How I Built This with Guy Raz - Tatcha: Vicky Tsai (July 2020)

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

In 2008, Vicky Tsai walked away from a startup job and set out to rediscover herself on a trip to Japan. In Kyoto, she had an unforgettable meeting with a geisha, and learned about the face creams and blotting papers that the traditional Japanese hostesses had used for centuries. But as she contemplated selling those products in the U.S., experts on both sides of the Pacific told her it would never work. Strapped for money and juggling multiple jobs, Vicky worked out of her parents' garage, pitching her new brand—Tatcha—on QVC and steadily growing it. In 2019, Unilever acquired Tatcha for a reported $500 million.This episode was produced by Jed Anderson with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail]. Sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com and on Substack.See 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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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.ca. Hey, everyone, it's Guy here. So this week, we're bringing you a really great episode from our archive. It's a story of Vicki Tsai and her makeup brand Tacha. And as you'll hear, the company was pretty slow to launch. In fact, Vicky ran it from the garage at her parents' house for seven years and took no salary. But she stuck it out, and in 2019, Tacha was acquired by Unilever for a reported half a billion dollars.

This episode first ran back in July of 2020, and it's a great one. Hope you enjoy it. We ran out of money over and over and over again. I couldn't afford a salary. My partner couldn't afford a salary. I couldn't afford rent anymore. and my parents had bought a place near the airport at that point, and they let me move into there. And we had this really, really incredible high-end clientele, and I was working on my mom's garage.

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 today's show, how a trip to Japan and a meeting with a geisha inspired Vicky Tsai to launch Tacha, a line of skin care products that almost nobody thought was a good idea until everybody did. So, as you've heard on this show, really good ideas often come from solving a problem that you and other people have. And of course, you can spend years solving that particular problem in just the right way,

obsessing over countless designs, doing mass. Mountains of research to find the perfect fit between what you made and what the market wants. But sometimes, ideas just sort of reveal themselves, even when you're not looking. And that can often happen when you're visiting a different country. Like Gordon and Carol Siegel, who came across Scandinavian furniture on their honeymoon and went on to build crate and barrel. Or Susan Griffin Black, who encountered lavender oil on a visit to Covent Garden in London. and came up with the body care company EO Products, or Blake Mikoski, whose trip to Argentina exposed him to a type of espadryl shoe that he'd recreate as Tom's.

And for Vicky Tsai, our guest today, the pivotal trip for her was to Kyoto Japan in 2008. She went there to kind of decompress after leaving a job that left her feeling pretty bad about herself. And it was on that trip that Vicky came across the... the nearly impenetrable world of the geisha, and in particular, the natural beauty products that the geisha used on their skin to make it look smooth and flawless. And when Vicky started to research the idea of maybe introducing some of these products to American consumers, she heard no from almost everyone. People in Japan told her that the skincare products used by the geisha were old-fashioned,

the kind of stuff your grandma might use. And in the U.S., beauty experts told Vicky something even more disappointing that Americans weren't even interested in beauty products from Asia. But it turns out they were, though it would definitely take years for Vicky's brand, Tacha, to gain traction. And much of that time, she worked out of her mom's garage, scrambling to pay her team and pitching her skin care products on QVC. But by 2018, Tacha was doing $70 million in sales. And a year later, it was acquired by Unilever for a reported half a billion dollars. Now, Vicky actually got her start in the beauty industry working for her mom who ran a small cosmetics shop in Houston. Both her mom and dad came to the U.S. from Taiwan.

And after high school, Vicky went to U.T. Austin before transferring to Wellesley, the Women's Liberal Arts College in Massachusetts. I loved my experience at Wellesley, but it was very, very small. UT Austin's huge school, and I was used to my independence and used to big classes and lots of different kinds of people. So when I went to Wellesley, it's a very small boutique experience, tiny liberal arts college, and it's women only, which I understood theoretically, but it wasn't until I got there where I was like, where I was like, where are the guys? But I guess while you were there, you met this guy who would eventually become your husband named Eric that you, the story I read is that you actually really kind of pursued him. That actually at the beginning, he was sort of not the kind of person who would ask someone out, I guess. Is that the story? Yeah. And it was the weekend before school started at Wellesley. it had hit me that there really were no men there.

And they had this dance called Tower Court Mixer, and men from surrounding schools would come in for the dance. And I saw him, and he wasn't at all interested in me. And I kind of kept on doing laps around the dance floor with my new girlfriends, and they kept on getting plucked off one by one. And then every few months, I would try to get his attention and email him and call him. But he just wasn't interested. So what got him interested?

How did you eventually, you know, get him to agree to go out with you? I'm not totally sure. I think I just wore him down. We've been together over 20 years now. And I just kept asking. Wow. So I guess after graduation, both of you moved to New York to work in finance, and both of you wind up, I think, at Merrill Lynch, right? Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Okay, so both of you are working in Lower Manhattan. Yes, we were. And you guys were there on September 11, 2001, right? Yeah, we were in one of the World Financial Centers that's actually connected to the trade centers via a land bridge. And so I was on the trading floor, which was the seventh floor of that building. And my husband was on the 26th floor, which is where he worked of the financial centers. And I was in a meeting when the first plane hit, and there was no windows in the meeting room.

So we felt the rumble and we heard it, but we didn't know what it was. But my husband, when he heard the first plane hit, he went straight to the windows to see what was happening. and he actually watched the second plane come in and bank, and he watched it go into the tower. At that point, I was back on the trading floor. We had gotten out of our meeting. And when we heard the second plane hit, we didn't know what was going on, and nothing came on over the loudspeakers yet. But I remember getting up and walking seven flights down,

and actually being one of the first ones to leave the building. And I'm ashamed to say that it didn't even occur to me to call up to my husband to tell him what was going on. I just split. And then I waited outside for him. You were on the sidewalk? On the sidewalk. And I realized we were never going to find each other because as people started flowing out

out of all the buildings that got pretty chaotic down there. And then the people were jumping. And I couldn't watch it. any longer. So I walked back to our apartment, which was in the West Village, and I thought he's going to know that we can't find each other here and he'll come find me and he'll probably beat me there because I have heels on and he's fast. He was a marathon run at that point. So then when I got home and he still wasn't there, that's when I realized like, shoot, he was looking for me. And then I had no way of getting a hold of him because the mobile phones weren't working. both the towers fell before he got home so there was a moment there was a moment in there where I thought he was gone wow how long

before you saw him before he got home it must have been it must have been minutes not not too long but it was enough for me to be watching on the TV and see the power towers fall I couldn't even quantify how long but then he came up after and he was okay when that happened I guess both of you decided you need to kind of rethink what you wanted to do with your life

that maybe being a traitor on Wall Street wasn't what you wanted to do. Yeah, I don't know if I came up with that immediately, but I knew I didn't want to be there anymore. He got sick with an autoimmune disease. Pretty soon after, right? Almost immediately after. And it was not unrelated, unrelated to. We'll never really know. He never had any symptoms before that.

He had run, I think, five marathons in two years prior to that, super healthy, captain of the crew team. And then all of a sudden, he couldn't move, he couldn't keep food down. He lost 40 pounds. Oh, wow. How long was he getting treated for it? About three years. So we would spend the weekends in the emergency room. Eventually, we did go to the Mayo Clinic.

He had some procedures. They didn't know what it was. Towards the end, they were thinking about Remikade, which is a pretty strong treatment. that the side effects included, you know, things like infections of the nervous system. I mean, it's pretty horrifying stuff. And we decided to just pull the plug on all the treatments, stop with all the medicine and the steroids and just quit it and see what happens.

And thank goodness he got his health back. Wow. So for three years he was struggling with this autoimmune disease. You were spending your weekends at emergency rooms. It must have just been totally, like, debilitating and scary. Yeah. it should have been but I think what I did at that time and I only realized it recently is I started I started to almost disassociate I didn't want to be in Manhattan anymore I didn't want to be in ground zero I didn't I didn't want to have to go there every day especially because when the temporary trading floor in New Jersey was moved back to ground zero right before Christmas time the only thing that I could see was out the window which looked straight at the hole that was left And you could always tell when they found a body or body parts because it would be covered with an American flag.

And that was my only view for months. I couldn't see anything but that. And then I would go home and my husband would be sick. And so I actually just went really numb. And I just went on complete autopilot. And I started planning, how do we get out of Wall Street? I just went into planning mode. And I guess eventually you did get out.

of New York. You guys both moved up to Boston where you went to business school, to Harvard Business School, right? Yes. And I read that while you were there, I guess you kind of got your first experience working in the beauty industry. Like you got an internship with Procter and Gamble. Yeah. So I was actually working on SK2, which is a Japanese skincare brand that they own. And I treated my face like a science experiment and gave myself acute dermatitis. Wait, when you say you treated your face like a science experiment, you meant you, you, you were trying all the products that you were working with? The products that we were working with, but then also to do competitive benchmarking, I would go to the other luxury brands. So LaMere and LaPri, it doesn't

matter. Across the board, I just got a chance to buy a lot of them, to use a lot of them, to try to craft SK2 strategy, and it was at that point that I ruined my face. You got acute dermatitis. What is acute dermatitis? It's when the barrier function of your skin has become disrupted, and so things that would typically not irritate the skin suddenly start irritating it because it's getting into the skin itself. So it looks like bleeding, blistering, scaling on my entire face, including my lips and my eyelids. It was very painful.

Wow. And you had never had that before? Mm-mm. Never. And once you have disrupted the barrier function of your skin, after that, it's not able to effectively keep things out. And so anything after that can start irritating your skin. So detergents in my pillowcases or fragrances or my shampoos that had traditional ingredients in it. It was everything. Oh, my God.

When the spring came, pollution, whatever, it would freak out. It's like the plagues in ancient Egypt. Like first there's 9-11 and then your husband's autoimmune disease. and then your dermatitis. We're only into 2004 here. Oh, yeah. We didn't even get to the fun stuff yet. That's right.

Wow. So you guys were dealing with a lot of stuff. How were you, how did you eventually get it, did it just go away on its own? Or how did you eventually bring it under control? I had it from the summer of business school. So between those two years, so I had my entire second year of business school. And then I had it two years after that when I graduated and I worked for Starbucks. So after business school, we moved to Seattle.

My job was to launch Starbucks's consumer products business in China. And I was flying all the time through Japan. There were not direct flights between Seattle and Beijing at that time. And the only thing I could put on my face that didn't irritate it was aquifer. Yeah. Which, you know, you put on baby's butts when they have diaper rashes. I know aquafore well, yeah. But it leaves you looking kind of greasy.

So when I would go to China via Japan, I would pick up these blotting papers that I found in Japan that I couldn't find in the U.S. What are blotting papers for people? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's a great question. It's a piece of paper that is made out of, there's various kind of materials. The ones in the U.S. are made out of cotton. The ones in Japan are made out of a certain type of leaf. And you press it to your skin when it's oily and it lifts off the oil, but it won't disrupt your makeup or take any moisture from the skin.

And that helped. It helped. All right. Cool. So you got the blotting paper. You're going to China. You're working for Starbucks, which sounds like a pretty amazing job. And was there like a Starbucks craze in China already at that point?

Like were people waiting in line to get their Starbucks and stuff? I don't know if there was lines, but it was already a very popular and admired brand. Got it. Okay. And your job is to launch what at Starbucks? Essentially Frappuccino. Frappuccino. Okay.

Bottle for Appuccino. So I read a story and I don't know if it's entirely accurate that, you know, you were grinding away at Starbucks. You were just working really, really hard and going back and forth. And you're really proud of this initiative. And then I guess it was time for you to get your annual review. And it was like meets expectations. That was what it said. You do do your research.

You found that. And that really hurt your feelings. Like you were really upset by that. I was offended. honestly. I would go 40 days straight without taking a day off. I would fly over the weekend so that I would miss any time and be back in in the office by 8 a.m. Monday morning. The timeline for the project was extremely compressed. I was a team of one with no manager. And in the middle of all of that, I broke my arm and I had a cast that went all the way up to almost my shoulder that I had to

where for months. And I missed zero days of work. And it ended up being a very successful launch. Howard was super happy with it and had me present to his port of directors. And I had a VP in my group who I had very little mentorship or guidance from. And at the end of the year, he gave me my performance review. And it was meets expectations. And I just thought, this is not a place where I'll be successful, even though I have so much admiration for Howard and the company and the brand. So I left. Wow. Meets expectations.

Yeah. So you left Starbucks. Yeah. And then I was recruited out to the Bay Area to head up marketing for a sustainability startup. And then Howard Schultz found out, and he called me on my mobile phone and asked me to come in and meet with him. So I went back to his office, and it was the week that my furniture was already on a truck to San Francisco. And he kept on being like, why? Why would you go? And tell me what you want to do and tell me what job you're interested in. But I had a weird loyalty to the VP who gave me a expectations review. So all I said to Howard was, oh, you know, I just don't fit in here. So if I could do it all over again, Howard, I left because I got a crappy review that I did not deserve. No, I mean, of course.

And when you're like, wait a minute, I've worked so hard and somebody else is, you know, recruiting me now. It makes sense. So you went, so you got recruited by this other company. And what was the company? It was called, well, it eventually became called good guide. It's very hard to say. Good guide. Good guide.

And it brought me to Berkeley. It was a few scientists out of Berkeley. And they wanted to create. sustainability ratings for consumers by scraping the internet so that a consumer could plug in their values. You know, I care about, I care about gay rights. I care about animal testing. I care about carcinogens, but I also want a shampoo for curly hair and be able to check all these things off and how have it pop out a recommendation. They're really ahead of their time. I gave so much credit for that. Because that was 2008. Just as the iPhone is coming out, it's still pre-app really.

and yeah. It was. I should mention you were married at this point. You guys, between you did get married. Yes, we were married. We still had a house in Seattle. And so I picked up and I left so quickly that I moved here, I moved to the Bay Area alone.

Got it. Okay. And what was your job at that internet startup? What were you tasked to do? I was their first business hire. And so my job was effectively to come up with a launch plan for them. as well as a marketing strategy. And so I was with them for only, I think, maybe four months.

So did you, I mean, so you four months in, and did you have a plan when do you quit? Or did you just say, I'm going to step aside? You know, I think it dates back to 9-11 and the experience is there. But I was becoming increasingly impatient with spending the hours of my waking life doing things. that I didn't believe in, or if I believed in, but it just didn't feel like the right fit or the right people. So I typed up a letter, a resignation letter, and I drove into the office, and I handed it to them, and I told them that I very much respected what they were doing, but it wasn't the right fit for me. And I tried to leave rather elegantly, but one, I was crying because I was so lost.

And then two, I had brought this big, clunky chair with me, and I was trying to take the chair out. You brought to the office, like a chair that you wanted to sit on? Like an ergonomic chair. Oh, yeah. And then so when I left, I had to take the chair with me, and I couldn't fit it in my car on the way out. And so I had to actually call up to someone in the office and have them help me compress the chair so I can close the trunk and drive away. It was the messiest resignation. It's humiliating.

So you're like four months in and you're out of work. Did you, did a part of you kind of regret leaving Starbucks at that point? Does a part of you think, like, God, what am I doing with my life? Oh, yeah. I thought to myself, Howard Schultz, called me my cell phone and offered me any job that I wanted at Starbucks. And now I am unemployed, standing in the street, crying with my chair in a different city than my husband. Because he was up in Seattle. Yeah.

And I definitely was thinking about all the debt that we had because we had two business school debts plus a mortgage in Seattle, plus a lease. for an apartment in San Francisco. And my husband had undergrad debt on top of that. And I just remember thinking, I've really made a mess for myself. Yeah, I mean, you probably had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. It's probably about 600,000 at that point. And then now this is 2008. Yeah, which is just the beginning of the Great Recession.

What did you want to do immediately? Did you want to hide in bed and put the covers over your head? Like, what was your plan? Well, I told my landlord that I was not working, and she let me help be the, almost like the super for my building. Oh. And rent out apartments for her and her other buildings for $400 a pop. And was that pretty good? Was that enough to kind of keep you going?

I worked about four jobs at that point. That was one of them. I think the only thing it was interesting about that was oftentimes the business school types when they moved to San Francisco will live in the marina so when I was out there

running out apartments it was not uncommon for me to see my business school classmates and they would be like is this your apartment? I was like no I'm like why are you running it out and I'm like for the money

they would give me this look of pity and confusion but it didn't matter So you've left the job at the startup, and you're kind of doing a bunch of different things to make money. And then I guess you at some point took a trip to Kyoto, to Japan, just to go visit? Like, was there a reason why you went to Kyoto in 2008? So I was unemployed. I still have dermatitis.

I'm still using aquafore in my face, and I ran out of my blotting papers. I tried to find those blotting papers around in the U.S. And they're not available. There's different kinds here, but not that kind. And so I called up my friend from Starbucks Japan, and I asked her where to find these blotting papers. And she said they're actually from around Kyoto, and they come from gold leaf artisans.

From gold leaf artisans? Mm-hmm. She said they're hammering papers. They're beating papers. And I was like, what are you talking about, Tomo? go. And I didn't really understand what she was saying, but I thought the whole thing was so fascinating. And I felt drawn to travel. I think I was trying to find myself. So I just picked up and I went to Japan. All right. So most people wouldn't just go to Japan to get a fresh batch of blotting papers. I have to

imagine that you're thinking, these work really well for me. I want to go check them out and see if maybe I can, I don't know, do something with them in the U.S. I did not have a commercial idea. yet at that point. I felt broken. We had had a pretty rough first 10 years of our adult life. And pretty rough as a relative. No, no, no, you own that. You have. You get to say that.

You know, I just felt like I didn't believe in anything anymore. And I questioned my value system and I questioned what I had been chasing my whole life. because my parents' first-generation Asian immigrants, you know, it's a very clear equation for success. You go to an Ivy League school, become a doctor or a lawyer, and then make your parents super proud and make their sacrifices worth it. And I had sort of veered off every one of these paths, and I just started traveling. And I think, like a lot of people, I was traveling to find myself. And when she said, Kyoto, there was something about it that drew me, even though I had never really spent significant. time in Japan before. I knew nothing about Japanese culture because I'm not Japanese, but I just felt drawn.

So I went there. And what happens when you get there? Did you get your blotting papers? When I got to Kyoto, I went to the artisans who are a couple hours outside of Kyoto. And when I went to the workshop there, all they make there is gold. And there's gold everywhere. There's like, there's gold on their eyelashes. There's gold in their clothes. Like, this is like a mess of gold. And this is gold leaf for like art for like paintings and decorative works. Mm-hmm. In Japan, things that are precious are often leafed in gold, including the Golden Temple. In Japan.

In Japan. So basically for centuries, like blotting paper in Japan came from these gold leaf artisans who were using it to hammer gold into, you know, thin sheets of paper. Exactly. So gold is soft. and what they would do is they take gold paper, gold paper, gold paper, gold paper, and then these massive hammers made out of like stones. And it protects the gold during the hammering process because gold leaf is only a few micrometers in thickness.

So it really has to get hammered down to almost nothing. And so this paper would get hammered with the gold, and it would protect the gold. And then when they were done with hammering, the hammering paper would get thrown away. So how did they figure out that this paper, that they were using the hammer gold into leaf would be useful on human skin. That was my question, because it's such a weird leap.

Yeah. And so they actually said you would have to ask a geisha or a kabuki actor because they're the ones who have been coming around getting them at the end of the day. And I was like, can I meet one? And they said, yeah. And so they introduced me to one, which is crazy because. Well, they got you in touch with some, with a geisha? Mm-hmm.

They introduced me to a geisha that they knew, and they helped arrange for me to meet her in a tea house either later that day or the next day. Wow. And I had a translator with me named Yuko, who's wonderful, and a beautiful, unreal geisha walked in, and I was just completely beside myself. It was the summertime.

I was pregnant. I was trying to sit on my knees, which I'm not very good at, and I was sweating, and I kept sliding off of my legs because of the sweat. And yet she was just the picture of perfection in wrapped in kimono. No sweat, never had to budge, never broke character. I just remember thinking, I'm a hot mess, but you're amazing. Was she in her uniform, in her sort of costume with the makeup on and the... Mm-hmm. She was in full performance.

makeup and kimono. All right, so you meet this woman and you start asking her, hey, tell me the story about this blotting paper. Yeah, and honestly, she didn't have a great answer. She just said, I don't know, we always knew that if we went and we used it before we put on our makeup, it would help create the nice canvas for makeup, and if we used it after, it would keep our makeup fresh. But she didn't have a lot to tell me about how that leap happened from one industry to

in the next. But at the same time, I was so enchanting. by her look, especially the makeup. And they told me that Geisha had been around three to 400 years. And I knew a lot of the things that scared me about ingredients in personal care were largely from the petrochemical industry. And so I knew whatever they're using largely predated the petrochemical industry. And so I started asking her questions about her makeup, not because I wanted that look,

but I was looking for anything at that point that I felt safe putting on my skin because I still had my skin. skin issue too. And now I'm pregnant, so I'm super careful about what I'm putting on my skin. Right. And what was her advice? What did she tell you to buy? She just told me some basic stuff. We use oil to take off our makeup. We use a lot of rice powder and camellia oil and sake. And then Yucco took me to go find some of those things afterwards. And that's when I started seeing Geisha flitting in and out of the store while we were there without any makeup on. Wow. And their skin looks like a a child skin. And so if they reached for, you know, a bottle of oil, I would reach for that bottle

of oil. And then if they reached for a powder, I would reach for a powder. And what were the, like, the materials that were so different that you hadn't seen anywhere else? Like, what was the source of the cosmetics? Like, what were they making it out of? Largely food ingredients. The, when I took them home, Yucco had to write down on Post-it note saying, you know, this is rice powder, add water, create a foam, massage onto the skin, or leave on as a mask. Because everything was in Japanese, right? Okay, yeah. Yeah. And so I just came home with this box of things like that, and I used half of them wrong. But about eight weeks later, my skin had pretty much healed. And that was after three years of dermatitis and steroids and antibiotics.

And at the same time, I was so enchanted with the story of the blotting papers, the gold leaf artisans, the geisha, and the history. And to me, it embodied so much of what I was looking for as a woman. It was authentic. It was beautiful. It was steeped in true history. And so, I guess if I take one step back is when I was still in Kyoto, after I'm at the geisha, I went back to the goldie fartisans. And I did ask if I could bring the blotting papers to the U.S. If you could buy some from them.

Mm-hmm. And they said, no, we're not interested in distribution. And by the way, were they selling the blotting papers to the geisha? Or were they just, like, it was just refuse, and the geisha were just picking it up. Originally it was refuse, and now they sell it to them. All right. So originally it was refuse. And clearly they were being sold in Japan because you had already used these blotting papers before. Exactly. And I was just asking if I could bring them to the U.S. because they weren't available in the U.S. And they said we're not interested.

They said they weren't interested. So then I said, how many would I have to buy to get you interested? And they said 10,000. And I was like, I'll buy it. And do you say I'll buy 10,000 piece of paper? I'll buy 10,000 booklets. Right. And how much does that cost you?

But like a couple thousand bucks? No, like 30,000, more than 30,000? Wow. So they said you have to buy 10,000 these booklets and you said, all right, I'll do it. But first of all, how are you going to do that? Well, first I said, I'll buy it. Then I went back to my hotel room and called my husband that night. So it's maybe 6 a.m. his time.

And I said, good morning. I hope you're doing great. I just bought 10,000 plotting papers. To bring back with me to the U.S. Yeah. And he said, how are you going to pay for them? And you said? I looked around the room and the only thing of value that I had left at that point was my

engagement ring on my hand. So I said, I'll just sell my engagement ring. Wow. You said you'll sell your engagement ring. Did you pawn it at a pawn shop? I called the place in New York where I bought my engagement ring because I had proposed my husband and bought my ring. And so I just called them and said, I need to sell it back to you. Would you buy it? So they took it on consignment. It took a few months for them to find a buyer. Okay. And what were you going to do with a blotting paper with 10,000 booklets of blotting paper in the U.S.? I had not really thought it that far out, honestly. But you just thought these work really well for me. There's something here. There's something here. Maybe I'll keep like a thousand for myself and then I'll figure out, I'll give everybody, I'll sell another 9,000, and then I'll have a steady supply for myself.

Got it. All right. So you come back to San Francisco and did you ship the blotting papers or? It took them about a month to actually make them and send them to me or maybe a couple months. And so they showed up in big crates a few months later. So did you have an apartment just full of blotting papers? Yes. But like, what, how are you? Then what? Like, do you start calling friends?

Do you have, like, a blotting paper party at your apartment and invite people over? Like, what do you do with them? I still can't explain it. but I saw this vision in my head of sharing these beautiful little treasures that I found in Japan with other women like me who were looking for something that was real and beautiful and safe. And so I thought maybe I can create a way to keep sharing these things that I'm finding because there was these ingredients that heal my skin. There's this paper with this beautiful history that's, you know,

know, fantastic and simple. And so I actually created Tacha as just as a way of sharing these things I was finding when I go there. And how did you come up with a name Tacha? I had been helping out my friend Stanley, who had been the global head of creative for Starbucks and had left to start his own creative agency. And I had asked him for his advice on creating a brand because I didn't know how to do that. And when I was telling him what I wanted it to feel like, I just said, I want it to feel like an exhale, like a breath of fresh air.

And so he actually came up with the name Tacha. And then shortly thereafter, he introduced me to this incredible woman Nami Onadera, who's still with us, who's our director of culture. And she said, when I saw the name Tacha, I assumed that it was short. for Tatehana, which is one of the classical Japanese arts of flowery arrangement, and it speaks to the beauty of simplicity in nature. And so we said, you know what, that's far more beautiful than just being an exhale or a breath of fresh air.

So let's imbue it with meaning. And did you start to talk to people about it? I mean, you had gone to business school, so you knew a little bit about what it takes to fundraise and did you build a deck and start like pitching the idea? I knew enough about fundraising that I didn't want to do it. Because? I wanted to create something really, really pure and really, really true. And a lot of people from business school end up in the private equity world and in the VC world.

And the ROI is very straightforward there. It's about money. Yeah, they want 10x. Yeah. It's money and its growth. and it's money and its growth. And I wasn't interested in creating something for money or for growth. I was interested in creating something worth loving and that I would want to spend the waking hours of my life doing.

So I just wanted to self-finance it and just see what it could become. But the only thing I wanted was to make sure it stayed really true. But here's a question, right? And I get this question a lot from people listening. They say, guy, you know, I keep hearing these stories about people who self-financed. But how? How do they do it? I mean, I don't have any money.

You sold your engagement ring, and presumably you had some savings from your Starbucks days and stuff like that. No savings. No, it was gone. But how did you do that? How did you finance it without any? I mean, because to do a, create a company, a cosmetics company, presumably requires a lot of capital, right? Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. Well, I started, before I even started the idea, there was maybe half a million in debt.

So we've immediately went to credit cards. which I don't recommend, but it is what we did. I worked for jobs. I begged my landlord for a discount in rent in exchange for renting out the apartments and being the super for the building. I sold anything that I had that was of any worth, including my car and my furniture. My husband is very good at poker. And so when he moved to San Francisco, every Tuesday night, he would go play poker.

Wow. And it would be just enough. I would wake up Wednesday morning. There would be a little stack of cash. And we'd use that to buy food. And then I just, I was just a team of one. Working out of your apartment. Working out of my apartment.

But, I mean, to be, to be completely honest, financially things were dire. We would, when we maxed out one credit card, we would roll it all over to another credit card to buy ourselves some time. And I have a distinct memory of being nine months pregnant. I couldn't afford maternity clothes. so I just sort of pulled the drawstring out of my sweatpants,

but then I'm like humpty dumpty without the suspenders. So like I have to hold on to the pants when I walk or else they're on the ground. And I went to the grocery store. I was checking out and my credit card got declined. And the people behind me and the cash the cashier looked at me with a great deal of pity because I was super pregnant and I couldn't afford my groceries. And I left them there and I walked out without them. Wow.

When we come back in just a moment, how Vicky finally got Tacha off the ground and into her parents' garage, where she would begin an eight-year-long struggle to keep the company from sinking. 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 2009, and Vicky and her husband, Eric, are about to become new parents. with a bank account that's almost empty and an apartment that's pretty much full of Japanese blotting papers. And Vicki needs to come up with a plan to launch her brand new business, Tacha.

I was completely mistaken about how I would bring it to life. I thought if they're beautifully designed and I tell this beautiful and true story about where they're from, I'll be able to find partners to work with. So retailers who would want to carry it, PR agencies who want to work with us, and we were turned down everywhere. You pitched everybody. You said, hey, I've got this great product. You name it.

Yeah, I couldn't even give people money to take me as a client. And then retailers were not interested at all. And everybody also told me at the time, too, that there is no demand or interest in Asian beauty in the U.S. because it's not aspirational. Wow. And they had pointed out that, you know, Chastato had been in the U.S. for over two decades and had not been able to really make it beyond Chinatown. SK2, Procter & Gamble, was behind them.

They weren't having, you know, any meaningful success yet. Shou Yomura, which was owned by L'Oreal, had been pulled out of the market and shut down. And there was no other Asian brands. And, you know, people told me very, very, very, plainly that skin care is not really a thing in the U.S. people care about. They care about makeup. And then Asian beauty in totality is not aspirational here. So don't do it. But you did do it. I mean, you started putting the blotting papers out into the world. So, like, how did you, how did you get the word out?

Well, I went to the library and I couldn't afford the magazines, but I flipped through. them and I wrote down the names of the editors and their mailing addresses and the makeup artist that I admired. And I started sending out care packages with handwritten letters to them just with the blotting papers. And all I did was tell the truth of their story. And I said, I hope you enjoy them. And that was where the press coverage started coming from. And so... And these are just blind. I mean, you were doing your own PR. This was you literally mailing it to somebody at one of those places? Mm-hmm. And the makeup artists?

The makeup artists, I saw the names in the credits on the side of the picture, and then I looked them up online, and I found their agencies, and I would send them to their agencies. Where was the coverage? What magazines? Pretty much everyone. Vogue did a spread. Oprah. It was on the Today Show pretty quickly. We got a ton of press.

It was amazing. And so in your first year, you're doing great. I mean, it was difficult. I had the labels made from a wine label maker in Marin. And then when I got the labels home, I realized that the adhesive wasn't sticking the way that I needed it to. And so I got like a purple cow paper cutter and had to cut down 10,000 tops off of these stickers. But I was pregnant. So like, it was hard to even reach the table.

So I did those 10,000. Then I bundled it all up and my husband helped me. And a lot of the, I would say half that order, I actually shipped to the UK. Space and K was my first retailer. Space and K is, that's the beauty retailer in Britain. Yeah. How do they even find out about you? The magazines.

And you're still running this out of your apartment? Out of my apartment. So they weren't buying huge amounts. they were buying manageable amounts. Yeah, a few thousand. Okay. Yeah. And then I had merchandising units made.

So it was pretty much every single dollar I could scrape together turned into either merchandising units or these plotting papers. And they ended up hitting stores the day that I was in labor with my daughter. So we officially launched the day that my daughter was born. What was Eric doing? What was his job at the time? Eric had found a job. At that point, I think he was with Cisco. We were fortunate.

We had one income. So you're a brand new mom. How were you guys dealing with child care? I was taking care of her myself, but I also was really lucky. My mom had visited and she helped me find a nanny, Mrs. Liu, who didn't speak English. She's originally from China. And she took care of my daughter in my one bedroom apartment while I worked. and then when my daughter napped, she would help me pack out orders.

Oh. And then she became our first employee. Was it clear to you that you could make a go of it just by selling blotting paper that that could be a sustainable business? No, it was not. I was making far less revenue doing that than my lowest paid salary job I'd ever had. It was not a business. It was a hobby business at that point. And did you have huge ambitions for?

or did you think it was going to kind of be a side hustle? Because it sounds like in a way... It was definitely not a side hustle in the sense that I worked 70 hours a week doing it. I took one day off in the hospital when I gave birth and then I went back to work. So about two weeks after that, I flew... After the birth of your... After the birth of my daughter. Maybe it was more like three weeks. I was flying again, either consulting or going to Japan and continuing to research. this and it was horrible to leave a newborn. Yeah. Wait, you were doing part-time consulting gigs like to make ends meet in addition to running the company? Yes. And how long did you do that?

Like how long was it was it before you were able to stop doing outside work and just focus on the company? It was like two years, three years in? Three to four years. Wow. And then about a year into it I had exhausted my search for those other ingredients that I had found in Japan and used.

The rice powder, the mineral powders, the chamelea oil, the things that had healed my skin were not available in the U.S. Even in San Francisco with an incredible Japan town. Japan town. I went to Japan town, Chinatown, Korea town. I went to traditional Chinese medicine places because there's a lot of herbal treatments there. I went to eBay. I mean, I went everywhere. It's just not here. You were looking for that like rice brand, whatever, like, foaming powder that you were using and the camellia oil.

And you could not find it. I'm surprised you could not find that. Could not find it. And then even then I did not realize how unique it was. And so on one of my trips back to Japan, I actually flew to Tokyo. And I just went to the department stores and I went straight to the cosmetics counters for the Japanese brands. And they all sort of looked at me like I was crazy too. and Yucco was like, yeah, they don't sell that kind of stuff.

The people don't use that kind of stuff here in Japan anymore. It's for like old, it's like what, for like old-fashioned people or like? Yeah, it was things that like they're great grandmothers or grandmothers had used. And you're like, no, no, this is actually really great stuff. Yeah, and I'm like, no, this is super legit. I have no idea why it's super legit, but it is. So it seems like, like at this point, Vicki, you were thinking of selling these products because you knew you couldn't make a go of it. just doing the blotting papers?

That's exactly right. And then I started working with scientists to develop these formulas. Yeah. So you found a lab in Tokyo. Yes, and I got really lucky because it turns out that they're some of the most famous skincare scientists in Japan. By the way, from what I understand, like the three main ingredients in a lot of these products are green tea, rice, and algae, seaweed.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Those were the ingredients that I had first used that healed my skin. and then we went really deep. So we interviewed a dozen geisha. We went to old texts, including the oldest beauty book ever written in Japan, which was written in 1813. And the more that we dug, the more that we realized that the Japanese traditional approach to beautiful skin was not some sort of exotic flower that only grows on the dark side of the moon.

Like many other cultures, hundreds of years ago, and women found that their skin was dry or patchy or breaking out, they go to what's within reach, and what's within reach is in the kitchen. And so the basis of the Japanese diet is the basis of their beauty. And that's it. It's amazing. It's amazing.

Straightforward. So they started tinkering with different products. And what did you say? You said, I want to do a lotion. I want to do a face cream. I wanted to, like, was it that specific? I brought them the things that I had been using that the geisha had shown me. And this was to wash your face.

or to clean your face or to do what? Yeah, there's a camellia oil that you use to melt off your makeup. There is a rice powder that you use to enzymatically exfoliate your skin. Got it. And then a moisturizer that was made out of silk extracts. And when I showed them the things that I was hoping to create, I remember that they laughed a little bit because they said, why do you like these old-fashioned things?

Nobody will like this. Nobody uses these anymore. And I was like, because they work. I don't really care what sex is it works. for me. But it's interesting because they were old-fashioned, right? But you understood that if you just updated the design, it could appeal to people in the U.S. Because so much of these things is about design, right?

You have a great product and the design sucks. No one's going to notice it. That's exactly right. You know, the way that most beauty brands come to life these days is, you know, if you've ever wondered, how does this model or this actress suddenly come out with an 80-piece skin care collection? What does she know about skincare? It's pretty easy if you want to do it the fast way. You go to a contract manufacturer.

They have stock formulas and stock packaging. You pick it. You put in 0.01% of a marketing level ingredient. You put your name on it. You pick a fragrance and it's out the door. And that is how the vast majority of skincare is made in the world. And I will be completely honest. I did go to labs in Japan and say, do you have formulas like this?

Because no brands are making anything like this. And they said, no, we don't make formulas like that. You were looking for like a potential white label product. Because that's the way you make things in the beauty world. Sure. And so they would take me to their like glass cases where they would say, we used to make something like that 120 years ago. But no, we don't make that anymore.

And so that's why I had to find my own scientists. How were you able to, I mean, at this point did you get some outside money? Because how are you able to pay that lab and those scientists? At that point, I had gone and started doing a friends and family round. And by friends and family was mostly my family. This is like 2010, 2011. Mm-hmm. And so I went to my mom and my dad, Stanley, my co-founder.

And then some people who eventually started working for Tacha, they invested as well. And so it really was, it was just us. Were you able to raise more than a million dollars? I think it was over the course of a few rounds. It added up to a million. And that was going to be, certainly going to be enough to get the lab to come up with the formulas. The formulas, yeah. We also did custom packaging, which is unusual as well.

So building our own molds from scratch. Molds for bottles and tubes. And the molds are expensive because they're huge and they're made out of steel. And so having custom molds made and the engineering and the design that goes into that, that's quite expensive as well. So in those first, like, you know, while you were developing the product line, like, what was you, were you burning through cash? Yes. And, you know, you asked me about the fundraising. And I mentioned that over the course of a few rounds, it was, it came to maybe a million dollars, eventually two.

But it was not an organized affair in any way. Yeah. It wasn't like we had a thoughtful business plan despite having multiple Ivy League MBAs on the team. Yeah. We were all finance people. We should have known better. Right. And been able to stick to a budget and a forecast and a business plan.

And that didn't happen at all. And we ran out of money over and over and over again. I couldn't afford a salary. My partner couldn't afford a salary. I couldn't afford rent anymore. My parents had bought a place near the airport at that point. In San Francisco. In San Francisco, Milbray.

and they let me move into there. Wait, where was your husband? My husband moved with me, but we couldn't afford the apartment in the marina anymore. But he had a job. He did, but every single dollar that he had, I took and I put into the company. Right. So you moved into their apartment for how long?

Into their house for seven years. For seven years? And worked out of their garage with no salary. So I'm just curious. You were making essentially a high-end, brand, right? You were making a beauty product that was going to appeal to people who had money to spend. And you could not live that kind of life, certainly at the beginning. But I guess at the same time, didn't you kind of have to present yourself that way a little bit, like kind of as

glamorous and, you know, just at least to people you were talking about the product too? I try to hide and not meet them in person and only speak with them or send them letters. And you're right. One of our first customers, and I don't normally mention our customers, but one of our first customers was Donatella Versace. And we had this really, really incredible high-end clientele. And I was working on my mom's garage. Wow. All right.

So you launched the product line, and you already had a customer. base, were people buying the product in 2012 when it started? No. When we launched the skincare, this little four-piece collection with just a cleanser and exfoliants, a serum and a moisturizer, I was so fortunate in that I had sort of the holy grail of press hit the same week or weekend that the products launched online. And so that was, it was like a two-page spread in vogue. It was a feature in Oprah.

It was the Today Show again. And we had this website set up and it was beautiful. And I remember we sold exactly one serum. And then that was maybe on a Friday. And then that weekend, I was trying to figure out how to create a promotion code. And I made a mistake and I zeroed out all the pricing on the website. And I didn't know it for two days. Finally, a woman that I knew from Starbucks who had seen a Facebook plea that I had put up,

like, please come check out my website. she went through the website and saw that everything was $0, purchased, made an order, and then forwarded the order to me, and was like, hey, girl, you shouldn't give your stuff away. And I realized, gosh, even... Wait, sorry, there was like a glitch on your website? Yes, and so the weekend after we got, the Holy Grill of Press, the only order that I got for $0 because I had zeroed out all the pricing

was from someone I know. Got it, okay. And no retailers wanted to carry us, and they said, I don't think this is interesting or compelling. I don't think that anybody will think that Asian beauty is compelling. And you needed retailers. You needed to be in Sephora and the department stores for it to work. You couldn't just do direct-to-consumer?

I had hoped that I could do a combination of direct-to-consumer in retail, but there was no traffic to our website. Even when I made the price of zero, nobody came. Even when I had great press, nobody came. And then all of the retailers said that they weren't interested. When we come back after a quick break, Vicki faces a difficult decision about her role at Tacha. Just at the moment she feels like the company is finally stable. 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 around the end of 2012, and Vicki Tsai has been grinding away at Tacha for years without a salary, living and working at her parents' house. And by the way, at this point, how many people are working for you, like in your mom's garage in Milbray? Up to 15. Every day. Every day, yeah. And the orders, because then around that point, I started going on QVC, and QVC volume is significant. How did you get onto QVC?

I begged and begged and begged and begged for an introduction, and I was turned down swiftly, at least four times to even get. a meeting. And then finally, this one merchant was kind enough to take a meeting with me. And then they gave me a chance to go up there and we sold out. You went on to QVC as like the pitch, the pitch person? Mm-hmm. Yep. What was that like? Were you nervous? Because it's live TV, right? Were you, or were you just like, I'm here, I'm ready to go? It wasn't nervous about the TV part of it because I just, when I get too stressed out, I just sort of leave my body. But I was nervous about whether I would hit my sales because if I didn't hit my sales goal, I didn't know how I was going to make salary. And I had

already called my mom probably by that point four times for an emergency loan to pay salaries because 15 people means 15 salaries or 14 salaries because I didn't take one. And then I would come home and my house would be full of half-packed boxes. And they would go from floor to about five feet up in every single room of my house. There was inventory coming in from Japan and And then there was orders going out through tacha.com and then for QVC. And so it was just boxes halfway up the wall. At one point, we lost the baby in the boxes. All right.

When you went on QVC and you're talking about the product and the story and how much of a turning point was that? I mean, did the QVC sales like lead to, you know, online sales from your website? It was symbiotic, but what happened in between, which I think I jumped over, is that after we launched the blotting paper, we had two acquisition offers within a few weeks of starting the company. In 2009, 2010. Wow. And what was the story? I mean, that's pretty great. One was a retail partner and the other one was a large strategic acquire and I had no intention of selling the company. But one, the strategic acquire said, and it was a mentor of mine who I really, really respect, he's a beauty veteran and said, you have lucked into a brand that has a potential to be one of the greats. And if you love it like you love your child, then you'll give it to a mother who knows how to raise it because you do not.

have what it takes. You don't have the money. You don't have the know-how. You don't have the team. And I had a newborn child at home when he said that to me. Wow. And, um, I mean, if it was me, I would have taken the deal. I would have said, yes, please throw me a lifeline. And, and, I mean, I think it would have been crazy of you not to have considered it at that point. I did consider it and it would have been just enough to pay down the debt. And that's what was, that was crushing me at that point was that, um, I had been, I'd taken my parents' retirement. I had taken money from my friends and family who were not rich.

We were probably 800,000 in debt at that point and maxed out all of our credit cards. And then when he said, you don't have what it takes, I felt terrified that I had bitten off more than I can chew and that I would lose people's money and disrespect to culture that's not my own. And so I was going to do it for no way. no personal profit, but just to get out. Just to pay everybody back. And to let the brand live on. And you would have no equity in it.

No. So you were going to do it, and why didn't it happen? Right when we thought we were going to do the deal, I wake up one day and I turn on the news, and there had been a tsunami. And then a radioactive incident with the nuclear. This is after the earthquake in Japan. This is the earthquake in Japan. And then the Acquirer pulled out.

They pulled out. They pulled out. Because of the earthquake in Japan. You know, they didn't really give me a reason at that time. They just, within 24, 48 hours, they were out. Wow. Yeah. And so you would have taken that deal had they not pulled out.

I would have taken the deal. And we would not be talking about Tacha today. Not with me. With them, yeah. Yeah. Wow. And so I think the reason I told you this story because you asked if I was ever scared or did I know that it was going to work out?

And no, at no point did I think it was going to work out. I just at some point I realized that the fear finally went away when about three years into it, we formed a partnership with an organization called Room to Read. And they are one of the leading nonprofits globally for children's education. And they have a special fund for girls and fund girls' education, including second skills, life skills training throughout Southeast Asian Africa. And I always knew that I wanted anything that we created to give back. And so we created a one-to-one model where every single purchase funded a day of school.

And before we started that partnership, I wanted to make sure that what we were going to tell our clients we were doing was actually happening. So I flew to Cambodia and I spent a few days with the girls in their schools, with their teachers, in their houses. seeing what Room to Read was doing firsthand. And when I saw that, that's when my fear evaporated because I was surrounded by children who had no electricity, no running water, maybe no parents, not a lot of personal safety over their bodies. And yet they showed up every day with hope and with courage

about the fact that their past wasn't going to define their future. And they look like my daughter. They look like me. And so that completely reframed for me what risk is and what sacrifices and what's dangerous. And how did the brand, I think by like by 2014, I think your revenue was like $12 million that year. I don't know, once people start to buy the product, did it just, was it just kind of like a self-generating process where it just grew and grew just organically? No. We were not profitable for the first eight years.

So we had to personally finance the losses. And then when we ran out of money, we would have to go to friends and family and ask for help. But no, every step of the way was like figuring out from scratch again how to make sure that people knew that we existed. If you started the business in 2009, it took you like eight years to get to profitability. So you weren't really profitable until like 2016. Right? Or 17. I mean, like at what point did you start to kind of breathe aside of relief a bit? I mean, at what point were you able to say, okay, because you had been through, you know, periods where you almost accepted a deal, right, to basically take care of your debt. And you had to borrow money and you were constantly worrying about paying your team and nobody was making a whole lot of money. They were all, you know, promised equity. Like at what point did you start to feel like, okay, this is going to be. okay. Was there a point? Every year it felt like a high wire act where the wire was getting moved higher and higher and higher.

And it was probably only when our private equity company came in. And it was the only institutional round of capital that we did that I started feeling less alone. Yeah. So it was probably easier to attract that at that point because you will, had proven the concept. Exactly, exactly. And they were wonderful partners.

And so that was the first time I started to breathe a sigh of relief, but it came with its own different pressures because private equity doesn't invest for very long. And so I knew that the second that they invested, the clock started. And there would have to be another capital event to buy them out. And it was at that time that one of the operating partners told me that he thought I should,

hire a real CEO. And it was a gut punch. This is in 2017. This was in 2017 or 18. I have to double check the timeline. And it was a gut punch because you were like, I'm the CEO. Yeah, I had founded this company and been the CEO for at that point nine years and had let it to, you know, pretty meaningful growth and meaningful in our industry and meaningful to our customers.

I mean, I think 2017 you're probably doing like $30, $40 million in sales, I hear. Probably. I would have to go look at the numbers. I mean, you had a degree from Harvard Business School. I mean, you clearly were qualified. So what, and I'm not trying to disparage this person. Maybe they were really genuinely trying to give you advice in your best interest. But what was it that they felt you didn't have?

I asked that question, and the only answer that he gave me was, if you are willing to hurt the company for your own ego, then we can have that conversation. But why would you be hurting the company? And that's what I said. I said I would never hurt the company. I love the company like I love my family. It is my family. It's in my house.

I mean, what are you talking about? So I never actually got an answer, but it took the wind out of my sales. But what was it? What do you think? I mean, if you could step out of your own body and get down on the balcony and look down, what would you have said about your leadership if you were being critical of it? I was definitely learning on the fly, but I would say that most founder-sees do learn on the fly because the job changes every day.

Yes. I was trying to negotiate between being Vicky and Victoria. Victoria is what a lot of people see on QVC and in magazines. And Victoria is always Zen. And Victoria is always grateful. But, you know, Vicky is an executive leader who needs to manage an agile and demanding business. And I didn't have a model of female leadership that I had seen before that I could look up to. And so I never really felt comfortable asking my team to do things if they didn't want to do it.

I think I needed to be liked too much. I didn't want to come across as a difficult female leader. So I hadn't grown into my own skin, I think, as a leader. The results were there, but the confidence was not. And so when he suggested that I go and find a real CEO, I did. I mean, that must have been really hard. It's your baby and your company.

But at the same time, you want what's the best your company in the future and all these people who had invested some money into it and hadn't seen a return yet. And not just the, forget about the private equity guys, but the, you know, the employees and your parents and the friends and, right? I mean, and I'm sure that was a lot of pressure on you. It was. It was a ton of pressure. I was burning out. I was on the road 250 days out of the year, missing my child's childhood. I miss Thanksgiving.

I've left my husband and daughter in line at Disney World to catch a flight to go on QVC. And I would have never told this story. You're the only person I would ever tell this story, too. And it's because your listeners are thinking about starting their company or they're running their own companies right now. And if I could do anything over again, I would have. told myself at that time that you're actually doing a great job. And if you want to hire a new leader of the company for all sorts of reasons, that's okay. But you shouldn't doubt yourself, especially just because you're a woman, and especially just because this is your first time

at the rodeo. So if I have one regret at the company, it said I didn't believe in myself. And the good news is it did lead me to hire a new CEO who is the light of my life, the best partner I could ever ask for for this stage of growth of the company. And it gives me the freedom to focus on what I love most, which is taking care of our clients and creating formulas. So it all ended up great, but it gutted me at that time. Yeah. In 2019, you get acquired. I'm assuming that this was a long drawn-out process, Unilever, Bata-Tacha, it's been reported for about half a billion dollars.

How did that happen? Did they approach you, were you guys, did you at this point feel like, look, the investors are all in, we should shop our brand around and see if we can, you know, partner with a bigger brand at this point? We were not intending on selling the company at that point.

We had gotten acquisition offers or interest almost annually from our, first year. And every time we said no, outside of the one time where it just fell apart. And after we did a private equity deal, we assumed that we would, you know, be independent and with the private equity company for five to seven years. Right. But then I had to sit back with myself and, you know, really have one of those hard to heart conversations with yourself about, why did you really start this? Yeah. What was this all about? It was, we know it wasn't for the money. And what I realized was that I created it because at that point in my life,

I very much felt empty. And when I went to Japan, I had experienced a beauty and a kindness and a humanity and a craft that I had never seen in my life. And it healed my skin, but it healed my soul. And I created this thing to share what I was learning because I needed it in my life. I needed it in my heart.

And I have always believed that a brand is a promise. And it's a promise that I can't break. And I want it to live a hundred years. I want it to outlive me. And so while I love running it and I wish it could be independent forever, I have no intention on living forever. Like dying is definitely on my bucket list. And so I know that eventually I have to find it a home.

And then I met Unilever and I knew nothing about Unilever and had certainly never thought about them as a strategic. partner, but there is this woman Vasiliki who was creating a group within Unilever, and the rule was that they had to be purpose-driven brands, and they had to have a purpose above commercial. And we had a conversation, and she brought me to tears. And she's a mother, and she's a female leader that I admire, and one of the things that she loved most about the brand was the giving model. And so that's when I decided, while I would love to run this myself independently forever, I know that's not possible. So I would rather than get it into a forever home where it can be protected. And I stay with it.

But then that's, it's a forever home. Do you, when you think about all the things that have happened to you and the success of the brand, the business, do you attribute most of that to your, your intelligence and your work ethic? or do you think a lot of that had to do with luck? For sure not intelligence. I am no smarter than anybody else. I think when you start any company, the most important thing is to show up every day. You just have to keep showing up for the game.

I did get very, very, very blessed with amazing people who believed in us when there was nothing to believe in and who stayed with us. So our scientists from day one are still our scientists today, our packaging partners from day one are still our packaging partners today, our retail partner, Sephora, who did believe in us in day one, I just couldn't afford to be with them until year five, because it requires more investment.

They are our best partners today. So I've been really blessed, but I'm definitely not smarter. I'm definitely not more strategic. And that's why I love what you do. And that's why I love this podcast. And I wish it was around when I first started because it would have been my lifeline to believe in myself. and it would have felt less lonely to do this.

And so I'm so grateful for this opportunity to tell you this story because the other hundreds of times that people have asked me over the last 10 years about building this company, they've only asked about the highlights. And so I think about the entrepreneurs and hopeful entrepreneurs out there who read stories like the ones like mine and think that it was sort of leaping from one gilded lily pad

to the next that just got getting better and better and easier and easier, and that I'm at home meditating, and it's all been very zen and beautiful. And it has been very zen and beautiful, but it has also been death-defyingly difficult and treacherous, and it has broken me down to my very core and caused me to question who I am as a person and what I'm made of. So I'm just a really big believer that if I can do it, and it's in the cards for you, then anybody can do it.

That's Vicki Tsai, founder of Tacha. We first interviewed Vicky back in the summer of 2020. And by the way, two years after Vicky stepped down as CEO, Unilever asked her to come back because things were kind of heading in the wrong direction of Tacha. And just like her former boss at Starbucks, Howard Schultz, Vicky came back to the company she founded and quickly turned things around. In fact, she talked with me about this last fall when she came. came back as a guest on the How I Built This Advice line.

And you should check out that episode as well. Vicki gives some great advice to three up and coming entrepreneurs. Anyway, 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 if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter at gairoze.com or on Substack. This episode was originally produced by Jed Anderson and updated by Casey Hart. Herman, with music composed by Rumtin Ereblewe. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our production staff

also includes Alex Chung, J.C. Howard, Carla Estevez, Chris Messini, Sam Paulson, John Isabella, Carrie Thompson, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.