but just was doing the service of offering a sunscreen. And so they have this messed up connotation that sunscreen itches your skin and feels heavy and thick and that's just absolutely not the case. In fact, if I had a nickel for every man that's told me unseen, sunscreen is the ticket to wearing sunscreen. Because they can't feel it. It's completely Undetectable, you know, it would really add up. Seriously.

Holly Thaggard [00:19:24]:
My son, in fact, before Unseen Sunscreen, he wore our play formula. And I could always tell he had it on because he'd miss a spot. And you could kind of see lotion on his face. When we created Unseen, which was almost 10 years ago, I could no longer see any trace of sunscreen on his skin in the mornings. And it kind of drove me crazy. And I'd say, do you, you know, I went back to the day of, do you have sunscreen on? And when he'd be headed out the door and he'd be like, mom, you created it. It was unseen.

Bob Rivard [00:19:50]:
You should say a word about Sephora. For our male listeners, I'm not sure they understand how important it was for you to get into Sephora. And I think you were still at the stage in your company where you were sampling and trying different formulas and different versions, but you finally had a product, but you had to get it. You had to get shelf space.

Holly Thaggard [00:20:09]:
Yeah. And prior to Sephora. So Sephora is the largest beauty name in the world. Hundreds of stores in the us Incredibly influential in building young indie brands. That's kind of their forte. And it was prior to that that I launched the brand in Barney's.

Bob Rivard [00:20:27]:
That's a high end and it is Rest in peace.

Holly Thaggard [00:20:30]:
The reason behind that, from my perspective, was that Barney's, I think families went to Barney's to find something that they weren't familiar with. You always want to go in and come out with something that's like the latest, greatest cool thing that you can show your friends and family. And Supergoop had not been, you know, wasn't out there much and had a crazy name, a funny name. And so I felt like Barney's also gave me the national distribution because they had only seven locations, but they were from, you know, Miami to New York to San Francisco, Beverly Hills, Dallas, Chicago. And so it gave me that full North America presence which was needed for the pr. And at the time, social media didn't exist. And so it was all about the magazines and getting your product in that May June magazine, because those were the only two months that people wrote about SPF then. And so I had the national distribution and then I built several little indie stores like, Gosh, Julian Gold here, Stanley Korshak in Dallas.

Holly Thaggard [00:21:31]:
But there always comes a time, I think, in the life of building a business where you have to continue to scale. And while for several years I was able to double, triple that business, it got to a place where like, gosh, I'm going to need a big retail account to continue to double this business. And that's when I got that call from Sephora, who also got my number on the packaging. And the buyer called and said, you know, we think you're doing something really interesting that hasn't been done before in Skincare. You're delivering highly efficacious products in a fun and playful spirit. We're interested in talking with you. And ultimately, I, you know, immediately flew to San Francisco and they actually offered me a fancy end cap for the 12 weeks of summer. But of course, that was like nails on a chalkboard.

Holly Thaggard [00:22:21]:
You know, I want to de seasonalize the category. I wanted to create the desire for everyone everywhere to wear sunscreen in the year round, year round. And so I had to fly back up there and sit down and share with them my vision. And I knew they were the right partner when they acknowledged it and said, okay, Holly, pick your two favorite products and we'll give you six inches of space. We're going to create a new wall called Skincare Advanced Skill, Skincare Favorites. And you can have 365 days, but you have to show us that you can be as productive at Christmas as on the 4th of July. And so that really shaped the trajectory of this entire brand because I knew that I had to create formulas that women weren't going to put in the drawer come fall. And that's where I think, you know, Supergoop, the brand is most known, is for innovation and creating things that, you know, have never been done before, but built on that foundation in broad spectrum protection.

Bob Rivard [00:23:17]:
Six inches is not a lot of space. And as somebody that has had experience seeing a bookstore only put two books in, and you wonder, how is it, how people are ever gonna find my book if there's only two books? How did that work for you?

Holly Thaggard [00:23:29]:
Oh, gosh, you know, it was tough. I spent all my time in the.

Bob Rivard [00:23:32]:
Stores making sure they had products.

Holly Thaggard [00:23:35]:
Yes. And actually, you know, what was interesting is that Supergoop was never found on the shelf. My shelves were always empty. And so I didn't really know. The beauty business was kind of. Retail was even lost on me a little bit. And so I didn't know there was something called a replenishment buyer that you could call and say, hey, we need to up those numbers and stock heavier because they're selling through faster. And so I, like, did what I have later kind of called reverse stealing.

Holly Thaggard [00:24:03]:
I would carry my handbag in and I'd restock the shelves because I knew If I. There was no product, I couldn't prove that productivity to the buyer. And so I. It was like I didn't. I couldn't reconcile how we would ever grow that 6 inches of space to a shelf. But it worked. I always kind of wondered what would happen if they caught me on tape. I was never really fearful because I don't think entrepreneurs are fearful of anything.

Holly Thaggard [00:24:27]:
But I think I did always wonder what would happen if they saw me restocking with my own. With my own inventory.

Bob Rivard [00:24:33]:
It's amazing what people will do when their companies are babies and they mean everything and there's no weekends, there's no quitting time. You just live, breathe, and eat your company. 247 people see Holly Thaggard today, and they just see enormous success. But I like to bring people back to the times when your credit cards were maxed out. Maybe you and your husband were having, you know, come to Jesus moments about, are we going to be able to sustain this? You were very fortunate to have a brother who had had considerable success in New York, I think, on Wall Street. But it's still. It's not easy to take a large sum of money or a substantial sum of money from a loved one knowing that you're putting that money at risk. So talk about how.

Bob Rivard [00:25:19]:
How it felt back then to say, we need. We need help. We need to go out and raise money to make this thing go. That comes with a lot of consequences.

Holly Thaggard [00:25:30]:
Fortunately, my brother, yes, he lived in New York, and so he saw my dedication because I was up there every week sleeping in his guest room. And he. I think, you know, he would tell you if he were here today that he was. He was betting on the jockey, not the horse. And, you know, it's interesting because people have asked me that question about taking family money. And his money manager, in fact, the office that managed his portfolio was in the front of his own office. And it was every week that I was there knocking on the door and asking for another hundred thousand. And, you know, I think that they'd, like, go out the back and be like, are you sure about this, Holly? And I mean, Stephen, are you sure about this? And I think, you know, from his perspective, he thought he was very young.

Holly Thaggard [00:26:16]:
He's seven years younger than I am, and he had a tremendous success. And I think he said to me once, I would rather put my money into you than a house in the Hamptons right now. Which is what all of his friends were doing. That's wonderful. And so, you know, it didn't feel risky Though, to me, for some crazy reason, I knew that this brand had a big job to do, and it just never felt risky. And my husband either, because I don't think he would have been comfortable taking money from Steven and helping us build. And Steven jumped in, more so than just financially. Initially, it was just financial, but then, you know, he began drinking the Kool Aid, too.

Holly Thaggard [00:26:54]:
And the passion, I think, that he saw that I had for this brand and for literally changing the way the world thinks about sunscreen, he wanted to get involved and help, and he's incredibly creative. So, I mean, he and my husband named Unseen sunscreen. When I woke up saying, this is the formula. It's fabulous, but the name doesn't do it justice. And many of our formulas had working names throughout the life of the product process of clinicals. And. And I woke up and said, you know, this is just not the name that does this product justice. And my husband said, immediately, it's like unscreen sunscreen.

Holly Thaggard [00:27:30]:
And then my brother chimed in and was like, it's unseen sunscreen. And I was like, that's it. And so, you know, they're not only creative, but they are both obviously very well versed in finance, and the spreadsheets are not my thing, I'll be the first to tell you. And. And so they really dug in creating the model. And I think, you know, with this incredible honor next week, I think what's so interesting, and I am so excited about being honored in Texas for this, but, you know, it's a lot of the people behind my passion that have made this brand the global success that it is, and to enable us to have an office now in Singapore and Paris and New York and San Antonio, and which I will always consider headquarters, because I feel like the heart and soul of Supergoop is in San Antonio.

Bob Rivard [00:28:18]:
I didn't ask you, Holly, what brought you here? I assume directly from Dallas, but you've made your family here. You have two teenagers, I think, or thereabouts.

Holly Thaggard [00:28:27]:
Yes. My husband is from San Antonio, so his parents were in Terrell Hills, and his dad was a radiologist. He's retired now. But, you know, they were incredibly supportive of this journey that. This crazy journey that I was on as an entrepreneur, and I started traveling so much, and we didn't have family in Dallas. My brother went to smu, but then he had already moved to New York. And we just started thinking about if this is really something we're diving into. It'd be nice to have family around our kids.

Holly Thaggard [00:28:58]:
We're young, and any Young mom or dad will tell you it's nice to have grandparents around, and that can help support and particularly if one's a doctor. And I had that. You know, as a mom and a working mom, I had always that fear that when I was traveling, something would happen to one of our kids. And I knew that they were just as, if not better off without, you know, with the support system that we were leaving them with. So we moved when our daughter was maybe three or four and our son was one. And it's just turned out to be such a fabulous place to call home. And. And in fact, our daughter is now in Dallas at SMU in her junior year, and our son is going into college next year, and fingers crossed he hopes to stay in Texas as well.

Holly Thaggard [00:29:44]:
He's really excited about the opportunities ahead in college.

Bob Rivard [00:29:48]:
Well, you're a terrific example for the city of brain gain, so we're glad to have you here. Talk about when it went beyond family and your first outside investor, where you were raising a round of. I don't know if it was angel investment or what, what series it was, but I'm interested because that individual talked to you about scaling up your company and what that would mean to you as a founder of how you had to build your executive team and what your role would be and what your role shouldn't be.

Holly Thaggard [00:30:18]:
Yeah. So I met a gentleman. His name is John Kenny. And he was actually, when we met, he was at TSG in New York, but in their New York office, which is a San Francisco private equity group. And the brand, when we launched in Sephora, started to look pretty big because we were in Sephora, we were still pretty small in revenue. I took every private equity meeting. Anybody that knocked on the door, I would fly up there and say, hello. And so I met John Kinney.

Bob Rivard [00:30:44]:
What size was your company, if I can ask at the time?

Holly Thaggard [00:30:46]:
Yeah. So when I met John, we were probably maybe 2 or 3 million sales.

Bob Rivard [00:30:53]:
You had operating revenue and profit? Not profit, not profit, just operating revenue.

Holly Thaggard [00:30:59]:
You know, interestingly, Supergoop wasn't profitable until 2019.

Bob Rivard [00:31:02]:
And what year did it start in profitability?

Holly Thaggard [00:31:05]:
Oh, 2005. We're in our 20th year.

Bob Rivard [00:31:08]:
14 years is a long time to go and stay the course.

Holly Thaggard [00:31:12]:
What that meant when it did come time to beyond my brother and our family money and we did a Series A round, I had already met with most of the private equity that I was interested in, and John Kinney led our Series A round. He gave us a nice valuation. He respected the business we had gotten to know each other. And I think that's the benefit when you meet these investors really early and they say, you're too young, but call me if you need me. And you actually take them up on that, and you call them every single time you have a question about anything, and you say, you told me to call you if you need me, you get the opportunity to really get to know those people. And I always say, with every investor we've made, I want to feel comfortable that I would have them to my home for dinner with my children. And, you know, if I was stuck in an airport, I would want to be stuck in the airport with them. And that's how.

Holly Thaggard [00:32:02]:
Well, I wanted to know an investor before they came on board with us. And so I knew when the series A round, when we. And that was about a $5 million raise. Supergoop hasn't raised that much money. It was a pretty small round for a company our size. And one of the first things that John did was I flew up to New York, we sat in a hotel room, and he said, holly, what do you want to do? You have money now. What is the job that you and only you can do? And I said, you know, John, product development is my forte. I literally.

Holly Thaggard [00:32:37]:
I say this, it sounds cliche. I dream about spf, but it's true. I wake up every morning thinking about another way in which we can get it into someone everywhere, you know, every single day, routine. And I said, so product development is something. I feel like this brand, I owe it to this brand to always be a part of product development. I also want to be the passion and the press, and I want to nurture the people that we're going to build the team. I don't want to be necessarily somebody that anyone reports up to. I want to be the passionate founder that inspires this team to go do the work we need them to do every single day.

Holly Thaggard [00:33:14]:
And so with that, we decided what came out of that conversation was that it was time to go look for a president. And that was a big moment about eight years ago that really allowed us to keep that trajectory of doubling the business every year.

Bob Rivard [00:33:31]:
It's just extraordinary that you went 14 years without profit and stayed the course. And so that was 2019.

Holly Thaggard [00:33:38]:
I did ask a lot of favors, I will tell you that. I think one year, our contract manufacturer, our main contract manufacturer, I begged is probably the word him to give us net 365. He, though, @ that point believed in what the work this brand could do so much. And I wasn't it was because I didn't want to raise more money, but I wasn't profitable, so I didn't have the, you know, and I wanted to raise money when the time was right and when I felt like we had the right investor. And so I asked a lot of favors. I asked them to warehouse our products so that I didn't have to warehouse it and pull and pay for it as I was shipping it out. I mean, there were favors all over the place from the vendors, but I think that really says a lot for the relationships it built between the people we did business with and even our retail partners. I had built that strong relationship.

Holly Thaggard [00:34:27]:
I'm from the south, and my family taught me to write my thank you notes and get them out quickly. And I think that that allowed this country to embrace the work that this brand needed to do and to. For everyone to really do their part in helping us build.

Bob Rivard [00:34:46]:
Well, you put together a company that began to grow, I would say, like a meteor. And when I first became.

Holly Thaggard [00:34:53]:
It's a rocket ship.

Bob Rivard [00:34:54]:
Yeah. When I became familiar with Supergoop a couple of years ago now, you were doing year over year growth. That was just astonishing. I mean, tell our listeners, for example, what size you were. Let's just pick 2021 pandemic year, and then 2022.

Holly Thaggard [00:35:14]:
I don't even know if I can know the answer to that question, Bob. I can tell you that we were doing 5 million in 2017 when we hired Amanda Baldwin to be my counterpart in building and become our first president. And mind you, at this time, we didn't even have a cfo. I mean, my brother and my husband and Amanda began to, you know, the three of them handle all the financials. So, I mean, in fact, this brand didn't have a CFO until after we were acquired by Blackstone. So we were really scrappy. But again, fortunately had a family of very talented people that were very smart and very creative. But in 2017, when Amanda began, we were doing 5 million in sales and we took that to 20, 2022 when we were acquired, to 110 million.

Bob Rivard [00:36:13]:
I think it's doubled since then.

Holly Thaggard [00:36:15]:
And then it has. But in 2023, you know, we talked through that process about our plans because we went to, we went through. We decided to go through the process in the fall in Q4 of 2022, which is hard because our peak season is actually spring summer, but we had 2023 locked and loaded for spring summer. Because by. By Q4 of the year before, you have to know what you're going to do the next year. And I think that's ultimately why we were paid so generously for our, for Blackstone acquiring the majority of Supergoop at that point, because we had shown them that we were going to get to 170 the following year. And the path to 170, which I'm most proud of achieving that number.

Bob Rivard [00:37:02]:
So you mentioned Blackstone. I would imagine you had people knocking on your door throughout your growth period to explore whether you were interested in selling. I know from our mutual friends at Rackspace, the smartest thing they did was say no early on when they had buyers that were coming and waving what seemed like large sums of money at the time. But then they experienced that rocket ship growth and realized, no, this is no time to sell. We're were growing too nicely. So you, you had that same rocket ship growth and then came the moment and maybe you can talk about what it is that you decided this is the right time and the right company to, to go ahead and sell.

Holly Thaggard [00:37:44]:
You know, I think I a number of things actually. Carol Hamilton was at l' Oreal and she was. And we took those strategic meetings when Unilever called. We were out there when, you know, P and G, when any strategic made the phone call, we definitely took the meeting. It was Carol Hamilton that said, you know, this is what we need at l'. Oreal. She's like, we need to check all these boxes. We need the growth to be extraordinary.

Holly Thaggard [00:38:12]:
And the one thing you don't have control over is the market, what's happening out there in the M and A. But then we need to show a global success. And so we knew that we had to. And for most beauty brands that's showing success in Europe, but we chose Southeast Asia first as our first global market because the climate and those in Southeast Asia really do care about protecting their skin and the color of their skin they want to protect from rattan. And so we felt like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, these were markets that were a little bit more low hanging fruit than Europe, where we knew we'd have to go into and educate about why they need it outside of holiday. And so we knew we had to show that global success. We had launched Canada in 2020, which it sounds like, you know, that's not a huge market, but it's a very important one because SPF is thought of differently in every country. And so the regulatory behind launching a different country is extraordinarily painful and time consuming and expensive.

Holly Thaggard [00:39:16]:
But we were able to during the pandemic Launch Canada. And we were the largest skincare launch that Canada has ever seen in Sephora. And so we had started to show these signs across the globe, which was one of the three, one of the four things. Carol Hamilton told me that you've got to have that high growth. The market's got to be ready, you've got to show a global success and your EBITDA needs to be beautiful.

Bob Rivard [00:39:39]:
You know, above 20%, this is cash after everything.

Holly Thaggard [00:39:42]:
Yes. So, you know, in 2022, we checked the box on all four of those things that Carol said, you've got to get this business to this point. And so we felt like everything was ready. It's time. And, you know, I also felt like we had still a big job to do in launching Europe and we could use some help with the regulatory that came with the 16 countries. We were going into and opening an office in Paris. And so, you know, we. And we had an office in Hong Kong at the time.

Holly Thaggard [00:40:15]:
And so it was. It was just a perfect time to bring on a partner. And so we went through. We started the process in August and we closed two days before Christmas.

Bob Rivard [00:40:24]:
There is always a feeling after that of, I don't know, but you've been so dedicated for so many years to building this company and suddenly you've let go of your baby and there's great wealth involved and the measure of your success by how they valued your company is extraordinary. But I wonder how it felt to walk away from it. You'll always be the founder and I don't know what role. Is there a role for you as the founder that you play in the company still, or is it completely in the rearview mirror for two years?

Holly Thaggard [00:40:59]:
22, 3 and 4. 22 is over. So it's 23 and 24. I stayed pretty involved in product development. I stayed involved in the press, the media. I was chairman of the board. It's only been this last March that I stepped down and gave my chairman of the board seat up and stepped away from the business 100%. And, you know, it was difficult those first few months.

Holly Thaggard [00:41:22]:
I have, fortunately, I've met a lot of founders in the industry that have gone through something like this prior to. And I got a lot of advice from Sarah Blakely, who was the founder of Spanx and had gone through this about a year prior. And gosh, Bobbi Brown, who is now at her second act doing an incredible. In fact, I was texting with her this morning, too. I think we're both going to be in Palm Springs here in November. And we're trying to find time to connect. But she sold, you know, Bobbi Brown, her namesake brand, to Lauder and stayed with Lauder for a period of time. But I think there's incredible, incredibly great stories that helped me because it was a little bit like, you know, I was pregnant with emory and she's 20 now, and it was 20 years.

Holly Thaggard [00:42:03]:
And there's a lot of. It's really difficult letting go. But I think when you realize that you don't own it anymore, it's. I mean, I do have a small percentage still in the business, but I think when you realize that somebody else bought this, it's theirs now, the majority of it. And the decisions need to be in keeping with the decisions that they envision for this brand and where they want to go. My hope is that education will always stay at the forefront and that product innovation, we will continue to be thought of as experts in SPF forever and ever. And I think that it's a sign of a strong brand that you've built when that happens and when that's true. But I think also as a founder and probably the other founders listening to this would say the same thing.

Holly Thaggard [00:42:50]:
You naturally love to create and build. And when a business gets to the size that supergoop is today, some of the magic of building and creating and figuring things out and doing things differently and not really leaning on McKinsey studies to make decisions for the brand and all of that, it's just like where your sweet spot is. And so it's been actually really fun. Over this last year, I've been helping our son Will. He has a vision to change the way the world drinks water and rid the world of microplastics due to I'm all in. And you know, it's a real authentic story because when he was 5, he went to the San Antonio Academy, which is an all boys military school. Most people listening know, and they had a doctor come in from New York and encourage the mothers in the room to not allow our sons to have plastic water bottles. And so he really grew up drinking out of glass water bottles.

Holly Thaggard [00:43:45]:
And what's really fun is that it wasn't until high school when he started asking me questions and we were volunteering with the Young Men's Service League and kind of our volunteer go to was always to clean up the ballparks on the weekends and our trash bags were full of plastic water bottles. It started this conversation about, hey mom, why did we never have these in the house? And so it's been really fun to be back in that building creating stages as he's planning a launch of his brand in 2026, in early 26. And he has done the research. Our kids have been brought up to do this kind of work, make the world a better place, going back to what my mother always shared with me as a child. And don't do things that have been done before. He's actually found a manufacturer in Japan that is bringing his first 500,000 aluminum cans that are actually not coated in plastic like all aluminum cans are, and they still release microplastics into the water. And he's doing it from a place in his heart where he wants to continue that education to our youth about health and wellness and not necessarily while formula. His cans, he calls them super cans.

Holly Thaggard [00:44:55]:
Well, his super cans are definitely are recyclable and sustainable and they will ultimately help our oceans. He's doing this from not necessarily an environmental perspective, but more on the health and wellness of how dangerous microplastics are in our body. And so it's a real good story.

Bob Rivard [00:45:12]:
I said to him, sounds like another thagger. It's coming onto the podcast here in the future.

Holly Thaggard [00:45:17]:
Oh, goodness, he would love that. I think I have always said my two beauty secrets are SPF and H2O. Makes a little bit of sense for me too. And I found even more so that being back in that early stage of figuring things out that I know nothing about food and beverage, this is like, from square one. I know a little bit about building a business more than I did 20 years ago when I started down the path of supergoop. But, you know, you've got also the advantage today of social media, and you can. As a mom, it's a disadvantage because I'm not a big fan. But as a brand builder, you know, you're able to get that word out so much faster about what you're doing than I was able to do 20 years ago.

Bob Rivard [00:45:59]:
It's a mixed message, but I guess you just break it down measure by measure, right?

Holly Thaggard [00:46:03]:
That's right. And you put more good out there into it than if you think about how much there is bad in the world in social media and the Internet, but the more you're flooding it with good, wholesome, family centric brands that are doing better for the health of the world and the health of our nation, then you know it's important. It's important work to do.

Bob Rivard [00:46:24]:
Last question, Holly Thagger, before we run out of time, your profile's a lot higher in the city and in the state and it will be even more so after next week. And you become one of the youngest members of the hall of Fame, by the way, the Texas Business hall of Fame. Do you see channeling some of this creative energy into either helping other young women or men for that matter, with their own startup visions and ideas? Do you see yourself investing in startups or is there other elements in the community that you want to get engaged with now that you have the time and resources to do so?

Holly Thaggard [00:47:01]:
I mean, yes and yes. I think I'm already advising young founders. I'm called every single day for meetings. It's actually a little difficult taking on what I can take on. Yes, I'm having to learn how to say no again. But. And many of those are from they're looking for investors. We have made several investments.

Holly Thaggard [00:47:20]:
I've found that it's important to define where I can help and in what stages of building a business I can be helpful. And that helps me also define what I'm interested in investing in. I'm you know, there's a Dallas brand right now that launched in May. It's called Grow Happy. And this founder is incredibly passionate about ridding allergies from our youth and the number of peanut and egg allergies there are. And actually it's like it's kind of a microdosing for those allergies at a very young age. It's similar to what Supergoop did, and I saw a lot of similarities in how passionate she was. Her own child was ended up on the ER as an egg allergy, and she's found the help she's needed in the world of allergies.

Holly Thaggard [00:48:07]:
And you said there's things like that feel really right for me to advise on and I can be helpful and also to invest in. So I look at those deals every day.

Bob Rivard [00:48:17]:
Howie Faggart, congratulations on this extraordinary company you built on your induction next week into the Texas Business hall of Fame. And thanks for coming on to Big City Small Town.

Holly Thaggard [00:48:28]:
Thank you, Bob, for having me. This was a lot of fun this morning.

Bob Rivard [00:48:34]:
As we approach this podcast's 150th episode. Later this year, we'll be adding some new sponsors that reflect the robust growth we've enjoyed this year. After welcoming producer and co host Corey Ames to our enterprise, launching our YouTube channel, and our weekly Monday Musings newsletter. If you do not yet subscribe to my free digital commentary, I hope you'll do so now by going to our Big City Small Town website and clicking on newsletters. The local media presence in San Antonio has been steadily shrinking since 2007. Believe me, I've experienced it personally versus the executive editor at the San Antonio express news from 1997 to 2011 and then as we launched the Rivard report in 2012 where I worked until 2022. If your company or organization would like to consider supporting our local journalism and programming as a sponsor, please drop me a line via social media or to my email@robertjrevardmail.com thank you. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Big City Small Town.

Bob Rivard [00:49:38]:
Please share this episode with friends and colleagues and if you haven't already, sign up for Monday Musings, my weekly newsletter. Just go to bigcitysmalltown.com and add your email. Big City Small Town is brought to you by Western Urban Building, the city our children want to call home, and by Geekdom, where startups are born and smart ideas become businesses. Thanks to Corey Ames of Ensemble, Texas for the production of this show. We will see you next week.