Transcript
Speaker: Hi, Susan. Hello. ho Thank you so much for doing this episode. i was really looking forward to get to speak with you. For anyone who doesn't know you, can you say who you are and what you do? My name is Susan Griffin-Black, and I'm the founder and co-CEO of EO Products.
Speaker: And we have two essential oil-based products. brand in the personal care section of mostly natural food stores and Amazon. One is called EO and the other one is called Everyone for Everybody.
Speaker: I have a lot of questions for you about your day-to-day, your role as a founder and the work you're doing now. But what was your career journey up until then? What led you to found your company and what were you doing until you got started? I was a clothing buyer, designer, merchandiser. My last gig was with Esprit and I worked for both founders actually. First, Doug Tompkins and then after Susie bought the company,
Speaker: Susie Tompkins-Bule. And that was back in 1991. And through that experience, the sort of portal opened, especially when Doug was there, about the energy and resources used to make things. And we were specifically looking at cotton, how it's grown and processed, and made very early in decisions to try to make products with organic cotton.
Speaker: But what it opened me up to is the idea of the experience, like on the street of life experience, of interdependence and how what we do over here has such a ripple out to so many things and so many people.
Speaker: And I became very aware of The harm that the clothing companies that I had worked with and in for years were not even tracking that.
Speaker: I've always been a product person. It led me into exploring personal care. And when I was in London, i think in 91, 92, I started. i was in Covent Garden, looked straight ahead. There was this natural apothecary.
Speaker: You could go to the acupuncturist or homeopath on the top floor, come down and get your prescriptions filled. And I walked into this small shop and the light turned gold and I picked up this bottle of lavender essential oil. And I was like, okay, this is what I want to do because the smell was so beautiful.
Speaker: And such a contrast to at the time, the first floor at Bloomingdale's or Pier 1 Candles or just being bombarded by that spritzer. It just felt so connected biologically and physiologically to nature and goodness, really.
Speaker: And something I really wanted to learn more about, which I took a cosmetic chemistry course and aromatherapy courses and really learned how to formulate and really learned about the sort of essence of each essential oil by studying.
Speaker: And it was a very intuitive relationship that I had and then started making things. So we launched EO as a private label project for Bloomingdale's Holiday Catalog in 1995 and just kept going.
Speaker: When you were younger, did you always plan to work in fashion or how did you move into those first early roles? I always worked in retail and I was naturally good at it from the time I was like 15 or 16 and had a really good sense of style.
Speaker: and color, finished school with a BA in liberal arts and moved to New York and just started working for a clothing company and kept going and then moved to San Francisco and Had a couple of retail stores, worked for Esprit, helped my dear friend Margaret O'Leary start her company, and then ventured off into formulating these products and getting them into the marketplace.
Speaker: So i think I've always been a product person and also vision person in terms of trending and the how and why. And I wish I would have studied anthropology, I think.
Speaker: I noticed when I was just doing a little research ahead of this conversation, in a lot of the photos, you're wearing a really similar outfit to what you're wearing right now, like a white shirt with like maybe a black jacket or blazer. Do you feel like you have a very signature personal aesthetic in that way, or is that just maybe a coincidence? No, it is very much that with the little leopard boots that you can't see. There's always a little twist there somewhere. a self-expression sort of, but I like, yes, beautiful fabrics and I'm a minimalist.
Speaker: When you talk about vision, well, now essential oils, everyone knows what that is. Probably a lot of folks have experimented or perhaps become interested in them, but what was the mainstream understanding and interest of them back in 1995? I think Aura Acacia was the premier essential oil company in natural food stores.
Speaker: And i think that was started in the late seventies, early eighties, and then Frontier, co-op bought them in maybe the late 80s, early 90s.
Speaker: So they had already established what essential oils are for the natural foods market with very credible product and quality and so forth.
Speaker: And then it picked up steam, really. We had the good fortune of being part of the natural products industry, more so in its childhood, not quite infancy. And when we started EO, Whole Foods, I think had 40 stores.
Speaker: When I had a problem with the buyer, we couldn't get together on something. I could call the president of Whole Foods and say, can you help me? This is my cost of goods. Would you do this if you were me? How can we afford six free? That's just not possible. And he'd be like coaching me and saying, you tell Doug, the buyer, that you're a small company. Here's my costs.
Speaker: We're a principal trading partner. And no, I can't do that. I can only do three. So we joined up with and had access to the best of the best in that community.
Speaker: And a lot of love and support still. 31 years later, i was at the trade show. It's the time I get to see people I normally wouldn't see once a year, which is why we still go, because I feel very much a part of that community.
Speaker: And also get to see folks and their kids and kids. sometimes their grandkids. And it's just a very beautiful continuation of something so positive that was started with so much heart and meaning.
Speaker: What were the first few years like for you as you launched and got the company off the ground? Pretty impossible. we were making things by hand. And then our other co-founder and co-CEO at the time we were married and we haven't been married for over 15 years, but we still run the company together and do a really fine job at being family and co-parents. But he was the one who was like, you can't do 10,000 of these private label
Speaker: products for Birkenstock by hand, you have to gravity feed, right? So he had made gravity feed and slowly we started working together and had the very beginnings of very rough, how to make things and how to make more of things.
Speaker: And we had one contract manufacturer who used to do lotions. So basically what we found is we could do small quantities of things that didn't require heat or emulsion ourselves. Right.
Speaker: And then we had to find sources for other things. But then we found that the way people were making things is not the way we wanted to make things ingredient wise.
Speaker: So then we had to find green chemists from different places that didn't really exist. People didn't like working with essential oils because they're so finicky.
Speaker: and they much preferred synthetic fragrance and it was way less expensive. So through fits and starts, we would find people to formulate different things and kept going.
Speaker: And we bought a very rundown contract manufacturer in 1999, which gave us some access to equipment and filling lines. And they had a few private label clients that we did projects for.
Speaker: and eventually, today we have three buildings. We manufacture in San Rochelle in an old ILM building. where parts of Star Wars and pirates were shot. And it was this building where when we first saw it, it's like there's more power and electricity in this building than any other building in Marin.
Speaker: But that was why. And just to have the honor of working with all that past and created Juju and yeah everything and just been really great.
Speaker: So we've been there for a little more than 10 years. Wow, I appreciate that. And thanks for the detail on that and having conversations with a lot of founders. One thing that is a pattern I really love is almost everyone talks about how the first stretch was figuring things out and solving problems as they arose. And I think sometimes there's an idea that you have to have a perfect plan and a perfect idea before you get started. But it seems like everyone is always figuring it out as they grow and evolving for the most part.
Speaker: Yes, because the best laid plans, we make them, but then you see what actually happens. I know it's hard to say an average day in your life, but what is a day in your life like now, more than 30 years later? It's still very actively involved in the creative process of how we do things and the why behind launching products, what those products are, and evolving our communication to our customers.
Speaker: Very much a part of the creative process. brand and product process, and then also finance and future looking. Most of my friends and most of our sort of colleagues have sold.
Speaker: So us, Bronner's, Alaffia's looping back around are the sort of last ones standing. And then there's a whole new great crop of people doing things.
Speaker: Even in the sanitizer business, right? Clorox just bought Gojo. Everything is very much tied up with the big guys. I think we're a heritage brand now with Whole Foods and in the natural market and of course branching off into Conventional and a lot of business with Amazon and Thrive and iHerb.
Speaker: So my day consists of pretty much whatever the company needs me to do. And then a lot of contact with our executive team.
Speaker: Brad and I meet with each person weekly and are very much in the loop. And then we all meet together weekly. And then there's a lot of prep for that and also getting up to speed. And for me, what's happening on the creative side and the product calendar side and so forth. And then product lifecycle.
Speaker: We also have really been working on business intelligence and incorporating ai And are in the process of doing our own AI bot now for product and for the company, really.
Speaker: So that's been a big endeavor. And then what I've noticed about AI is... If my son uses AI to solve a problem and to ask questions about something that he doesn't know anything about, he thinks everything that AI is saying is true.
Speaker: and if I ask questions about something I know about, i would say it's an incredible tool. It just shortens the distance to have everything in one place and to be in that conversation, but then I have different discernment because I know a lot about what I'm talking about. yeah So i think for everyone across the goodness and the credibility of the tool as it stands now, and I'm not talking about the far-reaching consequences for humanity, I'm just talking about today as it is,
Speaker: It's an incredible tool and it still takes discretion and oversight. And what I imagine is being able to maybe do more with less people, but not reducing the headcount that we have.
Speaker: It just informs how we go forward with new hires and for what. So that hopefully what we're trying to do is allow people to be more creative, more engaged, and to learn as we go how to process this change with this tool.
Speaker: That's interesting. For some reason, I didn't expect AI to come up on this conversation, but I really agree, of course, I hear you on the discernment side of it and also what you're pointing out around when you're an expert engaging with it, the discernment that one can bring compared to if you just type in a quick health query or something and presume it's all correct.
Speaker: When you say a bot, and if you don't want to say that that's totally fine, is it a quad project, a chat GPT project, or more of AI agents working across a variety of platforms to pull info and synthesize? It is a cloud project and in the making.
Speaker: And I'll be able to tell you more about it it when it's actualized because it's just about to launch. So this question about really what does email do?
Speaker: What does Instagram do? What does social connectivity mean now, TikTok? And then once it's embedded in AI, I'm a big fan of black boots.
Speaker: So over the many years, like if I said, okay, given Charentini Baker, the roe datter up show me the 10 best black boots in this price range, in this size with these finishes. And will I be able to do that and then buy it?
Speaker: Well, yeah. Right? So how is that going to go? And do all roads lead to Amazon? Are they going to be able to just hook you up with the company wherever it is in the world and it's distributed that way? So then if that's true, then what happens to Instagram and what happens to all of these other sort of channels.
Speaker: And Reddit seems to be lively with discussion and a lot of like-minded people coming together. So part of it's community and like find your tribe.
Speaker: And then the other part of it is community. Condensing all of the information so quickly that you can make a decision about something in so much less time.
Speaker: And then where does that leave brick and mortar? And I think it's hard to say. i always look for where that retail buzz is in my travels. It's definitely at Air One.
Speaker: It's definitely at Happier Grocer in New York. And where else? The Gap picking up a little bit. That is so interesting. And I feel like I'm going to be thinking about that a bit. Around some things with AI, like a month ago maybe, did you watch that love story that Carolyn just said? Of course. And everybody's talking about her and I like fell down the substack rabbit hole. But I started to get really annoyed because...
Speaker: I noticed that so many of these sub stacks that I'd Googled and come across to dig into basically her clothes and style were AI written. And i could just tell because I feel like since Medberry is in content, it's something I'm able to pick up on. And it was interesting because initially I'd had thoughts around maybe platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Substack, where in theory, the fact that it's a personal connection or it's content from a person would mean that it's somewhat, and don't know if protected is the right word, but somewhere that AI would be maybe less prevalent because the intention is specifically to connect. And yeah.
Speaker: I felt like it was a lot of AI swill to get you to links to a trench coat or like the perfect white tee that she might've worn, something like that, which is adjacent to what you're saying. That's very interesting. It's funny. I'd imagine that like 31 years ago when you started, everything was so different and probably the industry and what you need to pay attention to and be present around has probably evolved over and over again. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Over 31 years, did you ever have any moment where you didn't feel interested or you didn't feel you're bored with it? My brother-in-law, is an yeah ER doc and a nerd, built us our first website in, don't know, it's 97, 98, something like that. And then I just remember in like 99 drugstore.com and healthshop.com and all these, you know, and they were ordering like crazy. And I was like, are they ordering to forecast or real? It was so opaque.
Speaker: And I knew one of these guys who had been at Whole Foods and I was asking him, he's like, oh no, we have a very practical handle on. And then there was sort of the bust. And then they didn't at all. And they were selling off products all over the place. However, it was like, there's that part of it, the logistical distribution, what happens there?
Speaker: And then there's this part of it, which is, I'll wake up in the morning and think, oh, lemon and coconut. That sounds good. Let's just go into the lab and see if we can make something lemon and coconut.
Speaker: And walking around the company, seeing how people responded, and then yeah saying, yeah, let's put this on the product calendar or whatever. And now it's like...
Speaker: the data that must be consumed in order to make that decision and point us in the right direction and so forth. It's quite different. And that goes for everything. And when Whole Foods sold to Amazon in 2017,
Speaker: I thought, are we done? Because I don't want to learn all this. This would be a really good time to sell to whomever wants to understand the algorithm. yeah And we went out on a sort of informational, met with some of the big guys and private equity and stuff.
Speaker: decided nothing really worked that we felt good about. So we just kept going and learned and found people to teach us and found people who could do it better than we could and just kept going.
Speaker: But it is a very different experience. landscape in some ways. And then in other ways, people really have to buy the product, like the product and repurchase the product for it to determine success over time, right? So that part of it isn't different.
Speaker: 10 minutes ago, you were saying that one thing you think about is how you communicate to your clients. Can you say more about that? Are you thinking like social and email or is it beyond that? I think that we always made products that we wanted for ourselves, our friends, families, community, and rippled out from there.
Speaker: We're much more makers than marketers. So we've never adhered to a very conventional approach or had the resources. Also just a word about that. We are privately held and we never took private equity money or any kind of institutional money. So a few very patient angel investors and bank debt because it really integrated with our values.
Speaker: So all of this to say marketing And dollars on marketing, it's like, are we going to get that new piece of equipment or are we going to spend a whole bunch of money on something we don't know much about with an indeterminate return? yeah So we've always erred on the very practical side of we're investing back into what we know.
Speaker: We're still on the hockey stick with everyone. And that was in 2012, but EO has just plodded along. But it's as sticky as it ever was and just has slowly grown.
Speaker: We've got two very different brands and the Everyone brand was designed for everyone. Can we take the same methodology and choose the essential oils that are less expensive but still make high quality integrity product available that's healthier and better for you and the planet kind of thing?
Speaker: It seems like you've been values focused the whole time or that when thinking of whether to sell, to take private equity, how to approach the product, do you feel like that's why it's been so successful? Or is there advice that you'd give to other folks who are in a similar product space?
Speaker: Because I would imagine that at times you've gone against what would have been like the traditional path toward just selling and making money. Yeah. I talked to so many people who have sold over the years in our space and They have the money, but the purpose and meaning are not the same.
Speaker: And so some of them are on a lot of boards, but that's annoying because you're not the boss. Some of them go on to do a second venture. Some of them are in real estate.
Speaker: Some of them are traveling. But there's a very consistent thread of transition or lostness. And I still wonder this for myself, like Meryl Streep's still working at 70. You know what I mean? Like... What is this notion that you get the money and then you live the life that you want? Shouldn't you be living the life that you want now, today, at this very moment? And we always wanted to create a company that we wanted to work for that was sustainable in that way, that it would keep you engaged and you could learn new things and
Speaker: Be a lifelong learner and teach and learn and be with a really great, smart group of people and do something good. So we're still doing that, right?
Speaker: And if we brought in private equity, that wouldn't be the case because it's a very different model. So we've had choices. and But we did make the ones that are values aligned.
Speaker: And that could have changed at any time. And it just didn't. Thank you so much. I admire what you all have built very much. Are there any bits of advice for maybe any founder who's listening? i know I find it hard to give advice to broad general swaths of people, but is there anything that's been helpful to you pretty consistently throughout your journey so far that you might want to express? Yeah.
Speaker: Yes, I think that values alignment yeah and living an integrated life is what we all want. A life with heart and meaning that's aligned where you don't behave differently at work than you do at home. And if your kids saw you do anything at work, that they would think you're great. Not that, oh my God. yeah.
Speaker: I do think that showing up as one person and with the same values wherever you go is an outstanding idea and has a lot of meaning.
Speaker: And I think when you look at money, money is part of the circle of energy and goodness when you're in the right reciprocal relationships.
Speaker: One thing, when you were talking about selling before, I was thinking about how i feel like For a lot of the founders, I know the goal of selling in some ways is because then I think there's this idea that then you won't be afraid that you'll lose it all. It's like, it's sold. It's out of my hands. I'll have the money. I'll have security. I'll have safety to your point. And then you can go,
Speaker: live some kind of different life. I feel like there's a fear underneath that can be difficult. Do you feel like you navigated fear around that much? Or do you feel like you really trusted you're in alignment and you'd have enough of what you needed? i would say back and forth when the company was in dire shape after COVID-19.
Speaker: because we were just way too heavy on inventory and contracts that span too long. And we didn't look at what the end of that might look like in the sanitizer world and hand soap world when we took a lot of products off the shelf.
Speaker: I thought, wow, this is really scary. Everything could go. That means my house. And the making it through was so difficult and so important.
Speaker: that I have to say I treasure that experience because I could see the meaning of what it was that we were doing. And I could see that the way that we got through it was, okay, who can help us?
Speaker: And asking for that help and staying on track with what our side of the agreement was and getting through it together. And same thing with our employees. We laid 30% of our staff off and we had to right size and rebuild.
Speaker: And at that point in life, I just thought, well, if we would have had this money, but I wouldn't have learned this. So I don't know really how to answer that, except then you have this pile of money. It answers what it answers. But you see how it's meaning pale when someone's sick and there's nothing money can do. Or in so many instances, it's ineffectual, right?
Speaker: Yeah. I'm very inspired by everything you've said. Is there anything I didn't ask that you would want to say before we wrap up? No, I don't think so. Thank you so much, Susan. I really appreciate your time and getting to have this conversation.
Speaker: Thank you so much. i really enjoyed talking with you.
