Houston, TX

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Text: Texas Business Hall of Fame 2025 Sponsored by JP Morgan Chase Houston. A woman stands at a podium with the word ion printed in a white dot. Another woman stands off to her right.

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Good morning.

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The woman looks out towards the audience.

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Good morning, everyone. I'm Meredith Beaupre with JPMorgan Chase. I lead our commercial banking business for South Texas and New Mexico, and I'm chair of our Houston market leadership team.

And on behalf of my partners at The Bank, welcome. Welcome to the Ion, to this fantastic space. We're thrilled to be here with you to kick off the Texas Business Hall of Fame Creator series.

So JPMorgan Chase is very proud to sponsor the kickoff of this series. This is the first time that the Hall of Fame has done this. So we are starting here in Houston. And then the series will travel across Texas over the next few months, featuring some of our state's most innovative trailblazers. And of course, we have two of those trailblazers here with us today. Janet Gurwitch and Tiffany Masterson. So welcome to them.

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And if you haven't heard them speak before, you're in for a treat. So as a native Houstonian, I am thrilled to be kicking off here in Houston. It's very fitting.

So at JPMorgan Chase, we strive to be the most respected financial services firm in the world, serving both companies and individuals. And we are very proud partners to the Texas Business Hall of Fame, and we share in a mission of empowering, supporting, and honoring transformational business leaders.

We believe that innovation and entrepreneurship are absolutely essential to the growth and to the strengthening of our local communities, of our great state, of the country, and of the world. So, Janet and Tiffany, we are thrilled for you to lead this discussion today. And undoubtedly your experiences, your stories will help us set the stage for what is going to be a great series over the next few months.

But one more acknowledgment that I'd like to make before we dive in. A very, very special thank you to Rice, the Rice Alliance, Brad Burke. We are very proud partners with them today and their partnership in helping launch today's event and this series.

And what more fitting space than the Ion, the home in the capital of Houston Innovation than to honor two innovative trailblazers. So with that, I'm going to introduce the Texas Business Hall of Fame 2025 Chair Amanda Brock to get us started. Thanks, Amanda.

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Amanda approaches the podium as Meredith walks away.

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Thank you, Meredith. I'm very pleased to be here with everybody. And just welcome to you all. Just such a wonderful full house and a call out to the students from Baker beta Academy and Kinkaid. So welcome, everybody. And it's lovely to see everybody sitting here and just waiting to hear from these two very inspiring women.

So as Meredith said, today is the first in 2025 of our Creators series, and we are pleased to have it here at the Ion. And we want to extend a sincere thank you for JPMorgan Chase for their generous support in their support of this series and for all they do as a long time supporter of the Texas Business Hall of Fame. Their sponsorship makes this series possible across Texas this year and hopefully in the future.

We couldn't be more excited to be here at the Ion, and the Ion has also partnered with us for today's event. They've been a great partner for the Texas Business Hall of Fame, and we thank the entire Ion team and also Brad, who is also going to moderate or at least help along the conversation today.

So Brad is the Associate Vice President at Rice University's Office of Innovation and well-known to many of us in the room. And hopefully those who do not know Brad, just listen, read, and you'll know a lot about Brad.

But he is also focused on enhancing Ion's role as the startup hub in Houston. But importantly, Brad has served since 2001 as executive director of the Rice Alliance, and he has helped elevate Rice's graduate entrepreneurship program to number one in the United States.

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And if that was not enough, he has also transformed the business plan competition, and which I've judged, and it is just an amazing event, to number one and the world's largest business plan competition. So an incredible, an incredible ability to make things happen.

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By the way, Texas Business Hall of Fame was very pleased recently when a Texas A&M grad, who we recognized as one of our scholars and gave an award to, went on to win the Rice Business Competition and apparently is in the 30 under 30 for this year. So great again.

So it's now my great pleasure to introduce you to today's speakers. They really need not much of an introduction, but I'm going to read carefully so I don't say anything or ad lib more than I usually do.

So Janet Gurwitch, lovely my friend, who is a trailblazer in the beauty industry and also an accomplished corporate leader. As founder and CEO of Laura Mercier cosmetics, she built a global brand that transformed luxury skincare and cosmetics. She has held leadership roles at Neiman Marcus. She served as an operating partner at Advent International.

She currently sits on the board of front row and near and dear to her heart, the Houston Astros. She was also inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame in 2023. Well deserved. Her insights into brand building strategy and innovation have shaped some of the most recognizable consumer brands on the market today.

And then Tiffany Masterson, also went to Kinkaid, so for those of you here, Houston native. And she revolutionized the skincare industry with her groundbreaking brand that everybody always just flips at the name but seeing it is my spirit animal.

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Drunk Elephant. Frustrated by ineffective products, she spent years researching ingredients and identifying what she called the suspicious six common ingredients that can wreak havoc on the skin and really compromised skin health. And this led her to develop a biocompatible skincare philosophy, creating high-performance products free from unnecessary additives.

Today, Drunk Elephant-- I love saying that-- Drunk Elephant is a global phenomenon, winning over 736 awards and changing the way people approach skincare.

So both Janet and Tiffany have built brands that not only resonate with consumers, but also challenge and have challenged industry norms. And they did it themselves with courage, with guts, with a belief they could succeed. They dared to be different. They dared to try.

We are honored to have them with us, to share their journey, their insights, the lessons they learned. So get ready to be inspired. I'll turn things over to Brad, and we will have time at the end for some audience questions. So please join me with a warm welcome for Janet and Tiffany.

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The camera pans to a different area of the stage, Janet and Tiffany sit across from a man holding a microphone.

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Well, good morning, everyone, and I'm completely honored to be able to have the two of you in my presence and to be able to moderate this Q&A session. I'm huge fans, and I have to get over that, so I can actually think about the questions that I'm going to ask. But we're so pleased to have you here at the Ion.

And I know you guys are both incredibly busy still, and this means a lot to all of us. I think this is the most fun thing that I get to do, is to talk to entrepreneurs and to talk to successful entrepreneurs, because I know that people who hear what you have to say are always walk away with things they learn and inspiration. So again, thank you.

What-- I think I'll do is-- we often do is from your early years on through your story of how you founded the company and what you learned along the way. So let's get started. And so, Janet, I'll start with you.

So you grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Hattiesburg, no offense for anyone from Hattiesburg, including you, is probably not the center of entrepreneurship in the world. And then you went to the University of Alabama. Did you always know that you wanted to go into business one day and go the path that you had gone?

Great question, Brad. No. I knew I wanted a much more exciting life. I lived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. So I knew I wanted a much more exciting life, and I thought I would do it through my love of business and retail.

So initially I majored in retail at the University of Alabama. I then got a job at Foley's Department Store, which was based in Houston. Many of you remember, and that is where I started. It never entered my mind I would leave the corporate world.

I went from Foley's to Neiman Marcus, which was the highlight of my retail career and was executive vice president. And I always say I went from planning one day red apple sales to being on the front row of the Chanel show. And I much preferred the second.

But it was a great experience, and it was there that I saw an inflection point in the beauty industry. For the first time in decades, young brands, a few young brands, Bobbi Brown and Mac started having some momentum in the sea of L'Oreal and Estée Lauder and Shiseido, and I decided to toss my life away. I was the next person to be CEO of Neiman's had things hadn't worked out, and I left it to start Laura Mercier.

Cool. We're going to get to that part of the story. But you actually skipped over one thing that I thought might be interesting is, I recall that your transition from University of Alabama to Foley's was not quite as smooth as one might think. You want to say a little bit about that?

Well, as a college senior, I wrote a letter to the University of Alabama, because that's what you did then, and typed on your typewriter and--

You wrote a letter to Foley's?

Wrote it to Foley's and asked if I could interview to be on their executive training program. And they wrote back and said, "Dear Miss Gurwitch, we at Foley's interview on seven select college campuses, and the University of Alabama is not among them. We wish you best of luck in your future career. Sincerely, JK Lewis."

I have this framed in my office to this day because my father said, toss that letter, fly to Houston and try to get the job, which all fortunately worked out. But I keep it to remind myself there will always be people who will doubt you. There will always be people who tell you, you can't get it, and it's what you do that has the real impact.

And I ask you that, maybe as obvious, because of the point that you just made, that you were rejected from Foley's, and yet you talked your way in through that perseverance and personality to senior levels at Foley. So I think it's something that we all have to remember that that one disappointment doesn't mean the end of the opportunity.

Tiffany, so you grew up in Houston. I'll ask that same question. So you grew up in Houston. I learned a few minutes ago that you went to Kinkaid, where some of the other students are. So did you always know that one day that you would be in the position that you're in, founding a company, running a company, being successful? Was that from the early days of your life at Kinkaid?

No, not at all. Not even slightly. I think you said you always thought you would be with the corporation. I didn't have any. There was no intention to be any place near a corporation or a company or anything.

I just wanted babies. I wanted to meet my husband and have babies, and that's all I wanted. I didn't try to mislead anybody about that.

I went to school and got my work done and graduated from UT. But it would have shocked me had you told me. And of course, I didn't start this journey until I was in my early 40s. So yeah, no, I didn't.

I appreciate your honesty there, because when you went to UT that your desire was to have a family. And that's not a popular thing to say these days. And I appreciate you saying that.

Did I recall-- I think I read somewhere that your degree is in psychology, but I could be wrong.

No, I studied psychology and Spanish.

Psychology and Spanish.

And I lived in Spain during college. I went off for a semester and lived in Spain, and I had a great time in college. And I worked after college.

I got my real estate license. I worked in real estate for a while. I worked at Neiman's for a while. I just supported myself.

I had a job since I was 16, so I just was used to working. And so I just was trying to find my way. And I knew that I would land someplace great as far as I would meet somebody one day and have my kids.

My mom was a stay-at-home mom as well. So I just I wasn't worried, but I was really trying out different things. I mean, I was creative, so I did have the urge to get up and work.

I just didn't think I always would, which sounds bad now. I guess it does sound crazy today, but that's just the way we-- my friends thought that way too, I think.

And so anyway, I worked and I did. I went to Los Angeles. I worked for a movie director. I came back. I worked for a software company. I worked for Neiman's, like I said.

And I didn't start trying to do my own little things until I got married, which is when I realized, it was great being married, great having babies. But I was anxious to do something because I'm creative. So that didn't come up in me until later, but--

Well, clearly your work ethic showed up at an early age. But what I was also going to ask is, did your degree in psychology actually help you in running the company? Did that degree help?

I think it was everything. I'm fascinated with psychology. I never took a marketing class in my life, and I really did everything I did with the marketing of the brand and naming it, the colors. Everything about the brand I did from sort of sitting in the consumer's shoes.

And how would they think? And what did they want? And how do they work? And so it was all from a psychological point of view that I did the brand.

Yeah, super. Janet, you already started to lead into this, but so when you were at Neiman Marcus is when you got the idea that maybe you wanted to leave the corporate life and pursue a cosmetics business. Could you talk a little bit about-- that was a big change. You'd been there in the corporate world 19 or 20 years, I think. How did you come to this realization to give all that up and take a really high risk role in starting your company?

I think it was a bit of naiveté, to be honest with you, because I think why did I think I could start a cosmetics company? But--

So you didn't know how tough it would be?

I did not. I did not, and I didn't even know where makeup brushes were made. And I didn't know where the chemists were, and I didn't know much. But I knew-- I really saw this beginning of an ad.

And I think what Tiffany and I both did applies to whatever industry you're interested in, and particularly in consumer. We did it in beauty. But if you're aware, if there are inflection points, if you're seeing the beginning of something.

And I was at Harrods in London. I thought Bobbi Brown and Mac were just demons. And then I go to Europe for the shows. And I see all these young women and older women in line at one brand.

And I went over to look, and it was Mac, and it hit me, it's happening. It's global. It's not just in the United States. And maybe I could create a brand whose focus would be on the flawless face. That's what our focus was on. I did not think the name Janet Gurwitch had any ring to it, so I didn't name it.

I think it does. I think it does now.

Thank you. So I thought I needed to build it around a makeup artist who was-- I mean, because of lack of social media, no one knew who Laura Mercier was but movie stars and models. But she was very well respected.

She was doing all the covers of Vogue. She was Madonna, Julia Roberts, and Sarah Jessica Parker's main artist. And so I felt she had credibility, even though no one really knew who she was except in that world. And I licensed her name, and together I hired-- I lived in Dallas, moved to Houston, and I hired a chemist from Mary Kay based in Dallas. And the three of us went to labs, and we created the flawless face.

Yeah. So one of the things I think you've said previously is that most of the makeup artists at that time were men, and you really sought out a woman, a female makeup artist for the company as well.

That is true. When I first decided I was going to do this, I knew the editors of Harper's BAZAAR and Vogue. And I wrote them and said, can you give me the names of the world's top makeup artists? Because I had no idea.

And they sent it back, and it was all men with the exception of Laura Mercier and one other. So I was very fortunate. I said, no, if I'm starting a cosmetics company, we're building this around a woman. And Laura Mercier, French woman, challenging but very talented.

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Talented.

Well, we can go into that part later.

I'll pass.

Was it hard to convince her to go with you, who had never started a cosmetics company before? Did you have to convince her?

I should have known when she brought three lawyers to lunch.

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No, it was not hard.

OK.

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And, Tiffany, so again, you started to say when, as a mother of four, it's incredible to me having just two older kids now that you had any time at all, but you decided you had the itch to do something more and do something more creative as a mom of four. Was this the first business that you tried to start, or were there others, perhaps that you started and evolved into what became Black Elephant?

And evolved into nothings. I started a few little things. I started cleaning people's pantries out, where I would go and look at all their food and look at all the ingredients and remove the things that they shouldn't be eating that weren't healthy and keep the things in there. And I got fired after my first job, basically.

The person who fired you was a relative, right?

It was not. It was my best friend's husband.

Oh, your best friend's husband fired you?

What have you done with all my stuff? Like, where's my food?

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So that didn't work out. And then I did--

So glad that it didn't work out.

I am too. In fact, I got this-- oh, and then started a meatball company that just making meatballs and lasagnas for people catering, and that didn't work out either, because I wanted to buy all the best ingredients again, and we weren't making any money. So I was buying the best beef and the best-- I was going to Central Market to get my mass, my bulk ingredients. And that didn't work out.

Your meatballs were too expensive.

Hmm. I actually got a picture from one of my friends recently on text, and she had photoshopped meatballs on her shelf in her bathroom. And she was like, I'm so glad that didn't work out.

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It's way better this way. So then I started selling. So I did sell Arbonne for a while, which is a beauty brand. And it was just keeping myself busy while the kids were in school, and they were still very young. And so I would just work while I could.

I started, after that, selling a bar cleanser called the Wonderbar. That was from Malaysia. And I got really into that. And I really believed in it and believed in the ingredients and didn't really know what I was doing. Of course, I didn't have any reason to.

But I started studying ingredients. My friends would call and say, I'm using the Wonder Bar. I love it, but now I'm breaking out. And I would say, What else are you using? And they would say, I'm using these products.

We'll send them to me. Send me the ingredients, and let me look at them with no reason in the world for me to think that I could know anything or understand anything about all these ingredients. Because you know these ingredients text are long and lots of words you don't understand.

But I would take them apart and put them in a column and put them in buckets. One was foreskin. What's their foreskin? Like, an antioxidant, a humectant, a skin identical oil or something.

Another bucket was to keep the formulation safe and stable. Those things had to be there. You don't want them, but you can choose which ones you want, but they have to be there.

Third bucket is ingredients that were there that didn't seem to make sense why are they there. They're not there for your skin. They're not there to keep the formulation safe. They were there for marketing, so they were there to make the product smell nice, look nice, feel nice.

Silicones drying alcohol maybe they were there to modify the skin, which isn't great for your skin. Things like that. And I just thought, well, they're in everything.

I started reading and just really researching these ingredients and what they could-- what the potential they had for skin. And I thought these could really potentially be disruptive to people's skin. This could be the reason that I have semi unpredictable skin.

And so the more I read, the more I researched, the more I tested, experimented with eliminating these ingredients. And this was over two or three years. I was selling this bar.

I started figuring this out, this philosophy, and realizing that there was nothing on the market that didn't contain one or more of those ingredients. So that's where I was inside excited. There's nothing out there that has this philosophy. And I actually believe in the philosophy.

I think there's something to this. And if people just started avoiding these six ingredients, skin would like reset to normal, and people would have less issues with their skin. So that's how that started in my head. And then, of course, I had to figure out the rest. But that was what started me. And I also would loved marketing and the creative part of it.

So you spent two years or more educating yourself on what these ingredients are, something that none of us, probably very few of us-- maybe there's some of you in the audience, but most of us don't really understand the ingredients. And you didn't have a background in that, but you taught yourself about what ingredients are potentially irritating, which ones are positive for your skin.

Right. And which ones just can hold your skin back and really which ones don't need to be there. Some of them, like silicone, is an example of one that's not bad for you. It doesn't hurt you in any way, but it can block absorption of other ingredients.

So I was reading and learning about all that, completely just taught myself about skin and how skin functions and what it needs and what it doesn't need. And by the time two years go by and I've been doing this, it was time to stop selling the Wonderbar, because I was learning stuff about the Wonderbar itself as well.

And it's funny. I got a review on the Wonderbar that said, this is just bogus. This is BS. None of the ingredients do what the claims say that they do.

And that even started to make me go, wait a minute. So this company out of Malaysia is claiming all these things turn out not to be true. And so that made me question everything. So I was already suspicious of brands in general, and this just made it to where I really dove in and taught myself.

Well, you might say you taught yourself. You gave yourself a PhD and ingredients in the beauty world. Let me go one step further. And that is the tide of Malaysia. You know where I'm going. Is that where the name Drunk Elephant came from?

No, no. In fact, there was no link between Wonderbar and Drunk Elephant.

True?

The only link was what I learned not to do with Wonderbar and what Wonderbar was claiming to do. I learned that that was the opposite of what I wanted to be. My philosophy was the opposite of Wonderbar, which it was avoiding certain ingredients. And Wonderbar claimed to be fixing skin because of the ingredients it included.

Yes.

But so I separated from that completely. And the main investor, the one who owned that exclusive right to sell Wonderbar in North America was my brother-in-law. And then my brother also had a part in that. But it was my brother-in-law who had the money into this Wonderbar, so he's the guy that wanted his money back when we figured out that Wonderbar wasn't going to set the world on fire.

So it was like, I said, I have an idea. He said, you really seem to this marketing stuff, and you seem to really be knowledgeable about the ingredients. And what do you want to do?

And I said, well, I would love to do my own brand. I'd been talking to a consultant at Guthy-Renker. Guthy-Renker was somebody I reached out to at some point, and they responded to me. And they said, we'll put you on a show with the Wonderbar and to do a $5. We'll pay you.

And I was like, we're paying way more for this bar than that. And I had to call my brother-in-law and say, they're only offering. Anyway, long story short, we needed to close things down with Wonderbar. And he wanted his money back.

So I said, I've got an idea. And he said, OK, well, if I can get my money back from me selling these bars, I'll invest in your idea.

But talk about one last thing. Talk about the name, which is it's the elephant in the room.

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I'll use this. Talk about where the name came from.

So I did all this on my computer. And I'm not a chemist. So I had all my ingredients, and I wanted an oil that would represent the main moisturizer in the line. And it was apricot oil. And because it's bioidentical, it's easily absorbed into the skin.

But then I was in California visiting my grandmother, actually, and I went to this apothecary. And I picked up this oil, and I've never heard of it before, and it was called marula. And it had a bunch of stuff in it I didn't want in there, but I could still feel that the oil was highly absorbable and very light.

I went home and googled it. And just thought I wanted to learn more about generally the antioxidant levels, and all of that, ended up being the perfect profile. Exactly what I wanted-- skin identical, high antioxidants, high omegas, antimicrobial, balancing, all that.

And so I thought, this is it. It's time for a new oil. But the videos were showing these animals in South Africa stumbling around eating this fermented fruit off the ground and becoming tipsy.

And I also didn't think Tiffany Masterson would fly. I'm the youngest in my family. They make fun of me all the time. No one takes me seriously. So I thought if I name it Tiffany Masterson and I'm living in Houston, Texas, I mean people are going to laugh at me.

And so I wanted to--

Not anymore.

And then I thought, and I'm not French, and there's so many gorgeous beauty brands that have this gorgeous French name. And I'm not French, and I'm not a doctor, and I'm not even an esthetician. So what am I going to do here?

So anyway, and then I thought Drunk Elephant, can I call it that? And it makes sense to me. I mean it's my personality. I think I laugh at myself, and I'm not drunk, but I laugh at myself.

And I am hard working on the inside. And I do have fun and can joke. And I don't take myself very seriously, is what I'm trying to say.

So I thought, OK, I can make this whimsical on the outside and very hard working on the inside. And it can represent-- and I wasn't thinking. You don't think when you do a brand. It represents me.

But when you do a brand, it represents you. It is you, and it's my personality. And I thought, well, a lot of people hated it. A lot of people loved it.

No one loved it for a skincare brand. Some people loved it for a bar, like a pub or something, but nobody loved it for a skincare brand. And actually my close friend sat me down.

One of them took me for pizza and was like, this is a terrible name. The consultant from Guthy-Renker who wanted to do a brand with me, she said, I'm out. The name is just awful. I'm out. My mom said it's horrible. My grandmother said it's asinine.

And so I was like, but it's me. So if I'm going to fail, I might as well fail right up front because I'm not going to do anything else that's not me. And so it's all coming from the same place. I'll know quickly if this is not going to work out.

So if you put the people who said it's a terrible name in one camp and the people who said it's a great name, you would far-- the people who said it was a terrible name far outweighed the others.

Yes.

And yet you stuck to your guns, obviously. And you have proved all of them wrong, which is a trait that a lot of entrepreneurs have.

And, Janet, so you talked about why you started Laura Mercier. So how did you actually start it? And what did you do first? Did you need funding? Did you get some funding?

Tiffany mentioned where some of her funding came from, a brother-in-law. You say you found Laura Mercier. You got her and her three lawyers to agree to license her name to you. Then what do you do? What's the next step to begin to market and sell the product?

Well, you do a business plan. I mean, I wrote a business plan to myself, because I had no investors. This was pre-VC, private equity. And although friends and family is a great way to start, I thought I don't want to lose my friends.

And so I did just myself and my family. So I started with my own money. And I had a partner actually out at Dallas in the beginning. So we did put in $3 and 1/2 million, which was a nice amount of money to start, but I had to build a whole organization.

It was a very different time. Tiffany started Drunk Elephant 17 years later. And it's interesting the parallel paths and the non-parallel paths. So for me, there was no one was interested in a beauty brand based in Texas. And so we did it ourselves. And I did it. It worked for the first few years.

Having been the EVP of Neiman's, was a good contact, and I went to Neiman's. And in my fourth year, Neiman's did buy 51% of Laura Mercier, which was a good thing. They owned Bergdorf Goodman in New York as well, and they gave me great real estate in all the stores. So that was a plus.

However, it is my greatest regret that I sold 51% So early, so that's another story. But that's how we funded.

And then I must say, Chase Bank financed us all along. And I want to say thank you for that. They did. They did.

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Did I understand from a talk that you gave that one of the first things you did in order to generate sales was work with H-E-B?

So I didn't have enough cash, and I thought, how could I make quick cash? So I flew to San Antonio and met with a young Scott McClelland and--

Who's now the CEO of the company.

Yes, I think he just left, but he was the CEO. And in San Antonio, he was over beauty. And I said, can I make you lipsticks and fingernail polish under your own name? Because I needed the cash. I didn't tell him that.

And he did it, and it was called Shades. It was a brand they created called Shades, or we created. It was our same formulas. We sold it at a much discounted price to them, but they sold huge numbers and for several years gave us great cash flow. So as an entrepreneur, you got to think outside of the box all the time.

Yeah. So that was a way to generate cash. Tiffany, tell us the origins of the launch of the company and what were the couple-- I think I know-- but a couple of the trigger points that were the inflection point.

So it was 2012, I think, and I named the brand. I settled on Drunk Elephant, and I--

You had lots of people telling you that was a dumb idea.

Yes. And I just got on the phone, and I didn't know any-- I had my formulations written out on a chart, on my computer. And I picked every single ingredient. And I was so excited about these formulations, because they're very different.

And I just started calling around. I called The Color Factory. Someone said, call The Color Factory in Los Angeles. See if they'll do your formulations. And so I called The Color Factory.

They said, no, call this person. They said, no, call this person. They said, no, call this person. I ended up with someone named Judy who told me to call someone named Susan.

And I just remember that because I don't know why I remember that. But Susan's who I ended up with. And we hit it off.

And I said, can I send you? Can I email you my formulations for these products? And they said, yes.

And then she called me back and she said, are you a chemist? And I said, no, I'm not. And she said, well, these are really interesting. These look great.

Obviously, I didn't know the amounts. I knew the amounts of the actives. I wanted a certain amount of vitamin C, a certain amount of glycolic. So I knew that, a certain amount of zinc. But I didn't know-- it's like I got to choose, but she did the formulation.

So I had them in my hand two weeks later, but only a couple of them because it's very expensive. And by the way, it seems like it would be easy to have your brother-in-law be the money guy, but it's not. He was so annoying. I mean, it was awful.

He was calling me 20 times a day. And I could always tell if he had somebody else in his ear, which he did. He had a brother who was in his ear all the time saying, we need to go in strip centers. We need to do this. He was the accountant. The brother was also the accountant.

And it was just very confusing. And so I'd be like, Charles. I'm the visionary here. I'm the founder. This is my baby. And if you can't like-- because I just wanted to go in one retailer. I had one retailer on my mind.

And also, by the way, at first, I didn't. I wanted to get in a few different ones in New York, and they rejected me. But then someone said to me, put your products in the store where you shop. Don't try to put your products where you think-- don't put them in Barneys. Don't put them in-- because you don't shop there for beauty.

Where do you shop? And I said, I shop at Sephora. And they said, well, then put them in Sephora. That's where they'll sell because you're the brand. And it completely made sense.

Anyway. So I'm fighting with my brother-in-law, not really, but kind of. And at one point he wanted to pull out. So he put $200,000 in. He agreed to put $200,000. We got up to $400,000.

And he was getting anxious and nervous. And I don't blame him. And he was doubting my strategy.

It's the downside of friends and family funding--

Right.

Is there--

And so he was doubting my strategy. And so I ended up having to bring a couple more guys in from Dallas who I did not know. I went and pitched the brand to them. They agreed to come in with a little bit of money to get us over this little uncomfortable hump that we were experiencing, which was I needed to get the rest of the formulations made, et cetera. I needed to order the packaging and all that.

So I had a designer that I hired as a contract who helped me bring my vision to life. I wrote the logo myself. I knew the colors that I wanted. I knew I wanted matte, all of that. So that was happening along over here.

And so eventually, it was like-- and I had been emailing Sephora. And of course, you don't have their email addresses. I read an article about this woman at Sephora who launched a brand and made the brand, and the founder said she made me. So I used every different combination of her name-- @sephora.com. Every single, there was like five different combinations, and one of them got through.

And she responded. And she said, what is this? Where do I send you? Do I send you to clinical, or do I send you to all natural?

And I said, oh, this is a new category. It's a brand new category. And it's called non-toxic, which is what I thought that I wanted to use for the name, for the category.

And so she sent me to a girl named Cindy, who then was nice enough to keep following up with me, even though I was like, here I am. It's called Drunk Elephant. This is my philosophy.

And she said, well, send me the products. And I said, well, I don't have any products. And she was like, what do you mean you don't-- and I said, I haven't done the pack. I haven't done that part yet. So she said, call me back. That took about another year and a half.

Anyway, so I put them on my website. I tweaked things. I listened to feedback. I was super open to all the constructive criticism. And by the time we hit 2014, I had been online for a year. I had what I needed, I'd learned, and then I was ready to go out to show my brand to retailers, which is what I did. I went to Las Vegas, which is where I met Sephora.

They said, no, we're not taking any new brands. I said, fine. And I just thought, I didn't believe him. I don't know why. I was never cocky, but I was super sure of the philosophy.

I sent him home with their package of Drunk Elephant and this neon acrylic box with confetti. And it was a week later. They emailed and said, can we talk? And I just sobbing, crying. So exciting.

And that was it. They put me on January 2015 online. And by September, I was in every store.

It's amazing. That's incredible.

[APPLAUSE]

So, Janet, let's see. When we left off your story last, you had gotten investment from Neiman Marcus and your product, your business was growing. Can you say more about that next phase of the company?

Well, I built a company very differently than Tiffany, because at the time, the great department stores of the world was my plan. And I went to English-speaking countries first, obviously. So I did US, Canada, UK, and Hong Kong, and Australia. So that's where I focused, so I could speak the language.

And Laura Mercier made personal appearances. So we would go, and we'd be in London, and she'd make a personal appearance and be on TV. There was no Instagram, so we had to start. How do we get her name out? And she was fantastic, a great makeup artist and would have huge followings at these stores.

And like in Harrods, the first morning, I remember tearing up thinking, I can't believe all these people are here to see Laura Mercier. But it did work out. So that's how I started building it different than Sephora. Obviously, Neiman Marcus was my partner, so they weren't eager for me to be at Sephora.

And Sephora wasn't what it is today. Again, timing is everything, and it wasn't. So the fine department stores globally was my goal. And that's what we did.

You touched on this. Because of the timing, has the beauty market changed? Is it easier or harder because of social media to build a brand like this? I imagine there's things that are easier about it and things that are harder. You guys have thoughts on that?

Well, I think it's both. When I entered, I was a pioneer. I mean, so there were just so few indie brands and no one was looking for them. And the big brands are so well funded, and we obviously weren't.

In fact, the small business organization of Houston called me and asked me if I would join. And I was in my little office on Wesleyan and I said, no, I'm not a small business. I'm a young business. And I really didn't want anyone that worked for me to think of me as a small business. And so I didn't do that. I always thought, we have to be sizable or we won't make it.

But to enter when I did was difficult, but it wasn't that crowded. Whereas Instagram and selfies, I mean, changed everything. And I have to give Tiffany so much credit because her packaging had color on it and whimsical, and it was a great mix. So it was a very different time on how we did it and of course, the landscape with selfies and Instagram.

Well, you touched on something that we always tell entrepreneurs is to act like you're a bigger company than you are and not let really people understand how small you are. I can't imagine Sephora, maybe they did know how small you were at the time, but taking you on.

What's your answer, Tiffany, to that question? Is it easier today or harder today to create a brand because of social media and Instagram and TikTok?

I think it could be harder today because social media and TikTok and it's made the industry so saturated now that everyone's doing a brand. And when I started, Instagram was getting really popular, and it was just great timing, because I grew up with Instagram.

The algorithms are different now. You don't see everything. It's not like it used to be. It's so filled with ads, so filled with-- no one knows what to do anymore. And it's hard to find the rhythm.

I had this situation that was phenomenal where the brand was pictured so well. Everyone wanted to take pictures of it. I was sending it to every single person who asked.

I didn't care. I didn't do any-- I didn't advertise, so I didn't spend $1 on advertising until about three years ago. And that wasn't my idea. It was Shiseido's idea because it's not my brand anymore.

But whiled I owned it, I never advertised at all, and I just sent it to people, influencers, celebrities. And if they talked about it, great. And if they didn't, that was fine too. And if they gave me constructive criticism, that was fine too. I just didn't care.

But with Instagram at the time, it just exploded. And I wanted people to tell their friends, and that's what happened. But with the social media, that just happened much faster than it normally would have.

Now it's very confusing on social. I even had the president of-- the CEO, rather, of Sephora fly to Houston just so he could sit. And he just looked at me and said, what are you doing? Because how is this happening? We get more traffic from Drunk Elephant's Instagram page into Sephora than we can create ourselves, and we can't understand. We want to understand how that's happening.

And it just was word of mouth, and it was just having this kind are very different-- we were very transparent. We were very different. We were funny. We had jokes on our feed. It was just a different approach to relating to the consumer. And we wanted education, but in a fun way, so that people would remember and want to be on our page. And that's, I think, how it happened.

So you differentiated yourself, but you were at the right time, at the right place in the life of social media. But you might say now it would be tougher to do that because it's so much more pervasive, perhaps today than it was--

There's a way. It would be tough to do it my way. But there's a way. And so whoever's doing it today is going to find a way. And that's going to be it, because this is going to keep happening with little brands that pop up and figure out a way to make themselves unique and outstanding and different.

But it is a crowded space today, very crowded.

Yes. I'm going to turn it over to you guys to ask a couple of questions in just a second. But let me do this one more time, the other elephant in the room, and that is that you're both female, women entrepreneurs who've been very successful. As a woman, did you find it that created obstacles or challenges, or did you run into things as you were building your company?

Maybe I guess in terms of obstacles but also I will say-- I'll ask the other half of the question is, since you've been successful, do people say, wow, that was luck? They don't give you credit for the smarts, how smart you were, how hard you worked, how you work to differentiate. So what is it your journey been like in that regard? If you don't mind sharing with us and what is said here stays here.

[LAUGHTER]

Or it goes on social media. I'm not sure.

Right. Now, I think in particular, and it'll be interesting to hear what Tiffany says, that it didn't help or hurt me. I think my idea was good. I self-funded. It wasn't like I was trying to get other monies. But the reality is, in the venture world and the private equity world, males are favored. I mean, it just that's true.

But in my particular case, I don't think it was a plus or a minus. I think my drive and my vision and my brand over spoke.

Yeah.

I feel the same. I don't think it mattered. I don't think of it that way. You either have a good idea or you don't and a proof of concept. And the way that you're perceived by the consumer is really what matters. So no, I don't, I mean, I didn't have those obstacles.

Yeah. Well, that's super. We need more women entrepreneurs. And hopefully there's some in the room that will learn from you. But questions from the audience.

Yeah, we have a couple mics. They're going to try to run the mics around to you. There's the question. How about first on the side easier to get to. And I think there's a question up there.

Hi, ladies. Thank you so much for being here. My question was for Tiffany. I just had a question. I know you sold the business. When did you know you were ready to sell? And how did you feel giving what you started away in a sense?

Great question.

You have to follow your gut, your instinct, the whole way through. You don't know. You don't always know.

It turned out I got really lucky with my timing of selling the company. I sold it in 2019. But you do. If you're paying attention to-- it's like a child that's growing up.

And I can remember there was a time when somebody offered to buy it. A company offered to buy Drunk Elephant earlier than I was ready, earlier than it was ready, I should say. And I actually called them up and I said, I was teary because it was a wonderful opportunity.

And I said, I feel like this kid's still in middle school. And I need to get it through high school, so I can send it off to college at some point. And we're not there yet.

So you just know when it's time to expand. You know when it's time to bring in private equity, because you may need to bring in C-suite. You know when it's time to go more global, spread out a little bit.

I did what Janet did. I played it safe. I went to Australia. I went to London. I went to Singapore. So we can communicate there and have people on the ground.

But when it's time to go out big, even if you have private equity, you do need somebody who's been there, done that, who has people there already. And so it was at that inflection point with Drunk Elephant. We were growing at such a clip that it was really necessary for us to start to get out there.

And I didn't know how to do that. You don't know how to do that. It's just it's a huge thing to go global like that. And so that's when I knew we want to do this well and right. And so it was that time.

Maybe one more question over here.

Good morning. My name is Christina Tegbe. I also have a brand sold in Sephora Nordstrom retail. It's called 54 Thrones. So I have a retail question.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you. I have a retail question. We've been in retail for four years now. And what I want to know is, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see indie brands or young brands make when scaling into retail?

So I'll tell you, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from Janet, sitting in her living room. And I knew I wanted to go in Sephora. But then you got Charles in your ear saying, go in strip centers and go in this and do that.

And of course, we'd never done this before, so I didn't for sure know. But Janet looked at me and said, your gut instinct is right. You go in one retailer, and you stay there until you get into the top 10. Do you remember saying that?

And you don't budge. You don't go off and spread yourself too thin. You focus all your energy into one place, and they will give that back to you. And you be a good partner. And that's how you-- and so I did that.

And it was great, because we really developed this relationship. And it's all about relationships with retailers in the end. But focus. Put all your focus, energy, and time into one place and really make yourself very strong there and have your feet on the ground before you spread out.

Yeah, I said that was one. But we have just one more question.

OK. I'm Patricia Will legend, like you, Janet, and very pleased to be here with my granddaughters who led me to your brand. My question is that there is a trend afoot where even this age group-- they're 8 and 7-- and middle schoolers are going big for new brands and makeup. As trendsetters in the industry and mothers, what do you make of that?

Oh, I think it's normal. I don't know that I didn't go in my mom's bathroom and pull out her powders and lotions and all of that, Erno Laszlo, when I was eight years old, seven years old. I think it's normal to want to do what somebody older than you is doing.

I think the colors of this brand are happy, and they're appealing to all ages. When I did the brand, I did it for my family. So I had something in mind for my mom, my husband, my children.

Not everything has acids. Not every product has retinol or anything like that. And so I don't mind when younger children are wanting to take care of their skin and know how to do that. I wasn't allowed to wear makeup when I was little at all. And so it was always, so you want it more when you're not allowed.

So I don't know. I think a lot's been made of it. It blew up on TikTok and social media about targeting children, that kind of thing. That, of course, never happened. I never even targeted anyone, because I didn't advertise.

I just wanted people to know that if whoever you are out there, I've got something for you. I wanted to create a brand that was big enough that people could choose what was right for them and their skin.

So I don't mind it. I can see parents don't want to spend that kind of money on kids. But it's never been a thing where we're targeting the children to get them to use retinol and stuff like that.

Do I think they should be wearing makeup and using acids? No. But do I think the interest can be developed in kids to take care of themselves? I think it's great.

So one final quick question from me. If you had to think of two or three traits as an entrepreneur and a founder that make someone successful, so two or three traits that maybe you have or you've seen others have. Janet, what are two or three traits of successful entrepreneurs?

Well, I think it's difficult whenever you enter it to start a brand that resonates globally. So you've got to believe in yourself unbelievably. And I did this at the Texas Business Hall of Fame. I quoted something from baseball. "You can't let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game." And I think that is a great analogy.

But you also need a great team. I mean, you can't do it by yourself.

Tiffany.

Very true. I think believing in yourself, but just also not looking around, just following your gut, being true to you, remembering your vision, not forgetting what your purpose is. Finding a purpose, like, naming the purpose. The purpose of Drunk Elephant is to help people with their skin.

That's simple. That's my reason for being. And so finding your purpose and your reason for being helps you not get off track later on.

Super great advice.

[APPLAUSE]

I just want to offer a few closing remarks for those of you who have not met, I'm Meredith Walker, the executive director at the Texas Business Hall of Fame. And our mission is to tell the stories of people like Tiffany and Janet to inspire your story. And I know they've probably inspired so many people in this room today. So thank you so much for being here.

[APPLAUSE]

And as Meredith mentioned, this is the first of our Creator series. The next is in Dallas. We'll be featuring John Arnold and Mark Cuban for what promises to be a very interesting discussion on the future of our health care economy. So hope to see some of you there.

I also wanted to mention to any of our veterans in the room, to any of our entrepreneurs that are in the higher Ed space, part of what we do is honor transformational business leaders. We put them on our stage once a year. We also fund the future transformational business leaders with $15,000 to $20,000 grants.

If you're in the higher Ed space, you might qualify. If you're a veteran, you might qualify. Please visit our website at texasbusiness.org. Our applications are open right now. We'll be interviewing for our 2025 award soon.

So on that note, JPMorgan, thanks for making this possible. Ion, Brad, you're amazing. Janet and Tiffany, thank you for inspiring everyone here today.

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