Jack Black Skin Care: Curran and Jeff Dandurand

Hey, it's Guy here. You know, we hear a lot about pivots on how I built this, how a simple change in perspective can create a whole new opportunity. And this made me think of a conversation I recently had with Keenan Thomson, who's the longest running cast member of Saturday Night Live ever, twenty seasons. And I asked him, What if one day Instead of performing on SNL, You were given the keys to run SNL.

You will definitely want to hear his answer. Check out my interview with Keenan Thompson over on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for the Great Creators with Guy Roz, wherever you listen to podcasts. And now. On to today's show. We had this Oh seven foot tall.

Very beautiful wood. Floor standing fixture. Lasercut logo. We spent a ton of money on it. And our idea was This is the display you're gonna use in your golf shop.

Okay. But People would look at that display and just Like go on, what are you thinking? We don't need We can't put that in our shop. We would never sell that much product.

They just Weren't interested. And Jeff's like This isn't working. We gotta pull the plug.

And we gotta go get real jobs. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. they built. Guy Roz and on the show today, how Curren and Jeff Danderan took a gamble on men's skin care and managed to build a$100 million brand. Jack Black.

The men's skin care market is a tough one to crack. It's a tiny fraction of the overall skincare market. Guys Just don't spend much time moisturizing or exfoliating their faces. They might shave or use shampoo and soap in the shower and

That's it. That's slowly changing. Between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty one. Sales of men's prestige skincare brands. grew by twenty-one percent. And part of that growth has to do with a brand called Jack Black.

It's a brand that was designed specifically to appeal to men. Blue colored tubes. Labels that look like cigar brands, even the name. Jack Black. Sounds like a rugged dude in a bourbon appreciation society.

The name, by the way, was picked before the actor Jack Black was well known. Anyway, when Kern Danderand founded the company with her friend Emily Dalton in two thousand, Almost no one wanted to touch men's personal care. In part because it was and still is dominated by the big players like Gillette.

But the other reason is that some of the prestige brands like Clinique and Chiseido already had men's skincare lines that Weren't really flying off the shelves at department stores. But Kern had a hunch that if she could redesign men's skin care. Make it appeal to men and say

Texas. She might be able to break through. And That's what Jack Black did. They would lure guys to department store counters and give them samples to take home.

And over time? It won them over. Early on, Curin recruited her husband Jeff to help with sales. And it took many years before they managed to eke out a small profit. Today, Jack Black is owned by Edgewell. It's a company that also own brands like Chick and PlayTex.

The co-founders sold the company in 2018 and made a hefty return. But We'll get there. Curran grew up in Florida and went to college at Vanderbilt. Jeff grew up in Indiana and went to college at the University of Mississippi.

They met in Dallas after they both graduated. Jeff was working as an executive recruiter. and Curran was working in market research. At Mary K cosmetics. I thought that cosmetics would be fun and exciting and creative.

I really wanted to be creative. I didn't have any experience in cosmetics. I was a minimal user of cosmetics at the time. But It had all the ingredients of a product category that I thought.

I would be good at and enjoy. And explain what I mean, for people who who aren't familiar with it, Mary Kay basically it's a Old school direct to consumer And basically

So they don't sell in stores. It's you've got an army of independent entrepreneurs, mostly women. Who sells. cosmetics to their friends, door to door uh parties, right? Right. And so you would you have a hostess, and you would sell to a group of the hostess's friends.

And um I moved up very quickly, so it was very Stimulating and challenging. And rewarding for me. They were growing like crazy.

Um, so it was very fast paced. Yeah. It was a good life. I had I loved my job, but I had a good social life. I was dating a lot. I wasn't married, I didn't have kids, didn't have that responsibility. And at the same time you decided to do a an MBA, I guess on sort of at night or part time at At night on and on the weekends, I it took three years.

Okay, so Jeff, I know that that you were in Dallas around the same time as Current, uh working as an executive recruiter. Correct. Yeah. Okay, and Current Your sort of working your way up at the time at Mary Kay. So um tell me, how did the two of you meet? Like w what do you remember? Well, we met at the downtown YMCA. I was doing aerobics. Right. Back in the Jane Fonda aerobics days. Yep.

He was playing basketball. And he sent some friends over that were mutual friends that I knew. And they asked me if I would be interested in going out with him, and I said well What does he look like?

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

And I just thought man, this girl is just beautiful. And uh like You were like thinking I'm gonna go above my program here. Yeah. Yeah, out of my league. I'm like a goofy dude playing basketball. Yeah, I've got an afro and you know, long hair and Well and he had the super shiny suit on that like too short. Like a pop of an ankle.

What Oh geez. First impressions were so great. But you you agree, you you guys were on a date and and how d how did that date go, Corinne? Well, I I was I didn't think it went very well. He talked about himself the entire night. Um he went into

minutia detail about how he keeps a index card filing system about all his recruiting prospects and How he works that system he got up several times to go use the payphone. Wow. What my job was, where I was from and promising. Yeah, so it's gonna be a long and fruitful relationship. Never going out with this guy again. That's one and done. And Jeff, wh how do you how did they go for you?

Well, uh I was living with my brother at the time. And he asked me, he said, How did that date go? I said it went great. I said I'm gonna marry that girl. Had you had insight into her thinking, you would never have thought that. No.

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

being a little more interesting and having a convers two way conversation. Wow. And then he lied and he said, I want a trip to Mexico, and I'd like to take you with me. And um I said no about ten times. Finally he wore me down. Wait, sorry, s pause.

Jeff, you made up a story about winning a contest. I wouldn't say I lied. I'd say that I s I Bended the truth a little bit. We were talking about a sales trip at our company. I just decided it was gonna be Cancun, Mexico, and that I had won that trip.

Okay, I got you. You were gonna you were gonna engineer this trip. So Eventually. You convinced her to go to Cancun with you. Uh and you you agreed, Karen, you agreed to go. Yes.

And that was the turning point then. I I started to you know, fall in love with him and Things changed after that. Alright, so you guys

And then a few years later I think you nineteen eighty nine, maybe, you get married. Mm-hmm. Um And start a family. And you were um current you were

Kind of climbing the ranks at Mary Kay. Um and tell me what you were doing there. Tell me about your job. When we got married, I was director of uh marketing.

And then a couple years. After we got married we had our son. And then by the time we had our daughter two years after that I was executive VP of Global Marketing and Business Development. So I was over

Product development, marketing for the entire World, many countries. And they were public. When I joined Mm-hmm. And the owners which were Richard Rogers and Mary Kay

Ash decided to take it private, and so that was That was an important milestone for the company. And it also afforded me some phantom share. Options that they granted to key people.

Um which I was later Able to use to Help fund Jack Black Startup. Curren, um, tell me about the culture at Mary Kay. I mean, now you were sort of rising up the ranks and and eventually as you're in your late thirties,

you're getting into the executive suite there, um, mid to late thirties. And you basically started there when you were twenty two. So you you know this you were a lifer. You were a lifer. Right. What was the culture like there?

Well, I think towards the end of the time I was there it got Very political. More bureaucratic. I felt like I was solving the same problems over and over. Um

And then they brought in a new CEO. that I didn't think had the chops or the experience or the Knowledge of the business and I just felt like it was time for me to move on. Yeah.

Did you have ambitions to be the CEO? Yes. Yeah. I wouldn't want it to be given to me, but If I was the best candidate and I had earned it, yes, I wanted it.

When you decided to leave Mary Kay. In nineteen ninety eight. That must have been a difficult decision. First of all, y you know, you guys were not independently wealthy. I mean, Jeff had a job and money coming in and You had some shares. But

It wasn't enough to Stop working for for the rest of your life. Like w so that must have been a difficult decision. Yeah. And I was the major breadwinner and um Jeff was

Very distraught at my decision and I I pretty much decided I'm leaving. But I didn't know exactly what my next move was gonna be. I just

Knew I had to do it. Jeff, when she made that decision Um I mean, of course, I'm assuming you were supportive of your husband, but were you worried? How about that?

Yeah, it was. Um And uh When she start talking about leaving and and she would tell me she was, you know, very upset and She didn't want to be there anymore.

And I would try to talk her into staying. And I I d was able to do that for Maybe six to nine months before she finally left. Right. And and now Jeff, the pressure's a little bit on you. Because you're

Paycheck coming in. Well my job was straight commission. I was Basically Month by month having no idea.

what I was gonna p get paid that month or Make anything that month. 'Cause if you didn't place people in in jobs, you didn't get anything. Correct. Yeah. So you're constantly having to hustle, constantly having to sell. Yeah.

So that's going on. And Kuran, you're You're out of Mary Kay. And What did you start to do? What did you st I mean, did you start to have conversations with people? Did you just Or did you completely stop thinking about work for a while? No, I I

Just knew I was gonna keep working. It wasn't like I was gonna retire. But I was starting to realise, hey, you know, I don't wanna go back to the corporate world. I want to do something different. I want to be in control of my destiny. I want to be in control of Who I work with and how I run the business.

And then The turning point was after I had resigned from Mary Kay. Several of the key marketing people that worked for me also resigned. And one of those Top performers was Emily Dalton, who eventually was the co-founder Jack Black with us.

And We had lunch and she said, um Why don't we start a business together? Mm. I'm like well

What are you thinking? And she's like Well, it's gotta be in cosmetics'cause that's what we know. And I'm like, right? Sure. And she's like What about man?

What about men? she said. Men. Yeah. Like cosmetics for men. Yeah, I'm like what? I'm like No. That is such a small non existent market.

'Cause people had tried it. Mary Kay tried it. It was like Point one percent of their business. And she's like no Men are changing. Nobody's doing it.

Somebody's gonna figure it out. Let's pursue it. Let's think about it. So when the two of you started'cause it's exciting that conversation, that first conversation gets your blood pumping and you're like, Wait a minute, maybe there's something here. But w when you started talking, I mean

was the conversation around cosmetics for men like concealer and you know, uh things like that for men, or was it Never it was never cosmetics. It was Skincare.

Grooming. Head to toe. care for your body. So personal like what we call personal care. Yeah. Functional products like deodorant, antiperspirant, shave cream.

But then moisturizer, sunscreen. Um a brand that was luxury. Because you had the mass market grooming brands like Gillette. And in the prestige market you had

Fragrances. But you did not have A complete line. That was positioned at the luxury end of the market. Yeah.

Targeting more affluent guys. Luxurious textures. That didn't exist. So What did you do? I mean, did you go home and and

Start to talk to Jeff about this? Well, Emily and I talked amongst ourselves extensively. We were both marketing people, so we're putting together Tear sheets and imagery and crafting the brand personality

And We knew we had to do Almost everything totally different. Than the women's brands were doing. To break through to men.

Our insight was that that's why it had failed before. Right,'cause it was like there was Clinique for men and I remember but it l and I think it's still around, but it just looks like Clinique for Women, but just says Clinique for men. And And that Didn't quite work. They basically cost reduced their women's formulas, put it in stock, grey packaging.

And Put it on the shelf with the women's stuff and never supported it. So we were busy brainstorming okay, what is our strategy? How are we gonna make this work? When so many others Have failed.

When we come back in just a moment. how Curran comes up with the name Jack Black. And while Jeff takes their first display case for showcasing the product? and winds up smashing it into bits. Stay with us.

I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. One more thing before we get back to the show, please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And it's totally free. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the late 1990s, and Kern Danderand and her colleague from Mary Kay, Emily Dalton, are brainstorming ways to launch a brand of skincare products for men. And it turns out that their first tough pitch meeting isn't with investors. Instead, they have to convince Curran's husband

Jeff. I was out playing golf one day and I came in through our garage to the our family room and Curran and Emily had You know, all the things that she Out.

On our tables. And I said, Well what are you guys doing? And they said, Well we're thinking about starting a company. And I said well What kind of company?

And they said, Well, we're gonna start a skincare company for men. I said. That's a crazy idea. You know, guys don't care about skin care. I said, Where are you gonna get the money?

They say we're gonna use our money. Oh. That's even a crazier idea. But then they spent um A little bit of money on doing some

market research where they talked with Man about Skincare. What they used, how they used it. We got those reports back a couple of weeks later and I was reading the reports one evening in bed.

And I thought, you know what? They're really onto something here. Yeah, so we did focus groups. And we basically Presented

our brand concept which was Rugged masculinity, but there was a luxury and a polish about it. So we showed different pictures of Celebrities, Tom Landry, Steve McQueen. You know, these are the kind of guys that this brand is for.

And Men really liked that. Hm. One of our inspirations was to have our packaging kind of

be inspired by liquor labels and cigar labels, which are kind of timeless and cool and interesting. And they liked that. And so we got positive feedback. Yeah, I'd be receptive. I'd like to know more. Alright, so you decide.

That you're gonna Jump into this and Tell me about how you're gonna finance it. Well we We did want to raise money.

We spent a lot of time putting together a very beautiful business plan. This is you and Emily. Me and Emily. Because Jeff is still working, he's still recruiting. Yeah, he's involved on the periphery, he's aware of it, but he's still working, you know, we had to have some income coming into our family. So we networked with people we knew that were connected.

To investors. And we sent out a bunch of business plans. We got Mostly crickets. Nobody even r bothered to respond.

The one response we did get was I'll pass. Mm. This won't work. I'm just surprised because both of you had come to the table with such deep experience. In the industry.

It wasn't like you were just out of college. I know. We were pretty cocky, you know, we're like, Okay, this business plan's gonna wow um, they're gonna see the potential. Yeah. Um We just got Total thumbs down, just not even the courtesy of a response. And I look back and I I don't know. Exactly why we kept going. We were totally undeterred.

And we're just like Okay, well we'll fund it ourselves. And which in hindsight I'm so grateful'cause we had total control. We had no outside investors. And you had a little bit of a nest egg from your time in Mary Kay. Correct. How much money did you have to use? Close to half a million.

Was that pretty much everything you had? Yeah. Well. And Jeff at this point, Jeff got laid off. From his recruiting job.

At around this time. Yes. So Jeff was on board. 'Cause then there was three founders, three co founders.

And Jeff, from what I understand, the company where you were working, uh, I guess their their business really started to slow down and so they're just There just wasn't. much recruiting for you to do at that point and and you were laid off, right? Correct.

Yeah. But but can I just ask Kinda where your head was at. the time because I mean y you'd read the surveys and research that Current and Emily had done and you thought That was encouraging, but but still, like you did not now you'd have a steady income.

put in all of your money into this business, which was a a huge risk. I mean we're Were you worried about that? Um Yeah, I mean I would'cause you guys are like four you know, all I mean that's

Yeah. Was Very achievable. And I thought Gosh.

We're gonna be killing it in five years. Does the number supported a hugely successful company. Projections. Yeah, projections. But the projections are numbers. Yeah. Projections are projections. Yeah. And we did and we didn't make our projection. We did we didn't even come close to that.

But The reality was that I just didn't Think about us not being successful. And it was it was sort of like this incredible stroke of luck that you lost your job at this time. I mean, of course at the time I I probably didn't feel that way, but

Emily and Curran had expertise in marketing and in product. But not in sales. You were a sales guy. They needed a salesperson.

Yeah, and I you know, I talked to Emily and Kern about helping them with sales. in developing a database for us to Contact. golf country club buyers all over the country. And these were for golf shops. You thought golf shops on golf courses. Yeah. This is smart because you that's a tribe and Jeff is a golfer, right, Jeff? You're

Good golfer and so Okay. And so I mean, we really thought that this golf club strategy of distribution would be a very strong one. Yeah. When we first started the company we were more thinking

We're gonna focus on sunscreens. Yep. But then we're also gonna add on things like shave cream and hand cream. Um Lip balm. 'Cause we're thinking, Well, the men They're playing golf every weekend. They're not going to the mall.

So let's reach them where they're going. We're trying to be innovative in our distribution. And Kern, was Emily at all nervous, like ooh, your husband coming in, like Was there any any of that weirdness? Yeah. Yeah. She had some

advisors, some lawyers that were like You don't want to get involved with the married couple. Like what if that goes off the rails and Also, you know, with Jeff and I combined, if we voted against her, you know, we could go, Hey, we just want this whole Thing for ourselves. We're

Buying. Yeah. But um She Trusted us and

believed in the concept and she moved forward, but we did have to talk through that. And tell me about the name. How did you how did you'cause you didn't initially didn't have a name, you just had a concept. Right. Yeah, tell me more about that. Well, I actually came up with the name. I was on a flight, I had a yellow legal pad, and I just wrote down Jack Black. I liked the strength of that name, the simplicity of it, the timelessness.

It felt very masculine. And it could Um have authority over a lot of different product categories. It wasn't so narrow. Like the art of shaving, or your just body.

Or you know, you're just Sunscreen. And you wanted the name of a person. Because Because I wanted the guys to relate to it, like it's their buddy.

And they're not embarrassed at all to say, I use Jack Black. Yeah. Versus I use something that I can't pronounce, or it's a French name. Or it's a girl's name. And Jack Black could be the person who who started the company, like Vidal Sasson or or you know, like It's Jack Black. It's my company. Just a a very

Strong, rugged, masculine. Athletic. Guy. You wanted to be able to do it. Like

Maybe this isn't the best analogy, but you kinda wanted the Marlboro man. Yeah, exactly. But not a smoker. Except not smoking, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, smoking. was getting the vast numbers of

Heterosexual guys. That cared about how they looked, that worked out, spent money on their clothes. Tried to eat right. Get them to use skin care. Right.'Cause it totally makes sense. Alright, so you have this name Jack Black, and by the way.

just coincidentally, I mean this was kind of before the actor Jack Black really blew up. I think High Fidelity Shortly thereafter. Like, yeah. We had already trademarked the name and locked into that. And design the packaging when he had his first movie.

And God bless him, but he is not like the Marboro man. He's he's he's amazing. I love him. He's and if he was here right now I'd have a beer with him or a coffee. But he's not I don't think of like rugged Americana when I think of the actor Jack Black. No, we would not have ever picked him to be our our uh There was confusion in the early days and and

People We're thinking he owned the company. And we'd get emails to our Info it Get Jack Black. Hey Jack, I love your

Latest movie and I love your line. Alright, so you've got this name and this brand. Now let's talk about the colors and the label. What what did you Do for that.

Well, this is was Emily's strength too. She was so good at design and i everything was just meticulously Crafted. the label and the overall design. Was more inspired by cigar labels and liquor. Upscale craft liquor. It's a diamond shaped. Right.

Sticker. Right. But was it diamond shaped l logo on top of a solid colored And the colour was blue. Right.

It was a royal blue. And at the time the men's lines were White. Gray and brown.

The competing lines you're talking about. Competitors. Yeah. We're white, grey and brown. Okay. And we knew we had to have You know, massive eye appeal to Get men to notice it. So we liked the strength of the blue and the black together.

Yeah. And then After we did the first focus groups, we didn't do any more research because we didn't have any money. So we're just this is all gut feel and instinct. But we settled on what we ended up going with and it's

but we still market today. Yeah. Alright, so you have the the logo, you've got the name. And you've got the money to Get this this out there and I'm assuming you didn't

build your own facility, you didn't have enough money for that, but there were contract manufacturers that you could Presumably go to and pick out the ingredients and say this is what we want. Did you already have relationships with some of those manufacturers through Mary Kay? We did. And we went to um three different contract manufacturers that we had worked with at Mary Kay, so we knew the people and they were willing to work with us.

And we all the formulas were custom. We did test the formulas amongst um different guys that we knew in the Dallas area and got really good feedback, so that was encouraging. And what kind of sense, what kind of smells were you going for? That's a good question'cause the aromas are so important for guys. And what we had found in the market was either they were super heavily fragranced

Or they were just not fragrants at all. So we really took approach the approach of light aromas, not fragrants. There was a lot of eucalyptus and peppermint, very fresh kind of tingly. Spa like fragrances. And the other thing in the formulations that we focused on were the textures.

Men really object to heavy, greasy, kind of Eclusive. Feelings. So the products were very sheer and light and didn't weigh heavy on the skin, which was important. All right, so two thousand you launched the brand. The idea is you're gonna be in golf stores.

So you have, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars worth of product. Right, that you've ordered. Mm-hmm. And what are you gonna do from there? Like how are you gonna start. How are you gonna get people to notice? Wha wha how did you decide to like launch this product? We decided to debut at the

Two thousand PGA show in Orlando. Which is a massive show, like thirty thousand people attend. This is like presumably one of the biggest golf In the world, biggest in the world. Okay. See you preparing for this show.

And you know, you need to get the word out. personal care products shown there. So What did you do?

So Jeff had m meticulously compiled a list of what was it like five thousand? Yeah, it was about five thousand Golf country clubs, resort clubs. All over the country.

And then when I got laid off, I just spent my whole day calling country clubs and making sure that the database that we're putting together had the right address and the right buyer's name, email address. follow up phone number. And then the mailer.

Right, Karen? Yeah, so we designed this mailer. That featured our Product line, beautiful photography. And we mailed it out to

All these five thousand Buyers. That Jeff had carefully researched and We didn't design the mailing panel correctly. And the post office read the return address as the ship to address.

So All of them came like within two weeks later, three weeks later, like right before the show. We get'em all back to the executive suite. So The mailers never got there. So like nobody knew we were there. Yeah. So that was the first sign it was gonna be an interesting show.

So you get to Orlando at this PGA trade show, you've got a booth there. And uh you show up. And tell me about the show. Well, it's it's massive. There's just people everywhere. We had terrible

location for our booth. We're in the very last row, at the very end of that row in the back corner. Not even by a bathroom or anything. We had no traffic coming by. So we would kinda walk the aisles and Grab people and bring'em back and put the product on their hands and what did your display look like? I mean did you

have all the products in, you know, all labeled and everything. Well, we we didn't have production yet, so we had lab samples, which were basically white tubes that were hand crimped by the lab. Okay. And then we had this Ugh seven foot tall.

Very beautiful wood. Um Floor standing fixture. Lasercut logo. We spent a ton of money on it. And our idea was

This is the display you're gonna use in your golf shop and it'll hold four thousand dollars worth of Jack Black product and doesn't it look beautiful. And you were gonna provide that to whoever If you ordered four thousand, you could get the free Display. The wood display, okay.

So First of all, when we finally got a few people back there, we would You know, take the tubes and Get ready to let them feel the product and the crimps would bust and shoot out the other end all over their shirts. So the crimps were busting everywhere.

People would look at that display and just Like go on, what are you thinking? We don't need we can't put that in our shop. We would never sell that much pro sunscreen product or shave cream. Hm. weren't interested. They were there to Look at the latest equipment, the latest golf balls, range finders, uh.

Clothing. Yeah, they just the category they're just like I don't care. Yeah. I don't get it. And so Finally Jeff rounded up.

Seven of his good friends in the Dallas Fort Worth area that were head pros. at the various country clubs and got brought them over. And we got a sale. Probably a pity purchase from each of them. So it was a big

A big fail. So All right, so this I mean, you had put your entire strategy was this Tribe of people. Gers and golf courses and

Did you ask yourself, what did I get wrong? Wh what what happened here? Yeah, I think we were starting to go, hmm, you know, we might need to expand and go to traditional retail. But we After we left, I I will say Jeff took that Floor standing seven foot wooden display.

He cracked it into a million pieces and put it in the dumpster. He was so mad. Yeah. And then we went to the Orlando Airport. We went to Chili's to have dinner before our flight.

And Jeff's like This isn't working. We gotta pull the plug. And we gotta go get real jobs. Wow.

Jeff, you're the guy who's like was persistent in pursuing Kern, never taking no for an answer. You're the guy that she was like, No, I'm not gonna marry you, I'm not gonna date you. And you're like, No, come on. You're the one who says let's bat let's pack pack this in? I I was so Discouraged. By the lack of sales at that show.

No. When we get back to Dallas, you gotta get on the phone and start making some calls to open up accounts. We have four hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of inventory coming in in March and April.

And we can just start selling that. So I thought Okay. Yeah, I've got a really strong database here. I we we did meet some people that seemed interested. And uh found a couple independent reps.

And I start talking to those reps about carrying Jack Black. And then I just got on the phone and cold called all day. Literally all day. So you needed a different approach. Mm-hmm. You are not gonna build

a scalable brand through golf shops. Yeah, we didn't abandon golf, but And Jeff continued to build golf and we opened some really amazing accounts, which you know, a few months later led to a great PR mention. So we opened was it Austin Country Club, Jeff? Yeah, Austin Country Club. Austin Country Club.

The pro Told Jeff. that Matthew McConahae was using our products and loved'em. How he he was buying it at the shop there? Yes. In the golf pro shop. So they s the golf pro there says Matthew McConay

Likes your stuff, but you didn't know that for sure. We just heard it through the pro. Okay. So this was at the height of Instyled, Instyle magazine, and there was all these celebrity features about what the celebs are using. So Emily was based in New York and she was really hitting the streets. You know, talking to the editors, trying to get some

Ink on Jack Black. And she landed a meeting with NStyle and she shared the Matthew McConay tidbit, and they published it. In September. Just a photo of him and then saying hey, he likes Jack Black products. Right. And then they had a picture of the beard loop. And the lip balm. Well.

And so That led to specialty stores. Calling us. We actually got inbound calls from people interested in taking our line, which was a first. Here's my question about that.

She could have been totally lying. Like she could have said, Hey. Matthew or Jack Nicholson. And they they were just like, Yeah, great. We'll we'll run a story like I'm amazed about that. I mean, because And Matthew probably doesn't read in style, but like he could have been flipping through it at the grocery store if he goes and had been like Mm, Jack Black. First.

What is Jack Black or he might have been like, How do they even know this? Like right. They just ran with it. Well that was back in the day. Back in two thousand. That doesn't happen anymore. Yeah. Yeah So the magazines, you know, they carefully do their diligence and all that. But back then it was very, very common.

Alright, so you have um Matthew McConaughey, maybe maybe not using the product, but doesn't matter. You're getting attention and you But you also knew through the disaster at Orlando that you had to probably start to look at retail shops. And

Um, and so I guess the first big store was a a Dallas department stores. Um Stanley Corsak, that's what it's called. Yeah. So tell me about uh about that approach. How did you get in there? Well, they just have one location, but it's super special store, very upscale, great.

Selection of merchandise. And the buyer granted Me a meeting. And I presented the line. At that point it was still on lab samples because we didn't have production. He took everything home and he tried it.

And he called back very quickly and he's like, I love your formulas. We'll take it. And we're like, Oh my gosh, like that's great. And they immediately did well with it. They had good sell through and were reordering. And so we started really to focus on the more traditional retailers, but to not abandon golf either, though.

And once you got into those stores, right, you still the problem that you have was not was far from being solved, which is the behavioral change. Mm-hmm. Because you know, it reminds me, we did a story uh on the show about Guayaquil Yurba Mate, right? And and it's a big company now, but like When they first started trying to get people to drink it, they're like, This is this tastes awful, it's bitter. What is this?

And it took them like twenty years to you know to kind of introduce it to people. Um it's still growing, but You're in a in Stanley Corsak. And then what? Like don't you have to like show

men to start using it? Well, they had really great salespeople that did a lot of consultation and personal service. Yeah. But what we when our eyes were really opened was when we opened Nordstrom. We pitch the guy. In Dallas, his name was Mark Lance. He said he liked the formulas.

But he wasn't sure it would work. Yeah, because Retailers are very protective of their valuable real estate on the floor and they gotta make sure you're gonna sell. Yeah. And so men's skincare was absolutely not proven. And it was very risky for them.

Finally, he's like okay, we'll bring you into Stone Bart. We'll test it. Stone Briar is a is a Where is that? It's in Frisco.

Okay. That's where the Dallas Cowboys headquarters are. It's like boom. Yeah. Booming town. So they invited us to come to the grand opening of the store. It was the last minute invite. We could not get a babysitter.

And so me, Jeff, and our two little kids. Went to the opening. And I kinda manned our product. And Jeff followed the k chased the kids around the mall. So I didn't sell anything.

But I did see This woman. Making Sale after sail. Her name was Elaine Sykes.

And um She's the best sales person I've ever laid eyes on. Wow. And At the end of the night I went up to her and I introduced myself and we started talking and I'm like w just started this line and Would you be willing to work a few hours for us? And she

She agreed to give us five hours a week. And She sold like crazy. She would Pull guys over.

Start to talk to them. put the product on their skin, let'em feel it, let'em smell it. And they would buy. So here's this This model of how you educate

Guys. And they would come back and reorder. What would she sell them? Shaving cream or Well, our strategy was Guys understand shave product.

You hook'em with Just a superior Shave cream. And that was our hero product. It was called Beard Lube. Was very unique. It was translucent. It had a lot of natural oils in it, had some skincare ingredients in it, so it was

a great shave and it left your skin feeling really soft and silky. That was the gateway. The the shadow. Okay. You would talk about the beard loop. They would say buy it. You'd give'em a sample of the face.

Buff, which is your cleanser and your scrub. Use this in the shower before you shave. It exfoliates. Gets you a closer shave. And then you give them a sample of the post shave cooling gel after you're done shaving.

Put this on to cool the skin and gently hydrate. And so I saw at that moment the power of what A great salesperson can do at the store level.

what we had to invest in. Yeah. He had to pull the guy in because he's not. Just walking up going, I'm looking for Grooming products. He's walking by and you're literally

Chatting him up and pulling him. From what he's doing and bringing him over to your area. Yeah. And that's what we had to do. It was very time consuming and labor intensive, but you had to do that. That's how you get the behavior change. Educating these guys one by one.

When we come back after the break. А Джак Блакшоза. at Cowboy Stadium.

and the Super Bowl. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz.

So it's two thousand two, two years after launching Jack Black, and Curren, Jeff, and Emily are shifting their initial strategy. From selling to men in golf shops. And they're starting to get some traction, hitting two million dollars in annual sales. By the way, were your projections right? Is that what you had anticipated for two thousand two?

Oh, from the original? No, we were way under. Way, way under the I mean that business plan was bogus and off target from day one. We may have had at the end of year two eight million dollars in sales in our projections. It wasn't even close. And that's because you overestimated initially. How big the market was going to be at that point.

Yeah. And how How much golf shops would sell. So Let me ask about your relationship. during this time because it's you know

Yes, you're growing and there it looks good, but still, you know, you're not y I mean Bringing two million dollars in a year, you guys were not making you're not profitable and I have to assume you guys had almost no salary at that point because you had to spend money on product What was your relationship like? I mean, was it stressful being married, raising kids, and running the business? Like did you guys

Did you guys fight? Yes, it was very, very stressful. And um There's a lot of tension. Lot of pressure.

We didn't pay ourselves for Maybe four years, pay ourselves at all. And you know, you're just you're struggling to survive. And your family's all in on it, right? Yeah. So um

We got through it, but um You've gotta know what you're getting into, I advise other couples that are thinking about starting a business. It it's gonna really strain your marriage because You could disagree at work and have a

Heated discussion. If it's not your husband, you come home and you don't have to see that person that you just had that big fight with. But when you're working with them, they're there they are. And you're still fighting when you get home from work and then you're fighting when you're back on the job and there's no Escape.

Jeff, did you I mean it sounds like you really Kern was the CEO that that you defer to her leadership or Or did you c sometimes I don't know metal is the maybe not the right word. Do you sometimes question her leadership? No, I never really questioned her.

her leadership. Or Emily's. I mean they were just In my opinion. Extremely talented and

I mean I will say that But my annual physical my My doctor who I'd known for many years asked me how things were going. I said, You know what? It's pretty tough. I said it's uh Things at home are are rough because you know, we're we're working together. We're trying to build this business. And he said, Have you ever thought about it, you know, going to therapy?

Hm. And I said yeah. Yeah, I I have and He gave me the name of a therapist and I Current and I went to

You know, for an hour visit and Yeah, I thought it was pretty helpful. And uh She's a little bit more. You know

You're Wife is Really, really smart. And you need to stop. Arguing.

About the little things. And save your ammunition for something that really matters. And I stopped that. That

Day the next day I just I just said I'm not gonna do I'm not gonna keep arguing about this little stuff. And then couple of years later when we start, you know, really Doing better. And start paying ourselves more. I mean

That helped a lot. Those two things helped a lot. I think you guys started to break even. Or maybe even turn a slight profit. In your

maybe third or fourth year. Your sales were about five million dollars that year. Did that. Ease the pressure a little bit. Yeah, I think you could breathe a little easier, but I was still

super conservative um fiscally. Like yeah, we still didn't have a lot of money to spend, and so I was very tight fisted about what we spent our money on, and we had We had a saying that were fabulously frugal, try to make it positive. You know, we didn't ha we had really crappy offices, no trappings and

flow coach stayed in budget hotels and We would not spend money unless we knew it was gonna drive sales. Because We were not out of the woods yet. Yeah.

Well and we were operating with a line of credit at that point. That was expanding. you know, I think initially it was two fifty, then it was five hundred, then it became A million dollars and that was within

five, six years of starting the business and Of course. there weren't any bankers that were gonna give you that money without a personal guarantee, so We'd have to take our stock portfolio and personally guarantee that. To have the line of credit.

Yeah. What about what I mean? Of course you're still small, even as you grew, you know. You're growing every year, which was impressive. I mean by you know, I think twenty Eleven you hit thirty five million dollars in sales, so eleven years in

But Still small compared to the overall cosmetics industry. Did that in a sense shield you from potential threats and competitors, or did you already start to see the shark circling, saying, Wait a minute, maybe there's onto something.

Oh. Yeah, it was just hyper competitive. Oh my gosh. You had everybody from the big companies to the little startups to everybody in between. because in the industry everybody's look you know, it's pretty quick to copy something that's working well. So there was a lot of competitors and

It was even more brutal than the women's because the total size of the market was so much smaller, the space you were granted on the floor was smaller. But yet there were so many more people wanting to get a piece of it. And some of'em could be ruthless. They try to steal your Employees, still your customers.

You know, you'd have your space all set up and the next day you'd go into work and it was gone'cause your competitor moved it. Um So there was just a lot of battles on the store floors. One of the um things that you guys did. And it I think it goes back to the to the sort of the golf strategy was you start to partner with N F L teams. Like you put your product in locker rooms so players could use them, you part up with the Dallas Cowboys. I mean this is a you know, you're in Dallas, America's team

Right, and did that move the needle? I mean, being in in luxury suites at Cowboy Stadium or being in the locker rooms at at at you know NFL locker rooms. Did that really does that really matter? Does that make a difference? Well, it was hard to quantify, but I do feel like it was a game changer for us. Um We first got into the NFL program through the Cowboys. The Joneses were building the new stadium, and it was gonna be the absolute epitome of luxury stadiums.

Jerry Jones used Jack Black. And We were invited to meet with them about putting our products in the luxury suites. And we would co-brand the products, so we change our labeling to include The cowboy star.

And then we would also in return for providing the products we negotiated. Advertising in the stadium and on their website. And also we would do gifting to VIPs. Which is a great way to sample. Yeah. And you know, you're

Creating this relationship with the guy's favorite football team. And that's That's good. Good combination for us and it's positive aura for our brand.

Tony Romo's using Jack Black, it's good enough for me. Yeah. Yeah. Or like the cowboys like Jack Black. Wow, I'm gonna check that out. Yeah. Um So The Superbowl, I think it was in twenty eleven. was at the Cowboy Stadium.

And all our products were in the suites. And all the other NFL team owners and executives. Of course came to the game. And they saw products. And we started getting so many phone calls from the other teams.

We wanna put your products in our suites. We want it to be co branded. You know, with our Packers logo, with the Bears, whatever. And we reached so many men that way. That we wouldn't have otherwise reached.

I mean the growth really was organic, right? I mean you just kind of Cash flowed. Crew. Mm-hmm. I mean once you were in

Saxfield Avenue and Bloomingdales and these big Was it still a hustle? Did Jeff did you still have to like

Yeah. Significantly easier. Well the cold calling was obviously heavy for the first six or seven years and then from that point Forward.

You know, I dealt with our independent sales reps who sold to gift stores. Specialty shops, spa, Men's clothing stores. I mean that was a whole different category that no one else was was going after either.

Um we had You know, one point maybe six or seven hundred. Independent. retail type stores that were selling Jack Black and I dealt with all the reps. that were helping us open those types of accounts.

When did you Feel, Corinne, that you were like, okay. I think we have Cross the threshold. Like Now

Now we have done enough work where there's momentum in people understanding What These products are how to use them. I think it would be, you know, around two thousand

Eleven, twelve. So Ten, twelve years into it, we're with the NFL teams, we have that great sports program. our brand awareness was growing. We were number one with almost all our retailers. We had thirty five percent share in the luxury category and We were the dominant leader. Um

But I never felt like I could rest because there was always somebody trying to take you out. Yeah. There's so many competitors and um So even at to the point where we sold the company every day I was still like

Fighting the good fight. Let me ask you about that because you did of course twenty eighteen, eighteen years in. You were acquired by Edgewell. And there's a there

pretty big personal care company. they paid you a significant amount of money for the brand. And I imagine Eighteen years in, you guys were exhausted. And so had you been looking for an out at that point? Yes, um we actually at that point um in

started a process with investment bankers to um Pursue selling the company. Emily had two small uh ch they were in junior high, high school. And she was ready to just spend time with her kids. Uh we'd work so hard. Jeff was ready. I was getting there. I was the last one to finally say, Hey, you know, it's time to retire.

Um For Jeff and I everything we had was tied up in the company and so we had little liquidity at that point. So we just felt like it was time and we had grown the business to a good point and we had a great story to tell. And did you ever think about I'm sure you were approached. By like.

private equity groups are like look we'll buy a chunk of it, you can take money off the table, and let's make this even bigger. Right. They would go, You have two bites of the apple. Um We weren't Interested in that.

In that option. But we we did talk to some private equity groups as part of the process. Uh prior to the actual hiring of an investment banker two years prior to that We were approached by a

very significant player in the category. They made us an unsolicited, non binding offer. That was Yeah. Very nice offer.

And we spent nine months with them. Giving them every detail of our business. Um they knew that they were the only ones bidding for our business. We You know, provided them with details on new products, on how we sold, on the sales and every store that we sold to.

And two weeks prior to closing they came. Into Dallas, we met at the Four Seasons Hotel. They probably had forty people. I think we had five or six. And they said, You know that offer we made you nine months ago? Non binding.

Well our board can't get to that number. I mean they Basically the offer that we made were not That number's off the table.

Yeah, we asked him, Well what What do you have in mind? I mean what you know the numbers X What's the new number? And they were They just wouldn't give us a number.

They just said you're not going to be happy with it. And then we were like, Well, what is it? And then I asked him, I said, Well how much do you think you can grow our business by? We only think we could grow your business by fifteen to Twenty percent. I said.

We can grow our business fifteen to to twenty percent without you. Wow. And it ended. I mean it basically just stopped that day. And this is after you'd opened your entire data room to nine books. Yeah. For nine months. And what year was this? Two thousand fifteen, two thousand sixteen. Wow. So they had they had New All Year's trade secrets.

At everything. They had our formulas, everything. Yeah, so we learned a very painful lesson. Yeah. You need to have competition in your process.

That must have been quite devastating. It really was. Oh yeah. And we did not see it coming'cause they were just Wining and dining and Sweet talking and And it was non binding, so they didn't have to pay a penalty or anything.

Zero. So we waited a couple years before we hired a A banker to You don't do it the right way. Um

You reportedly the Edgewell paid. about a hundred million dollars for the brand. I don't know if that's accurate or not. That's been reported, but still amazing and amazing.

Exit. for a a brand that you started, you know, in in two thousand. I mean, once that happened, I think Jeff, you left, right? You sort of Retired. I stayed For one year.

Uh. I agree to Stay on for a year. To help with the transition. Emily left right away. Or she left pretty soon after, right?

Yeah, she left in we closed in January and she left in December. And you, Kern, you stayed for a while as an advisor, even up until like twenty twenty one, I think, right? Yeah, I was worried I would be bored'cause I've always been pretty much a workaholic. Um, but when I did retire and I kinda weaned myself from work'cause gradually reducing my hours that I was working after we sold the company. But um I never had any girlfriends when I was working'cause it was just so all consuming. Uh you had your work and then your kids.

So I never had any friends. And now I've got time to have some good girlfriends, which I I'm enjoying. So um It's been good. I mean, when you guys think about this journey and and you know, everything that led up to it.

How much of it do you attribute to to your work and how much do you think has to do with Getting lucky. Um I mean I I've heard some luck in there. I mean I think the fact that you were You got laid off, Jeff.

Was a little lucky. I mean, I felt that at the time, but yeah. Wha wha how what do what do you think, Jeff, first first to you. I I believe in luck. Um I'm a lucky guy. I was lucky to have met Curran.

Uh she changed my life. We were lucky to have Emily as our business partner. I think we were lucky to open some of the retailers that we opened. But Also

You know, we worked extremely hard. You know, it seemed like we were always working. It it just seemed like for eighteen years there that That we didn't have a lot of downtime, but we were lucky. I think we were very lucky. But If we hadn't been resilient and

pivoted when we needed to and Worked hard than I think we wouldn't have capitalized on the luck. So You gotta have I guess all of it.

Firing on all cylinders. That's current Jeff Danderand. Co-founders of Jack Black. By the way, probably not a huge surprise here, but one of the company's most loyal customers. Is Jeff.

I am not lying, I use probably 14 or 15 Jack Black products every day. Everyone's gonna be a little bit more. Body wash, I use the shampoo, I use the conditioner, I use the face buff and the shin to the show this week. It's totally free. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramteen Arablui.

It was edit by Neva Grant with research help from Catherine Cypher. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Sam Paulson, Ramel Wood, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Massini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening. to how I built this.

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