Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Clean Beauty Branding: Building a Resilient Consumer Brand with Deanna Wallin

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Clean Beauty Branding: Building a Resilient Consumer Brand with Deanna Wallin · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Hey, welcome back to Crunching Your Growth, the show where we break down the strategies, pivots, and scaling mechanics that turn ambitious ideas into marketing leading brands.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Phil Massiello, and today we're diving into the world of retail expansion, product market fit, brand resilience.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: My guest today, Deanna Wallen, the founder and CEO of Naples Soap Company.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: Deanna took a personal challenge searching for high-quality natural solutions for sensitive skin and turned it into a powerhouse brand with a massive brick and mortar retail footprint, a booming e-commerce engine, and loyal national following.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to talk about how she built the brand from the ground up, navigated the complexities of scaling both physical retail and D2C and what it takes to grow a consumer brand in today's landscape.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: So, Deanna, welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time to come on.
0:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: I appreciate that.
0:51
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me on.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: I love talking business.
0:54
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk, all things.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: So do I.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: So why don't you just take us back and give us a little bit of a frame of who you are, what you've done prior to starting the business, and then what led you to start the business?
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh my background, I was a nurse.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: My mom is a nurse.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: I was a nurse.
1:13
SPEAKER_02: My daughter is now a doctor.
1:15
SPEAKER_02: She's a plastic surgeon at Stanford.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: She's been a few residency.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: We have a lot of medical women in our family.
1:21
SPEAKER_02: Um so I found myself in uh 2008.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: I had um raised my children and they were in high school.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: I had gotten divorced, and I was really looking for something.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: I had gone back to working in the medical field, really wasn't happy with um, you know, uh working as a medical sales rep at that time.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: And I was looking for something to do, something different.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: I I'm just an entrepreneur at heart.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: It just I cannot work for someone else.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't, but if you're an entrepreneur, you understand like someone else signing your check and telling you what to do is just painful for you, especially when you have ideas and you want to implement them, that kind of thing.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: So I uh had a friend and she had a small store in a very busy um tourist uh traffic, high tourist traffic center in Naples, Florida.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: And she said, you should open a store next to me.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: I said, Well, okay, that sounds like fun.
2:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh so open a store, they said.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: It'll be fun, they said.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: So I started looking for concepts and thought, okay, you know what, I've done retail before.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: My first job was at JC Penny's.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: I worked in the men's uh uh clothing department.
2:37
SPEAKER_02: I was selling ties at 15 years old and I crushed it, by the way.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I had worked at Chess King, these are some old names, um, in a few different areas, you know, in high school, but always loved retail.
2:49
SPEAKER_02: And plus, I'm a shopper, shocker as a woman.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: So I was looking for concepts.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: I had a friend of mine come over.
2:56
SPEAKER_02: I was picking his brain about ideas.
3:00
SPEAKER_02: Um, he owned different, you know, had some different stores in different malls and stuff.
3:04
SPEAKER_02: So go to an expert.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: And he, as we got the laptops out and we're sort of, you know, going back and forth on ideas, he he goes in my bathroom and he comes out and he says, Why do you have so much lotion and soap in there?
3:17
SPEAKER_02: I've never seen anybody with so much lotion and soap.
3:20
SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, my daughter has eczema, I have eczema, we're really sensitive skin.
3:25
SPEAKER_02: And I give him about a 45-minute dissertation on chemicals that are in soap and all this kind of stuff.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: And he goes, Well, what do you like?
3:34
SPEAKER_02: I said, Well, because what works?
3:35
SPEAKER_02: And I said, Oh, natural soap, and give him another 20 minutes on natural soap and natural products.
3:41
SPEAKER_02: And this is in 2009.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:43
SPEAKER_02: So this was a, we'll call it a quote, trend and air quotes there.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: Like natural and clean beauty was a trend.
3:51
SPEAKER_02: It's what people were calling a trend.
3:53
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I thought to myself, well, this is what's working for us.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: And I know as a mother, I raised my daughter, she came out of the womb itching and always had painful sores and stuff.
4:05
SPEAKER_02: And it was really traumatizing as a child, you know, she wouldn't want to wear shorts to school and she was embarrassed.
4:11
SPEAKER_02: And so there's a there was a lot of emotional stigma that went along with the pain and the frustration, and then and then we would go to doctors and dermatologists would give us steroids.
4:22
SPEAKER_02: I just talked to a friend of mine yesterday who who has a baby, she's less than two, and the doctor's giving them topical steroids to put on the skin.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: So, anyways, as a nurse, I had worked from in everything from geriatrics to pediatrics and orthopedics, surgery.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: I I had a lot of experience with skin care.
4:40
SPEAKER_02: And at that time, I was actually doing uh wound care assessment for hyperbaric centers.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: So I had a lot of experience with the skin, and and I he googled natural soap wholesale, boom.
4:51
SPEAKER_02: The first person that came up on that search result is still my supplier today, 17 years later.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: And it just started like everything he said, sell what you know.
5:02
SPEAKER_02: He said, You are the you would be the face of the brand, sell what you know.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: He said, This is very impressive.
5:08
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know any of this.
5:09
SPEAKER_02: So it just the light bulb went off, and I went, wow, this is in my wheelhouse, and I'm super comfortable with this, and I have a personal experience with it.
5:18
SPEAKER_02: And so I started with a 300 square foot store, which is like the size of a closet.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: And before I knew it, within four months, I was tearing the wall down because I had people, I was in the store all day talking to people.
5:31
SPEAKER_02: And the funniest thing is people would come in and once they figured out I was a nurse, they would just like start disrobing or taking like dropping their clothes down and stuff.
5:40
SPEAKER_02: Or what do you think of this?
5:41
SPEAKER_02: What do you think of this?
5:42
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, whoa, okay, let's uh let's let's just maintain.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: But people are so desperate for help, you know, when they've tried everything and nothing was working.
5:51
SPEAKER_02: And we used to have that kind of mantra that if you've tried everything and nothing's worked, we've got something for you.
5:56
SPEAKER_02: And and it was a really it is a really simple concept, you know, if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're gonna keep getting what you've got.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: So getting people to reboot and you know, a lot of things they didn't understand was if you're putting maybe you change what you're washing your body with, but if you put a shampoo that has an irritating chemical on your head, it washes down your entire body.
6:18
SPEAKER_02: So now you're putting this irritant on top, but you're thinking about what you're washing on your body that that you're treating that.
6:24
SPEAKER_02: So it's really, you know, the product's about rebooting from head to toe and um and getting clean product on people.
6:31
SPEAKER_02: So 17 years later, we've been doing this a long time.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: We've got currently open 13 locations in the state of Florida.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: So we're a really solid regional retailer with a cult following here.
6:44
SPEAKER_02: We ship all over the United States.
6:46
SPEAKER_02: We have a 20,000 square foot warehouse and distribution center here, 120 employees.
6:52
SPEAKER_02: Um, we have over 400 of our own branded SKUs now under our brand.
6:58
SPEAKER_02: Um, not 400 categories, but because there's fragrances within those subcategories.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
7:03
SPEAKER_02: So it's been an incredible ride, and we have helped thousands and thousands and thousands of people with their sensitive skin or with their eczema and psoriasis just by getting them switched onto a healthier, cleaner product.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: So that that really is our mission.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's amazing when you start diving into it.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: Um because we, as you know, we we got into this with Carol Alt and we built a uh a beauty brand around her, and we had to learn really quickly.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh I unlike you, I didn't grow up using uh beauty products.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: I you know, I I didn't didn't matter what sort of thing.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: You look like it, Phil.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: Come on.
7:43
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm really 80.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: No, I um but when we got into it, we had to study a lot about it and just learn like all about ingredients and and and different things.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing what you're allowed to put into whether it's skincare, body care, you know, face care, it doesn't matter.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing what goes into some of the products in in in this country and and which I believe, like you, uh it leads to other problems.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: It leads to other skin problems.
8:18
SPEAKER_02: It's horrifying what goes into our skincare and what the FDA allows to go into our skincare.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: There are so many things, ingredients in the US that are legal here that are banned in Europe and other countries.
8:31
SPEAKER_02: And you know, we are so far behind.
8:33
SPEAKER_02: The FDA just recently, in the last 18 months, did upgrade uh upgrades to certain guidelines that hadn't been upgraded since the 1930s, hadn't even been addressed as far as like um cosmetic safety, the cosmetic safety act.
8:49
SPEAKER_02: The 30s, what do we?
8:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we still have lead in cosmetics and lipsticks, you know.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: And what is what are the you know the the recognizable safe amounts?
9:02
SPEAKER_02: Can we agree on those things?
9:04
SPEAKER_02: Um, not only in you know, uh cosmetics, but personal care, body care, sunscreen, SPF is absolutely one of the you know trickiest and worst things as far as putting it on your skin because you put so much copious amounts of it on your skin.
9:17
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, absolutely, there's a big learning curve.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: And if you had told me I would end up in, you know, doing product formulation and and things like that and product development as a big chunk of my day, I would have laughed and said, no, no, no, no.
9:29
SPEAKER_02: But you know, I've been very fortunate in throughout this journey to be surrounded by some incredible manufacturing partners who really have fantastic chemists and they take the time and explain.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: So we we've been great, you know, we've had we've had a really great run um with uh just the best partners we could possibly ask for.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's important.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: It it was important to us too to have a great manufacturing partner because and formulation partner because you know Carol knew what she wanted and she could translate it, and then I could take that and give it to somebody, but I didn't know.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: I had to do a I had to do a steep learning curve about ingredients and processes and things like that to adhere to the guidelines of of Raw.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: But what was funny was uh ca the sh we started on the shopping channel in uh in Florida, HSN.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: And then Canada wanted us because we started doing so well.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, the people in Canada said, you know, I'm just letting you know that skincare is really difficult because we have different guidelines in Canada than than the United States.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: And when we submitted everything, we got through really quickly because they were like, oh, you know, sort of conforms.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: And then when we went overseas, they were like, look, we want you, but I'm gonna tell you now it's gonna be you're gonna have to wind up changing things and blah, blah, blah, blah.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: Very challenging.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: And when we submitted, we didn't have to change anything because again, the way that we were doing it to adhere to RAW, it sort of fit, and uh, which was a big it allowed us to move quickly.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: So when you're holding those standards to start with, then you don't have to make those modifications, like staying credo clean, Sephora clean, whole food standards, all those kind of things within the US.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: Typically, those will pass overseas.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: And I love Carol, she's fantastic.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: We've had some exchanges with her back and forth about our products as well.
11:25
SPEAKER_02: And we have she and I have a a very good mutual friend, Andrea Cataneo, um, uh a securities attorney out in New York.
11:32
SPEAKER_02: And she's just uh such a lovely person, and uh and her cookbooks are phenomenal.
11:37
SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, I mean, she just really understands it, and then to tie the skincare in with um with the diet piece of it is huge because most people just miss that and and they want to just slap something on topically.
11:51
SPEAKER_02: But if you're not hydrating and you're not taking care of yourself, or if you're eating processed foods and things like that, like that's an organ and it affects your organ, you know.
11:59
SPEAKER_02: And just like eating cholesterol and high fatty foods affects your heart and and and alcohol affects your liver, like what you put in your body affects this protective organ that we have.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny that because of of all that that I learned, you know, I I have five children and four are girls.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: And uh it's funny that I as they got older and wanted to use makeup and wanted to use skincare and things like that, they would always have to clear it through me.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: And their friends crack up because they say, You have to you have to go to Phil to get clearance on what you can use.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: Because if they're out shopping, like they're in now they're in, you know, out of college and everything, everybody's out of college.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: But even still, they'll go to Sephora, they'll go to Altair, they'll go wherever, and they'll take a picture of it and say, Is this good for me to buy?
12:48
SPEAKER_00: And I'll say, no, that's not good.
12:50
SPEAKER_02: Good for you.
12:51
SPEAKER_02: That you know what, and that's the thing.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: Like, if you look at the instance at the rates of cancers and skin cancers in our younger women, especially, they're skyrocketed.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: The rates of melanoma, these numbers have skyrocketed in the last 20 years.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: While our younger females, they have more access to products, they're buying products younger.
13:14
SPEAKER_02: You have a lot of these um, I won't name names in particular, but you have a lot of these chain, larger chain uh bath and body companies that are producing product overseas, and they're just cranking stuff out with super cheap ingredients in it and mass amounts of toxic fragrance with phthalates and all even like the phthalates that are in some of these are endocrine disruptors.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: So we're having seeing fertility issues and cancer uh increases and a whole host of things that go along with this.
13:44
SPEAKER_02: So I absolutely I have a grandchild now and my daughter.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: So this is a this isn't even like like I said, I put trend in air quotes because people would in the in initially people would interview me, I'd get the newspaper, whatever, and they'd say, How do you like this trend of natural and organic skincare?
14:00
SPEAKER_02: And I said, it's not a trend, it's not going anywhere because once you start doing this and you have that education and that mindset, you do not go back to putting chemicals on your body because you just know the difference.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: And you may think, like, at my age, I am late 50s.
14:16
SPEAKER_02: Um, I know I look fabulous.
14:18
SPEAKER_02: You do.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: It's a good thing.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: I thought you were in your 20s still.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: I was trying to put the dots together when you said you had kids and you were married and divorced.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: I thought, geez.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: 32 and 34-year-old, yes.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: And and Bill can tell you, I have fabulous skin, no wrinkles.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: Um, but when we were growing up, you know, number one, we didn't use sun SPF, so our skin got damaged.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: And if we did, it was a probably a fairly toxic SPF that came in a gallon jug, you know, in the 70s and 80s.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: We used, you know, things like I I guess I could say this is probably not even around anymore, loves baby soft.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean, these types of things that were horrible for us and spraying them on, and and um, you know, just the stuff that our parents washed us with, our daily cleansing things, and nobody thought about this.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: Now I have a grandchild, and everything that is, you know, she obviously they use our products, but my but we're we're product junkies, so we use other people's products to test them as well.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: So it looks like a science lab in our home.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: So my daughter has, you know, all ranges of different brands of uh skincare from body from the bubble bath to the wash to the shampoo, the whole line for infants.
15:32
SPEAKER_02: And I think this is great because it there it's that's absorbing into your skin.
15:37
SPEAKER_02: It's going into your skin, into your body.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, our world has changed drastically, drastically.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: But but you're 100% right.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: When you start looking at the data, you start looking at the instances of, you know, the increased instances of breast cancer and you know, skin cancers and just toxic things, you you start to equate it to and it's primarily on women, and you start equating it to what what are you what are you using?
16:05
SPEAKER_00: And uh y you go back to the you know 70s, 80s, 90s, and you look at what young women were exposed to, like you just said, but when you start thinking about oh, the stuff they bought in like those uh funky gift stores in the malls, right?
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Horrifying, yeah, and using it and and putting it on their skin, it's it's terrible.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: And then on top of that, when you start thinking about processed food, right?
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Because you you're also feeding from the inside.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: Right.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in an Italian household and uh the the the the women in that in my family uh cooked every day.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: They didn't we didn't have processed food.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: And then you know, you start to to look at the trend.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, everything has become so processed, and I believe wholeheartedly that that has led to the amount of uh or the increased amount of cancers and things that we have.
17:04
SPEAKER_02: Our sugar intake is is absurd in this country, and you know, tying that into the the you know uh increases in obesity, and you know, now we combat obesity with injections.
17:19
SPEAKER_02: And you know, I'm very much from a business perspective, I am a see a problem, solve a problem entrepreneur.
17:26
SPEAKER_02: So, and uh it's a gift and a curse.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Those other entrepreneurs go, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about.
17:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I cannot go somewhere.
17:36
SPEAKER_02: I I'll even look at other people's businesses or even go into a restaurant or another retailer or whatever, and I can immediately scan and go, okay, I would fix this and this and that.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: What about this and this and this?
17:45
SPEAKER_02: So see a problem, solve a problem.
17:47
SPEAKER_02: And for me, I was running into so many people.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't just my personal journey.
17:52
SPEAKER_02: You know, I knew what my pain points were, but it wasn't just that.
17:55
SPEAKER_02: It was, you know, seeing other moms and other kids.
17:58
SPEAKER_02: And my daughter's 32 now.
17:59
SPEAKER_02: So so when she was born in in 94, there, I mean, we had Johnson's baby shampoo.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: That was that was it.
18:08
SPEAKER_02: Mr.
18:08
SPEAKER_02: Bubble, you would put Mr.
18:09
SPEAKER_02: Bubble in the back of the round, like, oh my God, we were literally, it's that's the equivalent of what they like armor all car wash, basically.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: It's and it's still out there on the market, but it's a high sulfate uh SLS lathering agent, basically just a giant lathering agent.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: It's the same thing in like same basic ingredient in like Dawn dishwashing soap or that kind of stuff.
18:31
SPEAKER_02: Like it and people don't think about this.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: And if you're buying products in you know lower markets, uh, I you know, I I am happy that there's a lot of more national brands.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: And I know we love talking about my company, but I'm excited with that what I see coming down the pipe now.
18:48
SPEAKER_02: Like, if you look at big box retailers like Target and Walmart, they're carrying more clean brands.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: And if you look at, uh, for example, if you go into say Target and look at their sensitive skincare section, it used to be a couple of shelves and you had your typical players, you had Cetophil, Aveno.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: Now it's a wall.
19:09
SPEAKER_02: It's there's 15 feet of sensitive skincare in there.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a reason for that.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: Why?
19:15
SPEAKER_02: Because the other crap is irritating.
19:17
SPEAKER_02: And the stuff that has, you know, chemic the high chemical content, high fragrance content, you know, our our bodies aren't meant to absorb that kind of stuff.
19:25
SPEAKER_02: And especially when you throw in like processed foods, gut dysbiosis with it, um, you know, our our bodies are just pushing back.
19:32
SPEAKER_02: And and I'm I'm excited to see that there are other brands available there, you know, such such as native.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: You know, there's just a lot more options out there.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: Um, of course, we want everyone to use Naple Soap Company, but you can't get to us, it's nice that we have these, that it's more mainstream and again, not a trend or what we would call a trend.
19:53
SPEAKER_02: It's just not that anywhere.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: No, it's it's absolutely a difference in in thought.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think that my wife and I drilled it into the the you know, our daughters that you know you have to be careful because you know there is a lot of garbage out there.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: And also on what what you're intaking, you know, we don't so so they didn't grow up going to fast food, they didn't grow up with a lot of processed food because I I cook and I actually one daughter's a vegetarian and uh you know we taught her how to cook, and my other daughter loves to cook, and so um it's a lot better, but still, you know, you still have to be aware, and uh so many people aren't.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's an economic problem because sometimes all those great brands are charging more and and you're paying more for for fresher food, and so it's sort of you know uh backwards in a little in a in a different way.
20:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so interesting.
20:51
SPEAKER_02: Um when I got COVID in 2020, I had a very mild case of it in February of uh 2020, and I thought this isn't I didn't even know I had it.
21:01
SPEAKER_02: Like it was like, no, that stuff's killing everyone.
21:03
SPEAKER_02: This is just a minor cold.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: Within a few weeks, I was barely able to swallow.
21:08
SPEAKER_02: I have gone through five years of long COVID treatment.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: Um, I couldn't swallow, I couldn't breathe.
21:14
SPEAKER_02: I went to every specialist under the sun.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: One of the things that happened, so number one, now I have no nutrition.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
21:21
SPEAKER_02: The first thing I did was go to a dietitian.
21:23
SPEAKER_02: I said, I cannot heal my body unless I'm putting nutrition in my body.
21:28
SPEAKER_02: And I need to make sure that I couldn't swallow supplements or anything like that.
21:31
SPEAKER_02: My whole esophagus was just chewed up.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: So that was challenging.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: I lost my voice for eight weeks.
21:37
SPEAKER_02: I was on liquids for about 12 weeks.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: This is a really interesting time in my life.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: And meanwhile, stores being shut down, a lot of stress happening all at the same time.
21:45
SPEAKER_02: So I also uh simultaneously get something called mast cell activation syndrome.
21:50
SPEAKER_02: So my mast cells, my healthy cells are starting to attack other healthy cells.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: So my body is basically kind of short circuited.
21:57
SPEAKER_02: When you have a bad mast cell Outbreak, it I had a rash that made poison ivy look tame from my head all the way on to the bottom of my feet.
22:06
SPEAKER_02: And that was about, I don't know, six weeks of something so incredibly painful.
22:12
SPEAKER_02: And so I but I had to meet it both ways.
22:15
SPEAKER_02: I had to deal with internally and getting my nervous system calmed down and getting the masked cells calmed down with supplements and a whole lot of other treatments, and then treating topically, because when you have a rash like that, like you just want to scratch and itch and do things like that.
22:33
SPEAKER_02: So so that was a really interesting learning curve for me.
22:36
SPEAKER_02: And I had I had had the business, you know, obviously this is just six years ago.
22:40
SPEAKER_02: So we had been around for about 11 years.
22:41
SPEAKER_02: So I thought I knew everything, you know, and I was like, oh no, no, no, this is the universe saying we've got a few things to teach you.
22:49
SPEAKER_02: So it was interesting, but through that experience, um, you know, I I have really come to appreciate that, you know, gut uh combination of you know that that gut body uh connection.
23:03
SPEAKER_02: So I think that I applaud you for raising your children that way.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: And you know, that also that experience has changed the way I eat, it changed my supplements, um, it changed the things that I add into into my daily routine.
23:16
SPEAKER_02: And um, and now I actually belong to a quite a few different groups for mast cell activation and on on social media, I'm in tons of different groups to help people.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: And when I join these groups, if they have serious skincare, I always tell them to DM me because I will send them a free kit, no charge.
23:33
SPEAKER_02: I just hate seeing people suffer.
23:34
SPEAKER_02: I hate seeing them suffer.
23:36
SPEAKER_02: So if they DM me, I will I will just send them an entire kit.
23:39
SPEAKER_02: It's about$80 worth of product.
23:41
SPEAKER_02: And we've shipped stuff to so many people, and we get all kinds of great messages back.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: And we never post any of it.
23:49
SPEAKER_02: We don't do it for the recognition, we do it because we're here to help people.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: It's uh you know, it's interesting about how people's perceptions of of the routine, the skincare routine, the hair care routine has all changed.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: I've seen it change dramatically since over the last 20 years, since we were in the business to to today.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: Um and even when we got into uh shaving after subsequent to to to raw uh raw beauty, we got into I I founded a shaving brand.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: And even then we created a men's, women's shave cream, after shave lotions, things like that.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh a nice lotion-based shave cream.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: And we did it based on what we learned prior.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: And people uh loved it because they would look at the ingredients and there was like six ingredients in the shave cream, and and they thought it was you know phenomenal.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: Same thing for uh for women, because we didn't leave women out, and they were that we got a lot of uh positives about that because uh every there was the pink tax on women shaving and all that.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: And we just we just priced men's and women's shaving almost identical.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: But you know, women were very happy that we created a shave cream that and an aftershave lotion that were all you know very clean.
25:09
SPEAKER_02: Well, the market continues to explode and we we keep developing better and better products and um taking it out to new markets.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, from a business perspective, we're a small publicly traded company on OTCQB.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: We've been public about five years, but um uh you know our goal is to help as many people as possible, but it's you know, people say, oh, well, you you sell soap, that's really cute.
25:32
SPEAKER_02: And it's a little patronizing.
25:33
SPEAKER_02: And I said, no, we actually help a lot of people.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: We consider ourselves a lifestyle, health, and wellness brand.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: And we also do almost$13 million a year, and our average order value is$50.
25:46
SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of transactions.
25:48
SPEAKER_02: We've got a ton of customers, and once they purchase from us, they continue to purchase.
25:53
SPEAKER_02: Our repeat on our sensitive skin and fragrance free is off the charts.
25:56
SPEAKER_02: And our LTV for a customer uh, our LTV is over$580.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's so yeah, it speaks volumes to so we don't mind a little higher CAC on the front side because we know what our LTV is on the back side for our marketing.
26:12
SPEAKER_02: Um, but we just have it's been a phenomenal journey, just really being mission-driven and um being able to expand the retail footprint and get people in.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: And you know, people ask, oh, what's your ideal customer base?
26:25
SPEAKER_02: Because they want to pin you into.
26:27
SPEAKER_02: I said, Oh, let's talk about this two ways.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: Number one, who are we actually helping?
26:34
SPEAKER_02: Okay, who is my ideal customer?
26:36
SPEAKER_02: My ideal user.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about the ideal user.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: My ideal user is babies to 80s.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
26:43
SPEAKER_02: So I've got babies that have eczema, I've got people in their 80s that have compromised skin.
26:48
SPEAKER_02: So my market, my addressable market is, you know, it's a very wide range.
26:53
SPEAKER_02: Who's spending the money?
26:54
SPEAKER_02: Females 35 to 65.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was just gonna say completely different things.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: So it so from a business perspective, tying those two messages together, you know, we I think we've done a really good job of creating like ideal customer profiles for our marketing.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we're using a lot of AI right now, and we've got all of those ICPs created, but really it's always problem solution oriented, which, you know, that's the biggest thing that I piece of advice I give to entrepreneurs.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: They're like, tell me, you know, what's the secret sauce?
27:25
SPEAKER_02: I said, solve a problem.
27:27
SPEAKER_02: Tell people how you're gonna help their life and how you're gonna, whatever your gadget widget service is, how is this gonna make their life better?
27:35
SPEAKER_02: How are you gonna improve it?
27:36
SPEAKER_02: And then and you're winning every time, and you don't really have to sell.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: So how are you using AI in your business?
27:44
SPEAKER_00: Aside from writing emails and algorithms and all that.
27:48
SPEAKER_02: No, that's that that's so last year.
27:53
SPEAKER_02: We um interestingly enough, we I am a I am in tech geek.
28:00
SPEAKER_02: I had an internet service provider back in the late 90s.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: Like I love technology and I love um e-commerce and AI.
28:08
SPEAKER_02: Last year we were using chat for you know, some images, certain things, emails, polish this up, write this brief, that kind of stuff.
28:17
SPEAKER_02: And then um as of January this year, I went to a huge CEO conference and came back and I looked at my staff and I said, All right, everyone's using Claude.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: I go, you're all done, you're all done on chat.
28:29
SPEAKER_02: I said, you can use both, but this is gonna so and they were like, Who is Claude?
28:33
SPEAKER_02: What we don't know who this person is.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: I go, no, no, no, you're gonna get very familiar.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: So we my team is phenomenal.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: They have quickly adapted.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: Um, we have we've got Claude and and co-work, everything is all integrated.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: Um, any processes that we could utilize internally, we're using it to create decks for investor relations presentations, um such a wide range of things.
29:00
SPEAKER_02: It used to take us, you know, we've presented at the National Investment Bankers Association twice.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: It used to take us weeks to get a deck done.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: And you'd have to send it over to graphic design and then bring it back in.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: Now I polish it out in three days.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: So everything from investor relations decks to um we have AI automated on Acumatica, which is our warehouse ERP.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: So we're getting forecasting done with with AI.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: Um, we just utilize Quad to rewrite our entire operations binders and our training binders, and now we're using it to create an app, a training app for that.
29:39
SPEAKER_02: Um we have utilized Notion to create a marketing agent.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: Her name is Laurel.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: And so uh Laurel is tied into our Monday board.
29:52
SPEAKER_02: She looks at what our promotions are coming up, and she generates about 50 pieces of content every Monday for whatever our upcoming.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: We have a window for her.
30:01
SPEAKER_02: So she generates all of our social posts, all um any of our static images that are needed for emails, things like that, um, and then some and goes many layers deep.
30:11
SPEAKER_02: And she'll even create the the posts, the captions, and all that.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: So we have a brand new person who is a marketing intern that is now we've hired her since she graduated.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: So she is she's Laurel's best friend and boss.
30:25
SPEAKER_02: So, and Laurel does whatever we ask her to do, no complaint.
30:29
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, you name it.
30:30
SPEAKER_02: We we we run the gamut on AI.
30:32
SPEAKER_02: We have we have Fast and Furious integrated, but you know, there's a lot of companies that are like, we're using AI, but they're just generating a lot of AI slop.
30:40
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of words and things out there, and I like to keep AI as small and simple as possible.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm a huge fan of the one pager.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, give me a one-page summary of this, like give me one page because AI will spit out, you know, 12 pages of something, and I don't need 12 pages of it because as a busy CEO, I'm not gonna read 12 pages of it.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:01
SPEAKER_02: So so I try not to go AI overkill.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: I try to really uh and we do, I think we do a phenomenal job operationally.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: We are just one of the most well-run companies operationally that you'll ever see.
31:15
SPEAKER_02: So we we've really embraced it.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: I agree with you.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we started using AI, well, the LLMs and things like that, you know, six, seven years ago.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And then the when we got agentic, which was about three years ago, we uh we started to build agents because we have an we have an agency.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: And we actually build agents to do SEO, we build agents to be deployed, to do social, to do you know ads.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: The biggest place, the biggest benefit that I've ever seen for AI is in just the analysis and structure of ads because it saved us so much time uh and saves our clients money.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: I don't agree with making predominantly our core customer base is consumer products.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, personal care, beauty, and uh and food.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: And we don't let it create the content.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: We let it uh we let it create the the posts and the descriptions and things like that, but not the images, because we create a bank, keep it in a uh keep it in folders, and then we let AI use the real images and real videos to create it.
32:29
SPEAKER_02: Yep, that's what we do.
32:30
SPEAKER_02: We have we have our we have our asset gallery here.
32:34
SPEAKER_02: Here you go, you can utilize this, but we also uh you know, she'll jump out and do competitive scrapes and come back.
32:42
SPEAKER_02: And so the analytics are phenomenal.
32:45
SPEAKER_02: It's really cool.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: But it but it has launched our businesses into like warp speed.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh our business is moving so fast, my head spins sometimes.
32:55
SPEAKER_02: And as an entrepreneur, like I I always want to be ahead, and then I feel like, oh, I'm sliding behind.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: I want to be ahead.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, I'm sliding behind.
33:03
SPEAKER_02: But I I realize now there's no way we can keep up with it.
33:05
SPEAKER_02: It's it's outpacing and out thinking us so fast.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's true, but you said I can out-strategize my comp competitors, okay by using I will tell you from what we see, and we deal with a lot of clients and a lot of companies, and between that and talking to people and entrepreneur groups and things like that, I can tell you that 90% of the the founders and the the business managers, CEOs, whatever you want to call them, don't have a clue how to use it correctly.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: Right.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: And they think that writing an email, having it tapped onto their email so they can, you know, correct the email correctly or writing copy, that is just not even scratching the surface.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: That's six-year-old stuff.
33:50
SPEAKER_02: But you know, yeah.
33:52
SPEAKER_02: I I actually don't know when if I get something that's like overly AI, uh, this here's the funny part.
33:57
SPEAKER_02: Do you know where it's the worst?
33:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh this is like a personal thing because I'm single.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: It's on the dating apps, it's horrifying.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, I don't know.
34:06
SPEAKER_02: Do you have an original thought?
34:08
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's so it's terrible.
34:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm just revealing way too personal information, but that's the worst use that I've seen of AI because it all sounds like cheesy like 80s pickup lines and stuff.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, come on, did you not read this?
34:23
SPEAKER_02: Like, I like sunset, fun, sun, and pun.
34:26
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, this is why, why would you put this on your profile?
34:31
SPEAKER_02: If I get an email that's excessively AI, if my staff sends me something that's like too, I call it AI overkill or AI slop, I'm like, I just kick it out.
34:39
SPEAKER_02: I kick it out.
34:40
SPEAKER_02: I go, I I still need the human in the loop.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: I need the human in the loop.
34:44
SPEAKER_02: I want to know that you actually read, understood, and are actually this whatever is being fed to us has an executable reality to it, not just, you know, because some of this stuff is like grandiose, and you're like, yeah, that sounds great, but it's not applicable to my particular business.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: Like get solid with your prompts, get tight with what you're asking for and super specific.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's part of the problem, is that so many people don't know how to write a prompt to save their life.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: And they get back garbage, and then they go, you know, oh, it didn't give us.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's amazing to me.
35:18
SPEAKER_02: You're asking the wrong questions.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: You're asking it the wrong question, or you're giving it the answer you want, and then it gives you the answer back, and then you go, see, you know, AI just gave me what I said.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's a terrible prompt.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Let me rewrite it for you.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we have one this goes back to something you said earlier about problem solution.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: And we we were hired about two years ago for this company that thinks they have innovative technology for the in the shaving world.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: And you know, we sat down with them the first time and said, Look, you know, there what's the problem you're solving?
35:53
SPEAKER_00: And they just made something up.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: And I go, Well, that's not a problem.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Like, what's the what's the problem you're solving?
35:59
SPEAKER_00: You you just made that up and created the problem.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: But does that problem really exist?
36:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, I studied the shaving category.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that problem.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: So what's the problem you're solving?
36:09
SPEAKER_00: And they get frustrated because you keep asking them over and over again, say, look, I can't do my job.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, my folks can't do their job and and come up with your marketing plan if I don't know what problem we're solving, right?
36:21
SPEAKER_00: And then they had one guy who went into ChatGPT and and basically said, you know, da-da-da-da.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: And it spit out and said, Here, see, ChatGPT agrees that this is a problem.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: And I looked at it and I said, Let me rewrite the prompt for you the correct way.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know, and I did it, and it came out and said exactly what I said, which is, you know, we don't see that problem being prevalent.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: And so they they sort of had to go back.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: And then we they launched the product and it was just a disaster.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: The first like because it was nothing was happening.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: And I said, look, you're just gonna spend money and you're gonna spin your wheels.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: And and after like three months, the founder said, you know, okay, we gotta stop.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: And then they brought it back to to to really look at what they sold and what problem they were trying to solve.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: And then he realized, well, we have to rework the product because the product really doesn't solve the the real problem, right?
37:13
SPEAKER_00: I said, Look, every guy out there will buy a new razor.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: Everyone, I I don't know a guy that does not own three or four or five razors.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: Right.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, but each one it they they have a hope that it's gonna solve a problem.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: So you either have a sensitive skin problem, or you know, you're not getting a close enough shave, or it's not an on-the-go shave, or whatever it is.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
37:35
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's a time constraint.
37:36
SPEAKER_02: You want to do an electric shave, and then other times you want to do a closer shave with a blade.
37:40
SPEAKER_02: Like there's yeah, there's a lot of different nuances to to grooming.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, finally we got them to to see the light, so to speak, but it took almost a year.
37:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's funny.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: I tell I tell the staff, I'm like, don't be lazy with AI.
37:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, you cannot, this is uh, I do not want it, and I will not accept it.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: I said it's a beautiful tool, but if you're lazy with it and you're using it as like a shortcut for for the human in the loop, actual thinking and and and uh problem solving and contribution, that's just lazy.
38:11
SPEAKER_02: And I don't accept it.
38:13
SPEAKER_02: You know, I think it's a phenomenal tool.
38:14
SPEAKER_02: We use it to run a ton of analytic reports and even like executive summaries on contracts and things like that, like you know, pulling out salient points, it saves me a tremendous amount of time.
38:24
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, you have to be very careful because I, you know, in the next few years, it's gonna be interesting to see like the brands, you know, because we are CPG.
38:32
SPEAKER_02: I love building brands.
38:33
SPEAKER_02: We have three different brands under Naples Soap Company.
38:36
SPEAKER_02: We have Celeste, we have Grow Beauty, and we have Naples Soap Company.
38:39
SPEAKER_02: So I love building brands, but um there I'm seeing a lot of brands now that are falling victim to too much AI imagery or too much um AI uh, you know, copy and slo out out there.
38:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, okay, yeah, you're saving money, but how is your conversion?
38:57
SPEAKER_02: How is how is your engagement on social?
39:00
SPEAKER_02: Like, are you sacrificing because people are getting numb to some of this stuff, just like me.
39:04
SPEAKER_02: If I get a big AI email or an AI profile, a dating profile, whatever, I I just delete it.
39:09
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, that I don't I don't care because this is coming out of nowhere.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's the problem, right?
39:15
SPEAKER_00: You can't say that's why we don't use uh AI-generated images and videos, because you can't say to the consumer, we're authentic.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: You can't say to the consumer, buy us, you know, we're solving this problem and we're authentic, but then you shove an inauthentic image at them.
39:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is failed.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: You just can't do it.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: And you have to be careful about how you word things, even if you're gonna use AI to come up with your descriptions and your and your headlines and things like that, somebody's gotta look at it and say, okay, I agree, and or change a word, change this and that.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: You can't just do it.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: And and the minute you start allowing the uh M dashes, then you know everybody knows.
39:56
SPEAKER_02: Terrible.
39:57
SPEAKER_02: And I will actually give it the prompt, make it not sound like AI.
40:00
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's terrible.
40:01
SPEAKER_02: Like, make it not sound like AI.
40:04
SPEAKER_02: And then I will even ask Claude, I'm like, challenge me on this.
40:06
SPEAKER_02: This is my idea, da da da.
40:08
SPEAKER_02: Tell me the opposite, prove this untrue.
40:11
SPEAKER_02: Give me all the opposite points.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: You know, I I want it to make me think.
40:16
SPEAKER_02: I don't want it to make me lazy and not think.
40:18
SPEAKER_02: And that's, you know, and I think I've I have reiterated that with my staff, and they are using it in the same way because they're pushing it, they're pushing the envelope, not just going, look what we did.
40:29
SPEAKER_02: Hey, we got this data, but then we drilled down on it and and we saw this and this, and then we added five more layers onto it.
40:36
SPEAKER_02: So, so using it, you know, from for some good foundational work, but doing the work on top of it.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: One last discussion point, and maybe you can't talk about it, maybe you can, but why would you why would you take it public on the uh on the uh OTC uh sure?
40:54
SPEAKER_02: Um, so we did a reverse merger into a pink sheet company.
40:58
SPEAKER_02: Um, we had a consultant that had suggested that was a good way for us to raise money.
41:03
SPEAKER_02: Um we so backing up, number one, all of our numbers are public, so the information I'm giving you right now is public info.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: So we came out of COVID smelling like a rose, no pun intended.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: But I decided to make hand sanitizer in the very beginning.
41:22
SPEAKER_02: In 2020, I had gone on a cruise to Antarctica, came back, and I had been getting all the all the news from Europe, and I was like, oh my god, Italy's on fire.
41:32
SPEAKER_02: This is getting crazy.
41:33
SPEAKER_02: And they were talking about the shortages of cleaning product and sanitizers and all that in Europe.
41:38
SPEAKER_02: And I so I got home, and uh before I got sick, and even during getting sick, um, we made hand sanitizers.
41:46
SPEAKER_02: So, so we for two years in a row, we were very profitable.
41:54
SPEAKER_02: And we had this opportunity to go into a pink sheet company with the idea that it was a good way to raise funds.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: We had a 25-store plan to get us to$25 million, and then, which is something we haven't even touched on, forget COVID, in 2022, we had this black swan event called Hurricane Ian.
42:18
SPEAKER_02: We were ground zero for Hurricane Ian.
42:21
SPEAKER_02: It pushed four to six feet of water through 40% of our operations.
42:26
SPEAKER_02: So we had 10 stores open at that at that time.
42:29
SPEAKER_02: And we, I mean, it was just in the Southwest Florida region, it was apocalyptic.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: I mean, no one was spared.
42:37
SPEAKER_02: Water spares no one.
42:38
SPEAKER_02: And you know, in Florida, we've been used to hurricanes with wind damage, that kind of stuff.
42:43
SPEAKER_02: But we've never, we never, I'm a native Floridian, never in my life have I ever seen the epic flooding that happened.
42:50
SPEAKER_02: So that was a big game changer for us.
42:53
SPEAKER_02: So we were on a trajectory, 25 million, then we're gonna do an up list.
42:58
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I'm always MA minded, so I am always growth-minded, you know, like, hey, we can do some MA and we can increase our revs, and we've got an up list strategy.
43:10
SPEAKER_02: We have a phenomenal um investor relations team that works with us on all this.
43:13
SPEAKER_02: Like I said, we've we've presented at NEBA twice.
43:16
SPEAKER_02: Um, and Hanover International is our IR team, and they we have a plan, you know, we're our plan is public, it's published, you know, and we continue to work towards that plan.
43:27
SPEAKER_02: Um, so we had some setbacks in 22.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: What happened is that we have a six-store concentration in South Florida, and so it has taken three years for economically the tourism to return.
43:40
SPEAKER_02: We are seeing, thanks to FIFA this summer, we're seeing a lot of the um uh European tourists come back.
43:47
SPEAKER_02: We had a great summer here, and um so you know, we're on a path.
43:52
SPEAKER_02: We're on a mission, and we're going to continue on that mission.
43:56
SPEAKER_02: But you know, sometimes you just get something that happens and It's not what happens to you, it's what you do with it.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: So you're you know, we had COVID and then we had a hurricane, a massive hurricane back to back.
44:06
SPEAKER_02: So we have a pretty resilient team here, and we've still continued to maintain top line revenue in uh you know through other sales channels because we have the 13 brick and mortar stores, we have uh wholesale division, we have our e-commerce um, and then we have our corporate gifting division.
44:23
SPEAKER_02: So we've just focused on you know the other channels, expanding the other channels with wholesale and e-com, which we've been doing um quite steadily it, you know, in a you know, 10 to 15 percent year over year in the last few years.
44:36
SPEAKER_02: So we're working on it, Phil.
44:38
SPEAKER_02: We're working on it.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's good.
44:41
SPEAKER_02: I am a girl with a plan.
44:42
SPEAKER_02: I am always a girl with a plan.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: It's it's funny when you you were talking about, you know, when you were on a your cruise in Antarctica and you heard you started hearing stories.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: My wife is uh SVP at a senior living company and they have uh uh places all up and down uh the east coast.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: But anyway.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: And she she came home one day and she said, you know, this was like in January.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: She said, you know, it's gonna get bad.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: We need to start we need to start thinking about it.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: I was like, what do you mean?
45:10
SPEAKER_00: She said, We need to start stocking up.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be shortages of things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: She said, you know, and and we're starting to take action on the senior living side.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: So I immediately got uh a second fridge in the in the garage, and then I started stocking it up, and then I got a freezer and I started signing up, and then I got like all the toilet paper.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: We need all the started bringing in right toilet paper, paper towels, everything.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: And the whole I I took one side of the garage and just loaded it up, and my my children were just looking at me like I was a maniac, and and then it hit, and my wife was not wrong.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, things were happening, the grocery stores had problems, it was it was rough.
45:51
SPEAKER_02: Florida shut down and talk about resiliency.
45:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we uh I really could write a book.
45:56
SPEAKER_02: This is it's we've been through so much.
45:59
SPEAKER_02: I I've had multiple articles written about my crisis management skills, and there's one reporter from the Business Observer here that loves to write about me.
46:07
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, Mark, you know what?
46:08
SPEAKER_02: If we can just not write about my crisis management skills anymore, that would be great.
46:13
SPEAKER_02: Because every time you and I talk, there's been some major disaster.
46:16
SPEAKER_02: And he goes, but you're so good at this.
46:18
SPEAKER_02: And I go, Well, not by choice is because we're survivors and you got to figure it out and rapid, you know, rapid problem solve.
46:25
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we went from during COVID, uh, you know, Florida shut down.
46:30
SPEAKER_02: We were kind of last to shut down and first to reopen, which is why everybody on the planet moved here.
46:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, but creating the hand sanitizer was a huge pivot for us, but we were also able to keep our warehouse operations open because we were selling soap and cleaning products.
46:46
SPEAKER_02: So, but we didn't really realize this.
46:48
SPEAKER_02: There were so many like things that no one knew.
46:52
SPEAKER_02: Like we would be on the phone with HR attorneys and saying, we need policy, we need that, and they didn't know any better than my HR director.
46:59
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, guys, I'm hanging up.
47:01
SPEAKER_02: There's four of you on the call, you're billing me by the hour, and you don't have any more answers than this.
47:06
SPEAKER_02: But making the hand sanitizer was a big pivot for us, uh, which we did for quite a while.
47:11
SPEAKER_02: We had the sheriff's department pulling up with squad cars, and we would just give it to them.
47:17
SPEAKER_02: We would just literally load up trunks full for the officers that were out on the on the uh road.
47:23
SPEAKER_02: But we had let the staff go home and a lot of people wouldn't come to work.
47:28
SPEAKER_02: So now we've got a warehouse, we've got to run people six feet apart on a line, okay, on pick and pack.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: Six feet on pick and pack is like you might as well be a mile.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: Right.
47:38
SPEAKER_02: It might as well be a mile.
47:39
SPEAKER_02: But our orders went up to like Black Friday numbers every day for about 10 weeks.
47:46
SPEAKER_02: So we have Black Friday one day a year, and we start prepping months in advance for that.
47:51
SPEAKER_02: Now I've got Black Friday numbers every single day.
47:54
SPEAKER_02: I don't have enough staff and I damn sure don't have enough inventory.
47:58
SPEAKER_02: And we are just trying to get manufacturing in.
48:00
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, we we were scrambling.
48:02
SPEAKER_02: We were scrambling, but but we're fortunate, like we kept going while everything was closed down, so the warehouse kept running.
48:09
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, that those are the types of things that, you know, when the hurricane came, my staff knows, okay, I mean, I like to think that they have confidence in their leader because we definitely navigated some very, very interesting and tricky times, just like uh all business owners did.
48:26
SPEAKER_02: But, you know, to go from like, okay, we're we're at normal speed, we're at zero, and now we've got to go back to like warp speed in this short time frame.
48:37
SPEAKER_02: It was it was interesting to say the least.
48:40
SPEAKER_02: But you're smart, you know.
48:41
SPEAKER_02: If you're listening to the news and your wife was smart too, we did the same thing, just had to start getting ready.
48:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, unfortunately, we're out of time.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: We went a little bit over, but that's okay.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, so just how can people get in touch with with you or how can people buy your products?
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Where can they find your products if they're not in Florida and they're everywhere?
49:00
SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Phil.
49:01
SPEAKER_02: Uh, Naplessoap.com, N-A-P-L-E-S-S-O-A-P dot com.
49:06
SPEAKER_02: Uh over 500 products are on that page.
49:08
SPEAKER_02: The sensitive skin products are on there as well.
49:11
SPEAKER_02: And um, we ship all over the US.
49:13
SPEAKER_02: So you can order there.
49:15
SPEAKER_02: There's there's a store locator.
49:16
SPEAKER_02: If you are in Florida, there's a store locator there.
49:18
SPEAKER_02: We've got an 800-mile footprint on those 13 stores and also on all the socials.
49:23
SPEAKER_02: You can find us on every social channel possible.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: Great.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: I I thought it was a great conversation.
49:30
SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed talking to you.
49:32
SPEAKER_00: I really enjoy your uh your enthusiasm and your and the way that your mind works.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: And uh we're in alignment on a lot of things, which is uh a great thing.
49:40
SPEAKER_02: So great talking to you.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time and coming on.
49:44
SPEAKER_00: So thank you again.
49:45
SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it.
49:46
SPEAKER_02: Take care.