What's in Your Skincare Products? Discover Clean Beauty with the CEO of Junk Theory Justin Wolff

there's an element of guilt about buying the stuff that you need, right? Knowing that it's not going to be recycled and that for 2 months of use of a given product, right, it's going to sit on this planet for 500— for the next 500 years, right? That can't make people feel good.

It doesn't make it feel good. Welcome to Driving Impact. Justin, welcome to Driving Impact. I'm so excited to have you here with us.

Thank you. Really happy to be here.

And Justin, a little bit more about you. So you're the CEO of Junk Theory, which is a clean skincare line, and we'll talk a bit more about it, uh, later. You're also the former Chief Giving Officer, CGO— first time I hear about that, by the way— of FUBU, which is like a school supply line that you grew $150 million plus. Yeah, cash flow positive, 6 million of, of kids impacted.

Yeah.

So you're like a serial social impact entrepreneur. Is that, is that correct?

I'll take that. Sure.

You'll take it? Yeah. Okay. And I love how you marry like purpose, but really like cause and commerce together, which I think is important because at Driving Impact, what we care about is of course climate. So how do we ensure the future of a planet? We talk also about different topics like game changers. In the world of AI, of leadership, of climate, of like, like science, etc. So I think for us it's the first time that we have a commerce retail owner, skincare owner coming to us. I'm very curious about the conversation we're going to have.

So yeah, consumer goods is a big space. It creates a lot of junk in the world. So really excited to be here and share what I can with you and your audience.

Awesome. Thank you. I want to start a little bit because our audience is very curious about like who people are and not just what they do. Sure. Such that they can also trailblaze and figure out how they can become the game changers and changemakers in the world as well. So I want to go back to little Justin, right? You as a kid. So who did you want to be when you were growing up? And I want to have like this vivid experience of where you were born and some of the critical experiences of your life.

I think, you know, growing up, I'm originally from South Africa. I was born in Cape Town. I spent the first like 4 years of my life there. So enough to have—

0 to 4?

Yeah, 0 to 4. So enough to have like active memories. But, uh, most of my growing up was done in California.

Okay.

Uh, but definitely a lot of influences, uh, uh, from South Africa and my time over there. You know, growing up I would go back and forth between California and South Africa.

Mm-hmm.

Most of my family was still there. So I feel like, and, and the ones that left, you know, kind of went all over the place. The, the typical South African exodus story. Yeah. So, to various Commonwealth countries and, and others. So my family was, you know, went from everyone being in the same place to now I had family in England and Australia and Israel and the US. Um, so I spent much of my childhood kind of traveling the world and, and, and getting exposure to different places and people and, and all of that through, through visiting family. Uh, which I, I think sparked this idea of exploration and adventure in me.

Yeah.

Like I think I knew from a pretty young age, like I didn't wanna do things conventional way.

So was your family nomad? Were you like part of a— was your family in the military?

Or no, no, no, it was really to visit family and spend time with them. So my uncles and aunts that lived in the UK or Israel or Australia, that's where we would go almost every year to one of those places to see them. So I had exposure from a very young age to kind of have this global, if you will, perspective on the world or in the world.

That's amazing. Do you have any memories of like being— I mean, it's very young— of being a child in South Africa, of being a toddler, really?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, I went to school there and, you know, preschool there. So I remember, you know, things like that. I remember Zoo Lake near in Johannesburg where we go kind of rowing and to the park and things like that. I remember my pet fish, Ferdy, who I had to say goodbye to.

Okay. Okay. Okay. We're gonna pause a minute. Who's that pet fish?

Ferdy was a little goldfish, you know, that I had. But I, I mean, I remember him and then I remember as we left, uh, I had to release him. So I released him in a stream and, uh, you know, best wishes to, uh, to little Ferdy there.

Wow.

But it was onto a new life in, uh, in America for us.

And then when you were always flying to California, you're talking about Los Angeles.

Yeah. So that's, that's where I grew up. I grew up in Los Angeles. We moved to LA, so grew up there.

What part of LA? Because LA is like so, so big.

Yeah. So our first place was this tiny little microscopic apartment in kind of, I guess you would call it Brentwood. Brentwood's got a lot fancier now. It was—

Yeah, it's very fancy.

It wasn't quite like that back in the day. Yeah, that's so cool. But, you know, at the time you couldn't really leave, bring any assets with you outside of South Africa. So we came to the US with next to nothing. Both my parents worked multiple jobs. It was tough, you know, but, you know, persevered, the typical immigrant story of working harder. Yeah, yeah. You know, doing everything you can for the next generation. So super grateful to my parents for that. And, you know, as I got older, you know, that idea of exploration and adventure stuck with me. When I was 14, I entered a scholarship, like a application type of thing, competition. There we go. And ended up winning the thing. And the prize was basically to go abroad for a summer and do like a summer exchange. So at 14 years old, I went off to Japan and I spent the summer in Japan living with a Japanese family. They didn't really speak a word of English, but it was like the greatest adventure in the world for me. I got to see Japan. I lived in this little village at the base of kind of Mount Fuji in the Shizuoka Prefecture. Fiction, a small town called Fujinomiya. But I got to, I got to travel to Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto, and I got to summit Mount Fuji at 14 years old. Never mind, I nearly froze to death at the top, but I mean, such cool adventures. And that really sparked this idea that, all right, I, whatever it is that I do, I want to have an effect and impact and on the greater world around me.

I think it's such an amazing experience at 14 years old just to hike Mount Fuji. How long did it take?

No, it was one day. We cheated. You know, they drove us to a certain point, and then at that point, we hiked the rest of the way to summit. But, you know, no one really prepared me for that because I had no idea that we were sleeping on the top of the summit. And literally, I went to the top of it with a sweatshirt, t-shirt, and jeans.

Unprepared.

Super grossly unprepared. Unprepared doesn't prepare.

14 years old, that's like, it's kind of—

You can take it at 14.

Yeah.

You can take anything, you know?

At 18, I would be sleeping in beaches in Portugal and I didn't care if I had—

Yeah. I mean, I look at my kids now and, you know, we were in California, you know, over the holidays and, you know, took them to the beach. Of course, no sane adult is getting in the water at that time.

No.

But of course the kids are like, you know, 3 seconds after arriving at the beach, they're in the water.

That's the beauty of it. The sense of adventure. I think it's— It's very helpful to paint the picture of Justin Wolf. And did you have any, like, parental figures or mentors that really, like, had a big impact on you growing up and carving your path?

Look, I had great parents. I, you know, I had a mother who was always, you know, okay with me being me and trying out different things and exploring different things. And of course, she was nervous, you know, and Half the decisions I've made in my life, I think nearly caused heart attacks.

Yeah.

But I never heard no, you can't, or you shouldn't. You know, I thought that was amazing. I also think that I've really surrounded myself by incredible people that are like-minded, you know, like wanting to do things differently, you know, wanting to push boundaries, always elevating. You know, conscious leaders, things, things like that, that I think are always—

you talking about business people?

Yeah, business people, but also, you know, friends, the kind of social community you surround yourself with. Like, I don't like, uh, pigeonholing people into these are my business relationships or these are, yeah. You know, it's like there's so much that, that the people around you can add to your life. Yeah. In different ways and in unexpected ways. Um, you know, it's exciting to, to kind of surround yourself by, by people that lift. that lift you.

So it's kind of the criteria for you is creating a community of, of, of birds who flock together but are inspiring and energizing and maybe a little bit contrarians.

Yeah.

Who think differently.

Yeah.

And, and move differently.

It's great. You know, kind of mavericks in, in whatever space they are. And whether that's business related or, you know, friendship, uh, community building, um, it's, it's all, it's all great.

And did you know that, like, growing up you would become a serial eco-conscious, like, social impact entrepreneur? I'm just trying to figure out if there's gems of hints of who you were going to become at an early age.

Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that I didn't have as a kid was, this is what I'm going to do. And I knew it from like 4 years old. That was not me. I think for the longest time I swore I was going to be a pilot. I was like, this is it for me. I'm like, I'm gonna be a pilot. Really excited about that.

But you wanted to fly?

Yeah, I wanted to fly, you know. I was super into jets, and I was like, okay, you know, the—

let's do it.

Back in the '80s, I was like, all right, I want to be an F-15 pilot, you know. How cool would that be, tearing through the skies and everything, you know? Again, you know, no, I didn't, because in middle— at the end of middle school, these came on, and all of a sudden those Pilot dreams went out the window.

Yes, your glasses.

Yeah, which was okay.

But you were in the military.

I was, but—

You did not fly.

No, I jumped out of planes instead of flying.

Okay, so that is the adventure. So you are a base jumper.

Yeah, so I was a paratrooper in the IDF. So I served in the Israeli Army, and there is like a bigger story sort of behind that. But that came about when I was in college, I think. You're really trying to figure yourself out. You're trying to figure out, you know, how you relate to the world around you. And I had this class, I majored in political economics of industrialized societies. It's like such a Berkeley major, you know? Yeah. That, that whole, it's political economics. But I, you know, the one thing that stuck with me was this professor who asked like a really difficult question for the classroom, you know? And it was like on the last day of class. And you know, what she was talking about is a, as the US was transitioning from like a manufacturing economy into like a service oriented economy, which would require more education, more technical skills to, to be competitive in that kind of space. What she was positing was that there was this— the future was going to be one where fewer, like, the rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer. And to be in that kind of like wealth-building class, it required more skills, more education.

So the skills economy was going to evolve.

And the question then she posed to us was, what is it that's going to make us all feel like Americans or all feel united? You know, there's all these sub-identities that everyone is latching onto. What is it that is going to bond us and bind us? You know, she's like, more people are going to live in gated communities separate from, you know, where the others are. So how do we create this idea of togetherness? You know, build more baseball fields, she says. Yeah, right. And it really, you know, Got me thinking.

Yeah, it's like the societal tissue.

Right.

How do we stay connected? How can we connect with each other?

So, you know, I basically that summer, just on my own, I wrote like a 10-page paper trying to answer that question where my response to it was, I think what would be a really good idea to sort of solve this is the idea of national service, right? Where we don't really have something like that at the moment.

What is that? What is national service?

So national service, and by that I mean is everyone, and I don't care how rich your parents are or what you look what you look like or where you come from, everyone goes ahead and serves, right? And I don't mean necessarily military service. You can do it, right? Go ahead. You want to do your national service in, in the armed forces? Great. But if you want something else, I don't care if it's the Marine Corps or the Peace Corps, Teach for America. There's so many opportunities to contribute, right? And to do something that gets you out of the orbit that you grew up in, right?

Yeah.

Gets you to interact with people that you may never have had any kind of contact with.

Yeah.

Right. You get to learn skills along the way, right? And then my final idea was for it is that, look, you finish these 2 years of service, let's say you—

Are you talking about full-time?

Yeah, like full-time from the age of 18 to 20.

When you're in your life crisis. Yeah. When you're totally emo.

Yeah, I think it's like people head off to college at 18 years old, they have no clue.

No clue.

What they want to do with their lives or who they are.

I went on a trip. At, at 18 for a month, and that was helpful. But like the whole year after I started university, it was like sitting on the bench and not being sure.

Yeah.

About my major.

So I think, you know, look, you spend 2 years working with the fire department or working with the elderly, or, you know, being a big brother in some kind of big brother or a teacher's assistant, you know, something like that. You think about the life experience that you'll have.

Yeah.

Think about the kind of people that you'll interact with. And the idea of having real responsibility at a young age, right? You finish that. And, and what I wanted to propose is you finish that and, you know, you either get interest-free loans for college or free community college after that. I mean, how transformative would some kind of idea like that be in society?

So, and it's very transformative. It, it forces people to widen their aperture. It also kind of like dismantles some of the beliefs because sometimes when you're only in one community, this is the view from which you see the world. Versus being in that melting pot and understanding perspectives and not honestly being forced, but being immersed in that environment. It also can help with some of the problems we're seeing nowadays. Like there's a loneliness pandemics, right? But it's really North American. It's, if I go to Haiti, it's not gonna happen.

That's right.

Because you're with people 24/7. So just creating that societal tissue I think is important. I love the idea. What happened to the idea?

So, I mean, for me, I went ahead and did something like that. I went and did it in a different way than I had originally thought. But for me, you know, most of my family had emigrated to Israel from South Africa. And I was, you know, there was a series of events that took place in the mid-'90s where there was like a, you know, suicide bombings in Israel. And there was like big, you know, protests on in Berkeley following that where people were holding up some pretty let us call it anti-Semitic sign. Yes. I would walk by and say, "How is it possible that because of events that are taking place on the other side of the world, someone could speak so directly and derisively towards me?" And it is still happening today. Completely. Nothing has changed.

Yeah. Nothing has changed. I think that is important as we are going to talk a bit more about what you do, because if things are not changing from generation to generation, How do we actually impact change? Right. Right. Talk about the Israel and the war. And you talk about like, like I started my career, I was educating people on genocides.

Yeah, right.

That events in the world that were genocides, Armenian genocide. I had a full class that was about the Holocaust, one about the problems of Africa. I hated the name of that class, but I think it's important because if we see that history keeps repeating itself, so who are going to be the game changers? Who are going to be the changemakers in this world? And I mean, you are one of them, or we hope. So I think that experience is very important. Thank you for sharing it.

So, yeah, so basically, bottom line is I wanted to discover myself more, what I was capable of. I felt like most people in the world kind of see the world between here and here, and I really wanted to understand what takes place here and here, and how will I respond? What kind of person will I be? Facing those kind of situations. So I wanted to test myself, and at the same time, I began to develop a relationship, at least, you know, with Israel where I felt like the future of that place mattered as much to me as it did to any person that was living over there, and therefore the responsibility to ensure its future, I felt, lay with me just as much as anyone that would be over there. So I combined all the things that we sort of talked about in terms of contributing and being part of a story that is bigger than the self and the now by ultimately moving to Israel after I graduated university. I learned Hebrew and then— Yeah, I heard you speak Hebrew earlier.

Can you tell us "parachutru"?

Yeah, so I then went to the IDF and I served from '99 till 2001 in Tzankanim, which is the paratrooper unit over there.

So how long did you stay in Israel?

All in, about 7 years. I was only planning on serving and then kind of coming back, but it was such a deep emotional experience for me, and I was so close to the friends that I had made over there that I found it very difficult to leave. Because look, when I went in to serve, it was It was great. You know, the Oslo Peace Accords were in full effect and it was a very quiet time. You know, Israel was about to withdraw from Lebanon. So it was like peace was in the air, you know?

It was.

And then literally one year after I drafted, the Second Intifada broke out. So it went from like very quiet, kind of peaceful times to very chaotic, very deadly, difficult experiences. But And got through it. Yeah, one piece. And I don't look back on it and regret my time there. You know, I think it was one of the deepest, most impactful experiences of my life. The things that I did on a daily basis there had a certain consequence that I've never seen repeated in any kind of like work afterwards. You know, it's almost funny because I watch people stress out in an office.

Yeah, you're like, this is not the real—

Yeah. No one is gonna die.

Yeah.

If you don't get that done by this, by this time. You know what I mean? Or if there's some error there. So I think one of the greatest gifts that the Army gave me was a very, very high tolerance for stress. Like, mm-hmm. I just don't stress out about things in the same way that other people do.

Which helps when you're an entrepreneur. Yeah. Trying to disrupt a whole category.

You need that. Yeah. Because being an entrepreneur, I mean, talk about one of the hardest professions out there. The highs are like super high.

Yeah.

And the lows are like super scary.

Yeah.

And however well you thought you planned whatever it is that you're gonna do.

Yeah.

I guarantee you, you're gonna ride that wave, you know, at some point, if not multiple times along your entrepreneurial journey.

Yeah. And I'm, I'm saying yeah, because I had a business a long time ago and I grinded my teeth so much that my first front row was, was gone. So. When I interviewed for my job at LinkedIn, my boss said, what was your biggest challenge or biggest grind? I said, it's probably when I was a CEO of a company and I was so stressed and I didn't sleep that I grinded my teeth so much that I had to redo my teeth. Like, so my boss was like, oh, you literally grind? I'm like, yes, my friend, because entrepreneurship is hard. You don't know what— like, it's like, where do you start? How do you scale your business, etc.? All the decisions are very important. So before we talk about Jonkiri, like, I wanna understand, like, when you were in the army in Israel, what were the things in the day-to-day that, because you said some of the things that we're doing on a daily basis had a lot of impact. Yeah. Just wanna understand what were those things?

Well, I mean, it's, uh, if you're in a, you know, combat unit during, you know, conducting combat operations, I like kind of mistakes result in people getting really badly hurt. And the people that you surround yourself with are the people that you're closest to. So you have that sort of sense of responsibility that, like I said, I've never seen repeated. You know, people concern themselves so much about the politics behind like wars and conflict and things like that. But when you are in a bunker or a foxhole or you're going out on patrol, like that's kind of sometimes the last thing you're thinking about is, you know, really think about the politics of this situation. All you care about is what do I need to do to make sure that my friend on the right and the left of me is safe. It's your community.

It's like you're trying to survive.

Yeah.

Right. You're in the front of the war.

For sure.

And you are in the trenches, as they say.

That's right.

And that was your purview.

Yeah.

Right. Let's fast forward to now.

Yeah.

You're in the trenches. Totally different world. And like, let's look at the focusing facts, 'cause honestly, not everybody like, looks at the plastic industry or the skincare industry. So let's look at a couple of global focusing facts. So according to multiple sources, including the Plastic Pollution Coalition, the personal care and beauty industry produce more than 120 billion units of packaging every year globally, most of which are not recyclable. So when we look at the stats, like 9% of plastic produced is recycled. Which means that 91% is not. So basically—

In the US, that number is even lower.

Wow. So it means that everything that you, we see that's plastic is just here to stay forever and ever and ever. That's exactly right. Across generations, that we're still here. I'm not, I don't wanna go into doom and gloom, but—

I wouldn't say forever, but 500 years is a really long time.

Right?

That's 20 generations. Yeah.

500 years. Okay. So if we don't change anything today, every plastic that's produced, 91% of the plastic produced globally will stay 500 years.

Yeah.

Is that correct?

Yeah, pretty much.

Okay. So in 2018 alone in the US, almost 8 billion units of rigid plastic were created just for beauty, right? And personal care products.

That's right.

And it keeps getting worse and worse. So let's talk about Junk Theory.

Yeah.

How are you aiming to change that?

Yeah. So really it's statistics like that that prompted us to, to launch the brand in the first place and, and really start along this, uh, journey. Um, it took much longer than I was expecting. Like my timing could not have been worse. Like literally we, we launched this brand, uh, uh, 2 weeks before the entire world, before COVID uh, before, yeah, the entire world shut down. Right.

Yeah.

So when I say launch, I, I, I should say we started the company, you know, we didn't launch until several years later.

It takes time to do the research to, to figure out what the name or everything. Right. So you started before COVID you launched, did you launch during? No.

So like post-COVID launch. So we launched last year in 2023, late summer. But prior to that, you know, while I was working at Ubi, my partners at Ubi had started a beauty incubator, right? And everything was kind of working. We were all working sort of shared services, same office space. So I really had a peek behind the curtain to see how the proverbial, you know, beauty sausage was made.

Yeah.

And that's where I realized, you know, this is a category that is just drowning in plastic.

Yeah.

Right. And at the same time, this is like 2019, 2020. We had seen this like meteoric rise in what was termed clean beauty. Right. And I'm still trying to figure out what exactly that means. But broadly speaking, I think clean beauty was really talking about this idea of healthy formulas for people and planet. Right. Like, like getting rid of— Yeah. Getting rid of junk ingredients and things like that.

Because what does junk do? Just like for the audience.

Yeah.

I mean, if I put junk in my face, what happens to me?

Yeah. I mean, there's all kinds of things. You know, you can clog your pores, endocrine disruptors. You know, a lot of this stuff is absorbed into your bloodstream, you know, and with pretty negative consequences, you know, you know, on your health a long time.

And then sometimes you don't know where it's coming from, but it might be coming from, from the junk.

Absolutely. And, you know, So I just felt like if we're going to talk about this idea of clean beauty, right, there's got to be something wrong about this idea that, that, okay, great, we've got these clean formulas that everyone is putting in plastic packaging, right? And the kind of people that would be seeking clean beauty, I think, would also really, you know, want something that's a little more sustainable, right? There's an element of guilt about buying the stuff that you need, right? Knowing that it's not gonna be recycled and that for 2 months of use of a, a given product, right? It's gonna sit on this planet for 500, for the next 500 years. Right?

Yeah.

That can't make people feel good.

It's, it doesn't make it feel good. I do think the new generation is a bit more aware than the old generation. Sure. Right?

For sure.

We talk about the millennials, Gen Z, right? Gen Z is like, is a, on a whole different bandwagon.

Totally.

We're a bit more conscious. Like they were raised differently. They think differently. And then, The future, my son, Gen Alpha.

Yeah.

The, the little ones are like, they're, they're digital natives. They're aware, they're informed, but also they're looking for to make more conscious choices in their life. So I do think that maybe the old generations didn't care, but the new generation is, is astute. For sure. And they wanna be able to walk the talk and, and, and leverage, like live through their wallet and make vote through their wallet. That's true. I think that's, that's where there's a beautiful medium between what you're doing, the clean beauty industry, and also how the world is evolving. And now and in the future, and hopefully the new generations and you and all the changemakers are gonna lift us into a different future.

And what I think it is, is it's a partnership between brands and the consumer, right?

Mm-hmm.

So we can't expect the consumer to do all the heavy lifting, right?

Yeah.

At some point, brands need to be doing more of the heavy lifting and they will, you know, and it depends on, you know, how quickly they do that depends on, you know, how strong the demand is from the consumer side. And also from the retailer side, right?

Yeah.

So I just think, you know, what I'm so excited about with Junk Theory that we did is we took all the heavy lifting away from the consumers. There were so many different ways that we could have gone about solving this plastic problem.

Yeah.

And what we didn't want to have to do is have the consumer change any of their habits, right? No, like, okay, you need to send this back to us if you want it to, you know, be recycled.

Who has time for that?

Yeah, who has time for it, right? Or, you know, I don't know, bring this back into some store or, you know, other things that add carbon footprint, you know, by action. Instead, why don't we just meet the consumer where the consumer is, right? And make a packaging solution that's curbside recyclable, right?

Mm-hmm.

And it took us a long time to get to this point. Originally, actually, the company was gonna be, we were gonna package our stuff in, uh, Ocean Waste plastic, right?

I thought, what, what is Ocean Waste plastic?

Ocean Waste plastic is plastic that's harvested, that's already in the ocean.

That you pick up.

And you collect it and you take it to a, you know, a recycling facility that's gonna repurpose it, pelletize it, and then you use it in new products, right? So you've taken plastic out of the ocean.

Which is like you're helping the planet because you're cleaning it up.

That's right.

And then there's a factory, I guess, that's gonna reprocess it and then you can, okay, so that was the initial idea.

So that was the initial idea, but then, you know, I realized that until the recycling infrastructure is more advanced in this country, If only 5% of the plastic in the US is— gets actually gets recycled.

Mm-hmm.

Then all the stuff that we're doing would just end up right back where it came from.

Yeah, exactly. It's like we, we bring it back to the ocean.

And I think one of the most important things as a social entrepreneur, and if you're starting a, a brand that is a social enterprise, right? Don't make it a marketing ploy. Don't make your impact just like, hey, let me check this box so that we can look good on, on paper. Stand behind the impact that you're gonna have, right? And make sure that it is genuine. Take the time to research how to, you know, make it effective and, and really make a difference in the space that you are trying to engage in, right?

Mm-hmm.

So that's where, cuz you took the time, it took what, 4 years to, to, yeah, I mean, it took us basically 3, 3 years to, to do this. And, uh, you know, a lot of that was because of COVID and supply chain issues and it being impossible to have face-to-face meetings. But, you know, we really took the time to understand what the environment was like, you know, from a recycling perspective, from a plastic use perspective. We did so much material analysis on what would be the best solution to package our formulas in. Yeah. Which ultimately led us to put our formulas in metal, in aluminum packaging.

This is what it looks like. Oh, yeah.

There we go.

Oh, make it real. So this is— metal. It looks so cute. So this is metal. It took you a couple of years to figure out how to create— is it a zero waste? Because I think the ambition was to create a zero waste company.

So I want to be 100% transparent, which is a rare thing in beauty. There is a tiny amount of plastic. If you look inside the cap there to keep the fresh seal. Yeah, there's a tiny thin layer of, you know, plastic in there. Right. It's basically less than 1 gram. The average skincare jar made of plastic has about 150 grams. So in other words, you would have to use our products every single day for 25 years before you had the same plastic footprint as a single skincare jar that you would buy today, which is a step change from, from the current situation. Yeah, I mean, it's more than that. Like, what I didn't want to do is create something that I thought was just incrementally better. I wanted to create something that I felt was impossible to ignore.

Okay.

Not just by consumers, but by the industry as a whole. Mm-hmm.

Right.

Because there's a certain amount of impact that we can make as Junk Theory as a company, right?

Yeah.

How we grow our company, how many consumers we have. Yeah. I, I consider them partners, our customers really.

Yeah. Yeah. Because they're changemakers. Like if I wanna vote with my dollars, then I could decide I'm gonna try it, by the way. Yeah. I'm gonna see, but my esthetician is, is gonna probably judge me, but I'm gonna try it. I think the question is that if you can create a movement, because there's a lot of people want to be able to have access to products that are not going to destroy our planet. Right. And then it's a question of first discovering who you are, right? If I was not in this philanthropic event in L.A., I would not have met you. I would not have known that this exists. So basically it's getting to know the brand and then leveraging it for your skin. So the formula must be important as well. But then for this, then how does it like, how does, how do you recycle this? What happens? What's the life cycle?

You put it in the blue bin. At home.

And that's it.

That's it.

So are you saying that aluminum gets recycled more and more efficiently than plastic?

Yeah, it's like 6 times more than plastic. Um, it's the most recycled and recyclable material basically on earth, right? Mm-hmm. Like some, somewhere upwards of like, I think 80% of aluminum in current use or 75% of aluminum in current use today. Yeah. Is recycled aluminum. So not new aluminum mined, uh, from the ground.

So are you saying that our infrastructure is better for aluminum than plastic?

Plastic, like way better.

But how is that so?

I'm just, uh, you know, it's— aluminum, I think, is a more valuable, uh, material for recycling and reuse purposes. Yeah, it's infinitely recyclable. So there's— with plastic, even the plastic that does get recycled, it can only be recycled a few cycles, uh, before it is no longer a viable, uh, feedstock for new product, right?

Yeah.

Aluminum, there's, there's no limit to how many times you can recycle it. which makes it much more efficient.

Yeah.

Um, and broadly speaking, you know, up until a few years ago, we used to just basically export all our plastic to China where it would be processed. Uh, and China stopped accepting that. So now the infrastructure is not, you know, it doesn't exist in the US right now. It's not as sophisticated to recycle more than 5% of the plastic that we consume.

Yeah. It doesn't make sense that we export our plastic to China for them to— Yeah.

No, it's all, it, it's crazy. And Again, I, I think given the climate crisis that we're facing right now, mm-hmm, you know, small baby steps are, are not enough.

Yeah.

We need to do more. And I wanna touch on one other point that you made there because we've talked so much about the packaging here. And I think that's what really makes, you know, the, the product, you know, unique in, in, in the space, in the category. 'Cause God help me, you know, beauty is a very crowded space.

It's crowded. It's expensive. Like I spend, yeah, I spend most of my career growing brands. So I know how much money it takes to scale a brand.

That's right.

Advert— like bring awareness to a new brand and why this brand versus the other brand. And on top of that, you're trying to educate a category. Yeah. In terms of changing habits. So this is—

that's right.

It's a lot of heavy lifting.

Yeah. But one of the most important things, and I think this sometimes gets lo— gets lost with people that are trying to do social enterprises because they think so much about the impact, right?

Mm-hmm.

If you want to create impact as a social entrepreneur, yeah. Creating a social enterprise. You have to begin— I should say begin and end— everything needs to be about creating a better product than what sits to the left or the right of it on the shelf. Right.

What do you mean by better product?

Okay, so, so in case of like Joint Theory.

Yeah.

Our formulas are spectacular, right? So many brands go out there and launch and they basically white label someone else's existing formula. They'll sprinkle in a few things there and that's it. Like we created our formulas from scratch with one of the best formulators in the United States for clean, clean beauty products.

So how did you do that? You met someone or you searched to see who's the best?

That's right.

Hired that person and then kept iterating. So what is in Jonkiri? What are the products?

So we launched with 3 products, right? The idea behind the brand is not to create like a million different products because again, that's just more junk, right? You don't need it, right? Our idea was let's do the basics better than anyone else out there, right? So we launched with 3 products, right? The 3 items that you're most likely to use every day in your daily skincare routine. It's a daily moisturizer. We call it Camo. It's a chamomile hyaluronic—

Relaxing.

Moisturizer.

That sounds very relaxing.

It's amazing.

I hope there's lavender somewhere.

No, I can't wait for you. You got to try it. I can't wait. There should be a follow-up to this podcast after you've tried it.

I got to try it.

And give people your honest opinion.

I'm going to go on TikTok and do— I don't know if you saw the viral skincare video. Anyway. But okay, so moisturizer, like for me, I need to wash my face.

Yes.

And that's what that is.

That's what this is. So that's a gel wash there, right? So that's your go-to for washing your face in the morning and night. And then our kind of powerhouse, you know, most active ingredients formula is our overnight treatment, which we call Palo. It's a—

it's a—

it's a, you know, it's a heavier— it's a heavier cream. Right. So our moisturizer is like the lightweight and our overnight treatment is the heavyweight.

Okay.

And it's a—

Heavyweight. You wake up, you're a new human being.

Yeah.

20 years younger.

So the overnight treatment works with your, you know, during your skin's resting cycle.

Okay.

It's a plum algae overnight treatment. So the idea is just to wake up and your skin should feel really glowing, dewy, fully, fully moisturized.

What a promise. Yes.

Yeah, it's fantastic. And, you know, it's chock-full of really amazing, amazing ingredients. We have this sort of approach of land and sea. So we use various kinds of algaes and kelps, seaweed.

Do you use it yourself?

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't want to be that weird person who says, but you're a man. Do you use it? Because listen, there's all these things about skincare. Your co-founder is a woman.

Yeah, that's right.

Right? And then you were in the incubator in LA, and then you heard about clean beauty, and then you were like, yes, I'm going to go for it. And before launching Juncture, were you like putting creams on your face or— No, but it's just— I just want to know. I just want to know. Let's get real here.

Yeah. Yeah. So no, I wasn't really. And now you do. I kind of joke with people that, like I say, you know, before I started this company, like the last time I put anything on my face, like camouflage in the army, you know, like 20 years ago. But then, you know, as you get older, your skin starts changing. And the more I started learning about skincare and really trying to understand the space, then I started to become like kind of a user of various skincare products. And now I'm like, I can't live without this stuff. I mean, it's amazing. My skin's never felt better. And look, I'm pushing 50 here. And, you know, if you want to start to tackle things like early signs of aging and overall skin health, fine lines, wrinkles, any redness, things like that.

Some people start at 18. I don't want to discourage you, but I—

it's— it's— I don't want to say it's never too soon, but, you know, prevention and, uh, it's important. Yeah, it matters.

So basically, you launched this, you have 3 different products that people can get.

That's right.

Uh, the ingredients that you— you said it's full transparency, and you said it was not something that's common in this, right, the beauty industry. So you're fully transparent about what is in your products.

Yeah, we disclose 100% of our ingredients. I mean, look, it's not that complicated. If, if you have nothing to hide, then show it all.

Do you think people are hiding something?

Oh, for sure. You know, look, I think you need to give the consumer the power to make choices for themselves.

Right? Be aware. First, you need to be aware. What is my makeup? What is my—

so in skincare and beauty right now, any ingredient that is— that constitutes less than 1% of your formula, you don't have to disclose. Fragrancing, you don't have to disclose. And there's some real culprits in that, in that space. So it's an easy way to sneak things in. Yeah. That you don't want people knowing about. And I just think that's bad for business, you know?

I just want to know, because to educate our audience and ourselves, like, what kind of things could people sneak in to a skincare product that could be damaging? You know, talk about plastic, but I'm just— what are the other things?

It's tough for me to answer. I'll answer it by saying this. Okay.

Because you don't do sneaky things in your— Yeah.

And no, I mean, there's, there's things that you can find phthalates and, you know, artificial fragrances and things like that that can be harmful to your skin. But the way that I would look at it is like this, you know, the US is one of the least regulated markets when it comes to skincare and beauty, right?

Not just that. Food. I'm from Canada, so I know. And when I go to Europe, my wine tastes different than my wine in the US.

So like, for example, in Europe, Europe has banned over 1,300 ingredients for use in skincare and beauty products. The US, I think, has banned 11.

And the last time it, you know, you can sell anything and everything that you want.

Yeah. I mean, they banned 11 in 1934. Okay, great.

So since then, nothing has—

so it's like the Wild West, right? And I just think for consumers who really care about the kind and quality of products that they're putting on their skin, you know, let's give them the power, A, to make great choices for themselves by disclosing everything. And let's, you know, when we started Junk Theory, we said, can we get rid of the guilt and the guesswork behind your daily routine. Like, you shouldn't have to be a pharmacist to figure out if the ingredients you're putting on—

Yeah.

—on your skin are okay. Yeah. And you shouldn't have to feel guilty about getting the stuff that you really should be using because, you know, brands aren't taking that extra step to do, you know, to do right from a sustainability perspective. So that's the idea, you know, at least behind Junk Theory is let's get rid of the guilt and the guesswork behind your daily routine. Let's align with our consumers at a values level, right? Mm-hmm. Because it's more expensive to package this way, right? Yeah. But my thinking is, is, okay, what's more expensive? Is it more expensive for me to package it that way? Because what happens when I do that is I create a value-aligned partnership with my consumer, right? Mm-hmm. That A, is gonna lead to lower customer acquisition costs, hopefully when they see what, you know, what it is that we are offering. And then higher lifetime values because they believe in what we're doing and our mission and it aligns with their values. Yeah. Right. So, okay, so it costs me, you know, let's say a dollar more to package my stuff in aluminum. Right. But how much more is my competition going to have to spend on advertising and convincing someone to go with their formula when they don't have the sort of sustainability offering that we have or the supply chain?

Yeah, that's right. Sustainable supply chain. I think it's super interesting, right? Because we know that the beauty industry has very fat margins. Yeah. And because like we buy it all the time, we need makeup, we need creams, we need all of those things all the time. We need shampoo. So CPG is one of the most— I'm coming from the advertising world, so CPG is one of the categories with the deepest pockets, and the biggest brands have like this effect, this network effect of being able to circulate a lot of different products. That's right. So you're a disruptor, right? Dongchiri is a bit more of a disruptor, and then you're carving your path following like the beauty counters of the world, which is very promising, right? The whole category is supposed to to go from $6 billion to $15 billion in 2028. Yeah. Which is good. And the consumer demand is increasing. It's at 68%. Yeah. Increase because there's demand. So now I think the biggest question now is how are you gonna get this to market, to the hands of the conscious customer, the eco-conscious customer?

Yeah. That, you know, I think there's a, from a marketing perspective, a couple of different routes. One, because we're primarily D2C at the moment. Mm-hmm. You know, it's pretty traditional kind of marketing where I think we can distinguish ourselves from anyone else is the kind of content that we can put out, right? Yeah. So we can put out educational content and speak about, you know, for example, plastic in a way that just no other brand can do. Yeah. Right. And I think that's a huge advantage to us. I think we can align and work with other organizations that are taking action against plastic. Mm-hmm. In a way that no other brand can in the space. Um, and we can seek influencers and affiliates and advocates who believe in the things that we do, right? The people that are out there screaming at the top of their lungs. Yeah. To stop using single-use plastic and to start being more thoughtful as a, you know, a consumer and start to reuse packaging instead of just throwing it away. Yeah. I can have a conversation with those, those kind of folks in a way that other brands can't. And I think there's also something that's just more genuine and honest about, you know, talking to consumers in that way versus like the, the paid influencer celebrity thing, you know, endorsement, that kind of stuff.

I just, you know, I mean, if it's not real, like I, I worked for one customer where they, they paid $10 million for one influencer and it flopped, right? That was their marketing strategy. Mm-hmm. It didn't work, right? Because there's beyond that, there's also values, there's purpose. That's right. Mission, but also the product. And there has to be a fit. Yeah. So, so basically what you're saying is that you're gonna create a movement or you're gonna like impact—

That's exactly how we try and talk about it is, is the idea of building a movement, not a brand. Okay.

Creating a movement, not a brand. And that's gonna help with the sustainability of our planet for the future. And like, listen, what you've done, like all those years of research, it's super interesting. Did like, can other brands leverage that? Is that patented or do you have a patent or?

Not on producing, you know, packaging from aluminum. In fact, we want— I don't think you'll hear many CEOs say something like this, but— Yeah, tell me. We want other brands to do this. I hope that Junk Theory will inspire brands that are, and, you know, beauty conglomerates. There's about 5 or 6 beauty conglomerates that own pretty much every brand out there. And if we can start to get market traction, right? Mm-hmm. And, and start to take market share from some of their traditional brands, what my hope is, is that they'll take a, a much closer look at us and begin to emulate that, right? Yeah. Begin to put more packaging in metal instead of plastic. And all of a sudden, you know, we've outsized the impact that we could do as a single brand, uh, alone, you know?

So your goal would be, if your dreams, the wildest dreams would be happening in the next 10 years, right? Is that it would— Junk Theory would not be the only brand who has zero waste. It would be a movement of all the biggest, especially the 5 conglomerates. 'Cause you can convince, you can have impact and convince all the little players, or you can have like the, the big players actually shift drastically. That's right. So what can— with Driving Impact, what we try to do is we simplify what's very complicated because it's like everything that's climate sounds very complicated. We have like doctorates who come and like, it's not that complicated. So how to simplify it? So if you're a consumer today, what are 3 things, 3 actions you can do to start impacting the beauty industry knowing that it produces like significant amount, I think 70% or something of all plastic pollution. Yeah. In the US.

Um, 3 things you can do. I think probably the first thing that I would recommend doing is, is just taking a moment to understand and reflect and, and not put pressure on yourself to be perfect. Mm-hmm. None of us are perfect, right? Yeah. And it doesn't mean that you suddenly have to eliminate every single item of plastic that you ever use in your daily life. Mm-hmm. That's really hard to do.

You don't wanna be a purist. Right. Cause sometimes it's like the standards are so high and it's like, that's right.

You're setting yourself up for failure. Instead, set yourself up for wins. Make one small change, you know, figure out some way of, of changing some part of your routine, whether it's a switch to Junk Theory for your 3 most basic skincare, you know, products, or it's going ahead and, and reusing something that you would otherwise throw away. You know, get that small win. You don't have to be perfect. Just take that small step in the right direction.

I think that's number one. Get a small win. And then another one around the big companies. How, what can the, our audience do to impact the 5 big beauty conglomerates?

Yeah. So one is, you know, to a point that you mentioned earlier, which is vote with your dollars. Mm-hmm. Make smarter consumer choices. You know, if you can find a brand that aligns with your values, go with them, you know, sometimes that means spending an extra dollar and that's okay. I think something like 70% of consumers are willing to do that. Yeah. For a brand that aligns with their values. And the third thing that I want to say is, is be an advocate. You know, brands listen, you write to them. Yeah. Let them know it's not okay. You know, and you can do that, you know, whether it's whether you're speaking directly to the manufacturers or these like beauty conglomerates that are producing all these products. Or your favorite retailer. I mean, take a look at what, like, you know, clean beauty retailer Credo, for example, you know, they probably set the standard when it comes to like what they're willing to offer in their stores, you know, from a clean perspective, sustainable perspective. And they've taken some pretty serious action that I think, you know, it's like a 5-year plan to start to eliminate single-use plastic, right? That's important. Yeah, but it's a big commitment.

And now we have to—

and I think it matters, you know, same thing with Sephora, Sephora Clean, Sephora Clean Plus, you know, and they have like 80+ percent of their products in a certain line that's now clean.

That's right. So we're seeing the transformation and the change. So we need more of these brands to do that.

But I just think that that stuff has to start to happen faster. Like we got to light a little bit of a fire, like, like the products that we produce, Junk Theory, this tiny little skincare startup company that just launched, you know, was able to produce something that is better than where Credo wants its brands, you know, that it features to be, you know, in 5 years from now. Like, this is more sustainable than where they want to be now.

You know, there's something to say about regulations, right? I was— I'm originally from Montreal. I was in Montreal for the holidays and I had to purchase a couple of things. And then I asked, I said, do you want a bag? I said, yes. And he said, what options do you have? We have one option. We are not legally we're not allowed to give or sell plastic. And I was like, wow, go Quebec, right? There's like, I was there, anywhere you go, you cannot, it's illegal to give plastic, which means that they had to give me a bag for free or charge me for a different type of bag. But even a dollar store had some bags. So there's also something to say about regulations where like you talk about, about like it's not a regulated, that regulated of an industry, but there could be some pressure applied from, from consumers to create more regulations around it.

Sure.

I mean, like, what about if Quebec can do it? I think.

Yeah. I mean, what about like a— God, don't hate me out there for this, but like, what about a plastic tax? You know, if you're going to produce, produce products in plastic, you know, I'm talking all the, the big ones, you know, everything from skincare to Coca-Cola and stuff, you know, which is, you know, leading to all the, the, the issues that we're having right now about plastic pollution. Then make those brands, you know, be part of the solution as well. I think it's not that hard, especially in categories like beauty where there are such big margins, you know? Yeah. A lot of that margin gets eaten up through marketing costs and whatnot. But still, I mean, the margins are exceptional. And, you know, look, if you're producing a product that has COGS of, let's say, $5 to $10 or whatever, it's that number can vary more, you know, depending on the quality of the product and everything. But, you know, you're creating a product that's going to cost you, let's call it $5 to make, right? But you're selling that for $70. You're telling me there's not $1 of wiggle room or $0.50 of wiggle room to create a, you know, a packaging solution that won't pollute the planet for the next, you know, 500 years? There is. Just stop being greedy. You know what I mean? Don't. Don't maximize profits at all costs. That's what's so beautiful about, you know, the social enterprise model or the business, the benefit corporation model is that the, the, you know, executives at, at a, at a benefit corporation don't have to maximize every single, you know, dollar of shareholder value. You can prioritize, prioritize mission as well. And I think ultimately that makes for better, that makes better business sense.

There's a balance, right, between sustainability of the planet and, and growth at all costs. But it's not at all costs. So I think there needs to be a balance and it's possible to be a profitable brand. That could be, uh, our future. The other thing that I'm hearing from you is that consumers really have a choice, 'cause you named a lot of big brands. What about not using or like consuming these products anymore? Right. Right. 'Cause if there's no demand, you can throw a lot of marketing, but if the, the demand vanishes, then they're going to have to think differently. And then they're going to see, oh, that's— this is disruptive, disruptive brand that's creating something that's interesting in the world that actually they're growing and they're not doing that much marketing because we've seen a lot of disruptor brands grow organically due to different ways, like passion around clean tech, energy, or like EV cars, whatnot. So I think there's also that, like there's also a lot of power in the people of making the choices that are going to like kind of cut some of the levers that the big companies have had for a long time.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, consumer demand drives business, so.

I want to go on another fun part of the interview. We didn't have a chance to talk about Youbee. We have maybe 5 minutes. Let's go do the rapid-fire questions. Oh, sure. Okay. I'm at the grocery, like real life. I think I'm going to do a whole series about that. Real life choices, because educating ourselves and other people is like, I'm at the grocery store. And I forgot my bag. What's the least worst option?

Paper, plastic? Like, easy answer on that one. Paper. Paper is like aluminum, one of the most recycled materials on Earth. I think it was something close to 70% of paper gets recycled and is recycled. No-brainer on that one. Take the paper bag. Let's talk about microplastic.

Where is the oddest place microplastic has been found?

That's a tougher one to answer because I don't know what you mean by "honest." It's found everywhere. Microplastic is basically ubiquitous in our lives today. I think CNN had had an article pointing out the fact that we consume roughly the equivalent of a credit card's worth of plastic every week.

Oh my gosh. So basically I take my credit card and I eat it.

Pretty much each week. Every week. But it comes in microscopic portions. In basically everything that you're eating, uh, and consuming, uh, which is crazy.

Moment of silence. And then it goes into my brain and then, and then I'm tired or things happen. I don't know why. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing.

Yeah. Sorry about that one.

Um, what's the easiest way to get rid of microplastic?

Stop consuming plastic. Um, you know, we really, this is like not a, we can hold off for a few years and deal with it later kind of issue. It's the kind of issue where we need to be dealing with this right now. And whether, you know, we switch to, you know, going back to some old wisdom around metal packaging, or there's some really innovative stuff that I think is coming to market very soon around biopolymers. So making packaging out of seaweed and different things like that that are, you know, biodegradable. But what you want to make sure with like kind of the biodegradable space is, again, we explored this for packaging for Junk Theory, is biodegradable polymers. There's not the infrastructure right now in the US for proper, like, managing products and having them actually biodegrade. Usually you need an industrial facility, so it's not like you can chuck it in your backyard compost and it'll biodegrade properly. Which would be the best. But that's the way to go. Like, that's where we need to be thinking about future packaging for consumer products, right? Yeah. The other thing that I think brands can do is reduce the amount of packaging that they include. You know, there's so many products out there.

That's your packaging. What is this? Yeah. Oh, yeah. What is recyclable? But what— I don't even know what material. Sorry, it's going to be loud. Yeah.

What is this material? So this is glycine, you know, basically a kind of paper packaging. It's like almost like rice paper. If you will. And instead of putting our product inside a box that's got all kinds of stuff that you don't really need, I mean, that's it right there. And literally not a single thing. I see you have our starter kit over there, but is it compostable?

Is the starter kit?

No, it's just, it's all recyclable. You just chuck it in the recycling bin and this stuff will get recycled. Okay. Right. All of it? Yeah, all of it. So nothing that we produce that you receive from us should ever go in the trash bin. This is like the, the basically the only brand that I know where nothing goes in the trash. And, you know, again, with, with Junk Theory, what, what's so exciting about it is that, you know, we really challenged ourselves with a question of, you know, can we build a brand where absolutely nothing goes in the trash? Yeah. And also, um, and the answer is yes because it's here.

Yes. It's here. It's possible. What happens with the small microplastic that's there?

Like, if that'll get incinerated when through the recycling process.

So it's managed and it's, it's, it's a glitch. Yes.

Okay. The other thing I was gonna say is what I think really sets us apart and what I would love to see more brands do is care as much about where their products end up as they do about selling. Mm-hmm. It's, you know, so many brands, all they care about is selling, selling, selling, right? Without giving as much thought to, okay, what happens when people are done with the stuff that they just bought?

That's the whole life cycle of a product. Exactly. So basically thinking about the end and the future. That's right. Right. And making it like, I don't wanna call it regenerative. I don't even know if it makes sense, but really having a, like a supply chain that's and, and yeah.

And closed loop, closed loop, kind of, kind of, you know, product lifecycle is, is the, the kind of star.

It's amazing. The gold standard. So the last question, we didn't get to talk about Ubi, and that's how I approached you because you shared an amazing story. Yeah. When we were at Bella Masters in Beverly Hills.

Right, about this form. Amazing company. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you spent 7 years building a company that was all about school supply, and I don't know why, but I'm hoarding products today. Oh nice. So I went to Montreal and I grew up like with these Hillroy books, whatever. And anyway, dear to my heart. So tell us a little bit more about the impact that you drove with UB, what does it do, and what brought you to that journey? Because that was a bit of a start of your social impact.

Yeah, it was. You know, Yubi, I have so much love for that company. It's still, you know, an ongoing concern and that you can find it in, you know, Target stores and online all across the country and lots of different places. Um, but Yubi really came out of, um, this idea that, um, you know, there is a huge difference in access to basic school supplies between kids, you know, from families of means and those without. Right?

In the US?

In, in the US. Yeah, absolutely. Like, you do not have to travel far to find incredible need, you know. I, I don't care where you are, it's within like basically short driving distance, you can find incredible need. And the fact is that today teachers are spending hundreds of dollars out of pocket to provide their students with supplies that should be a right and not a privilege.

Like, Like crayons. And they're already underpaid. Yeah.

And they're already underpaid and they're spending what little they make, you know, to provide, you know, school supplies for their students. So, you know, things like crayons and pencils and markers and erasers, those shouldn't be a privilege. They, every kid should have access to those things. Yeah. Right. And it shouldn't fall on teachers to, to make sure that that is so, so, um, I had done a lot of pro bono work in the education space as an attorney. And, uh, I had some, you know, friends and who became partners that, that were big in the, in the CPG and retail space. And, you know, this was back in 2012 where we were seeing this rise of this, uh, upstart shoe company, Tom's Shoes. Yeah. You know, that was doing one-for-one giving, right? Yeah. And beating out and taking market share from much bigger competitors, right? In the space. And we thought to ourselves like, why can't we do that in the education space? Like, no one is doing that. Could we create a brand where, and, and, you know, school supplies have been really commoditized. I felt like, you know, everything kind of looked the same and it wasn't like when I grew up, you know, we had Trapper Keepers and all these cool school supplies that we were really excited about. So we said to ourselves, you know, can we make a school supply aisle as hard to pull your kid out of as a toy aisle? Right? And at the same time, is there enough margin in this, in this space whereby we can execute on a one-for-one giving program, like, like really make an impact in this space.

And it was there.

Yeah. So, so for every item that we sold, we donated a school supply item to kids in need in the US. Okay. Right. And you know, we, there was so many innovative things that I think that we did at Ubi. Um, and it's still, still up and running today. Oh yeah. It's still going. Yeah. I mean, Ubi today I think provides close to 2,000 kids a day. In the US with full sets of school supplies. Uh, so I don't mean here's a pencil and we're gonna check that mark and, and tell everyone that we give kids school. Uh-uh. I spent 6 months before we launched Yubi as like a teacher's assistant in South Central LA, you know, going into classes and going into, you know, school, you know, to really figure out, hey, what do these kids need? Mm-hmm. How can we help teachers most? How do I design the give side of this company? Yeah. To make a real difference and not check some marketing box. Yeah. And you know, that's, that's what we did.

And, and another thing, so you did your market research, you spent some time on the field, and then you were able to create that, this cool supply line, Ube.

Yeah. So, you know, and another thing that I think was really innovative about our, our product line at the time, and this is what I mean about, you know, your product has to go first. Like it, I, I say this as former chief giving officer where I just wanted to scream about our impact and talk about that impact story. Yeah. You got to have a good product. The product that sits on that Target shelf had to be better than what was sitting to the left or the right, or our impact didn't matter because they were picking that other item. Yeah. So what we did that I thought was really cool is, you know, prior to Ubi and its section there, you know, everything was organized on the aisle by what the product was, right? So all your pencils are here, your crayons are there, your notepads are over there. Right? Yeah. And we said, let's not do it like that. Let's merchandise everything by color. Oh wow. So everything pink was here and everything purple was there. I love color blocks. Everything green was there.

I have a whole library of color blocks.

And it was just this like island of fun and color and excitement, you know, in a, in a space that had really become kind of commoditized, commoditized and boring, you know, and boring. That's exciting. And so, You combine that kind of spark of excitement with really cool, exciting, fun, fuzzy, tactile products with this idea that every time I pick one up, I'm giving another kid a school supply item that, you know, has never had something to call their own. That's cool. That's how you keep people like kind of coming back and, and always choosing, you know, your brand for, you know, when they, when they need school supplies.

So I think, I think it's amazing because I think for people who want to become changemakers and social entrepreneurs is what I'm hearing from you is that you have to create a kick-ass product. Yeah, right. That the customer—

number one thing— raving about. That's right.

Passionate about. So thank you so much, Justin. So it's a wrap for us about this important conversation about how to impact the world, drive impact through clean skincare, but also school supplies. So I'm super excited about the Jong Thierry journey. I'm excited to try it on my own. Thank you. Right. And then see, see what it brings us.

Yeah, I would love to hear the results afterwards, please. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Bye-bye. Appreciate it.