Your Next Move - How to Stand Out in a Crowded Market

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Holly Thaggard founded Supergoop! to provide child-friendly sunscreen pumps for Texas public schools. Her focus on clean formulas transformed the sunscreen market and created a new category in health ...and beauty. Now she's shaking up the crowded bottled water category with her new company, WaterOuai!

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Starting point is 00:00:38 Hi, I'm Mike Hoffman, editor-in-chief of ink, and welcome to your next move, the audio edition. Before we start, I wanted to let you know that this was recorded live at our Inc offices in New York City, so you'll notice there's more audience interaction than usual and a slightly different format. We hope you enjoy it. Today on your next move, reframing the market,
Starting point is 00:01:00 How to succeed in a crowded category by changing the conversation and resetting consumer expectations. In 2007, former teacher Holly Taggart founded Supergroup in an effort to provide child-friendly sunscreen pumps in Texas public schools. Her focus on clean formulas transformed the sunscreen market and opened up a new category in health and beauty. After our $700 million acquisition from Blackstone, she's now focused on shaking up the crowded bald water category with her new company Water Rights. I'm Mike Hoffman, editor-in-chief of Inc. And welcome to your next move, produced by Inc. in Capital One Business. Holly, thanks for joining us today.
Starting point is 00:01:38 Hi, Mike. Good to see you again. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah. We're excited for this live session, right? Super excited. So you started Super Goop in San Antonio in 2007. It completely changed the category,
Starting point is 00:01:53 and it became a bestseller in Sephora. Let's start there. What was the insight that helped you build? that brand. You know, I mean, I think my good friend was diagnosed with skin cancer. My college roommate was going through a residency in dermatology, and she said, Holly, it's not about beaches and bikinis. It's about that every single day, a little bit of exposure.
Starting point is 00:02:10 And my father and my mother were both entrepreneurs, and they taught us to look for the white space and things. And I thought the sunscreen industry was incredibly sleepy. There was no innovation. And if we really wanted people to wear SPF every single day, we had to reinvent the category. and we had to desseasonalize the industry. And that's when I began to dream about SPF. And you didn't have a background in entrepreneurship, right?
Starting point is 00:02:35 You had been like a harp teacher. So what was the hardest part about being a founder that you had to learn? And how did you learn it? Well, I did grow up, very entrepreneurial household. We had many conversations in the evenings about building and creating. My father always said,
Starting point is 00:02:51 make the world a better place, Holly. Don't do things that have been done before. And I think by nature, I'm kind of a problem solver. And so when I see opportunities to make the world a better place and I want to contribute, I've become obsessed with that category. And I have a little bit of OCD, my husband would tell you in me. And so once I start thinking about something, I truly genuinely cannot get my mind off of that. So it was a little bit that came naturally for me.
Starting point is 00:03:19 And it was quite the journey that, you know, for the last 22 years, I've been laser, focused on. So Supergroup was sort of a mixture of great brand building and product innovation. How did you sort of come to that mix? And what do you think in the end was most important in making Super Group a success? Well, you know, people in 2005 were not wearing sunscreen every single day. It was an icky, sticky mess you had to put up with when you were at the beach or at the pool. And so it was really more for me about how do we, if we want to inspire consumer change. And, right, you know this, Mike, the most difficult thing in the world to do. is to change consumer behavior, particularly in adults.
Starting point is 00:03:59 And super good having the fun and playful name was very purposeful and to inspire the next generation growing up to start that healthy habit from a very young age. It's much easier to start that healthy habit than it is to change an adult's behavior. And I studied a lot of different, a lot of different, I think, pathways that people had been successful in changing consumer behavior. and I learned that it often comes to a really inspiring place, not a scary place. And most of the people talking about sunscreen were using the scary word cancer, and it had such a just a negative reputation.
Starting point is 00:04:35 And so I really felt like there was this huge opportunity to be an inspiring aspirational brand and talk about how beautiful and luxurious formulas could be if they were infused with innovation. So innovation and education really became the foundation of the brand and still is today. Real quick, where did the name come from? Oh, so, you know, early lab samples, you mentioned I was not from the beauty industry. I didn't know how things were done. And I think that actually was a real benefit for me because I was able to think about things differently not coming from the beauty industry.
Starting point is 00:05:09 So I passed around the early lab samples to friends and family and anybody that would try them on. And I kind of referenced them as goop versus what we call today lab samples. And when the first formula came back to be beautiful and luxurious and feel amazing on the skin and not leave that residue that so often SPF products did in 2005, I said, this is super. And I knew I was looking for a fun, playful name. It was an exciting time because our testing had already come back, that it was wide, broad spectrum UV protection, the SPF number hit of 50.
Starting point is 00:05:43 It was very exciting and best the exclamation point of the end. I love it. So let's fast forward to 2021. Blackstone acquires a majority stake in Supergroup for roughly $700 million. Talk me through the process of selling the business. Tell me a little bit about the deal. And then what happened next? Yeah, you know, I think for every brand founder and entrepreneur,
Starting point is 00:06:05 if you're successful, you're scaling quickly. And if you're scaling quickly, then you have a lot of interest from not just private equity, but also strategics. So when we entered the space, I had taken everything. every meeting along the way from interest, even back dating to when we were only doing, call it a million in revenue. I always sat with those people that were smarter than I was and new consumer products. And what I learned from those conversations, even with like Carol Hamilton at L'Oreal and some of the just icons in the beauty industry, I learned that there were several
Starting point is 00:06:38 boxes you wanted to check. You wanted to show a success outside the U.S. You wanted to have double the business every year. You wanted to have high growth. You wanted to have a strong retail partner in place, which we had through a relationship with Sephora. And it just became time. And then the market is, you know, the market is something you can't really predict what's happening. But, you know, all of those things aligned in late 2021. And it felt like we had the interest there to take this to the next level. And we felt like we could use some help growing internationally. We had not yet launched, or we were just about to launch Europe, I guess. We had launched Southeast Asia. We had launched Canada. We had launched the Middle East. And so we felt like the timing was just right. And I think
Starting point is 00:07:22 that's probably something only our founder can know if the timing is right to go through a majority acquisition. So you stayed with the business after the sale for a little while. You didn't have an earn out. Is that right? That's correct. I stayed employed with the business. I was chairman of the board for the next two and a half years. And it was an interesting time because when you're when you scale a business to several hundred million in sales, you know, everything changes. And what I've learned about myself is I really love to build and create. I love the early days of, you know, really getting in there and making decisions and making changes. And for me personally, my, our son had right about that time hit high school. And he became obsessed with the kids. And he became obsessed
Starting point is 00:08:09 with the category of water. And if it wasn't such an authentic true story to his life, I probably would have been like, huh? What do you want to do? But, you know, he grew up in a house that never had a plastic water bottle. And it was nothing he ever asked me why, when his friends would come over with a water bottle or even an aluminum can in hand, why did I throw it in the trash like it was a tube of copperstone?
Starting point is 00:08:36 And until he hit high school. And when he had high school, we started volunteering with the Youngman Service League, which is a mother-son commitment to do philanthropy work every year of high school. And we chose to work cleaning up the ballparks and the hiking trails around town. And of course, everything we picked up on this hiking trails were plastic water bottles. So he started asking me those hard questions of like, what did you know that other people don't know? And I told him that when he was, I think he was in pre-K or kindergarten, He went to the same time to the Academy, and they had a guest speaker that said,
Starting point is 00:09:12 it's, microplastics are real. Again, this is like, call it 14 years ago when microplastics were not something. Yeah, it was really early. But he started by saying, moms, if you don't take anything else from our hour together, do not let your voice touch a plastic water bottle. And he went on to talk about health and wellness and how it relates to testosterone loss and heightened ADD and loss of drive and focus and all these health and wellness concerns. At the same time that I was crisscrossing the country and trying to be a good mom,
Starting point is 00:09:43 and I said, this is pretty easy decision I can make for our household. Well, when Willa hit high school and we started cleaning up the ballparks, he said, Mom, I don't get it because even at my school, when we blowed on the bus to go to a football game, there was an ice chest full of plastic water models. So if someone's not getting the message, there's definitely a disconnect. And I want to be that kid that goes back to schools and finds partners that can completely make that commitment to change the water in their space. And I, you know, I was like, huh, that's, that's interesting.
Starting point is 00:10:16 His sister was going abroad to study in Provance and studying French. And she said, well, Will, so what are you going to do if you can't put water on the go in a bottle or even an aluminum can with a screw top? And he said, well, I've been researching this. And I found a technology made in Japan that's really interesting. and I want to learn more about how we can make a can differently in the U.S. And, you know, one thing led to another, and that gear kicked in, that building and creating. And it was also a very exciting time, hence the exclamation point in the end of the Waterway brand name.
Starting point is 00:10:53 But she said, you know, the cool way, when you figure out this can thing, well, the cool way to say, yeah, in French, is way. It's spelled OU-A-I. So you should create a brand. Now, mind you, Mike, my children have had to listen. and to admit more dinner table conversations about entrepreneurship and building and brand making than probably any two-year-old I should have to. But she said, you should create a brand,
Starting point is 00:11:15 call it Waterway. And I said, let's put an exclamation point because this is really exciting that you've found some technology that can literally change the way the world drinks water. And so that's the exclamation point is one through line from Super Group to Waterway. But I'm curious, as you're starting this new business
Starting point is 00:11:32 and starting it with your son Will, who's now, I understand our freshman in college, Now, what kind of goes through your mind? What aspects of the Supergoop story do you bring to Waterway? And then what things are different because the world of startups have changed. Sure. And that's the beauty of building and creating it in different generations. You can't really follow a playbook.
Starting point is 00:11:54 However, I will say that there is, there were so many parallels in how we educated the world and brought innovation into the world at Supergoop. And I felt very much in my conversations with Will, that that's exactly what needed to happen for water. We needed to first bring education to the world that not all aluminum cans are made the same. Even boxed water is lined with plastic. We needed to, before we could say, why waterway, we needed to say why packaging matters. And so bringing innovation in a packaging way, this was something that I felt naturally, there was just what I've been doing for two decades.
Starting point is 00:12:37 And then Will brings this fresh perspective of a younger generation that actually is educated on the dangers of microplastics because, again, 20 years ago, SPF was not something anyone was thinking about 365 days a year. And in fact, we had to fight hard to be in the media or in the magazines and social media didn't exist. And so you fast forward today, and these young 18, 17, 16-year-olds are learning about the dangers of microplastics online and through social media. And they're much more savvy to it.
Starting point is 00:13:11 And they're also questioning, I think, more industry standards. And so just because water's always been done this way doesn't necessarily mean it has to be done that way. So we both really brought different things to the party. And I think also I'd have to add to that that the relationship. I've built over the last 20-plus years are so strong. And there's so many people that have wanted to help and build. And that's where I can step in and find the right people to put a megaphone to this message that Will has about educating our youth.
Starting point is 00:13:46 And that even contributes down to thinking about the different partners and distribution that we've chosen for the launch of Waterway. And so as you're doing this launch and focused on consumer education, what platform or what channels do you find are the most effective at getting the word out? Well, we're still figuring that out. We are 12 weeks post-launch. So we have only been on the market for, gosh, I call it three months. We're definitely on Instagram.
Starting point is 00:14:14 And I think we'll soon be launching TikTok. But I think, you know, when we sat down to talk about distribution, it was interesting because we'll immediately say, and mom, I don't want to be on the grocery store shelves with every other plastic water bottle on the market competing for space. You even mentioned it's a very crowded category. And I said, well, what are you thinking? And he said, I really want to find the right retail partners. And mind you, he's had to listen for a long time.
Starting point is 00:14:42 Building a brand is not a sprint. It's a marathon. You have to have the perseverance. You have to have the passion, the purpose. All of this has to really layer in. And you shouldn't be in a hurry. So he started talking about like, Mom, I want to find partners in corporate business. I want to find partners in hospitality that can make the commitment.
Starting point is 00:15:02 How many hotels have we all been in and seen both glass bottles with aluminum screw tops and then also plastic bottles in some of the spaces and just it's kind of schizophrenic? And so he said, I really want to find those partners that can say, hey, we're done with this. We care about the health and wellness of the guest experience. We care about our children. We care about our children in this educational partner. For example, the first several schools to commit, the Episcopal School of Dallas, the Compass School of Texas, the San Antonio Academy, they've made the decision to never have a plastic water bottle on their campus.
Starting point is 00:15:42 And when you think about how that relates to the health and wellness of the children that attend school and the parents that are attending functions, you can have a big impact with that. Great. This is another great story of brand innovation and great branding all together. So thanks so much, Holly. And we'll continue this conversation in a few minutes. So today on the- Growing a business sometimes means taking a leap long before you feel ready.
Starting point is 00:16:10 That's what Hayden Wadsworth, Capital One business customer and co-founder of Hydrojug learned when he and his brother Jake launched a reusable water bottle brand from their parents' garage. Starting with three colors and a nerve-wracking 3,000-unit order, digital ads help them scale fast. 100,000 in year one, one million in year two, quickly outgrowing the garage and pushing them to sign their first warehouse lease. Through that rapid growth, they relied on their Capital One business credit card and cashback rewards on ads spent to help fund the move and keep momentum strong. Learn more at Capital One.com slash business cards. People Playbook, Caitlin Hargrove, head of operating office and chief of staff Capital One
Starting point is 00:16:57 business is with us to discuss how leaders can keep their team's morale high, even when everything around them is changing. Welcome, Caitlin. Thanks, Mike. Happy to be here. So right now, the economy is sending some mixed signals, and it can be hard for businesses to know what the future holds. So what is a leader's primary responsibility when the future is unclear? Yeah, when the economic signals are mixed, a leader's primary responsibility is to serve as a stabilizing force. But I will say there simply is no substitute for a clear and compelling strategy. Even when the ground is shifting, leaders must articulate a plan that accounts for the current challenges. Leaders must also reduce ambiguity by defining reality and offering hope. It is a balance of an honest assessment of the
Starting point is 00:17:39 challenges with an unwavering belief in the team's success. By clarifying priorities, decision-making criteria, and non-negotiable values, you transform collective anxiety into collective action. And how important is company culture during times like these when everything's shifting? I can't emphasize enough that company culture is so important. What I've seen most effective is building a culture where there is high trust in leadership decision making. In a perfect world, leaders would, of course, be able to provide ultimate transparency at all time. But the reality is, during seismic or sensitive changes, leaders aren't able to do so. So it's important that when leaders can provide transparency, they do it and they do it well. And what are some practical steps that?
Starting point is 00:18:20 that a founder can take to help their team feel more secure? Whether it's one-on-one in small groups or through more formal communication channels, leaders must not only explain what is happening, but also explain the why. Understanding the reason for decisions helps teams feel part of the thought process and more included.
Starting point is 00:18:36 I have found that setting clear expectations for performance and deliverables while also connecting how that work supports the top-line strategy leads to more engaged and empowered team members. And obviously burnout is a big problem. How can leaders prevent burnout when uncertainty can sometimes drag on longer than people expect.
Starting point is 00:18:52 A leader's job is to monitor the pressure in the system. Too little or too much pressure in the system doesn't work. Too much pressure, though, is almost always cured by a heavy dose of prioritization and being relentless about identifying where the highest leverage is. Also, this is obvious, but don't skip on recognition, especially during times of uncertainty or change. And last question, is there one overarching lesson leaders can take from periods of uncertainty? Yeah, during periods of uncertainty,
Starting point is 00:19:19 Leaders are often pushed to the edge of their learning curve, and this can be really uncomfortable. So my biggest lesson as a leader has been to be okay with feeling a little bit uncomfortable. This in turn transfers to the teams. Teams look for direction and also for composure. The leader's steadiness becomes the organization's stability. In the end, it's the response, not the uncertainty, that defines the leader. Caitlin, thanks for being with us today and for helping us understand how leaders can keep morale high in uncertain times. Thanks so much, Mike.
Starting point is 00:19:48 This was great. Now it's time for the debrief, where we'll take a closer look at a key strategy our guests used to build a company in a crowded category. Thanks, Mike. I'm Graham Winfrey, Deputy Digital Editor at Inc. I'm here with Angela Lee discussing how to succeed in a crowded category. Thanks for being here, Angela. Excited for the conversation. So Holly built Supergroup by convincing consumers that sunscreen isn't just for the beach, but is a daily habit. She then sold the company and started over in bottled water. Are there any strategies that you think were beneficial across both companies?
Starting point is 00:20:26 One of the biggest things that second-time founders can draw upon is their network. They have investors they can call upon. They have a team that they've worked before. They have advisors that they can rely on. And that credibility with those folks allows them to build faster and they're more likely to succeed the second time around. The problem is it's a double-edged sword. There are also traps they can fall into. One is that they think what worked for the last company is going to work for the new company.
Starting point is 00:20:49 A great example of this is Ron Johnson who built the Apple stores that we all love. And he tried to take that exact same strategy into JCPenney and thought, Oh, if it worked for Apple, it will work for JCPenney, and it absolutely did not. So founders really need to not have too much confidence in their old strategy. And then the second thing is that it takes usually a decade for a company to go well. And technology, 10 years ago looked very different than technology today, the markets today, customer acquisition strategies. So they can't just try to use the exact same playbook that they used a decade ago for the new company. So if a founder is starting over in a new industry, what advice would you give him or her?
Starting point is 00:21:24 The first piece of advice is to adopt a learner mindset, not a knower mindset. Do not assume you know the rules of the new game. And the second thing is I would form an advisory board that is really willing to challenge you. With Waterway, Holly is betting on consumers coming around to the idea that microplastics in water is potentially harmful. How do you evaluate a business that is kind of banking on a shift in consumer preferences? So we look for three things. The first is we ask is there a real problem? The second is the education of the consumer,
Starting point is 00:21:54 easy to do. And the third is if the behavior change small, ideally the answer to all three those questions is yes. If one of the answers is no, then the founder has to have a really unique way of figuring out how to bridge that gap. Waterway is launching through universities, hotels, and corporate offices. How does that compare to a traditional retail launch? I think Holly's being really smart because she's recognizing we want to change consumer behavior where it's easiest, and then hopefully they will adopt that at home as well. So she's going to places where the consumer thought actually buying the product, they're being served the product. But now they have brand recognition. And that brand recognition is so important. If you think about
Starting point is 00:22:29 Gatorade and why Gatorade has been so successful, it's because we're used to seeing those big orange canisters at football games. And that drives to purchasing behavior in the supermarket. And so she's trying to leverage existing behavior change into what is going to change behavior at the supermarket. The beverage aisle has a lot of established brands like Fiji Water and Evian and newer players in canned water like Liquid Death. How does a bootstrapped brand like Holly's get a foothold in such a crowded market? A bootstrap brand has to be smarter because they have fewer marketing dollars to spend, which is why I really like that Holly is going to non-traditional channels,
Starting point is 00:23:04 meaning she's not starting at the supermarket first because imagine walking the supermarket and there's that wall of waters. How is she going to differentiate herself? And so it's really smart that she's going around a different go-to-market strategy to meet consumers where it's easier to get to them. So I want to talk about fear-based marketing and aspiration-based marketing. Holly could have pitched Super Goop as, you know, use this sunscreen or you're going to get skin cancer. She could have pitched waterway as drink this water or you're going to ingest microplastics, but that's not how she did it.
Starting point is 00:23:32 How do consumers respond to those two different marketing strategies? I would argue one is a push-based marketing strategy and one is a poll-based marketing strategy. Push is don't do these things. And pull is do these things because it's pleasant, fun, aspirational to use. And the second is much more effective because, again, consumers want to feel good, especially for something they're doing every single. day. What other advice do you have for founders building in a crowded market? I think a mistake that a lot of founders make is they're going to try to improve the product by 10%. And I would really encourage them to stop thinking so much about the features and really focus on the problem that you're solving.
Starting point is 00:24:04 So I remember back when meal delivery kits were really popular and we were pitched a lot of them, the weaker founders would pitch things like organic produce or chef-inspired meals and those are great things to feature. But the really strong founders would say things like, we're going to give you back an hour each day, or we're going to eliminate food waste because now you are only receiving as much product as you need. And so founders who are able to communicate the benefit in the shape of a problem that the founders really care about, that's how you went in a crowded space. Thank you for this insightful conversation, Angela. Thank you so much for having me. Back to you, Mike. Thanks, Graham. And now one of the goals of this show is to connect our audience with founders
Starting point is 00:24:42 like you, Holly. Oh, thanks. It's fun to be here today. Yeah, yeah. So now it's time for viewer questions, and our first viewer question is about distribution. So obviously, as we just heard, Waterway has a really interesting and unique distribution strategy. How did you come up with it? And then how do you know when a brand is ready for larger distribution, retail or mass distribution? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think it was mentioned earlier that there's no big playbook for this. And particularly when I was building a brand in 2005 versus 2006, things change, times change, for example, with Supergoop, direct-to-consumer. wasn't even a thing. Social media didn't exist. Retail partners. Hard to believe. It's hard to believe
Starting point is 00:25:25 how far we've come in 23 years. But because of that, finding those retail partners for me that believed in this vision I had to desseasonalize the industry was so important. And for me, that was Nordstrom and Sephora. And then I spent every waking hour of my next two decades talking with them directly about what we were going to do in terms of product innovation. And then, of course, direct-to-consumer comes along and you see all of these DTC brands launching and shipping, which doesn't make a ton of sense for a heavy product like water, that we have been pleasantly surprised at how many people are on subscription now. And it makes sense to have, you know, cases of supercans delivered to your front doorstep on a monthly basis. But when we started talking about distribution and thinking about it differently, it was like I mentioned earlier, these partners who could come along that we had built relationships with. And that made sense for Will too.
Starting point is 00:26:19 I mean, Will feels very passionate about going back to the kindergarten classrooms and delivering the education in a fun aspirational way so that children are raised not going to the ballparks and drinking plastic water bottles. So educational partners that could come on board with this that obviously care about their school, their youth, their parents, their families, this was a top priority for us. But it may not be the same for another DTC brand going to. to market that might make more sense to focus all of their efforts on media marketing and spending dollars in that way. So for us, the hospitality partners like the Aubert's resorts,
Starting point is 00:26:57 the Hotel Jerome, some of these really influential places where travelers show up, they're fed this, and then they can go back to their community and be served this on a regular basis throughout a holiday vacation. Again, we're putting a smile on people's faces, and then go back to their homes and to their friends and their networking families to really to spread the message about the innovation that does exist today for healthy hydration on the go. It's a great venue for brand discovery, right? Absolutely. And I think every brand has to have their own story.
Starting point is 00:27:31 I've often believed you ask that question about, would you change the journey? And I would not do one thing differently. I will say, I think for SuperGoop, that was the path of changing, of making sunscreen cool and changing the way the world thinks about sunscreen. And for Waterway, this is the path. We're going to have ups and downs. I've made well aware that we have to turn those low points and those winds into something that makes sense for the future and the journey of the Waterway brand.
Starting point is 00:28:02 Now, another of your question is about the sort of connection between innovation and consumer education, especially when it comes to sustainability. So how do you sort of achieve that? level of consumer education when you're selling something totally new? And then what do you think the future of that looks like in terms of sustainability being something that consumers gravitate towards in brands? Yeah, I think that's a real interesting question. And I think that sustainability has been at the heartbeat of all aluminum packaging in this country. Everyone is talking about saving the oceans and recycling. And this is not our story at Waterway. Well, it's important
Starting point is 00:28:40 and we believe wholeheartedly in it. And, of course, the salmon in the oceans, we don't want them eating plastic either because it ends up on our dinner table. So it's very important, but it's not the heartbeat of the waterway brand. This will has been about how do we educate our youth about the dangers of drinking out of plastic water bottles in those cans that are lined in plastic
Starting point is 00:29:02 in uneven ways that can ship off and ultimately, particularly if you're in Texas where the heat is real, get into your water, your product, which we want to protect. We want to make sure that hydration is healthy because hydration is also something that's super important to our health and wellness and longevity. So I really think it's a mix of this. And that sustainability recycling conversation is very an important one today. And something also this next generation is hyper-focused on, by the way.
Starting point is 00:29:34 I said, well, it brings a lot of this conversation to me. but I think that for us to really know our point of difference and to have found the technology that exists, but nobody cared enough to spend the dollars to bring this to market. And that's what Will and I have really become most excited about is that we're able to do this. We're able to change the way the world drinks water, do it in a fun, playful way, put it into the right hands, the right people who can be cheerleaders and advocates from the sidelines. And that's ultimately what's going to bring the awareness. but balancing that education and innovation is so important.
Starting point is 00:30:10 Fortunately, for our family, it's something we've known how to do, and we're open to changing that throughout the process and the journey of building. Great. So another of your question is really specifically about waterways packaging. So what makes the super can different from plastic water bottles? Yeah, this is where Will should be on this call. He shines in this conversation. He loves the tech behind it.
Starting point is 00:30:33 our cans are made completely different. They're not made as a can and sprayed with microplastics, which, again, solvents and particles and washes have to go through that can. It can often be uneven in places. In fact, he created a great little video on waterway.com that talks and literally illustrates you right through the process of how our cans are made differently. Made completely backwards. Huge aluminum sheets are primed with a PET liner because we do have to protect the
Starting point is 00:31:03 aluminum from touching the product, the water. We want to keep the water healthy and safe. So we do have to protect it, but because it's done before the can is formed, it's incredibly even in its distribution and its application. So it's really just a different kind of technology that makes a really innovative can and one that we're really excited to introduce to the country. Great, great. So a question about running the business with your son. So many great American brands are family businesses, what, at the same time, people know that family businesses are not for the faint of heart, what's one piece of advice that you either got or a piece of advice that you would share about how to run a startup and start a company with your son or a family member?
Starting point is 00:31:47 You know, I think for Will and I, and again, it can be done a million different ways to skin and cut. But for Will and I, it's been really interesting because we've both gravitated towards different parts of building the business, where I've been able to be very helpful in building our brand book, our guidelines, our social playbook, our, you know, building and creating around a beautiful, luxurious aspirational brand, Will's really taken a, you know, drive towards the innovation and the technology and where are we going next, Mom? What are we going to do next when, you know, and so he, and I will say he spent his maybe fifth, six, seven, eighth grade working behind our head of operations at Supergroup. So those summers that he spent
Starting point is 00:32:30 working in operations is probably easily translated to him being more in touch with the upside of the business. So we've really found different categories. And then the crossover is the passion, the passion and the purpose. And I think for us, often now being able to do over Zoom interviews and be able to talk with people directly that can get excited about what we both bring to the table, it's been really a fun thing for me as a mom. Great, great. And last viewer question, which is about brand marketing, that's really sort of about how to build a challenger brand. What is something that someone who's building a brand that wants to change a category often gets wrong? I think people misunderstand how much time needs to be put into that. And then they get distracted.
Starting point is 00:33:18 And then they change gears and chase the shiny penny and chase a trend to feel relevant. Whereas with Super Goop, you know, we knew who we were. We believe. that innovation in SPF was sleepy, and we had to go full force and not be distracted by, hey, we're going to go make a body wash or, hey, we're going to go make something else to fill in the seasonality of the product. I think you have to stay focused
Starting point is 00:33:44 and have the perseverance to just know that this is not going to be a sprint. It's a marathon in building a brand. And those are the lessons we've tried to teach our children, too. Yeah, yeah. Holly Thigard, co-founder of Waterway with her son, Will, and founder of Supergroup, thanks again for joining us today.
Starting point is 00:34:02 Thanks, Mike. This is so much fun. Have a great afternoon. We hope today's conversation helped you learn how to reframe a market, change the conversation, and build a brand
Starting point is 00:34:11 that has the power to transform. Join us next time for more industry experts, candid conversations, and the strategies you need to make your next move. For now, I'm Mike Hoffman at Air and Chief of Inc.
Starting point is 00:34:23 Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.

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