Peter Thomas Roth: Founder & CEO of Peter Thomas Roth

Episode 487

In this episode, Kara Goldin interviews Peter Thomas Roth, Founder, Formulator and CEO of Peter Thomas Roth. Peter shares his personal journey including how the brand continues to corner the clinical market as a groundbreaking, results-focused company sourcing ingredients from all over the world then formulating at the highest percentage possible to provide maximum results for flawless, healthier-looking skin. Peter takes us through his journey and we learn about his lessons, as well as the role of community and influencers in building the brand. This episode is super informative and inspiring and you don’t want to miss it! On this episode of #TheKaraGoldinShow.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be, you just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control.

Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone, it’s Kara Goldin from the Kara Goldin show. And I’m super excited to have my next guest here, Peter Thomas Roth, kind of an icon in the beauty industry, for sure. He is the founder and CEO of the incredible brand, also called his name Peter Thomas Roth. He is clearly an influential segment leader in the beauty industry. And the brand continues to corner the clinical market as a groundbreaking results focused company sourcing ingredients from all over the world than formulating at the highest percentage possible to provide maximum results. For flawless, healthier looking skin. I have to say that I told a few people that I was interviewing you, or when I was with them over the weekend. And they were like, oh my god, I’m obsessed with his products. And definitely you have some big fans out there. So I’m very excited to have you here with us. So thank you for coming on.

Peter Thomas Roth 1:38
Thanks for having me. This is fine. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 1:41
absolutely. So tell us the backstory. I know that there was some family backstory, sort of what got you to actually decide to launch your own products, but I’d love to hear from you.

Peter Thomas Roth 1:55
But my dad, both parents from Hungary, my dad grew up his father had these two little hotels went to like Bala Thomas’s largest lake in Hungary, Lotus like in Europe, and then when wherever miracles wherever they live. And in Hungary, if you dig down for water, you get healing water, almost everywhere. So like every place has like a spa, basically, all you do is you get this big tub, like a small swimming pool, or a large Jacuzzi. And you just turn on the spigot and it fills it up, you know, there’s no chlorine and then at the end of that you’d go in and for your body aches and and then you just drain it at the end of the night. It’s really that simple. And they’re all over the place is seriously. So they had this spa and it was always interested but then he came to America and he was a dental mechanic came in the jewelry business. But despite industry always interests me and unfortunately, when I was a teenager, I had so many pimples like it was out of control. And I went to every DERM on Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue Manhattan got two injections into the you know, the big, you know, two parts that are so gross. So it’s always, skincare was always on top of, you know, because I always had it set like wherever at the tip of my nose or it was gross. Or I was super shiny face and and what I say now just to a shiny face. Doesn’t look good when you’re an acne person. A glowing face looks good when you’re dry skin normal skin person. Yeah, because of glowing skin like right out of work yet or a steam looks great. But an oily acne skin shine. It just doesn’t have the look. I can’t explain it. It’s just like it’s greasy. And it’s just I have I still have greasy skin, oily skin. So it’s actually kind of interesting anyway, so I had to constantly do skincare products. And when I was in college, this is one company that you shake, shake, shake, and it’s brown. Yeah, we saw that I’d be the last one to go to sleep and the first one to wake up because I don’t want anyone to see all the brown spots on my face, which is just stupid, but that’s the way it was. Anyway, fast forward. I was always into the skin because I had to be lit literally I had to be. And then I started my own company. It was a hobby, because I couldn’t figure out some good stuff. And at the time, if you go into a department store, they didn’t have acne ingredients. They had skin for oily skin but they didn’t do anything. There was no salicylic acid and there’s no sulfur in it. There’s no benzoyl peroxide, there’s no nothing. So it was down to the drugstores and prescriptions. So that’s how I started I just started with an aquiline it’s kind of fun. It was a hobby acne and wrinkles. I did and we had 20 products I think 10 were acne towel glycolic glycolic was super hot at the time. And that’s how I started and you know if it’s a hobby and you put everything into it, the products are really good because I did it for myself. To make it work as best you could, and then just kind of everyone kept buying it. And then the people liked it. And then it kept developing and, you know, slowly but surely, like the turtle that, you know, always, the turtle is my favorite. But I even have two turtles, because the rabbit kind of turtle goes slow lives for freaking ever. You know, I have turtles that are this big now that I bought for 10 bucks in Chinatown. That was so cute for my kids. So this little unit with a little plastic tray. Yeah, they’re still alive. You know, a rabbit. They’re so cute. You know, they only live like two or three years. And that’s it. They’re done. But they’re like, give you a lot of Yeah, so slow and steady wins the game and always being on top of what’s hot. That’s really, really important. You have to be current. If you don’t know how to be current, you can’t kind of succeed in anything, whether it’s building a house or clothing or you have to be current. Such

Kara Goldin 5:56
good thoughts there for sure. So what’s this right out of college that you or did you do?

Peter Thomas Roth 6:03
No, I went into my father’s jewelry business and I didn’t love it. We had a blue collar factory and I didn’t like cutting quote unquote, the factory. And I liked it. It was fun. We also i license very valuable jewelry back then we made jewelry for her. We did the stuff for the Franklin meant we did a lot of Americans press promotions, we did everything into Metropolitan Museum of Art if you bought a reproduction or factory made it. So you know, I learned a lot about how to be like, for example, the Metropole Museum of Art, that when they have the Egyptian exhibit, you know, each reproduction is actually reproduction. If you put it next to each other, you can’t tell the difference. You know, so perfection. I’m a perfectionist, and I’ve learned how to be perfectionist, because when you’re doing reproductions, or with the Franklin men to make 5000 rings, everyone has to look the same. They’ll be different. Like if you buy a ring, you see it, you want to look the same, it’s really hard to do, especially with stones, for example, if they’re like 10, sapphires, you have to have the same color, because they come in lots of hues and tones. So I really learned how to be perfectionists. And then I started the skincare business. And then actually, I closed my dad’s factory like 10 years ago because everything moved to Asia. And then, but I opened I started a jewelry company to sew with Peter Thomas Roth jewelry.com. And I have this pattern. Now that’s kind of a hobby. It’s just sitting there as a hobby. But it’s fun. It’s like I’m into it. Just you need a hobby. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 7:34
definitely. I love that you followed your passion and your interests and just your creative side, but also knew that in order to maintain that creative side, you had to make a business out of it. Right. I mean, that was,

Peter Thomas Roth 7:49
and it was fun. And yeah, and I went to I actually went to Wharton Graduate Award. And so I actually knew how to do that. So that came in handy, you know, because a lot of people don’t know how to do that part. And you know, that really hurts your bottom line if you can’t figure that out. So either have to hire someone who can or you need to do it yourself. And then if you hired someone you can, you have to actually listen to them.

Kara Goldin 8:12
Yeah, exactly. What was your first product that you created under the Peter Roth, or Peter?

Peter Thomas Roth 8:21
You know, we still have two in there. We still have maybe three, the cucumber gel mask, who was original. The sell for acne mask is original, they’re all improved, definitely improved, but they’re still there. And I think the HIV clearing gel, which is for acne, and fine lines are still in the line vastly improved. So they’re much better, but still still there. I will tell you the status. The status moment was everything was printed. And I had a bottle of one of my cleansers. And it was an empty, right. And I was like, oh my god, I

could throw the bottle out. It was like my first bottle. So it broke my heart to throw that bottle. You

Kara Goldin 9:09
actually kind of first bottle out I

Peter Thomas Roth 9:12
was just I was there for a long time. Yeah, I couldn’t do it. Because you know, by the time you you decide on the packaging and the logo and this and then the formulas and you put it together and you ship it out and you have your first few and you actually using it and you’re done with it. Like, you know when you get your pair of shoes, you hate to throw out that box. Yeah, but you have to throw it up as you go.

Kara Goldin 9:37
So great. So how would you describe the Peter Thomas Roth? I described it a bit in the introduction. But what when you think about your mission and your purpose, and maybe you see some new products that you’re developing and they’re not up to sort of the level that you really want it to be? What is it about your brand that you think is really What’s the ethos behind it that you want to always be carried through.

Peter Thomas Roth 10:05
So interesting, you said that being a perfectionist and coming from a manufacturer, jewelry manufacturer whose customers were very demanding, like the quality control at the time at the Franklin Mint. And the Metropolitan Museum was really high, like, as high as I would say, Tiffany and cardio would be like, good, you go in there, the pieces are perfect, you know, as they should be. But a lot of them aren’t. So, at the beginning, it was difficult working with other labs and getting what I wanted. Because they give you one or two submissions, you know, and then you want to tweak it, it doesn’t feel right, you want to put more ingredients in, it doesn’t smell right, it just doesn’t absorb. There’s 100 things on the list. And you know, they don’t like to do it because it cost them money. And they’re chemists. So it became a problem. And like a huge problem. So actually, we opened our own lab, so we manufacture everything. So in New Jersey, and basically I would say 90% of the products we manufacture some we actually can’t just because we can’t do it, but the ones we can do, but even the ones we can we actually sometimes sends the formula there and someone else puts it in the bottle or puts it together. So basically, right now, if I come up with a new product, and let’s just say I want to put 30% peptides in it. And we want to put this base in this, you know, whatever the list is, it’s like ordering food at a restaurant, I call it. And then the chef has to make us Let me give it to the chemist, and that’s their job. And then let’s say separates like oil and vinegar. So then they go, Oh, we have to take some peptides. So we’re gonna say we take a few peptides out, but then I don’t want to take it to study, then we go to 2928 and 27 until it works. And sometimes we hit it on the nail and 510 submissions, and sometimes it’s a year or two and it’s like 300 submissions. It’s hard. And let me explain why. First of all, it has to feel right, it has to have enough ingredients to work, it has to go into your skin to make it look good, you don’t want to be super shiny or super mad, or, you know, it has to you don’t want to be left with your makeup over it, there’s a whole list of things, then you may not know needs to go to, I think it’s called freeze thaw. So let’s say you live in Alaska, and your new sunscreen that I gave you is sitting on your dashboard, it’s going to freeze in your car overnight. So then in the morning, it’s going to thaw. So that’s the thing you have to do, because otherwise it’s gonna separate, right and then you get it’s gonna come out like oil and vinegar. Or let’s say you’re in Texas, and it’s 110 degrees or in Las Vegas, and it’s on your dashboard. And you’re going to lunch, basically it’ll heat up 220 degrees or whatever ridiculous hot, you know, and then it also like to separate. So after you come up with the formula, you have to go through that process. It’s it’s actually, like harsh. And I will say one thing if you get someone’s product in comes out a little watery, give them a break, just get the water out and take it just just because there probably wasn’t perfect, but I’m sure it’s good enough. So don’t freak out if there’s little water, or something is someone else’s for me, it shouldn’t be in mind. But you never know.

Kara Goldin 13:38
So what are some of the key strategies that you’ve thought about for the brand? You’ve been around for a while and you’ve stayed super strong? Right? And so why do you think that you’ve been able to be as successful as you have?

Peter Thomas Roth 13:58
Well, it’s, you know, I live in Manhattan. I grew up in Manhattan. And being in Manhattan, I think we’re always on, like everything is whatever’s new and hot. We’re We’re just there just because if you live here and you’re in you’re going out and doing things, you just know what’s hot, you know what clothes are hot, or what cars are hotter. But restaurants are hot, shows the same thing. I think, I don’t know, maybe if I lived somewhere else where it wasn’t as important. We wouldn’t be as you know, thriving. So when something new comes out with one of my retailers requests something that’s hot. We just always on top of what’s relevant and important. Other brands don’t have to do it because of other reasons in their DNA. We come out with, I don’t know, four or 5678 new products, excuse me a year, every year. So our newness is super hot. important, and it’s not easy, but it is easy. It’s not easy.

Kara Goldin 15:04
So one of the things that I’ve noticed with your with your brand is some key celebrities that always seem to be using your product. Why do you believe that? That’s important, right for celebrities? Do you think every beauty brand and maybe this crosses into kind of other industries as well? But do you think celebrities are really key to helping and and I guess, shouting about your brand from the mountaintops, so to speak? I mean, do you think that that’s such a key thing, especially today with social media and everything else that goes on?

Peter Thomas Roth 15:46
Well, two answers. Everyone needs to hear it from somebody that then will influence them. Just some people would want to hear it from a big singer who’s a female, someone might want to hear it from a big singer who’s a male or a big actor, or someone might want to hear it from, you know, a nurse in Minnesota, or a hospital worker in Missouri like we had. So everyone relates differently. In social media. It’s more about, you know, as you swipe up on your phone, just hitting the message, and some celebrities will hit home with me and others will hit home with you. So that and other people like our biggest one was instant flux. I think we had 42 million views. So that everywhere, it’s still one of my hottest products and its products like 15 years old, from Trini, who’s a hospital worker in I think, Missouri, and she just did a thing for the under the eye for the bags. And she’s 71 friends on Tik Tok. She just did a thing she has towel around her head and she and she showed her girlfriends is three minute video. Okay, which is not what Tic Tac is all about, you know, to take his 10 seconds right swipe up. And it went viral. And when crazy and she was asked to be on all the talk show, she went on all the talk shows like three years ago, and she’s on all the all the news shows because at the time, there are only if I’m not mistaken, like 10 that is viral and tic tac and we were one of them. And we didn’t do it. We didn’t give it to her. She went to Sephora found a product. She said what do you what do I do for my bat? I won’t fake eyelashes put on and going out tonight. What do I do for these big bags? And they brought my product. And then she said oh my god totally gone temporarily but gone, you know tissue washes it off. Anyway, so that was just viral. And then we had a few really good ones with Celine Dion. And that Celine Dion

Kara Goldin 17:47
with Gomez or

Peter Thomas Roth 17:49
Gomez. Thank you. She just did it. We didn’t send her the product. It was amazing. I sure did it, it seems through Vogue. It just, it just happens. We’ve had Heidi Klum put on the mask we have we have you know, we’ve had so many. And you know, and then we have a lot of just regular people do it too. So it’s just yeah, it’s, it’s like all over the place.

Kara Goldin 18:14
I think you touched on to that. I think especially today real people, right? And, and if and figuring out how people relate. So even your story of having acne, and you get it right. And there’s a story behind why you decided to do this, that I think many people maybe not all people but many people know that story. And that’s why he decided to develop the conduit.

Peter Thomas Roth 18:40
And you know what the first product that HIV is a clearing gel as 2% salicylic acid. So the first one was sticky, he kind of felt like scotch tape on your face. And I read developed it like about I don’t know, I don’t know, five years ago. And it goes on so beautifully well, and you don’t feel it as an acne person. When you put it you don’t want to feel anything on your face because your face will get greasy and a few hours anyway. So the fact that it goes away and it has glycolic acid and too and it helps with fine lines and wrinkles and salsa. It’s like it’s like a win win. But yes. So like it took me to, you know, actually want that feel. It’s hard to get a lot of companies come up with the stickiness. But yeah, and every company works differently. Like you said some social some are all on social media. Yeah. With celebrities. And it’s just a mix. It’s all good. There’s nothing about you

Kara Goldin 19:37
obviously have a tremendous partnership with Sephora. That is, you know, pretty incredible too. But do you think a brand needs to have kind of those anchors to be successful today? I mean, obviously direct to consumer is much bigger than it was when you first got going. But it’s but to You think that you really do need to have the kind of big anchor, whether it’s Sephora or maybe somebody else? I don’t know who that would be. But all? Yeah, I mean, is it pretty much Macy’s? Yeah. And girls, but if you don’t have those is that are there any products that you can think of like that maybe have? You know, really done? Yes. And so, a few. Yeah. Interesting.

Peter Thomas Roth 20:30
So there are a few lines out there. And I can’t speak for them. Because I don’t know. And we can sell. When you sell in your own private website, you don’t know the sales. But they’re whopping ones that that, you know, go direct to direct to them. And I don’t know their sales. But eventually, eventually, everyone wants to go into brick and mortar. Yeah. So your options are? If you want to be prestige, it’s so for us, obviously, huge. Autos, huge. There’s QVC. There’s the other department stores out there. And then if you want to go mass, then it’s, you know, the drugstores it’s you can do both, you know, so tells Amazon,

Kara Goldin 21:20
yeah, and Amazon as well. Of course, this is so key for so many brands. So building a strong and super loyal community, like I mentioned in the beginning, when I shared with a few people that I was going to be interviewing you, you have a huge community out there, and people just love your product. And first of all, that must make you feel so great, right? Every time you hear somebody say, oh my gosh, I’m obsessed with these different products. Maybe you see this various people on social media, but when you run into somebody and or they write to you saying how much you’ve changed their life, and in some way, how do you develop these incredible advocates for your brand that are really shouting from the mountaintops about your brand? I mean, how do you do that?

Peter Thomas Roth 22:12
Show truth quest to on that first is we sell to teens, 3040 5060 7080 90 100. Plus, we sell to men, women, we sell to all skin colors and tones, sell to everybody, we’re in the retailers that support that meaning one, one retailer might be an older customer when retail on a younger customer. But I think what really happens is they actually look at the ingredients, there are a lot of smart people like yourselves, and who are reporters and skincare experts. And they actually start at the bottom, I think, and they look at the ingredients, but only but also the percentages. Because sometimes, you know, it’s not enough, they put the percentages in, and they and then we get a lot of solid feedback. Like a car, you know, like, first you start with the engine, then you start with that, then outside and then the brand had said, but the car doesn’t work? Well. It’s not going to you know, sell. So it’s the same thing. The bottom line is when they when they Google everything, and they see what really nice ingredients we have in all the products and the high percentages. If someone’s gonna give you 4050 $60, whatever for something, expecting results, like you got to deliver. And you got to give them what they want. They just you know, so we do that. And so I think it starts at the bottom. And then once you have everyone there who will support you because not because they like your don’t like you just because the product speaks for itself. And then a lot of those people who follow the people who look at the ingredients will start posting and then it’s like a pyramid up like a staircase. I think it works that way instead of being like, I don’t know, a hot pink shoe. That’s super hot. It’s just super hot, you know, that everyone wants because it’s a designer made it super hot. So it I don’t think it works that way. With us. It’s more like I want it because it’s going to work and then they have the confidence of it. And then we also now have the critical mass, which means which I never understood before. We were like a department store a while back and I’d be standing there and you just walk to the next counter and I go hey, what about me and what happens is once you like one or two products in a line, it’s really easier to get that customer to try another a new product. So if you have a brand new line over here, and even though it can be super hot and while the celebrities or whatever is talking about it it’s hard to get your feet wet the first time you know because people Well, you know, but if they tried my product, and they’ve been using it for years, and then we come up with the new one, the chances of getting, you know, and so that’s why I call it critical mass. And the older companies have that the newer companies don’t, you know, the newer companies will get it, it just takes a while, you know, to go because you could fill all these bottles, and no one’s gonna show up to buy them, even though it could be the best products in the market. So it’s kind of like, it takes a while to get in there.

Kara Goldin 25:29
So like you, I’m an entrepreneur, I started a company called hint, back in 2005. And, and, and to grow a brand from zero is very hard. I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of different industries. And there’s a, there’s kind of a founders cult, right, that’s around because you just get it, you might not understand somebody’s industry, but you know how hard it is to build a brand that really has roots. And yours clearly does. When you look back and think about maybe some mistakes, or or maybe you didn’t do something quick enough, is there anything that kind of stands out like I wish I would have I don’t know gone direct to consumer sooner, I wish I would have done hired a CFO sooner, anything like that sort of jumped out at you as as Gosh, I wish I would have done this sooner. We

Peter Thomas Roth 26:33
were late going into Instagram and Facebook. And we just laid into doing it for no particular reason. And a lot of people are way ahead of us on that, you know, but now if you go by Peter Thomas Roth official, we have a whole team on it, my son’s part of it, and it’s really young and hip and cool and have a 12 people on our team. So we make gorgeous videos. And it’s just a beautiful silences, finance entity, even if you don’t buy the products, it’s fun to look at, you know what I mean? So we’re, we’ve engaged in that. And so that could have been a little earlier. I, there’s certain things I’m glad I didn’t too. So I’ve never really revamped the entire line. My competitors did that a few times. And they had big failures back in the day. And I never believe that because I like, you know, like, I come up with one product that might be slightly like, I never had, um, color on my box. So I put a cucumber on, and we tried it with one product, he was so successful. And then we had the pumpkin and then we continued it. So there are ways to continue. I that I like I’m a little cautious on that. Other people might just does the new brand. It’s all brown and used to be blue, you know, or whatever. So I’m not. That’s kind of not ready to do. What else? Oh, no, no, we were we were early into Q Thank goodness, we’re right, first ones into Sephora, which we did. First ones first store, they opened opposite Saks and Manhattan. We were in that wet in every other one in the city. So we did that. Well. We were late into Ulta that we’re in there. We’re late into QVC. But we’re in there. So yeah, we didn’t do everything immediately. But we you know, that we’re

that we’re everywhere now. So

it’s all good. Well, I think

Kara Goldin 28:34
it’s interesting when I think when I hear you saying that, too. It’s it’s, you recognize where you were late. But you also went ahead and did it right. And you caught up. And I think things like social media, for example, I was just sharing with another founder who felt behind. And I said the beauty is like the barrier to entry on social media is pretty minimal. You just get on it, right? And you start going and you staff and you have a strategy and everything, but you can catch up pretty quickly. If you’re good, right. And I think that that’s the key thing and also your brand. It’s It’s fascinating. I’m sure to see how many people how many new people are bringing are jumping in because they see a cool video or something on Instagram. So I really think new member acquisition is probably the most interesting thing, especially if you have a brand that is that maybe waited to get into social media. Yeah, no.

Peter Thomas Roth 29:34
Yes, I agree. It’s all good. Social media, you know, is is perfect. You know, it’s one of the new newer ways to go, which is fine.

Kara Goldin 29:45
So when you look back on advice, maybe the best advice that somebody ever said to you or if you have any advice to give to anybody who’s thinking about starting a company may be thinking about when you were first getting there ready to launch some of those initial products, or maybe it was somewhere along the way, where somebody just gave you a great piece of advice, as a, as a founder, as a leader of a company, can you share that?

Peter Thomas Roth 30:13
I would say just do it. And don’t listen to anyone. I mean, you gotta hear everyone. Because sometimes someone may come up with something very important for you to hear. So hear them, but you don’t have to listen to them. If that makes sense. You have to do what they say. But you got to hear. And then sometimes it’s not that important to have a perfect product. And let me explain what that means. When I had a little house in Connecticut, where we had a lake house in Connecticut, there was a little bakery near us, and it had the best peach and apple pie. And it was like, like really high like this. But whenever you bought it, it was like half burnt. And sometimes the crust would be like broken, you know, it wasn’t like perfect in and then by the time you put in the box and got it home, you could see it was kind of homemade, but it was really good. You go to the supermarket, that apple pie will be look perfect. And ingredients wise is probably perfect, but just doesn’t taste as good as the other one. So the other one can’t be mass produced, because it just can’t. But it’s really good. So if you have a product, and it’s good enough, I would say do it. And then as the years go by, you’ll make it better. Because people still would like that really good product, even if it’s not perfect. That’s why I’m saying a newer company, if you shake it up, and it comes out a little watery, let it go. Just it’s just separated a little bit. No big deal. Doesn’t make it worse. If if you like the product if you don’t like the product. That’s a whole other conversation.

Kara Goldin 31:50
I love the pie analogy. I couldn’t agree more. Absolutely. When we were first launching hints, I tell people, that story that we had no idea what we were doing. We got into Whole Foods back in 2005. And I mean, the the product was we knew it was safe for consumers to drink. If it’s important, of course, safe is very important. But number one, right, but we weren’t absolutely convinced that we had the shelf life figured out lots of things. So we, you know, had minimal production. We so that we could watch it very carefully until we really got the sort of finer points and finer points figured out. So, and again, like I think the packaging example that you mentioned, too. That’s another thing I mean, delaying a product for launch, because you don’t feel like the packaging is perfect. I mean, you’re gonna learn so much from consumers. We learned about, you know, the lighting and grocery stores, which is typically terrible. And maybe it’s better in and stores that are in cosmetic.

Peter Thomas Roth 33:05
No, they could change the formula. Yeah, yeah. If you color your items with, you know, because some if they’re red, they’re colored dye or whatever it is, you have to have the right time because the fluorescent lights can change it. So that’s super important.

Kara Goldin 33:26
Well, we found just being on the shelf right next to somebody like a vitamin water that was bright pink, the consumer would grab that bottle all the time. And generally we were right next to vitamin water, so 95% of the time. So you know when you’re right next to something that is very colorful. What is the consumer going to do? Yeah, that was not part of what we thought of when we were actually putting the package together. And little things like that, that you love to change. Yeah. So I mean, it’s a long, crazy story. But we ended up changing, actually just only a couple years in, we ended up changing because the New York City had a bottle bill. And basically, they had like a 30 day timeline to get the bottle deposits put on the bottle. And if we didn’t do that right away, then we’d have to pull all the products off the shelf. And there was like massive fines like every single day that we were late. So the we had a clear label, and then we ended up pulling off the bottles and putting a white label on instead that was much more colorful. And we ended up I mean, the sales were 10 times overnight in New York City. And we were like, Wait, what just happened? This is crazy. And we realized that you could actually get the consumer to see the product especially based on, you know, what we were dealing with, with the lighting and stores, etc. So, anyway, lots of

Peter Thomas Roth 35:05
walking through a store, whether it’s cosmetic or food, there’s could be 10,000 skews. They’re totally oh my gosh, how many are you going to pick up? 100? Yeah, 200. And

Kara Goldin 35:16
hopefully you look at your competitors or, or see who you might be next to on the shelf. But lighting inside of a store is just like, something that I think most people don’t even think about. Somebody was on our podcast a few weeks ago talking about the frozen food section that, you know, everybody thinks, Okay to differentiate, I’ve got to have a clear window. Well, it ends up that frozen food doesn’t look very good, right? It’s got the crystals inside. And I mean, fascinating things like that, that first time entrepreneurs, especially in frozen, might not know, but you learn all about the packaging things too. And also, the consumer might want to push the clear points in the box, and then it gets punctured, and then all kinds of other issues. So anyway, I love hearing about all

Peter Thomas Roth 36:13
the walls. So here’s a really good tip. You have to you don’t want to over promise and under deliver. Uh huh. Because if that food box has like the most fabulous picture of your meal, and then you come home and you open and you’re like, Are you kidding me? Yeah, you’ll never buy it again. Over promising under delivering but then again, there’s a fine line because you don’t want to under promise and over deliver. Because it won’t get sold. Right? Then it’s word of mouth. Right? Because it’s fantastic. But you kind of under promise, whatever the photograph is, or it’s just say it the way it is. And then people will be smart enough to figure it out. These people don’t like the other ways. I mean, people would like to under promise because they feel like they found it, something’s really special. But if you over promise, it’s not so good.

Kara Goldin 37:07
such valuable wisdom to deliver. So Peter Thomas Roth, thank you so much. We are going to have all the info for you and your products in the show notes too. But I really appreciate your time. No, thank

Peter Thomas Roth 37:20
you for having me. There’s so much fun.

Kara Goldin 37:22
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and good bye for now. Before we sign off, I want to talk to you about fear. People like to talk about fearless leaders. But achieving big goals isn’t about fearlessness. Successful leaders recognize their fears and decide to deal with them head on in order to move forward. This is where my new book undaunted comes in. This book is designed for anyone who wants to succeed in the face of fear, overcome doubts and live a little undaunted. Order your copy today at undaunted, the book.com and learn how to look your doubts and doubters in the eye and achieve your dreams. For a limited time. You’ll also receive a free case of hint water. Do you have a question for me or want to nominate an innovator to spotlight send me a tweet at Kara Goldin and let me know. And if you liked what you heard, please leave me a review on Apple podcasts. You can also follow along with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn at Kara Goldin. Thanks for listening

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