Kara Goldin built Hint into a major beverage brand through Amazon and direct sales, then moved into sun care after learning about oxybenzone risks. She discusses FDA approval, product strategy, and what drives her brand's mission.
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And so basically, we, a few years ago, decided really to go back to our roots. I had been selling through Amazon. Amazon had called us. I worked for a guy that was running their grocery business that was launching. And he said to me, we want to put Hint into the grocery business on Amazon. And I said, great. You can wholesale the product from us and we'll put it on and so we did that and very soon became one of the top sellers on Amazon, which I was really surprised that people would buy heavy cases of Hint and have it delivered to their door. We also— I should also mention something that we did that was really, really smart early on. We knew tech companies where we had— my husband and I had both grown up in these companies. And we went to Google and Google was actually— their original office was over on University in Palo Alto. And we went to them and said, hey, I heard you guys are giving free food and drinks to your employees and will you guys actually buy our product? And they said, sure, we'll give it a try. And today we're the number one beverage inside tech firms throughout Silicon Valley. We have— they've embraced us, we've really embraced them and it's been part of our strategy to really grow with them. And P.S., we've learned from these companies that if you have healthy and better-for-you products like Hint or plain water and not products like soda and stuff with lots of crap in it, that your healthcare costs go down because you don't have people that are sick and lethargic and not really— like the healthy food and healthy drinks thing really, really works. So we— We continued to grow through sort of nontraditional channels, at least nontraditional in the beverage industry, and then a couple of years ago launched our own direct-to-consumer business and basically have grown that to be, in combination with Amazon and Jet and a few others, almost 40% of our overall business, which is very, very unique for a beverage company. And 3 years ago, I had a scare with a precancer cell on my nose, too much sun in Arizona. And went to my local dermatologist and decided after having it removed that I was going to wear sunscreen forever and never be outside without sunscreen on. And after I started wearing sunscreen, I found that my precancer started growing back. really, really fast. And I thought, like, that's super, super scary. So I started to do some research on our sun care products that were out there in the market. And I had heard a lot about parabens, but I had never really heard about some of the other ingredients in sunscreens. And I stumbled across this one ingredient called oxybenzone that was approved by the FDA in 1976. And the Center for Disease Control had actually said that oxybenzone may actually enhance precancer cell growth for people that have it under their skin. And I thought, well, that's really crazy. Like, who actually knows that they have precancer cells growing under their skin until it's too late? And so I searched for a product that didn't have oxybenzone in it. There were a lot of products with no parabens in it. And 98% of sunscreens have oxybenzone in them in places like that you buy them at CVS and Walgreens. And I thought, I've got to find a sunscreen that doesn't have it. And I ended up finding a sunscreen that didn't have oxybenzone in it from my dermatologist, but it was over $50 for a bottle of sunscreen. And I thought, that's so crazy, like for the average consumer that really wants to to have healthy skin, like $50 is a lot of money to be spending on that. So I thought, wow, I'm gonna just go and do a sunscreen and I'm also going to make it be a product that actually smells better. And so I really thought about when we're bottling Hint that the scent that I would smell when I'm in our factories was amazing and overwhelming that when we're running mango grapefruit, I would smell the mango grapefruit. And I one day took a few drops while I'm playing around with making sunscreen in my kitchen and I threw it into the bottle. And I thought like, this is awesome and I'm wearing it all the time and my kids are wearing it and friends are wearing it. And then I find out that I have to go through FDA approval. So all sunscreens need to be approved by the FDA. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to go through that process. How do I do it? And so literally downloaded the form on the website and started filling out the paperwork on my table at home. And 3 years later, I get the news back from the FDA that I've got approval, that it's finally been approved. So that was December of this year. And we roll it out in January and it was so great because the way that stores work in terms of getting products on the shelf is it's typically like 6 months out. So the one-off opportunity that I had with Whole Foods was really, really unusual. Typically, they'll tell you yay or nay and then they'll put it on the shelf 6 months later. But because we had this online business, I was actually able to go direct to the consumer and say, Hey, I've got this great product. We're using the essences from this in order to scent it, and really call attention to oxybenzone as well as parabens. And we had an amazing response in January from that consumer base, and I really started to get excited because I thought, no longer am I being held captive to these— whether it's the soda companies or now I've entered into going up against the Coppertones and Neutrogenas of the world and really trying to have this relationship with the customer and helping the customer to get healthier. And it was really the first time— somebody asked me in a talk a couple of weeks ago, it was really the first time that I realized that like I had a brand and I had a purpose and I had— and I could actually take these ideas to the consumer and help the consumer to truly get healthy. And so that's really what the Hint brand is. It's not— it started out as a beverage company to solve a problem that was my problem first around diet sweeteners. But then now it's gone into sunscreens. We're launching a few other products coming up. Our plan is not to be 5,000 products. Our plan is really to look at industries that actually are not really looking to create the best products for health, for the consumer, and that's something to me that I love doing. I love getting up every day and being able to know that I'm making a difference in some way and I'm not doing it in a not-for-profit way. We are now, like as I mentioned, a profitable company that is really growing and we have the ability to go into lots of different categories as well. So that's my story. I'm going to take a break. Oh, thank you.
