How I Built This with Guy Raz - Dermalogica: Jane Wurwand (2016)

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

Jane Wurwand moved to Los Angeles with a suitcase and a beauty school diploma. She started what would become Dermalogica, an international beauty empire that set the standard for skin care. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," we check back with Nick Gilson for an update on his company, Gilson Snowboards, a snowboard & ski company based in Pennsylvania. (Original broadcast date: October 24, 2016) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time who are looking for a way to upgrade their digital footprint. Well, whether you're just starting out or you're scaling your business, Squarespace is the easiest way to build a great website that stands out. It's an all-in-one website platform that gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your products, and get paid. Anyone can use Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools to build an online presence that truly reflects what makes your business special.

There are templates, intuitive drag-and-drop editing, and even an AI-enhanced website builder. Then, Squarespace's built-in analytics tools help you make smarter business decisions. Review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue all in one place. Looking to grow your business, Squarespace even offers fast, easy business financing

through Squarespace capital. Go to Squarespace.com slash built for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code built to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Loans issued by Celtic Bank and serviced by Stripe, all loans subject to credit approval. This show is in partnership with Airbnb. This past summer, I took my family to Vienna, and it was incredible. We spent our days wandering the old streets, stopping for coffee and pastries, visiting museums, and just soaking up the history of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And one of the things that made the trip so special was the home we booked on Airbnb. It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna,

walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. Hey, really quick before we start the show, you may have heard of this, but if not, I want to tell you about this amazing, exciting event that we're planning. It's our first ever how I built this summit. It's an all-day gathering for innovators and entrepreneurs, sponsored, by American Express and we're hosting it this October 16th in San Francisco.

Throughout the day, I'll be doing live interviews with incredible entrepreneurs like Airbnb's Joe Gebbya, Lisa Price of Carol's daughter, Jen Hyman of Rent the Runway, John Zimmer of Lyme of Lyft and Katrina Lake of Stitchfix. We're also going to have workshops with experts and guides there to provide you with lots of advice. Plus, you're going to meet hundreds of people just like you, builders who are taking their ideas to the next level. So if you want to find out how to get your tickets, go to npr.org slash summit. Oh, and this episode, we originally ran it back in the fall of 2016. Hope you enjoy it. We went to a contract manufacturer in Los Angeles, literally sort of fell on our swords,

and told him our dream, gave him the pitch, and said, we need you to do like a test run for us. He said, look, I have absolutely no reason to do this. because 99% of everyone that sits opposite me telling me this story does not succeed. But for some crazy reason, I think you've got something interesting. And I want to be in for the ride. From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists,

and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Jane Whirlwind went from doing facials for women at a beauty parlor to building one of the leading skin care companies in the world. Dermalogica. So the story about Jane Wurwind really begins about a month before she turned three because that month her father passed away.

Jane barely remembers him, but what she does remember is that all of a sudden, her mom had to get a job. There were four girls in the family to feed, and she now had to do it all on her own. This was Scotland in the 1950s, and Jane's mom happened to have a skill. She was a qualified nurse.

So even though she hadn't worked for many, many years, she was able to find a job and also pass along an important lesson. The five words that changed my life were my mom saying to my sisters and myself, learn how to do something. Learn how to do something. She was absolutely adamant that each of us had to get a skill set training, that no matter what happened if we were somewhere anywhere in the world, we would have a skill set in our hands that we could,

go to work immediately and earn money and keep food on the table. So when she was old enough, Jane Rowan decided on her skill. She'd become what was called at the time a beautician. And right after she got her qualification, at age 19, she started looking for work. I decided, quite honest, it sounds so flippant now, but it was freezing cold. It was the winter of 1977. I think it's one of the coldest on record. and I'm reading the Sunday paper

and I want to see where is the hottest place on earth because I have to feel better about this freezing cold flat that I'm living in. So I look at the weather in the Sunday paper and it said Johannesburg South Africa. It was like 107 degrees. I'm like, oh my God, I wish I was in Johannesburg, South Africa. And as I turn the page, it's like the universe sending me a sign, there's a quarter page advertisement from the South African government

saying, if you meet our prerequisite, of qualifications, we will pay an assisted passage for you to emigrate to South Africa as long as you agree to live there for two years. And I thought, good, grief. I could be in Johannesburg in a month. And they had a list of 10 careers that they wanted to recruit to South Africa. And they were all vocational training. The number one was butchers. The number two was patissarers. Third was a hairstylist. And the fourth was a beauty therapist. And there I am. Six weeks later, I was on a flight to Johannesburg. And so when you got there, were you actually able to find a job?

Yeah. When I got to Cape Town, I sat in this immigration hotel, and I picked up the Yellow Pages, and I literally started calling salons in the Yellow Pages to see if they would hire me. And by 5.30 that evening, I had a job. Was it weird to live there at the time? I mean, what was it like to be there? It was completely different to anything I'd ever. experienced. You know, I remember my first day going to work, I was taking a bus. And buses kept

coming. I kept putting up my arm and they weren't stopping. And I couldn't figure out what was going on because on the front of the bus it said C-point and that's where I was going to work. And a woman at the bus stop finally said to me, they're not going to stop for you because on the bus at the front it said knee-blanc and it means non-white. And I said, what? And she said, You have to wait for a bus for white people. I'm like, what? Anyway, so that was one of my first introductions. I'd never seen it, obviously.

I'd never seen anything like that. Yeah, it must have been strange. When you were there in South Africa, were you more or less doing the same thing that you'd been doing in London? Yeah, skincare, manicures, pedicures, everything that I've been doing and trained to do and in love with the industry

and feeling so happy that I had this training. Because literally, as odd as it's, sounds, I know I could walk out of, I could walk out of the studio today. I'll have a job by tomorrow because there is such a demand for the work we do. And if you're skilled at it and you're good at and you love it, you're going to get work. So how long did you end up living there? I lived in South Africa for four years. And is that where you met your husband? Yeah, I met him in South Africa. He's from Cape Town. And he was already in process for a green card for the United States. And while we were dating, his green card came through. And I can't even

explain how exciting it is. It's like getting the golden ticket in a Willy Wonka chocolate bar. It's so hard to emigrate legally and do it properly. And he did and off he went. And I was so excited for him. And at the same time, I had a job with an American company and they were based in Los Angeles. And Within a few months, I actually got offered a training trip to Los Angeles. And so I met him when I came on that business trip. And together we just said, we've got to do something here. This is such an amazing country and such an amazing opportunity. I went back, gave him my notice.

I'd hired an immigration attorney in L.A. And four months later, I was on a flight to Los Angeles. Wow. So you get to L.A. and this is like early 80s? Yeah, it was January 1983. I was 24 and never been so excited in my life. Landied in Los Angeles with a suitcase in one hand. And my beauty school diploma rolled up and tucked inside.

And had no idea that there was an unemployment rate of 10.4% in California at that point. He's always good not to know these things, you know, because otherwise you put yourself off. Right, right. And so my boyfriend had been looking for a job for six months, couldn't find anything, was living in a one-bedroom apartment. and Marina Del Rey, ready to take anything. And I landed and I said, all right, well, I'm going to get a job in a salon. So I'm going to start calling my trusty yellow pages. And the first thing that struck me was there were hardly any advertisements for skincare salons.

They were mostly just like hair. Hair. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, this is kind of weird. Anyway, then I quickly realized the ones I could find and there was literally a handful, we're all in Beverly Hills and a very sort of

elitist, expensive sort of offering. So I went and interviewed at what I called, got a job interview, went to interview. And when I got there, the people at the front desk were all American and yet the people I was seeing in the white uniforms

who were offering the skincare treatments were all European. I could, you know, hear their accent. So when I had my interview, there said, do you have any questions? And I said, yeah, I do have a question. Why? I just noticed all the people are American on the front desk and all the people in the treatment rooms are European.

And the woman who owned it, who was French, said to me, well, it's really simple. The Americans have horrible training. They don't know how to give a skin treatment. And the Europeans can't sell. So I walked away from that interview thinking, repeating what she just said to me in my head. And I thought, I think we've just spotted the greatest opportunity in this. industry, and that is train Americans how to do better skin treatments and combining with that retailing and selling.

I'm surprised that, like, skincare wasn't a big thing in the U.S. at the time. So what was a normal skincare regimen? Very limited because it was all big hair, big shoulder pads, Dallas. It was all makeup. I mean, you could pick up magazines then, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, fashion magazines. there were always articles on makeup. There was nothing on skincare. The dermatologists were all saying,

oh, you can use anything, you can use soap and water. Right. And I knew that not only did the correct products work and you got a result on the skin, more importantly, when you receive a treatment in a salon, it's about human connection and human touch. And there's something much bigger happening in every salon than just the service you're receiving.

So I was absolutely convinced there was a waiting audience for the next era in skincare. So at that point, did you, like, what did you do? I went back, sat with Raymond, my partner. And he was how- Now your husband. No, we weren't married them. We were just dating and living together. Right.

So he was having the same experience because, oddly enough, the only job he'd managed to secure was selling skincare equipment for a Japanese. company, commission only. And we'd both come from the industry. We've both been in cosmetics. So he couldn't sell one piece of this Japanese equipment, which was amazingly sophisticated. It was like equipment to do what? To do skincare, to do steaming and exfoliation. And it was brand new cutting edge. And he wasn't selling a piece. He was going like door to door, to salon to salon, trying to sell it. Yeah. And so they were saying, we don't even understand what it is you're selling. So we were having this epiphany sort of together because he was like, how come they

don't understand what I'm selling when this is absolutely standard in Europe and the rest of the world. And we sat down and said, the opportunity is huge. We can teach how to do correct skincare treatments and we can sell this equipment to the people that we're teaching. So right then and there, you decided to start building a plan to create a business. Yeah, we actually cooked it up together on a drive back from San Diego, took us two and a quarter hours. And in that drive, we completely talked through our business plan. Ray got back and we wrote it out on the kitchen table on five pages of yellow legal paper. And the plan was... The plan was to train the professional skin therapist, then called an aesthetician. And we were going to take everyone who was licensed

And we were going to bridge it to the two-year training that we felt would bring them up to a level of proficiency where they could be successful. So the goal was really simple. We're going to make skin therapists more successful and able to run their own business and be financially independent. So the idea was that you guys would open up a school and you would train them? Both you and Ray? Yeah. So Ray was going to still sell equipment. He was going to stay on the wrong.

road. I was going to teach. I was going to use the equipment he was selling in the classes I was teaching, sell the equipment after the class, and we called it the International Dermal Institute. How did you even have cash to start to open up an... No cash. It was a hell of a difficult to get a lease. Because remember, we were immigrants. We had no credit rating. We had no bank references. We had nothing. So the only space we could find, was an empty space that had been empty for years next to the Social Security Office in Marina Del Rey. And they'd found it very difficult to lease. Because there's like long lines of people waiting for their checks every day.

Yeah, exactly. Fantastic. We had sitting, you know, people waiting to receive skin treatment. So we rented it. And then we got the equipment from the Japanese manufacturer, put that in. And we were off to the races. And now the challenge was, who were we going to train? Because we didn't know anybody.

Right. I mean, we just, you hung a shingle out, but like people had to know, like, who you were. Well, so we knew that our target market were licensed aestheticians. So in other words, they had to already be licensed to work in the industry. So I called the State Board of Cosmetology in Sacramento, California. And I called them and I said, do you have a list of everyone licensed in the state of California to perform skincare treatments? And it was a very short list. It was like 2300 names and they said yes we do and I said is that list available is it public record and they said yes and I said can you sell me the list and they said yes we can sell you the list it's $25 and would you like us to print it on every label I said yes please and they did wow and so we got in the mail just like

the label of every person who's licensed yeah so that was it and we sat in the library, we got a phone book out. Thank goodness for the phone book in those days. And we plotted the zip codes within a 50-mile radius of Marina del Rey. And we peeled off all the labels that fit those zip codes and we sent out a postcard saying this is who I am. This is my qualification. I'm teaching a free one-day class. We mailed it out and we were hoping we get, I don't know, like a dozen responses. We had 70 responses within 24 hours. So you were after bring a free one-day class to bring people in to get them so people would know what you're doing. Yeah. So we took 70 people, rented chairs took 70 people. And after a couple of weeks

of doing the free class, we charged $10 a person. So now we had $700 in that one day, which is huge. And you were like teaching what? Well, like cleansing, double cleansing, steaming, exfoliation, massage, and then toning and moisturizing. It was very simple. And so by December of 1983, I was offering eight different classes. And you were teaching all of those classes? Everything, yeah, taught every class, did all the laundry, took the laundry home at night to our one-bedroom apartment,

sat in the garage laundromat. Wow. And never slept. Never slept. Worked, I don't know, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. week for years, for years, didn't take a salary. Because, I mean, presumably you don't become rich by teaching classes. No, no, no.

We were actually earning enough to pay the rent for the school and cover $300 a month for me. I was taking $300 a month out of the business to just sort of buy underwear and pantios. Ray kept his job as a sales rep and he was making enough money to pay our rent on our apartment. And a big night out was a burger on a Friday night. That was huge. I mean, we saved everything. And for three years, it was just us. A guy who emigrated, who was a friend of ours, who joined us and slept on our floor on a futon.

And he was out pushing the classes. He was out sort of as a sales rep. He'd go to salons and say, hey, there's these classes. Yeah, these classes come and take a free one first, and then we'll sign you up. And that's what they did. And were they full classes? Yeah. I had full classes with wait lists.

Yeah, well, people were flying from San Francisco. They were flying from Phoenix. were coming from Nevada. They were meeting each other. They were rooming together. They were forming friendships. The class would finish at five, and we'd order, you know, pizza and box wine by 7.30. I love that you're, like, doing all the skincare and then you're eating burgers and pizzas, too.

Yeah. It's very, it's very heartening to hear. You weren't eating, like, kale salads and, like, lemon water. No, we were not. We were eating, you know, twicks and kick-cats. So at that time, like, you know, 83, and this is sort of the first few years of it, I mean, did you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Did you have visions of making this a huge thing? Or was it just something that you loved doing that you were?

No, it wasn't. Well, first of all, I didn't use the word entrepreneur. I'm not sure I really knew that word. Maybe I did. It wasn't a hot, sexy word like it is now. I just thought, I'm going to lead a tribe. We're going to change this industry. And so for three years, the International Dermal Institute was our own business.

But very quickly, I realized, and Raymond and I both together said, what product are they using when they go back to their salons? And when I would ask them this, they would say, they were all European products, French, German and Italian. And I said, why are you not using American products? And they said, well, which ones? And I realized there were no American-made products in the salon industry. There were tons in the department store and in the drug store.

There was nothing in the salon industry. And that was like a light bulb, off for both Raymond and myself, we both said, okay, the big opportunity is product. And Ray said to me, if you had to write down the kind of products you want to use, do you believe you could write down the briefs for a line? And I said, absolutely. And he said, write down the briefs. And let's set about making a product line.

When we come back in a moment, we'll hear how Jane and Raymond invented that new line of skin products and how they almost lost it before it even got off the ground. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's about 1985 and Jane and Ray have decided to create a whole new line of skincare products. And they wanted to be different than anything else on the market. I wanted cleansers that would completely rinse off with water. I wanted to develop an exfoliant that would be really, really efficient and not cause irritation.

to the skin. I have an allergy to lanolin, so I didn't want any lanolin in the product. I wanted no mineral oil, no fragrance, no drying alcohol, no artificial color. Ray named the line Dermologica. We had the International Dermal Institute, so it was kind of fitting with that. And we wanted to launch a line that was a bridge between a pharmaceutical product and a skincare product, a cosmetic. Yeah, it sounds like it's like made in a lab sort of clean. Yeah, we stepped forward with no jars, only bottles and tubes. And we didn't have sort of pink jars with gold tops and pink boxes. We had gray and white packaging. A packaging looked pharmaceutical. Many times people criticized it in the early days, it was ugly. And we felt it was utilitarian. And that was the image we wanted. That was who we were. You'd been working with these products for most of your career at that point. You were still really young. You were in your early. 20s or mid-20s.

Yeah. How did you know how to make the stuff? Had no idea. Yeah. So I spoke to a chemist who we knew, and he said, look, if you're looking for a chemist that can make the product, you want to use a lot of botanicals and plant extracts. Speak to the raw material suppliers for the plant extracts and ask them who in Los Angeles is formulating product, if anyone, using a lot of plant extracts because you need to work

with someone that knows these materials. And that was what we did. We contacted the raw material supplier in New Jersey, asked them, do you have any chemist in L.A. that are using your materials? And they gave us a list. And we started calling the list. And out of the 70 names we had, five would take our call. And of the five, there was one that number one was willing to work with us,

and number two we felt could do it. And this chemist was in L.A.? Yeah, he was in L.A. He since passed away, but he was in Los Angeles. And we couldn't pay him. That was the other thing. So we figured out, Raymond figured out this amazing kind of way of paying him based on the first two years of manufactured products. So a percentage of the product that we manufactured, not a percentage of sales.

Because we wanted to make sure he was tied into the fact that if we weren't actually able to ever make this product, he wasn't going to get paid. Yeah. And he agreed. And what did you decide to make? Was there one product or two products or five? 27 products. Right off the back. Right off the bar.

27 products. Yeah. Why so many? Well, because we needed to go in with a full footprint. If we went in with one or two products, we couldn't capture a skin therapist's attention and say, you need to use this exclusively in your room and you need to sell this to your clients. It wouldn't have been enough. So it was like creams and cleansers.

So it was three cleansers, two moisturizers. three boosters, two masks, an eye makeup remover. And then we had, I think, eight or nine products that were professional only, peels and professional masks and things that would only be used in the treatment room. And this chemist, he was making all these products in a lab. Yeah, he was like rumple-stiltskin. He was formulating them all, and you were going and testing them out and saying, well, adjust this a little bit or...

Yeah, I briefed him. He came back two days later with a little cardboard box with samples. And I thought, we can't possibly have. made these that quickly. And they can't be right. I mean, he must have gone to save on and bought them or something. But they were great. I mean, and in nine months, we had developed 27 formulas and we'd named them in one afternoon. How were you like even funding that product? Because you think about that today, like that process, we just think it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just to test it and just to like get it into the tubes. Well, it probably should.

How were you able to do it? We were buying tubes that nobody wanted. We were buying 500 at a time that they were selling to us for, you know. Filling them yourselves? No, but we went to a contract manufacturer in Los Angeles, literally sort of fell on our swords, and told him our dream, gave him the pitch, and said, we need you to do like a test run for us.

And we can pay you like $500 or whatever it was. And his minimum ones were thousands, you know. And without him, we really wouldn't have the company because he looked to us after we've been sort of like pitching crazily for an hour. He said, look, I have absolutely no reason to do this because 99% of everyone that sits opposite me telling me this story does not succeed. But for some crazy reason, I think you've got something interesting. And I want to be in for the ride. By the way, how were you able to test the product? I tested everything and approved everything.

On yourself? Mm-hmm. You just tested it on your skin and you were like your own guinea pig. I was my own guinea pig. And then I took it to class. And the students, I'd to ask them what they thought. And they loved it. And they were using it in the classroom.

It's just out of curiosity. Does that have to go through like any kind of regulatory commission or anything? Well, we weren't. First of all, you know, we were very young and new company. And a lot of the rules, I suppose, we weren't even aware of probably. but at the time, and still, we weren't using any ingredients that were controversial. We were eliminated a lot of the irritating ingredients. And so in the nine months that we were testing the product as we were developing it,

we hadn't had any incidence of reactions or allergies, etc. I mean, so that was it? You just launched? Yeah. So we launched in January of 1986. And the crazy thing was the chemist who developed these formulas who we were going to pay off over a two-year period, came to us in December of 85, so a month before we were due to launch,

and said that he did not believe in the product. He didn't believe we could be successful in a new venture. Why did he say that to you? Because he'd just seen so many startups fail. This is the chemist. This is not the factory owner. This is the guy that you like... No, this is Rumpelstiltskin.

He just said, I don't think it's going to work. Yeah, I don't think it's going to work. I'd like you to pay me out for the formulas now. And we didn't have any money to buy the formulas. What was it going to cost you? Well, I mean, he wanted something extraordinary and we whittled him down and it came down to, you know, sort of $14,000. Which probably was a lot of money for you in 1985. Huge.

It was like telling us you wanted $10 million. Why did the chemists not think it would work? I think he didn't believe in us. I think he believed in the formula. I think he thought these are two immigrants, these crazy immigrants. What do they know about starting a company? What do they know about funding a company? You can't just start a skincare company.

Were you freaking out? Yes, we were freaking out. But we had to figure this out and scramble, put it together. So we borrowed money from family. We put together everything we could from the school. We put it together when we paid them. But weren't you so nervous? Like if this is the guy saying to you, this is not going to work?

And you're like, we better come up with a $14,000, but we're going to be kind of screwed. because this guy's saying it's not going to work. We were worried that the formulas he was giving us, literally, you know, kind of exchanged on the table of a cocoa's diner. He passed the manila envelope of formulas over and we passed the money over. And we were worried that the formulas he'd given us were not the formulas that we'd approved. But we actually had the guy who was going to manufacture the product look at the formulas for us. And he said, no, this is it.

They're right. It's the real deal. I'm just thinking about that moment where a guy who was a total expert is saying to you who's never manufactured skin care products that this isn't going to work and yet you have to come up with $14,000 to pay him. Did you have any doubt? No. You didn't think, you didn't think maybe he's right. No, he couldn't be right. It wasn't possible because if he was right, we were about to launch into the biggest disaster of our life.

But that may have been the case. Yeah, but we turned each other on with self-repeated enthusiasm. You and Ray. Yeah. Like you and Ray were like, this is going to work. Yes, it's going to work, isn't it? And if one of us was having a modicum of doubt, guaranteed the other one was having a good day.

So on the days when I might be saying, we're not crazy, right? Ray would be saying, no, of course we're not crazy. The students love it. This is going to be great. And on the days when he was saying, I think it's a house of cards, maybe it's all going to collapse. I'd be saying, no, no, no, we just had the greatest class. It was so fantastic.

Everybody's excited. This is going to work. And you know what? If it doesn't work, we'll do something else. It's not the greatest disaster in the world. We have nothing to lose, basically. And it was exciting. And what if it works?

And we did the classic immigrant thing where, look at the population. It only takes 1% of the population to buy one product, and it's already enormous, bigger than it could ever be in the UK. So let's go for it. Okay, so you had no investors and you basically figured we'll sell the product and that will fund the manufacturer of more of the product. Yeah, exactly. And most of your customers were who? My students.

The first account we opened was in Bakersfield, California. This was one of your students who had a salon there? Yeah, Becky Sinclair was her name. She walked up with a check and I said, Becky, I haven't even shown you the product. And she said, Jane, if you and Raymond are in, I'm in two. And I said, you're our first account in the world. And that was it. My students came up.

They came up. They said, we want in. We want to be part of it. This was a California-made skincare product. And we were going to take on the world. And you were not selling this in stores, right? It was only... No, no, no, only salons.

You had to have a skin therapist. You had to have a therapist who sold this to you. And why was that? Why wouldn't you just, like, sell it in Walgreens or something? No, no. Because I'm a skin. therapist. We knew that this was an educated cell. It had to be people that understood the skin. And also, these were the people that brought us to the party. And my mom, another piece

of advice she gave me was, you leave the party with the person you went with. So we were committed to skin therapists. How did Dermologica do in that first year? Did a million dollars in our first year. That's insane. It was so insane. Yeah. I mean, you must have at that point, like, had all these buyers who wanted to like buy you out. Yeah. And lots of people wanted to lend us money. And you didn't take any of it. No, nothing. Because the sales was just funding the business. Yeah, and it was so exciting. It was great. I mean, that first year, we were plowing everything back into the business, you know, more staff. We hired a direct sales force. We wanted people walking in that were Dermologica. And so we were putting everything back into building the

business. But how are you like teaching classes and hiring a staff and like building an organization. We were working our tails off is what we were doing. I didn't hire another teacher until 1987. So I was writing the classes, teaching the classes and still doing the laundry. And Raymond and a couple of other people were handling the product. When the classes finished at five o'clock, we were doing the UPS orders. I was packing the boxes, sealing the boxes, writing the labels. There were five of us in the company. We used to did everything. We finished it 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night. Everyone came back to my house, our flat, four spaghetti. And then we were back at work at 7.30 the next morning. When did you and Ray

sort of sit back and say, we might actually get really rich from doing this thing that we never knew we could get rich from? Last year. Well, I mean, no, I mean, we knew. We knew. We We had a tiger by the tail that first year. Yeah. And we knew that we had to spread ourselves internationally. We needed eggs in all the baskets so that if there was a recession in one place, it wasn't going to take our business down. And the International Dermal Institute is now the number one provider of advanced education

in the industry worldwide. We train 100,000 skin therapists every single year. And last year, our wholesale turnover was a little north of time. $250 million. That's incredible. So you guys were, you basically ran the company for almost 30 years. Yeah, we ran the company. And decided to sell it last year. He sold it to Unilever. Why did you, why did you decide to do that? Well, you know, we'd run the company as what I sort of say was, you know, a beneficial dictatorship. We've always had a great team. We still have a great team. But the decisions ultimately came down to Raymond and myself, product approval, advertising, everything, the brand ID.

And, you know, we realized, much that we hate to think about it, the death rate is holding steady at 100%. So ultimately, we were going to have to make a plan of what we wanted to do with the company. We have two daughters, they're 17 and 22, and neither of them wanted to come into the business. And we didn't want them to. We told them even kind of before they were born.

We decided if we ever have children, they're not coming into Dermologica. It's our dream and we believe it's a burden to kind of shoulder your children with that responsibility. And so we had decided we'll hire a CEO and we've gone through a couple of CEOs in the eight years before we decided to sell. And it just wasn't working and we realized the problem probably wasn't the CEOs. The problem was probably us because we are the founders. You know, we have this sort of passion about the ownership. and it's very hard to run a company when the founders are in place

and kind of want to have the last word. And so we decided we should at least explore the idea of an acquisition. We'd never taken a phone call from anyone that was interested in buying, never even taken a call because we said we don't even want to have the conversation. It's a distraction. And so we kind of lined up who we thought would be the right partners for us. And then we set about deciding which ones we wanted to court. and Unilever were very aligned with us on their sustainable living plan.

They're very aligned with us on a value system. And so we decided to go forward. And I have to say, we're one year in, and it's been a fantastic year, so much so that Raymond and I kept a small percentage of the company and was still involved. And the chemist, the one who, like, bailed a month before Dermologica launched. Did he ever come back to you guys and apologize? No, never. He never did.

No, he was like Rumpel Stiltskin that flew out the window and never came back. You know, it's amazing looking back at your story. Because your mom was a widow with four girls and that she had to raise on her own. And she must have been a little worried when you left England for South Africa and then to the U.S. with very little. What did she make of your success? No, I know that she was really proud. She felt validated in the direction that she pushed us in. She passed away in 2001, but she saw our success.

And the last months of my mum's life, she had Alzheimer's. I'm not sure she remembered anything about dermatica. She remembered me, and I sat on her bed when she was in the hospital, and I was giving her a manicure. I was right back to filing her nails and painting them, and she was watching me, and she looked across, at the woman who was in the chair next to her. And she said to her with a huge look of pride, she said,

my daughter's a qualified manicurist, you know. And I smiled as I was doing it because I thought that if she doesn't remember anything about the success we've had, she's really proud that I got that training and I'm going to be okay. And I was. Jane Rewind, founder of Dermologica, she now spends most of her time on helping women around the world become entrepreneurs through her foundation. And of course, we couldn't let Jane go without asking for her number one skincare tip.

So here it is. Single best thing you can do for your skin is keep it out of the sun. So you wear a sunblock, you wear your hat, stop lying out in the sun, get busy, start your business, and go out and change the world. And please do stick around because in just a moment we're going to hear from you about the things you're building. Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And today, we're going to update a story we ran about a year ago. This one comes from Winfield, Pennsylvania. My name is Nicholas Gilson, and I am one of the original founders of Gilson snowboards.

Nick and his business partner sort of fell into the snowboard business. They were middle school teachers in Nashville and did a science project where they challenged their students to build a better snowboard. I brought in the original prototype for an idea I had when I was my student's age, when I was in a middle school. And that idea was basically to design a board, which instead of being flat at the bottom, was curved. And Nick hoped that it would make for a faster ride. And even though their first design totally failed, they eventually came up with one they loved. With this board, you can actually ride close to flat and engage these really surfy, drifty maneuvers that allow you to to get through the trees way easier with way more surfy motion.

And so with barely any money, Nick and his partner quit their teaching jobs and set up a snowboard shop inside a stable in Pennsylvania. It was an active stable. It was an active stable. There were donkeys and horses next to our machines. And in that stable, Nick says, they were able to make their boards even better. And we then started to travel the country, starting a company much the way our grandparents would have. We need to tangibly and physically share something with people. And so we went out and immersed ourselves in the community, traveled 17,000 miles from coast to coast, and started getting these people on the boards.

Now, since we last spoke to Nick, his team has traveled 17,000 more miles to slopes and parks across the country, letting people sample Gilson snowboards for free. The company is now four years old. They've sold thousands of boards, and they've recently expanded to skis. You can find out more about Gilson snowboards on our Facebook page. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We love hearing about the things you're building. And thanks so much for listening to our show this week. If you want to find out more or hear previous episodes, you can go to how I built this.npr.org.

Please also subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts or however you get your podcasts. You can also write us at H.I. ibt at npr.org. You can tweet us to at How I Built This. My Twitter address is at Guy Raz. Our show is produced this week by Rund Abdel Fata. Ramtin Arablui composed the music. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanazmeshkampur, Thomas Liu, and Jeff Rogers.

Our intern is Nur Kudzi. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.