How I Built This with Guy Raz - Jack Black Skin Care: Curran and Jeff Dandurand

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

In 1998, Curran Dandurand and a colleague from Mary Kay Cosmetics came up with an unorthodox idea: a premium skincare brand for men. Despite the prevailing wisdom that American men would never want to moisturize and exfoliate - and a total lack of interest from investors - Curran and Emily Dalton forged ahead, with the help of Curran’s husband Jeff. Their brand, Jack Black, launched in 2000, and eventually landed in major department stores, with some unexpected boosts from the Dallas Cowboys and Matthew McConaughey. The brand became a leader in men’s skincare, and eventually sold to Edgewell Personal Care for just under $100 million.This episode was produced by Casey Herman, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.Edited by Neva Grant with research help from Katherine Sypher.You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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you were given the keys to run SNL. You will definitely want to hear his answer. Check out my interview with Kenan Thompson over on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for the great creators with Guy Raz wherever you listen to podcasts. And now, on to today's show. We had this seven foot tall, very beautiful wood floor standing fixture, the laser cut logo. We spent a ton of money on it. And our idea was, this is the display you're going to use in your golf shop.

Okay. But people would look at that display and just like going, what are you thinking? We don't need, we can't put that in our shop. We would never sell that much product. They just weren't interested in Jeff's like. This isn't working. We got to pull the plug and we got to go get real jobs. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists,

and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today how Curran and Jeff Dandran took a gamble on men's skin care and managed to build a $100 million brand, Jack Black. The men's skin care market is a tough one to come. crack. It's a tiny fraction of the overall skin care market. Guys just don't spend much time moisturizing or exfoliating their faces. They might shave or use shampoo and soap in the shower, and that's it. But that's slowly changing. Between 2018 and 2021, sales of men's prestige skincare brands grew by 21%. And part of that growth has to do with a brand called Jack Black. It's a

that was designed specifically to appeal to men. Blue-colored tubes, labels that look like cigar brands, even the name, Jack Black, sounds like a rugged dude in a bourbon appreciation society. The name, by the way, was picked before the actor Jack Black was well known. Anyway, when Kern Dand Danderan founded the company with her friend Emily Dalton in 2000, almost no one wanted to touch men's personal care, in part because it was and still is dominated by the big players like Gillette. But the other reason is that some of the prestige brands like Clinique and Chesedo already had men's skin care lines that weren't really flying up the shelves at department stores. Bacurin had a hunch that if she could redesign men's skin care, make it appeal to men in, say, Texas, she might be able to break through. And that's what Jack Black did.

They would lure guys to department store counters and give them samples to take home. And over time, it won them over. Early on, Curran recruited her husband, Jeff, to help with sales. And it took many years before they managed to eke out a small profit. Today, Jack Black is owned by Edgewell. It's a company that also owns brands like Shick and Playtex. The co-founders sold the company in 2018 and made a hefty return. But we'll get there.

Curran grew up in Florida and went to college at Vanderbilt. Jeff grew up in Indiana and went to college at the University of Mississippi. They met in Dallas after they both graduated. Jeff was working as an executive recruiter, and Curran was working in market research at Mary Kay Cosmetics. I thought that cosmetics would be fun and exciting and creative. I really wanted to be creative. I didn't have any experience in cosmetics.

I was a minimal user of cosmetics at the time, but it had all the ingredients of a product category that I thought I would be good at and enjoy. And explain what, I mean, for people who aren't familiar with it, Mary Kay, basically, it's a old school direct-to-consumer company, right? It's a direct marketing company. Direct-selling, exactly. And basically, so they don't sell in stores. You've got an army of independent entrepreneurs, mostly. women who sell cosmetics to their friends, door-to-door parties, right? Right.

And so you have a hostess and you would sell to a group of the hostess's friends. And I moved up very quickly. So it was very stimulating and challenging and rewarding for me. They were growing like crazy. So it was very fast-paced. Yeah. It was a good life. I loved my job, but I had a good social life.

I was dating a lot. I wasn't married. I didn't have kids. Didn't have that responsibility. And at the same time, you decided to do an MBA, I guess, sort of at night or part-time. Right. At night and on the weekends. It took three years.

Okay. So, Jeff, I know that you were in Dallas around the same time as Karen, working as an executive recruiter. Correct. Yeah. Okay. And, Curran, you're sort of working your way up at the time at Mary Kay. So tell me, how did the two of you meet? Like, what do you remember?

Well, we met at the downtown YMCA. I was doing aerobics. Right. It was back in the Jane Fonda aerobics days. Yep. He was playing basketball, and he sent some friends over that were mutual friends that I knew. And they asked me if I would be interested in going out with him. And I said, well, what does he look like?

And we peeked over at the basketball court, and they pointed to him. And I'm like, yeah, he's good looking. I'll go out with him. And she started walking towards me. and I was just so nervous I was just like do you want to go out and she said yeah I'll go out

and I just thought man this girl is just beautiful and you were like I was just like thinking I'm going to go for me my program here yeah it's out of my league yeah I'm like a goofy

dude playing basketball yeah I've got an afro and you know long hair and it was totally well and he had the super shiny suit on that was like too short bad style

On top of it. On top of it. On top of it. First impressions weren't so great. But you agree. You guys weren't a date. And how did that date go, Karen? Well, I didn't think it went very well.

He talked about himself the entire night. He went into minutia detail about how he keeps an index card filing system about all his recruiting prospects and how he works that system. He got up several times to go use the pay phone. Wow. He never asked me what my job was, where I was from. This is promising. Yeah. This is going to be a long and fruitful relationship.

Never going out with this guy again. That's one and done. And Jeff, how did he, how did the day go for you? Well, I was leaving with my brother at the time, and he asked me. He said, how did that date go? I said, it went great. I said, I'm going to marry that girl. Had you had insight into her thinking, you would never have thought that.

No. I would have been very disappointed for sure. So, Kern, why did you agree to go out with him a second time if he was boring and talking about index cards on the first date? Well, he was so persistent, and this is a trait that really benefited us at Jack Black many years later. He did not take rejection. He didn't take no. And so finally he wore me down, and I went out with him again, and he started. started being a little more interesting and having a two-way conversation.

Wow. And then he lied and he said, I won a trip to Mexico and I'd like to take you with me. And I said no, about 10 times. Finally, he wore me down. Wait, sorry, pause. Jeff, you made up a story about winning a contest. I wouldn't say I lied. I'd say that I bended the truth a little bit. We were talking about a sales trip at our company. I just decided it was going to be Cancun, Mexico, and that I had won that trip.

Okay, I got you. You were going to engineer this trip. So eventually you convinced her to go to Cancun with you, and you agreed, Kern. You agreed to go. Yes. And that was the turning point. Then I started to fall in love with him and things changed after that. All right.

So you guys become a couple, and then a few years later, I think you've done. 1989, maybe, you'd get married and start a family. And you were kind of climbing the ranks at Mary Kay. And tell me what you were doing there. Tell me about your job. When we got married, I was director of marketing. And then a couple of years after we got married, we had our son. And then by the time we had our daughter, two years after that, I was executive VP.

of global marketing and business development. So I was over product development and marketing for the entire world, many countries. And they were public when I joined. And the owners, which were Richard Rogers and Mary Kay, Ash, decided to take it private. And so that was an important milestone for the company. And it also afforded me some phantom share options that they granted to key people, which I was later able to use to help fund Jack Black startup. Curran, tell me about the culture at Mary Kay. I mean, now you were sort of rising up the ranks and eventually as you're in your late 30s,

you're getting into the executive suite there until late 30s. And you basically started there when you were 22. Right. You were a lifer. You were a lifer. Right. What was the culture like there? Well, I think towards the end of the time I was there, it got very political, more bureaucratic.

I felt like I was solving the same problems over and over. And then they brought in a new CEO that I didn't think had the chops or the experience or the knowledge of the business. And I just felt like it was time for me to move on. Yeah. Did you have ambitions to be the CEO? Yes. Yeah. I wouldn't want it to be given to me, but if I was the best candidate and I had earned it, yes, I wanted it.

When you decided to leave Mary Kaye in 1998, that must have been a difficult decision. First of all, you know, you guys were not independently wealthy. I mean, Jeff had a job and money coming in and you had some shares, but it wasn't enough to stop working for the rest of your life. No. So that must have been a difficult decision. Yeah. And I was a major breadwinner, and Jeff was very distraught at my decision, and I pretty much decided I'm leaving, but I didn't know exactly what my next move was going to be. I just knew I had to do it.

Jeff, when she made that decision, I mean, of course, I'm assuming you were supportive of your husband, but were you worried about that? Yeah, I was. and when she started talking about leaving, and she would tell me she was, you know, very upset and she didn't want to be there anymore. You know, I would try to talk her into staying. And I was able to do that for maybe six to nine months before she finally left. Right. And now, Jeff, the pressure's a little bit on you because you've got this whole paycheck coming in. Well, in my job was straight commission. I was basically month by month having no idea what I was going to get paid that month or make anything that month.

Because if you didn't place people in jobs, you didn't get anything. Correct. So you were constantly having to hustle, constantly having to sell. Yeah. So that's going on. And, Curran, you're out of Mary Kay. And what did you start to do? I mean, did you start to have conversations with people?

Did you just, or did you completely stop thinking about work for a while? No, I just knew I was going to keep working. It wasn't like I was going to retire. But I was starting to realize, hey, you know, I don't want to go back to the corporate world. I want to do something different. I want to be in control of my destiny. I want to be in control of who I work with and how I run the business. And then the turning point was after I had resigned for Mary Kay,

Several of the key marketing people that worked for me also resigned. And one of those top performers was Emily Dalton, who eventually was the co-founder, Jack Black, with us. And we had lunch, and she said, why don't we start a business together? I'm like, well, what are you thinking? And she's like, well, it's got to be in cosmetics because that's what we know. And I'm like, right? Sure. And she's like, what about men?

What about men, she said? Men, yeah. Like cosmetics for men. Yeah, I'm like, what? I'm like, no, that is such a small, non-existent market because people had tried it. Mary Kay tried it was like 0.1% of their business. And she's like, no, men are changing. Nobody's doing it.

Somebody's going to figure it out. Let's pursue it. Let's think about it. So when the two of you started, because it's exciting, that conversation, that first conversation gets your blood pumping. like, wait a minute, maybe there's something here. But when you started talking, I mean, was the conversation around cosmetics for men like concealer and, you know, things like that for men? Or was it? Never. It was never cosmetics. It was skin care, grooming, head to toe,

care for your body. So personal, like what we call personal care? Yeah, functional products like deodorant, antiperspirant, shave cream, but then moisturizers, sunscreen, a brand that was luxury because you had the mass market grooming brands like Gillette. And in the prestige market, you had fragrances, but you did not have a complete line of skin care that was positioned at the luxury end of the market. Targeting more affluent guys, luxurious textures, that didn't exist. So what did you do? I mean, did you go home and start to talk to Jeff about this? Well, Emily and I talked amongst ourselves extensively. We were both marketing people. So we're putting together tear sheets and imagery and crafting the brand personality.

And we knew we had to do almost everything totally different than the women's brands were doing to break through to men. Our insight was that that's why it had failed before. Right, because it was like there was clinic for men. And I remember, and I think it's still around, but it just looks like clinic for women, but just says clinic for men. Right. And that didn't quite work. Totally. So they basically cost reduced their women's formulas, put it in stock gray packaging, and put it out on the shelf with the women's stuff and never supported it.

So we were busy brainstorming. Okay, what is our strategy? How are we going to make this work when so many others have failed? When we come back in just a moment, how Curran comes up with the name Jack Black, and why Jeff takes their first display case for showcasing the product and winds up smashing it into bits. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. One more thing before we get back to the show, please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. and it's totally free.

Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the late 1990s, and Kern Dand and her colleague from Mary Kaye, Emily Dalton, are brainstorming ways to launch a brand of skincare products for men. And it turns out that their first tough pitch meeting isn't with investors. Instead, they have to convince Curran's husband, Jeff. I was out playing golf one day, and I came in through our garage to our family room. and Kern and Emily had, you know, all the things that she talked about out on our tables.

And I said, well, what are you guys doing? And they said, well, we're thinking about starting a company. And I said, well, what kind of company? And they said, well, we're going to start a skincare company for men. I said, that's a crazy idea. You know, guys don't care about skin care. I said, where are you going to get the money? They said, we're going to use our money.

That's even a crazier idea. But then they spent a little bit of money on doing some market research where they talked with men about skin care, what they used, how they used it. We got those reports back a couple weeks later. I was reading the reports one evening in bed. And I thought, you know what, they're really on to something here. Yeah, so we did focus groups. And we basically presented our brand concept, which was rugged masculinity. but there was a luxury and a polish about it.

So we showed different pictures of celebrities, Tom Landry, Steve McQueen, you know, these are the kind of guys that this brand is for. And men really liked that. One of our inspirations was to have our packaging kind of be inspired by liquor labels and cigar labels, which are kind of timeless and cool and interesting. And they liked that. And so we got positive feedback. Yeah, I'd be receptive.

I'd like to know more. All right. So you decide that you're going to jump into this. And tell me about how you're going to finance it. Well, we did want to raise money. We spent a lot of time putting together a very beautiful business plan. This is you and Emily. Me and Emily.

Because Jeff is still working. He's still recruiting. Yeah, he's involved on the periphery. He's aware of it. But he's still working. You know, we had to have some income coming into our family. So we networked with people we knew that were connected to investors and we sent out a bunch of business plans. We got mostly crickets.

Nobody even bothered to respond. The one response we did get was, I'll pass. This won't work. I'm just surprised because both of you had come to the table with such deep experience in the industry. It wasn't like you were just out of college with this pie and the sky. And we were pretty cocky. You know, we're like, okay, this business plan's going to wow them. They're going to see the potential.

Yeah. We just got total thumbs down, just not even the courtesy of a response. And I look back and I don't know exactly why we kept going. We were totally undeterred. And we're just like, okay, well, we'll fund it ourselves. and which in hindsight I'm so grateful because we had total control. We had no outside investors. And you had a little bit of a nest egg from your time of Mary Kay.

Correct. How much money did you have to use? Close to half a million. Was that pretty much everything you had? Yeah. Wow. And Jeff, at this point, Jeff got laid off from his recruiting job. Around this time.

Yes. So Jeff was on board because then there was three founders, three co-finding. founders. And Jeff, from what I understand, the company where you were working, I guess their business really started to slow down. And so there just wasn't much recruiting for you to do at that point and you were laid off, right? Correct. Yeah. But can I just ask kind of where your head was at the time? Because, I mean, you'd read the surveys and research that Kern and Emily had done, and you thought that was encouraging, but still, like, you did not, now, you didn't have a steady income. and Kern was going to put in all of your money into this business, which was a huge risk.

I mean, were you worried about that? Yeah, I mean, I would – Because you guys were like four, you know – 40 years old. Yeah. I mean, that's – you know – Well, I thought the numbers, the business plan they put together was very achievable. And I thought, gosh, we're going to be killing it in five years because the numbers supported a hugely successful company.

The projections. Yeah, projections. But the projections are numbers. Yeah. Projections are projections. Yeah. And we didn't make our projections. We didn't even come close to that.

But the reality was that I just didn't think about us not being successful. And it was sort of like this incredible stroke of luck that you lost your job at this time. I mean, of course, at the time, I probably didn't feel that way. But Emily and Curran had expertise in marketing and in place. product, but not in sales. You were a sales guy. They needed a salesperson. Yeah. And I, you know, I talked to Emily and Kern about helping them with sales and developing a database for us to contact golf country club buyers all over the country. And these were for golf shops. You thought golf shops on golf courses. Yeah. This is smart because that's a tribe and Jeff is a golfer. Right. Jeff. You're good golfer.

That's right. Okay. And so, I mean, we really thought that this golf club strategy of distribution would be a very strong one. Yeah. When we first started the company, we were more thinking we're going to focus on sunscreens. Yeah. But then we're also going to add on things like shave cream and hand cream, lip balm. Because we're thinking, well, the men, they're playing golf every weekend. They're not going to the mall.

So let's reach them where they're going. We were trying to be innovative in our distribution. And Kern, was Emily at all nervous? Like, ooh, your husband coming in? Like, was there any of that weirdness? Yeah. Yeah. She had some advisors, some lawyers that were like, you don't want to get involved with the

married couple. Like, what if that goes off the rails? Yeah. And also, you know, with Jeff and I combined, if we voted against her, you know, we could go, hey, we just want this whole thing for ourselves. We're, you know, kicking you out. Yeah. But she trusted us and believed in the concept and she moved forward.

But we did have to talk through that. And tell me about the name. How did you, because you didn't initially didn't have a name. You said a concept. Right. Yeah, tell me more about that. Well, I actually came up with the name. I was on a flight.

I had a yellow legal pad and I just wrote down Jack Black. I liked the strength of that name, the simplicity of it, the timelessness. It felt very masculine, and it could have authority over a lot of different product categories. It wasn't so narrow, like the art of shaving or you're just body or, you know, you're just sunscreen. And you wanted the name of a person because... Because I wanted the guys to relate to it. Like, it's their buddy. And they're not embarrassed at all to say, I use Jack Black.

Yeah. Versus I use something that I can't pronounce, or it's a French name, or it's a girl's name. And Jack Black could be the person who started the company, like Vidal Sasson or, you know, like, it's Jack Black. It's my company. Just a very strong, rugged, masculine, athletic guy. You wanted, like, maybe this is the best analogy, but you kind of wanted the Marlboro Man. Yeah, exactly. But not a smoker.

Except not smoking. Yeah. Yeah. Not smoking. And the big potential was getting the vast numbers of heterosexual guys that cared about how they looked, that worked out, spent money on their clothes, tried to eat right. Get them to use skin care. Right. Because it totally makes sense.

All right. So you have this name, Jack Black. And by the way, just coincidentally, I mean, this was kind of before the actor Jack Black really blew up. I think high fidelity camera when that came out. That was his first big ball. Shortly thereafter, like, yeah. We had already trademarked the name and locked into that and designed the packaging when he had his first movie. And God bless him, but he is not like the Marlboro Man.

He's amazing. I love him. If he was here right now, I'd have a beer with him or a coffee. But he's not, I don't think of like rugged Americana when I think of the actor Jack Black. No, we would not have ever picked him to be our. He's a Kung Fu Panda. He's a Kung Fu Panda. Yeah.

So there was confusion in the early days. And people were thinking he owned the company. And we'd get emails to our info at Get Jack Black. Hey, Jack, I love your latest movie. And I love your line. All right. So you've got this name and this brand. Now let's talk about the colors and the label.

What did you do for that? Well, this was Emily's strength, too. She was so good at design, and everything was just meticulously crafted. The label and the overall design was more inspired by cigar labels and liquor, upscale craft liquor. It's a diamond-shaped sticker. It looks like a sticker, but was it diamond-shaped logo on top of a solid colored, and the color was blue? Right. It was a royal blue, and at the time, the men's lines were white, gray, and brown.

The competing lines you're talking about competitors, yeah, were white gray and brown. Okay. And we knew we had to have, you know, massive eye appeal to get men to notice it. So we liked the strength of the blue and the black together. Yeah. And then after we did the first focus groups, we didn't do any more research because we didn't have any money. So we're just, this is all gut feel. an instinct. But we settled on what we ended up going with, and it's what we still market today.

Yeah. All right. So you have the logo. You've got the name, and you've got the money to get this out there. And I'm assuming you didn't build your own facility. You didn't have enough money for that. But there were contract manufacturers that you could presumably go to and pick out the ingredients and say, this is what we want. So did you already have relationships with some of those manufacturers? through Mary Kay? We did. And we went to three different contract manufacturers that we had worked with at Mary Kay, so we knew the people and they were willing to work with us. And we, all the formulas were custom. We did test the formulas amongst different guys that we knew in the Dallas area and got really good feedback. So that was encouraging. And what kind of sense, what kind of smells were you going for? That's a good question, because the aromas are so important for guys. And what we had found in the market was either they were super heavily fragranced or they were just not fragranced at all. So we really took the approach of light aromas, not fragrance. There was a lot of eucalyptus

and peppermint, very fresh, kind of tingly spa-like fragrances. And the other thing in the formulations that we focused on were the textures men really object to heavy, greasy, kind of occlusive feelings. So the products were very sheer and light and didn't weigh heavy on the skin, which was important. All right. So 2000, you launched the brand. The idea is you're going to be in golf stores. So you have a few hundred thousand dollars worth of product, right,

that you've ordered. And what are you going to do from there? Like, how are you going to start? How are you going to get people to notice? How did you decide to, like, launch this product? Well, we decided to debut at the 2000 PGA show in Orlando, which is a massive show, like 30,000 people attend. This is like presumably one of the biggest golf. It's in the world, biggest in the world.

Okay. So you're preparing for this show, and you know, you need to get the word out. Probably aren't going to be too many personal care products shown there. So what does you do? So Jeff had meticulously compiled a list of. what was it like 5,000? Yeah, it was about 5,000 golf country clubs, resort clubs all over the country. And then when I got laid off, I just spent my whole day calling country clubs and making sure that the database that we were putting together had the right address and the right

buyer's name, email address, follow-up phone number, and then the mailer, right, Kern? Yeah, so we designed this mailer that features. featured our product line, beautiful photography, and we mailed it out to all these 5,000 buyers that Jeff had carefully researched. And we didn't design the mailing panel correctly. And the post office read the return address as the ship two address. So all of them came, like within two weeks later, three weeks later, like right before the show, we'd get them back to the executive suite. So the mailers never got there to anybody.

Never got there. So like nobody knew we were there. Yeah. So that was the first sign. It was going to be an interesting show. So you get to Orlando, this PGA trade show. You've got a booth there and you show up and tell me about the show. Well, it's massive.

There's just people everywhere. We had terrible location for our booth. We're in the very last row at the very end of that row. in the back corner, not even by a bathroom or anything. We had no traffic coming by. So we would kind of walk the aisles and grab people and bring them back and put the product on their hands. And what did your display look like?

I mean, did you have all the products in, you know, all labeled and everything? Well, we didn't have production yet. So we had lab samples, which were basically white tubes that were hand-crimped by the lab. Okay. And then we had this seven-foot-tall, very beautiful wood floor standing fixture, the laser-cut logo. We spent a ton of money on it. And our idea was, this is the display you're going to use in your golf shop, and it'll hold $4,000 worth of jack-black product and doesn't it look beautiful. And you were going to provide that to whoever?

If you ordered 4,000, you could get the free display. The wood display, okay. So first of all, when we finally got a few people back there, we would, you know, take the tubes and get ready to let them feel the product and the crimps would bust and shoot out the other end all over their shirts. So the crimps were busting everywhere. People would look at that display and just like going, what are you thinking? We don't need, we can't put that in our shop. We would never sell that much sunscreen product or shave cream. They just weren't interested.

They were there to look at the latest equipment, the latest golf balls, range finders. Hat, clothing. Yeah, they just, the category, they're just like, I don't care. Yeah. I don't get it. And so finally, Jeff rounded up seven of his good friends in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that were head pros at the various country clubs and got brought them over. and we got a sale probably a pity purchase from each of them.

So it was a big fail. So, all right. So this, I mean, you had put your entire strategy was this tribe of people. Right. We're golfers and golf courses. And did you ask yourself, what did I get wrong? What happened here? Yeah, I think we were starting to go, hmm, you know, we might need to expand and go to

traditional retail. But we, after we left, I will say Jeff took that floor standing seven foot wooden display. He cracked it into a million pieces and put it in the dumpster. He was so mad. And then we went to the Orlando airport. We went to Chili's to have dinner before our flight. And Jeff's like, this isn't working. We got to pull the plug and we got to go get real jobs.

Wow. Jeff, you're the guy who's like was persistent in pursuing Curran, never taking no for an answer. You're the guy that she was like, no, I'm not going to marry you. I'm going to date you. And you're like, no, come on. You're the one who says, let's pack this in? I was so discouraged by the lack of sales at that show. And Curran looked at me and said, no, when we get back to Dallas, you got to get on the phone and start making some calls to open up accounts. We have $450,000 worth of inventory coming in in March and April, and we need to start selling that. So I thought, okay, you know, I've got a really strong database here. We did meet some people that seemed interested and found a couple independent reps. And I started talking to those reps about carrying Jack Black. And then I just got on the phone and Cole called all day, literally all day. So you needed a different approach.

Mm-hmm. You were not going to build a scalable brand through golf shops. Yeah, we didn't abandon golf, but, and Jeff continued to build golf, and we opened some really amazing accounts, which, you know, a few months later led to a great PR mention. So we opened, was it Austin Country Club, Jeff? Yeah, Austin Country Club. Austin Country Club. The pro told Jeff that Matthew McConaug was using our product. and loved him.

How he was buying it at the shop there? Yes. In the golf pro show. Okay. So they said the golf pro there says Matthew McConae likes your stuff, but you didn't know that for sure. We just heard it through the pro. Okay. So this was at the height of in style, the in style magazine, and there was all the celebrity features about what the celebs are using.

So Emily was based in New York and she was really hitting the streets, you know, talking to the editors trying to get some ink on Jack Black. and she landed a meeting with End Style, and she shared the Matthew McConaughey tidbit, and they published it in September. Just a photo of him and then saying, hey, he likes Jack Black products. Right. And then they had a picture of the beard loop and the lip balm.

Wow. And so that led to specialty stores calling us. We actually got inbound calls from people interested in taking our line, which was the first. Here's my question about that. She could have been totally lying. Like she could have said, hey, Matthew McConaughey or Jack Nicholson. And they were just like, yeah, great.

We'll run a story. Like, I'm amazed about that. I mean, because Matthew McConaughey probably doesn't read in style. But like, he could have been flipping through it at the grocery store if he goes and had been like, my, Jack Black. First of all, what is Jack Black? Or he might have been like, how do they even know this? Right. Right.

They just ran with it. Well, that was back in the day. back in 2000. That doesn't happen anymore. It doesn't happen anymore. You get sued. Yeah. Yeah.

So the magazines, you know, they carefully do their diligence and all that. But back then, it was very, very common. All right. So you have Matthew McConaughey, maybe not using the product, but it doesn't matter. You're getting attention. And you, but you also knew through the disaster at Orlando that you had to probably start to look at retail shops. Right. And so I guess the first big store was a Dallas department store.

Stanley Corshack is that what it's called? Yeah. So tell me about that approach. How did you get in there? Well, they just have one location, but it's super special store, very upscale, great selection of merchandise. And the buyer granted me a meeting, and I presented the line. At that point, it was still in lab samples because we didn't have production.

He took everything home, and he took everything home. and he tried it, and he called back very quickly, and he's like, I love your formulas. We'll take it. And we're like, oh, my gosh, like, that's great. And they immediately did well with it. They had good sell through and were reordering. And so we started really to focus on more traditional retailers,

but to not abandon golf either, though. And once you got into the stores, right, still the problem that you have was not, was far from being solved, which is the behavioral change. Because, you know, reminds me we did a story on the show about Guayaki Yerba Mate, right? And it's a big company now. But, like, when they first started trying to get people to drink it, they're like, this tastes awful, it's bitter.

What is this? And it took them, like, 20 years to, you know, to kind of introduce it to people. It's still growing. But you're in Stanley Corshack. And then what? Like, don't you have to, like, show people how to use it and get, men to start using it? Well, they had really great salespeople that did a lot of consultation and personal service.

Yeah. But when our eyes were really opened was when we opened Nordstrom, we pitched the guy in Dallas. His name was Mark Lance. He said he liked the formulas, but he wasn't sure it would work. You know, because retailers are very protective of their valuable real estate on the floor, and they got to make sure you're going to sell. Yeah. And so men's skin care was absolutely not proven,

and it was very risky for them. Finally, he's like, okay, we'll bring you into Stonebrier. We'll test it. Stonebrier is a, where is that? It's in Frisco. Okay. That's where the Dallas Cowboys headquarters are. It's like a booming town.

So they invited us to come to the grand opening of the store. It was the last minute invite. We could not get a baby. babysitter. And so me, Jeff, and our two little kids went to the opening. And I kind of manned our product. And Jeff followed, chased the kids around them all. So I didn't sell anything, but I did see this woman making sale after sale. Her name was Elaine Syke. And she's the best salesperson I've ever laid eyes on. Wow. And at the end of the night, I went up to her and I introduced. to myself and we started talking and I'm like, well, we just started this line and would you be

willing to work a few hours for us? And she agreed to give us five hours a week and she sold like crazy. She would pull guys over, start to talk to them, put the product on their skin, let them feel it, let them smell it, and they would buy. So here's this model of how you educate guys and they would come back and reorder. What would she sell them? Shaving cream or? Well, our strategy was guys understand shave product. You hook them with just a superior shave cream and that was our hero product. It was called beard lube. It was very unique. It was translucent. It had a lot of natural oils in it, had some skin care ingredients in it. So it was a great shave and it left your skin feeling really soft and silky. That was the gateway.

The shaving cream. Yes. Okay. You would talk about the beard loop. They would say buy it. You'd give them a sample of the face buff, which is your cleanser and your scrub. Use this in the shower before you shave. It exfoliates, gets you a closer shave.

And then you give them a sample of the post-shaved cooling gel. After you're done shaving, put this on to cool the skin and gently hydrate. And so I saw at that moment the power of what a great, salesperson can do at the store level what we had to invest in. Yeah. You had to pull the guy in because he's not just walking up going, I'm looking for grooming products. He's walking by and you're literally chatting him up and pulling him from what he's doing

and bringing him over to your area. Yeah. And that's what we had to do. It was very time consuming and labor intensive, but you had to do that. That's how you get the behavior change. educating these guys one by one. When we come back after the break, how Jack Black shows up at Cowboys Stadium and the Super Bowl. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2002, two years after launching Jack Black, and Kuren, Jeff, and Emily are shifting their initial strategy from selling to men in golf shops to selling to men in department. stores, and they're starting to get some traction hitting $2 million in annual sales. By the way, were your projections right? Is that what you had anticipated for 2002? Oh, from the original? No, we were way under. Way, way under. I mean, that business plan was bogus and off target day one. We may have had at the end of your two, $8 million in sales in our projections. It wasn't even close.

And that's because you overestimated initially how big the market was going to be at that point. Yeah. And how much golf shops would sell? So let me ask about your relationship during this time because it's, you know, yes, you're growing and it looks good. But still, you know, you're not, I mean, bringing $2 million in a year, you guys were not making, you're not profitable. And I have to assume you guys had almost no salary at that point because you had to spend money. on product. What was your relationship like? I mean, was it stressful being married, raising kids, and running the business? Like, did you guys, did you guys fight? Yes, it was very, very stressful. And there was a lot of tension, a lot of pressure. We didn't pay ourselves

for maybe four years, pay ourselves at all. And, you know, you're just, you're struggling to survive. And your family's all in on it, right? Yeah. So we got, um, we got, through it, but you've got to know what you're getting into. I advise other couples that are thinking about starting a business. It's going to really strain your marriage because you could disagree at work and have a heated discussion. If it's not your husband, you come home and you don't have to see that person that you just had that big fight with. But when you're working with them, there they are. And you're still fighting when you get home from work and then you're fighting when you're back on the job and there's no escape.

Jeff, did you, I mean, it sounds like you really, Kern was the CEO, that you deferred to her leadership or did you sometimes, I don't know, metal is maybe not the right word, did you sometimes question her leadership? No, I never really questioned her, her leadership or Emmys. I mean, they were just, in my opinion, extremely talented. And, I mean, I will say that my annual fitness. physical, my doctor who I'd known for many years asked me how things were going. I said, you know what, it's pretty tough. I said, it's, uh, things at home are rough because, you know,

we're working together. We're trying to build this business. And he said, have you ever thought about, you know, going to therapy? And I said, yeah, you know, I have. And he gave me the name of a therapist. And I, current and I went to, you know, for an hour visit. And, you know, I thought was pretty helpful. And she said, you know, your wife is really, really smart. And you need to stop arguing about the little things and save your ammunition for something that really matters. And I stopped that day, the next day, I just said, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to keep arguing about this little stuff. And then a couple years later when we started, you know, doing better and start paying ourselves more.

I mean, that helped a lot. Those two things helped a lot. I think you guys started to break even, or maybe even turn a slight profit, in your maybe third or fourth year. Your sales were about $5 million that year. Did that ease the pressure a little bit? Yeah, I think you could breathe a little easier,

but I was still super conservative fiscally. like we still didn't have a lot of money to spend and so I was very tight-fisted about what we spent our money on and we had we had a saying that we're fabulously frugal trying to make it positive you know we didn't have we had really crappy offices no trappings and flow coach stayed in budget hotels and we would not spend money unless we knew it was going to drive sales because we were not out of the woods yet. Yeah. Well, and we were operating with a line of credit at that point that was expanding. You know, I think initially it was 250, then it was 500, then it became a million dollars, and that was within five, six years of starting the business. And of course, there

weren't any bankers that were going to give you that money without a personal guarantee. So we'd have to take our stock portfolio and personally guarantee that to have the line of credit. Yeah. What about what I mean, of course you're still small, even as you grew, you know, you're growing every year, which was impressive. I mean, by, you know, I think 2011, you hit $35 million in sales, so 11 years in. But still small compared to the overall cosmetics industry. Did that in a sense shield you from potential threats and competitors, or did you already start to see the shark circling saying, wait a minute, maybe there's on to something. Oh, yeah, it was just hyper competitive.

Oh, my gosh. You had everybody from the big companies to the little startups to everybody in between because in the industry, you know, it's pretty quick to copy something that's working well. So there was a lot of competitors. And it was even more brutal than the women's because the total size of the market was so much smaller, the space you were granted on the floor was smaller, but yet there were so many more people wanting to get a piece of it. And some of them could be ruthless. They'd try to steal your employees, steal your customers, you know, you'd have your space all set up, and the next day

you'd go into work, and it was gone because your competitor moved it. So there was just a lot of battles on the store floors. One of the things that you guys did, and I think it goes back to the sort of the golf strategy was you started to partner with NFL teams. Like you would put your product in locker rooms so players could use them. You parted with the Dallas Cowboys. I mean, this is, you know, you're in Dallas, America's team, right? And did that move the needle? I mean, being in in luxury suites at Cowboy Stadium or being in the locker rooms at, you know, NFL locker rooms. Did that really, does that really matter? Does that make a difference? Well, it was hard to quantify, but I do feel like it was a game changer for us.

We first got into the NFL program through the Cowboys. The Joneses were building the new stadium, and it was going to be the absolute epitome of luxury stadiums. And Jerry Jones used Jack Black, and we were invited to meet with them about putting our products in the luxury suites. And we would co-brand the products, so we'd change our labeling to include the Cowboy Star, And then we would also, in return for providing the products, we negotiated advertising in the stadium and on their website. And also we would do gifting to VIPs, which is a great way to sample. And, you know, you're creating this relationship with the guy's favorite football team. And that's a good combination for us and it's positive aura for our brand.

Tony Romo is using Jack Black. It's good enough for me. Yeah. Yeah. Or like the Cowboys like Jack Black. Wow, I'm going to check that out. Yeah. So the Super Bowl, I think it was in 2011, was at the Cowboy Stadium.

And all our products were in the suites. And all the other NFL team owners and executives, of course, came to the game. And they saw our products. And we started getting so many phone calls from the other teams. We want to put your products. in our suites. We want it to be co-branded, you know, with our Packers logo, with the Bears, whatever. And we reached so many men that way that we wouldn't have otherwise reached. I mean, the growth really was organic, right? I mean, you just kind of cash flowed, grew.

I mean, once you were in Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's and these big, big retailers, was it still a hustle? Did Jeff, did you still have to, like, call people up and try to open a counts or did it get significantly easier? Well, the cold calling was obviously heavy for the first six or seven years. And then from that point forward, you know, I dealt with our independent sales reps who sold to gift stores, specialty shops, men's clothing stores. I mean, that was a whole different category that no one else was going after either. We had, you know, at one point, maybe six or 700 independent retail type stores that were selling Jack Black. And I dealt with all the reps that were helping us open those types of accounts.

When did you feel, Corinne, that you were like, okay, I think we have crossed the threshold. Like now, now we have done enough work where there's momentum in people understanding what these products are, how to use them. I think it would be, you know, around 2011, 12, so 10, 12 years into it. We're with the NFL teams. We have that great sports program. Our brand awareness was growing. We were number one with almost all our retailers. We had 35% share in the luxury category.

And we were the dominant leader. But I never felt like I could rest because there was always somebody trying to take you out. Yeah. There's so many competitors. And so even to the point where we sold the company, every day I was still like fighting the good fight. Let me ask you about that because you did, of course, 2018, 18 years in, you were acquired by Edgewell. And they're a pretty big personal care company. They paid you a significant amount of money for the brand. And I imagine 18 years in, you guys were exhausted. And so had you been looking for an out at that point? Yes. We actually at that point started a process with investment bankers to pursue selling the company.

Emily had two small, they were in junior high high school, and she was ready to just spend time with her kids. We'd work so hard. Jeff was ready. I was getting there. I was the last one to finally say. hey, you know, it's time to retire. For Jeff and I, everything we had was tied up in the company, and so we had little liquidity at that point. So we just felt like it was time, and we had grown the business to a good point, and we had a great story to tell.

And did you ever think about, I'm sure you were approached by, like, private equity groups or like, look, we'll buy a chunk of it. You can take money off the table, and let's make this even bigger. Right. They would go, you have two bites of the apple. we weren't interested in that option.

But we did talk to some private equity groups as part of the process. Prior to the actual hiring of an investment banker, two years prior to that, we were approached by a very significant player in the category. They made us an unsolicited non-binding offer that was, you know, very nice offer. and we spent nine months with them giving them every detail of our business. They knew that they were the only ones bidding for our business. We provided them with details on new products, on how we sold, on the sales, on every store that we sold to. And two weeks prior to closing, they came into Dallas.

We met at the Four Seasons Hotel. They probably had 40 people. I think we had five or six. And they said, you know that offer we made United States? months ago, non-binding, well, our board can't get to that number. Oh, wow. I mean, basically the offer that we made were not, that number's off the table. You know, we asked them, well, what do you have in mind?

I mean, you know, the number's X, what's the new number? And they were, they just wouldn't give us a number. They just said, you're not going to be happy with it. And then we were like, well, what is it? And then I asked them, I said, well, how much do you think you can grow our business by? We only think we can grow your business by 15 to 20%. I said, we can grow our business 15 to 20% without you. Wow.

And it ended. I mean, basically just stopped that day. And this is after you'd open your entire data room to the online books. For nine months. And what year was this? 2015, 2016. Wow. So they had new all your trade secrets.

They had everything. They had our formulas, everything. Ooh. Yeah. So we learned a very painful lesson. Yeah. You need to have competition in your process. That must have been quite devastating.

It really was. Oh, yeah. And we did not see it coming because they were just whining and dining and sweet talking. And it was non-binding, so they didn't have to pay a penalty or anything. Zero. So we waited a couple of years before we hired a banker to, you know, do it the right way. To it all again, yeah. You reportedly, the Edgewell paid about $100 million for the brand.

I don't know if that's accurate or not. That's been reported. But still, amazing an amazing exit for a brand that you started, you know, in 2000. I mean, once that happened, I think, Jeff, you left, right? You sort of retired. I stayed for one year. Okay. I agreed to stay on for a year to help with the transition.

Emily left right away, or she left pretty soon after, right? Yeah, she left and we closed in January and she left in December. And you, Kern, you stayed for a while as an advisor, even up until like 2021, I think, right? Yeah, I was worried I would be bored because I've always been pretty much a workaholic. But when I did retire, and I kind of weaned myself from work because gradually reducing my hours that I was working after we sold the company. but I never had any girlfriends when I was working because it was just so all-consuming. You had your work and then your kids. So I never had any friends.

And now I've got time to have some good girlfriends, which I'm enjoying. So it's been good. I mean, when you guys think about this journey and, you know, everything I led up to it, how much of it do you attribute to your work and how much do you think has to do with getting lucky? I mean, I've heard some luck in there. I mean, I think the fact that you got laid off, Jeff, was a little lucky. I mean, I felt that at the time. But yeah, what do you think, Jeff, first to you?

I believe in luck. I'm a lucky guy. I was lucky to have met Curran. She changed my life. We were lucky to have Emily as our business partner. I think we were lucky to open some of the retailers that we opened. but also, you know, we worked extremely hard. You know, it seemed like we were always working.

It just seemed like for 18 years there that we didn't have a lot of downtime, but we were lucky. I think we were very lucky. But if we hadn't been resilient and pivoted when we needed to and worked hard, then I think we wouldn't have capitalized on the luck. So you've got to have, I guess, all of it firing on all solar. That's Curran and Jeff Dandran, co-founders of Jack Black. By the way, probably not a huge surprise here, but one of the company's most loyal customers is Jeff.

I am not lying. I use probably 14 or 15 Jack Black products every day. Every day. When I take a shower, I use a body wash. I use the shampoo. I use the conditioner. I use the face buff in the show. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show.

And as always, it's totally free. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Rumtin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Catherine Seifer. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Sam Paulson, Ramelle Wood, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this.