Tatcha: Vicky Tsai

In 2008, Vicky Tsai walked away from a startup job and set out to rediscover herself on a trip to Japan. In Kyoto, she had an unforgettable meeting with a geisha, and learned about the face creams and blotting papers that the traditional Japanese hostesses had used for centuries. But as she contemplated selling those products in the U. S., experts on both sides of the Pacific told her it would never work. Strapped for money and juggling multiple jobs, Vicky worked out of her parents' garage, pitching her new brand—Tatcha—on QVC and steadily growing it. Last year, Unilever acquired Tatcha for a reported $500 million, and Vicky remains confident the company will continue to thrive during the economic crisis. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:45Guy Raz?

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• 1:30Guy Raz?

  based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2:00 AM kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one Hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people?

• 2:14Guy Raz?

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• 2:54Guy Raz?

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• 3:36Guy Raz?

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• 4:21Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new, expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 5:06Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Hey, really quick before we get to this brand-new episode of How I Built This, we have a book coming out. It's designed as a roadmap for building an idea into a real business, and it includes hundreds of stories and lessons from some of the most inspiring entrepreneurs in the world. You can preorder the book by looking up How I Built This wherever you get your books, or by visiting guyroz.com. OK, on to the show.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  We ran out of money over and over and over again. I couldn't afford a salary. My partner couldn't afford a salary. I couldn't afford rent anymore. And my parents had bought a place in, near the airport at that point, and they let me move into there. And we had this really, really incredible, high-end clientele. And I was working on my mom's garage.

• 6:28Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:39Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how a trip to Japan and a meeting with a geisha inspired Vicky Tsai to launch Tatcha, a line of skincare products that almost nobody thought was a good idea until everybody did.

• 7:04Guy Raz?

  So as you've heard on this show, really good ideas often come from solving a problem that you and other people have. And of course, you can spend years solving that particular problem in just the right way, obsessing over countless designs, doing mountains of research to find the perfect fit between what you made and what the market wants. But sometimes, ideas just sort of reveal themselves, even when you're not looking. And that can often happen when you're visiting a different country, like Gordon and Carol Siegel, who came across Scandinavian furniture on their honeymoon and went on to build Crate

• 7:45Guy Raz?

  and Barrel, or Susan Griffin Black, who encountered lavender oil on a visit to Covent Garden in London and came up with the body care company EO Products, or Blake Mycoskie, whose trip to Argentina exposed him to a type of espadrille shoe that he'd recreate as Tom's. And for Vicky Tsai, our guest today, the pivotal trip for her was to Kyoto, Japan in 2008. She went there to kind of decompress after leaving a job that left her feeling pretty bad about herself. And it was on that trip that Vicky came across the nearly impenetrable world of the geisha, and in particular, the natural beauty products that

• 8:28Guy Raz?

  the geisha used on their skin to make it look smooth and flawless. And when Vicky started To research the idea of maybe introducing some of these products to American consumers, she heard no from almost everyone. People in Japan told her that the skincare products used by the geisha were old fashioned, the kind of stuff your grandma might use. And in the US, beauty experts told Vicky something even more disappointing, that Americans weren't even interested in beauty products from Asia. But it turns out, they were. Though it would definitely take years for Vicky's brand, Tatcha, to gain traction.

• 9:10Guy Raz?

  And much of that time, she worked out of her mom's garage, scrambling to pay her team, and pitching her skincare products on QVC. But by 2018, Tatcha was doing $70 million in sales. And a year later, it was acquired by Unilever for a reported half a billion dollars. Now, Vicky actually got her start in the beauty industry, working for her mom, who ran a small cosmetics shop in Houston. Both her mom and dad came to the US from Taiwan. And after high school, Vicky went to UT Austin before transferring to Wellesley, the women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  I loved my experience at Wellesley, but it was very, very small. UT Austin's a huge school, and I was used to my independence, and used to big classes and lots of different kinds of people. So when I went to Wellesley, it's a very small boutique experience, tiny liberal arts college, and it's women only, which I understood theoretically. But it wasn't until I got there where I was like, where are the guys?

• 10:15Guy Raz?

  But I guess while you were there, you met this guy who would eventually become your husband, named Eric, that you-- the story I read is that you actually really kind of pursued him, that actually at the beginning, he was sort of not the kind of person who would ask someone out, I guess. Is that the story?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was the weekend before school started at Wellesley. And it had hit me that there really were no men there. And they had this dance called Tower Court Mixer. And men from surrounding schools would come in for the dance. And I saw him, and he wasn't at all interested in me. And I kind of kept on doing laps around the dance floor with my new girlfriends. And they kept on getting plucked off one by one. And then every few months, I would try to get his attention and email him and call him. But he just wasn't interested.

• 11:23Guy Raz?

  So what got him interested? How did you eventually, you know, get him to agree to go out with you?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  I'm not totally sure. I think I just wore him down. We've been together over 20 years now. And I just kept asking.

• 11:39Guy Raz?

  Wow. So I guess after graduation, both of you moved to New York to work in finance. And both of you wind up, I think, at Merrill Lynch, right?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:53Guy Raz?

  Okay. So both of you are working in Lower Manhattan.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Yes, we were.

• 11:59Guy Raz?

  And you guys were there on September 11, 2001, right?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. We were in one of the World Financial Centers that's actually connected to the Trade Centers via a land bridge. And so I was on the trading floor, which was the seventh floor of that building. And my husband was on the 26th floor, which is where he worked of the Financial Centers. And I was in a meeting when the first plane hit. And there was no windows in the meeting room. So we felt the rumble and we heard it, but we didn't know what it was. But my husband, when he heard the first plane hit, he went straight to the windows to see what was happening. And he actually watched the second plane come in and bank. And he watched it go into the tower.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  At that point, I was back on the trading floor. We had gotten out of our meeting. And...

• 12:56Speaker 01

  When we heard the second plane hit, we didn't know what was going on and nothing came on over the loudspeakers yet. But I remember getting up and walking seven flights down and actually being one of the first ones to leave the building. And I'm ashamed to say that it didn't even occur to me to call up to my husband to tell him what was going on. I just split. And then I waited outside for him.

• 13:22Guy Raz?

  You were on the sidewalk?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  On the sidewalk. And I realized we were never going to find each other because as people started flowing out of all the buildings, it got pretty chaotic down there. And then the people were jumping. And I couldn't watch it any longer. So I walked back to our apartment, which was in the West Village. And I thought, he's going to know that we can't find each other here and he'll come find me and he'll probably beat me there because I have heels on and he's fast. He was a marathon runner at that point. So then when I got home and he still wasn't there, that's when I realized, like, shoot, he was looking for me. And then I had no way of getting a hold of him because the mobile phones weren't working.

• 14:08Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Both the towers fell before he got home. So there was a moment in there where I thought he was gone.

• 14:20Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 14:23Guy Raz?

  How long before you saw him, before he got home?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  It must have been minutes, not too long. But it was enough for me to be watching on the TV and see the towers fall. I couldn't even quantify how long. But then he came up after and he was okay.

• 14:42Guy Raz?

  When that happened, I guess both of you decided you needed to kind of rethink what you wanted to do with your life, that maybe being a traitor on Wall Street wasn't what you wanted to do.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if I came up with that immediately, but I knew I didn't want to be there anymore. He got sick with an autoimmune disease.

• 15:04Guy Raz?

  Pretty soon after, right?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Almost immediately after.

• 15:06Guy Raz?

  And it was not related, unrelated to?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know, we'll never, we'll never really know. He never had any symptoms before that. He had run, I think, five marathons in two years prior to that, super healthy, captain of the crew team. And then all of a sudden, he couldn't move, he couldn't keep food down, he lost 40 pounds.

• 15:23Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow. How long was he getting treated for it?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  About three years. So we would spend the weekends in the emergency room. Eventually, we did go to the Mayo Clinic. He had some procedures. They didn't know what it was. Towards the end, they were thinking about Remicade, which is a pretty strong treatment that the side effects included, you know, things like infections of the nervous system. I mean, it's pretty horrifying stuff. And we decided to just pull the plug on all the treatments, stop with all the medicine and the steroids and just quit it and see what happens. And thank goodness, he got his health back.

• 16:00Guy Raz?

  Wow. So for three years, he was struggling with this autoimmune disease. You were spending your weekends at emergency rooms. It must have just been totally, like, debilitating and scary.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. It should have been, but I think what I did at that time, and I only realized it recently, is I started to almost disassociate. I didn't want to be in Manhattan anymore. I didn't want to be in ground zero. I didn't, I didn't want to have to go there every day, especially because when the temporary trading floor in New Jersey was moved back to ground zero right before Christmas time, the only thing that I could see was out the window, which looked straight at the hole that was left. And you could always tell when they found a body or body parts because it would be covered with an American flag. And that was my only view for months. I couldn't see anything but that. And then I would go home and my husband would be sick.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  And so I actually just went really numb and I just went on complete autopilot and I started planning, how do we get out of Wall Street? I just went into planning mode.

• 17:09Guy Raz?

  And I guess eventually you did get out of New York. You guys both moved up to Boston where you went to business school, to Harvard Business School, right?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:21Guy Raz?

  And right that while you were there, I guess you kind of got your first experience working in the beauty industry. You got an internship with Procter & Gamble?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was actually working on SK2, which is a Japanese skincare brand that they own. And I treated my face like a science experiment and gave myself acute dermatitis.

• 17:44Guy Raz?

  Wait, when you say you treated your face like a science experiment, you meant you were trying all the products that you were working with?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  The products that we were working with, but then also to do competitive benchmarking, I would go to the other luxury brands, so La Mer and La Prairie, it doesn't matter. Across the board, I just got a chance to buy a lot of them, to use a lot of them, to try to craft a SK2 strategy. And it was at that point that I ruined my face.

• 18:10Guy Raz?

  You got acute dermatitis. What is acute dermatitis?

• 18:14Speaker 01

  It's when the barrier function of your skin has become disrupted. And so things that would typically not irritate the skin suddenly start irritating it because it's getting into the skin itself. So it looks like bleeding, blistering, scalding on my entire face, including my lips and my eyelids. It was very painful.

• 18:32Guy Raz?

  Wow. And you had never had that before?

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Never. And once you have disrupted the barrier function of your skin, after that, it's not able to effectively keep things out. And so anything after that can start irritating your skin. So detergents in my pillowcases, or fragrances, or my shampoos that had traditional ingredients in it, it was everything.

• 18:54Guy Raz?

  Oh, my God.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  When the spring came, pollution, whatever, it would freak out.

• 18:59Guy Raz?

  It's like the plagues in ancient Egypt. Like first there's 9/11, and then your husband's autoimmune disease, and then your dermatitis. We're only into 2004 here.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And we didn't even get to the fun stuff yet. That's right.

• 19:12Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you guys were dealing with a lot of stuff. How did you eventually get it? Did it just go away on its own? Or how did you eventually bring it under control?

• 19:20Speaker 01

  I had it from the summer of business school, so between those two years. So I had it my entire second year of business school, and then I had it two years after that when I graduated and I worked for Starbucks. So after business school, we moved to Seattle. My job was to launch Starbucks's consumer products business in China. And I was flying all the time through Japan. There were not direct flights between Seattle and Beijing at that time. And the only thing I could put on my face that didn't irritate it was Aquaphor.

• 19:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Which, you know, you put on babies' butts when they have diaper rashes.

• 19:59Guy Raz?

  I know Aquaphor well, yeah.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  But it leaves you looking kind of greasy. So when I would go to China via Japan, I would pick up these blotting papers that I found in Japan that I couldn't find in the US.

• 20:11Guy Raz?

  What are blotting papers for people?

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's a great question. It's a piece of paper that is made out of, there's various kind of materials. The ones in the US are made out of cotton. The ones in Japan are made out of a certain type of leaf. And you press it to your skin when it's oily and it lifts off the oil, but it won't disrupt your makeup or take any moisture from the skin.

• 20:32Guy Raz?

  And that helped?

• 20:33Speaker 01

  It helped.

• 20:34Guy Raz?

  All right, cool. So you got the blotting paper. You go to China. You're working for Starbucks, which sounds like a pretty amazing job. And was there like a Starbucks craze in China already at that point? Like, were people waiting in line to get their Starbucks and stuff?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  I don't know if there was lines, but it was already a very popular and admired brand.

• 20:53Guy Raz?

  Got it, okay. And your job is to, is to launch what in Starbucks?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Essentially Frappuccino.

• 21:01Guy Raz?

  Frappuccinos, okay. Bottle Frappuccino. So, so I, I read a story and I don't know if it's entirely accurate that, you know, you were grinding away at Starbucks. You were just working really, really hard and going back and forth. And you're really proud of this initiative. And then, I guess it was time for you to get your annual review and it was like, meets expectations. That was what it said.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  You did do your research and found that.

• 21:26Guy Raz?

  And, and that, that really hurt your feelings. Like, you were really upset by that.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  I was offended, honestly. I would go 40 days straight without taking a day off. I would fly over the weekend so that I would miss any time and be back in the office by 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. The timeline for the project was extremely compressed. I was a team of one with no manager. And in the middle of all of that, I broke my arm and I had a cast that went all the way up to almost my shoulder that I had to wear for months. And I missed zero days of work. And it ended up being a very successful launch. Howard was super happy with it and had me present to his board of directors.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  And I had a VP in my group who I had very little mentorship or guidance from. And at the end of the year, he gave me my performance review and it was meets expectations. And I just thought, this is not a place where I'll be successful, even though I have so much admiration for Howard and the company and the brand.

• 22:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  So I left.

• 22:34Guy Raz?

  Wow, meets expectations.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:37Guy Raz?

  Phew, so you left Starbucks.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I was recruited out to the Bay Area to head up marketing for a sustainability startup. And then Howard Schultz found out and he called me on my mobile phone and asked me to come in and meet with him. So I went back to his office and it was the week that my furniture was already on a truck to San Francisco.

• 23:03Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  And he kept on being like, why? Why would you go? And tell me what you want to do and tell me what job you're interested in. But I had a weird loyalty to the

• 23:13Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  to the VP who gave me a meets expectations review. So all I said to Howard was, oh, you know, I just don't fit in here. So if I could do it all over again, Howard, I left because I got a crappy review that I did not deserve.

• 23:27Guy Raz?

  No, I mean, of course, like, and when you're like, wait a minute, I've worked so hard and somebody else is, you know, recruiting me now. It makes sense. So you went, so you got recruited by this other company? And what was the company?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  It was called, well, it eventually became called Good Guide. It's very hard to say.

• 23:47Guy Raz?

  Good Guide.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Good Guide, and it brought me to Berkeley. It was a few scientists out of Berkeley. And they wanted to create sustainability ratings for consumers by scraping the internet so that a consumer could plug in their values. You know, I care about, I care about gay rights. I care about, you know, animal testing. I care about carcinogens, but I, I also want a shampoo for curly hair and be able to check all these things off and how have it pop out a recommendation. They were really ahead of their time. I give them so much credit for that.

• 24:19Guy Raz?

  Because that was 2008. That's still, just as the iPhones coming out, so still pre-app, really.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, it was.

• 24:28Guy Raz?

  I should mention, you were married at this point. You guys, in between, you did get married.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yes, we were married. We still had a house in Seattle. And so I picked up and I left so quickly that I moved here, I moved to the Bay Area alone.

• 24:41Guy Raz?

  Got it, okay. And, and what was your, what was your job at that internet startup? What were you tasked to do?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  I was their first business hire. And so my job was effectively to come up with a launch plan for them as well as, you know, a marketing strategy. And so I was with them for only, I think, maybe four months.

• 25:04Guy Raz?

  So did you, I mean, so you, four months in, and did you have a plan when you quit? Or did you just say, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna walk, I'm gonna step aside?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  You know, I think it, it dates back to 9/11 and the experiences there. But I was becoming increasingly impatient with spending the hours of my waking life doing things that I didn't believe in, or if I believed in, but it just didn't feel like the right fit or the right people. So I typed up a letter, a resignation letter, and I drove into the office and I handed it to them. And I told them that I, I very much respected what they were doing, but it wasn't the right fit for me. And I tried to leave rather elegantly, but, um, one, I was crying because I was so lost. And then, two, I had brought this big clunky chair with me.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  And I was trying to take the chair out.

• 25:55Guy Raz?

  You brought it to the office like a chair that you wanted to sit on?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Like an ergonomic chair.

• 25:59Guy Raz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  And then so when I left, I had to take the chair with me and and I couldn't fit it in my car on the way out. And so I had to actually call up to someone in the office and have them help me compress the chair so I can close the trunk and drive away. It was the messiest resignation. It was humiliating.

• 26:17Guy Raz?

  So you're like four months in and you're out of work. Did you did a part of you kind of regret leaving Starbucks at that point? Or does a part of you think like, God, what am I doing with my life?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I I thought to myself, Howard Schultz called me my cellphone and offered me any job that I wanted at Starbucks. And now I am unemployed, standing in the street crying with my chair in a different city than my husband.

• 26:41Guy Raz?

  Because he was up in in Seattle.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I definitely was thinking about all the debt that we had because we had two business school debts plus a mortgage in Seattle, plus a lease for an apartment in San Francisco.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  And my husband had undergrad debt on top of that. And I just remember thinking, I've really made a mess for myself.

• 27:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, you probably had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  It's probably about 600,000 at that point.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  And then now this is 2008.

• 27:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah, which is just the beginning of.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  The Great Recession.

• 27:17Guy Raz?

  What was your what did you what did you want to do immediately? Did you want to like hide in bed and put the covers over your head? Like, what what was your plan?

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Well, I told my my landlord that I was not working. And she let me help be the almost like the super for my building.

• 27:37Guy Raz?

  Oh.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  And rent out apartments for her and her other buildings for 400 bucks a pop.

• 27:42Guy Raz?

  How did and was that was that pretty good? Was that enough to kind of keep you going?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  I worked about four jobs at that point. That was one of them. I think the only thing that was interesting about that was oftentimes the business school types, when they moved to San Francisco, will live in the marina. So when I was out there renting out apartments, it was not uncommon for me to see my business school classmates. And they would be like, is this your apartment? And I was like, no. And they're like, why are you renting it out? And I'm like, for the money. They would give me this look of pity and confusion. But it didn't matter.

• 28:22Guy Raz?

  So you left the job at the startup and you're kind of doing a bunch of different things to make money. And then I guess you at some point took a trip to Kyoto, to Japan, just to go visit. Like, was there a reason why you went to Kyoto in 2008?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  So I was unemployed. I still have dermatitis. I'm still using Aquaphor in my face. And I ran out of my blotting papers. I tried to find those blotting papers around in the US and they're not available. They, there's different kinds here, but not that kind. And so I called up my friend from Starbucks Japan and I asked her where to find these blotting papers. And she said they're actually from around Kyoto and they come from gold leaf artisans.

• 29:10Guy Raz?

  From gold, gold leaf artisans?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. She said they're hammering papers. They're beating papers. And I was like, what are you talking about, Tomoko? And I didn't really understand what she was saying, but I thought the whole thing was so fascinating. And I felt drawn to travel. I think, I think I was trying to find myself. So I just picked up and I went to Japan.

• 29:32Guy Raz?

  All right. So most people wouldn't just go to Japan to get a fresh batch of blotting papers. I have to imagine that you were thinking, these work really well for me. I want to go check them out and see if they're, maybe I can, I don't know, do something with them in the US.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  I did not have a commercial idea yet at that point. I felt. Broken. We had had a pretty rough first 10 years of our adult life. And, and pretty rough is relative.

• 30:02Guy Raz?

  No, no, it was rough. No, no, you own that. You have, you get to, you get to say that.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  You know, I just, I felt like I didn't believe in anything anymore. And I questioned my value system and I questioned what I had been chasing my whole life. Because my parents is first generation Asian immigrants. You know, it's a very clear equation for success. You go to an Ivy League school, become a doctor or a lawyer, and then make your parents super proud and make their sacrifices worth it. And I had sort of veered off every one of these paths. And I just started traveling. And I, I think, like a lot of people, I was traveling to find myself. And when she said Kyoto, there was something about it that drew me, even though I had never really spent significant time in Japan before.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  I knew nothing about Japanese culture because I'm not Japanese. But I just felt drawn.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  So I went there.

• 30:58Guy Raz?

  And what happens when you get there? Did you get your blotting papers?

• 31:02Speaker 01

  When I got to Kyoto, I went to the artisans who are a couple hours outside of Kyoto. And when I went to the workshop there, all they make there is gold. And there's gold everywhere. There's like, there's gold on their eyelashes, there's gold in their clothes. Just like, it's a mess of gold.

• 31:20Guy Raz?

  And this is gold leaf for like art, for like paintings and decorative works?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. In Japan, things that are precious are often leafed in gold, including the Golden Temple.

• 31:29Guy Raz?

  In Japan?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  In Japan.

• 31:32Guy Raz?

  So basically, for centuries, blotting, like blotting paper in Japan came from these gold leaf artisans who were using it to hammer gold into, into, you know, thin sheets of paper?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. So gold is soft. And what they would do is they take gold paper, gold paper, gold paper, gold paper. And then these massive hammers made out of like stones. And it protects the gold during the hammering process because gold leaf is only a few micrometers in thickness. So it really has to get hammered down to almost nothing. And so this paper would get hammered with the gold and it would protect the gold. And then when they were done with hammering, the hammering paper would get thrown away.

• 32:13Guy Raz?

  So how did they figure out that this, this paper that you were, that they were using to hammer gold into, into leaf would be useful on human skin?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  That was my question because it's such a weird leap.

• 32:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  And so they, they actually said, you would have to ask a geisha or a kabuki actor because they're the ones who've been coming around getting them at the end of the day. And I was like, can I meet one? And they said, yeah. And so they introduced me to one, which is crazy because.

• 32:42Guy Raz?

  Well, they, they like got you in touch with some, with a geisha?

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. They introduced me to a geisha that they knew and they helped arrange for me to meet her in a tea house either later that day or the next day.

• 32:57Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  And I had a translator with me named Yuko, who was wonderful. And a beautiful, unreal geisha walked in and I was just completely beside myself. It was the summertime. I'm, I was pregnant. I was trying to sit on my knees, which I'm not very good at. And I was sweating and I kept sliding off of my legs because of the sweat. And yet she was just the picture of perfection in Wrapped in Kimono. No sweat, never had to budge, never broke character. I just remember thinking, I'm a hot mess, but you're amazing.

• 33:37Guy Raz?

  Was she in, in her uniform, in her sort of costume with, with the makeup on and the?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. She was in full performance makeup and, and Kimono.

• 33:47Guy Raz?

  All right. So you meet this woman and, and you start asking her, hey, tell me the story about this blotting paper.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And honestly, she didn't have a great answer. She just said, I don't know. We always knew that if we went and we used it before we put on our makeup, it would help create the nice canvas for makeup. And if we used it after, it would keep our makeup fresh. But she didn't have a lot to tell me about how that leap happened from one industry to another next. But at the same time, I was so enchanted by her look, especially the makeup. And they told me that geisha had been around three to 400 years. And I knew a lot of the things that scared me about ingredients in personal care were largely from the petrochemical industry. And so I knew whatever they're using largely predated the petrochemical industry. And so I started asking her questions about her makeup, not because I wanted that look, but.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  I was looking for anything at that point that I felt safe putting on my skin because I still had my skin issue too. And now I'm pregnant, so I'm super careful about what I'm putting on my skin.

• 34:48Guy Raz?

  Right. And what was her advice? What did she tell you to buy?

• 34:52Speaker 01

  She just told me some basic stuff. We use oil to take off our makeup. We use a lot of rice powder and camellia oil and sake. And then Yuko took me to go find some of those things afterwards. And that's when I started seeing geisha flitting in and out of the store while we were there without any makeup on.

• 35:12Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  And their skin looks like a child's skin. And so if they reached for, you know, a bottle of oil, I would reach for that bottle of oil. And then if they reached for a powder, I would reach for a powder.

• 35:23Guy Raz?

  And what were the, like, the materials that were so different that you hadn't seen anywhere else? Like, what was the source of the cosmetics? Like, what were they making it out of?

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Largely food ingredients. The, when I took them home, Yuko had to write down on post-it notes saying, you know, this is rice powder. Add water, create a foam, massage onto the skin, or leave on as a mask.

• 35:49Guy Raz?

  Because everything was in Japanese, right? Okay, yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Japanese. And so I just came home with this box of things like that. And I used half of them wrong. But about eight weeks later, my skin had pretty much healed. And that was after three years of dermatitis and steroids and antibiotics. And at the same time, I was so enchanted with the story of the blotting papers, the Goldie Fardisins, the geisha and the history. And to me, it embodied so much of what I was looking for as a woman. It was authentic. It was beautiful. It was steeped in true history. And so I guess if I take one step back is when I was still in Kyoto. After I met the geisha, I went back to the Goldie Fardisins. And I did ask if I could bring the blotting papers to the US.

• 36:36Guy Raz?

  If you could buy some from them?

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And they said, no, we're not, we're not interested in. In distribution.

• 36:43Guy Raz?

  And by the way, were they selling the blotting papers to the geisha? Or they just like, it was just refuse and the geisha were just picking it up?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Originally, it was refuse and now, now they sell it to them.

• 36:52Guy Raz?

  All right, so originally it was refuse, but, but, and, and clearly, they were being sold in Japan because you had already used these blotting papers before.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Exactly, and I, I was just asking if I could bring them to the US because they weren't available in the US.

• 37:04Guy Raz?

  And they said, we're not interested.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  They said they, they weren't interested. So then I said, how many would I have to buy to, to get you interested? And they said 10,000 and I was like, I'll buy it and um.

• 37:16Guy Raz?

  Do you say, I'll buy 10,000 piece of paper?

• 37:19Speaker 01

  I'll buy 10,000 booklets.

• 37:20Guy Raz?

  Right, and how much did that cost you?

• 37:25Guy Raz?

  For like a hu- a couple thousand bucks?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  No, like 30,000, more than 30,000.

• 37:30Guy Raz?

  Wow, so you, so all right, so they said you have to buy 10,000 of these booklets and you said, all right, I'll do it. But first of all, how did you, how were you going to do that?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Well, first I said, I'll buy it. Then I went back to my hotel room and called my husband that night. So it's maybe 6 AM his time. And I said, good morning, I hope you're doing great. I just, um, I just bought 10,000 blotting papers.

• 37:54Guy Raz?

  To bring back with me to the US?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:57Guy Raz?

  And?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  And he, he said, how are you gonna pay for them?

• 38:01Guy Raz?

  And you said?

• 38:04Speaker 01

  I looked around the room and the only thing of value that I had left at that point was my engagement ring on my hand. So I said, I'll just sell my engagement ring.

• 38:11Guy Raz?

  Wow. You said you'll sell your engagement ring. Did you pawn it at a pawn shop?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  I called the place in New York where I'd bought my engagement ring. Because I had, I had proposed to my husband and, and bought my ring. And so I just called them and said, I need to sell it back to you. Would you buy it? So they took it on consignment. It took, it took a few months for them to find a buyer.

• 38:31Guy Raz?

  Okay. And what were you gonna do with the blotting paper? With 10,000 booklets of blotting paper in the US?

• 38:39Speaker 01

  I had not really thought it that far out, honestly.

• 38:42Guy Raz?

  But you just thought, these work really well for me. There's something here.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  There's something here. Maybe I'll keep like 1,000 for myself and then I'll figure out. I'll give everybody, I'll sell the other 9,000 and then I'll have a steady supply for myself.

• 38:54Guy Raz?

  Got it. All right. So you come back to San Francisco and did you ship the blotting papers?

• 39:00Speaker 01

  They, it took them about a month to actually make them and send them to me. Or maybe a couple of months. And so they showed up in big crates a few months later.

• 39:10Guy Raz?

  So did you have an apartment just full of blotting papers?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:14Guy Raz?

  But like, what, how were you, then what? Like, do you start calling friends? Do you have like a blotting paper party at your apartment and invite people over? Like, what do you do with them?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  I, I still can't explain it, but I saw this vision in my head of sharing these beautiful little treasures that I found in Japan with other women like me who were looking for something that was real and beautiful and safe. And so I thought, maybe, maybe I can create a way to keep sharing these things that I'm finding because there was these ingredients that heal my skin. There's this paper with this beautiful history that's fantastic and simple. And so I actually created Tatcha as, just as a way of sharing these things I was finding when I go there.

• 40:07Guy Raz?

  And how did you come up with the name Tatcha?

• 40:10Speaker 01

  I had been helping out my friend Stanley, who had been the global head of creative for Starbucks and had left to start his own creative agency. And I had asked him for his advice on creating a brand because I didn't know how to do that. And when I was telling him what I wanted it to feel like, I just said, I want it to feel like an exhale. Like a breath of fresh air. And so he actually came up with the name Tatcha. And then shortly thereafter, he introduced me to this incredible woman, Nami Onidera, who's still with us, who's our Director of Culture.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  And she said, when I saw the name Tatcha, I assumed that it was short for Tatehana, which is one of the classical Japanese arts of flower arrangement. And it speaks to the beauty of simplicity in nature. And so we said, you know what? That's far, that's far more beautiful than just being an exhale or a breath of fresh air. So let's imbue it with meaning.

• 41:22Guy Raz?

  And did you start to talk to people about it? I mean, you had gone to business school, so you knew a little bit about like what it takes to fundraise. And did you build a DAC and start like pitching the idea?

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Hmm, I knew enough about fundraising that I didn't want to do it.

• 41:36Guy Raz?

  Because?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  I wanted to create something really, really pure and really, really true. And a lot of people from business school end up in the private equity world and in the VC world, and the ROI is, is very straightforward there. It's, it's about money.

• 41:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah, they want 10x.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's money and it's growth and it's money and it's growth. And I wasn't interested in creating something for money or for growth. I was interested in creating something worth loving and that I would want to spend the waking hours of my life doing. So I just wanted to self-finance it and, and just see what it could become.

• 42:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  But the only thing I wanted was to make sure it stayed really true.

• 42:15Guy Raz?

  But here's a question, right? And I get this question a lot from people listening. They say, Guy, you know, I keep hearing these stories about people who self-finance, but how? How do they do it? I mean, I don't have any money. You sold your engagement ring, but presumably you had some savings from your Starbucks days and stuff like that, but I mean.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  No savings, no, it was gone.

• 42:35Guy Raz?

  But how did you do that? How did you, how did you finance it without any? I mean, because to do a, create a company, a cosmetics company presumably requires a lot of capital, right?

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Indeed, indeed, yeah. Well, I started, before I even started the idea, there was maybe half a million in debt. So we've immediately went to credit cards, which I don't recommend, but it is what we did.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  I worked four jobs. I begged my landlord for a discount in rent in exchange for renting out the apartments and being the super for the building. I sold anything that I had that was of any worth, including my car and my furniture. My husband is very good at poker. And so when he moved to San Francisco, every Tuesday night, he would go play poker.

• 43:23Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  And it would be just enough. I would wake up Wednesday morning, there would be a little stack of cash. And we'd use that to buy food. And then I was just a team of one.

• 43:35Guy Raz?

  Working out of your apartment?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Working out of my apartment. But I mean, to be completely honest, financially, things were dire. When we maxed out one credit card, we would roll it all over to another credit card to buy ourselves some time. And I have a distinct memory of being nine months pregnant. I couldn't afford maternity clothes, so I just sort of pulled the drawstring out of my sweatpants. But then I'm like Humpty Dumpty without the suspenders. So I have to hold on to the pants when I walk or else they're on the ground. And I went to the grocery store. I was checking out and my credit card got declined. And the people behind me and the cashier looked at me with a great deal of pity because

• 44:21Speaker 01

  I was super pregnant and I couldn't afford my groceries. And I left them there and I walked out without them.

• 44:28Guy Raz?

  Wow. When we come back in just a moment, how Vicky finally got Tatcha off the ground and into her parents' garage, where she would begin an eight-year-long struggle to keep the company from sinking. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 45:08Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2009, and Vicky and her husband Eric are about to become new parents with a bank account that's almost empty and an apartment that's pretty much full of Japanese blotting papers. And Vicky needs to come up with a plan to launch her brand-new business, Tatcha.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  I was completely mistaken about how I would bring it to life. I thought if they're beautifully designed, and I tell this beautiful and true story about where they're from, I'll be able to find partners to work with. So retailers who would want to carry it, PR agencies who would want to work with us. And we were turned down everywhere.

• 45:56Guy Raz?

  You pitched everybody. You said, hey, I've got this great product.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  You name it. Yeah, PR agencies. I couldn't even give people money to take me as a client. And then retailers were not interested at all. And everybody also told me at the time, too, that there is no demand or interest in Asian beauty in the US because it's not aspirational.

• 46:17Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And they had pointed out that Shiseido had been in the US for over two decades and had not been able to really make it beyond Chinatown. SK2, Procter & Gamble was behind them. They weren't having any meaningful success yet. Shuyu Amora, which was owned by L'Oréal, had been pulled out of the market and shut down. And there was no other Asian brands. And people told me very plainly that skincare is not really a thing in the US people care about. They care about makeup. And then Asian beauty in totality is not aspirational here. So don't do it.

• 46:57Guy Raz?

  But you did do it. I mean, you started putting the blotting papers out into the world. So how did you get the word out?

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Well, I went to the library and I couldn't afford the magazines, but I flipped through them and I wrote down the names of the editors and their mailing addresses and the makeup artists that I admired. And I started sending out care packages with handwritten letters to them, just with the blotting papers, and all I did was tell the truth of their story. And I said, "I hope you enjoy them." And that was where the press coverage started coming from.

• 47:36Guy Raz?

  And these are just blind? I mean, you were doing your own PR. This is you literally mailing it to somebody at one of those places?

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:46Guy Raz?

  And the makeup artists?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  The makeup artists, I saw the names in the credits on the side of the picture, and then I looked them up online and I found their agencies and I would send them to their agencies.

• 47:57Guy Raz?

  Where was the coverage? Like, what magazines?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Pretty much everyone. Vogue did a spread. Oprah, it was on the Today Show pretty quickly. We got a ton of press. It was amazing.

• 48:11Guy Raz?

  And so in your first year, you're doing great.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  I mean, it was difficult. I had the labels made from a wine label maker in Marin. And then, when I got the labels home, I realized that the adhesive wasn't sticking the way that I needed it to. And so I got like a purple cow paper cutter and had to cut down 10,000 tops off of these stickers. But I was pregnant, so like, it was hard to even reach the table. So I did those 10,000. Then I bundled it all up and my husband helped me. And a lot of the, I would say, half that order, I actually shipped to the UK. Space and K was my first retailer.

• 48:56Guy Raz?

  Space and K is, that's the beauty retailer in Britain?

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:01Guy Raz?

  How did they even find out about you?

• 49:04Speaker 01

  The magazines.

• 49:05Guy Raz?

  And you're still running this out of your apartment?

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Out of my apartment.

• 49:10Guy Raz?

  So they weren't buying huge amounts? They were buying manageable amounts?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, a few thousand. Yeah. And then I had merchandising units made.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  So it was pretty much every single dollar I could scrape together turned into either merchandising units or these blotting papers. And they ended up hitting stores the day that I was in labor with my daughter. So we officially launched the day that my daughter was born.

• 49:35Guy Raz?

  What was, yeah, what was Eric doing? What was his job at the time?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Eric had found a job at that point, I think he was with Cisco. We were fortunate. We had one income.

• 49:47Guy Raz?

  So you're a brand new mom. How were you guys dealing with childcare?

• 49:53Speaker 01

  I was taking care of her myself, but I also was really lucky. My mom had visited and she helped me find a nanny, Mrs. Liu, who didn't speak English. She's originally from China. And she took care of my daughter in my one bedroom apartment while I worked. And then when my daughter napped, she would help me pack out orders.

• 50:15Guy Raz?

  Oh.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  And then she became our first employee.

• 50:17Guy Raz?

  Was it clear to you that you could make a go of it just by selling blotting paper? That that could be a sustainable business?

• 50:26Speaker 01

  No, it was not. I was making far less revenue doing that than than my lowest paid salary job I'd ever had. It was not, it was not a business. It was a hobby business at that point.

• 50:40Guy Raz?

  And did you have huge ambitions for it? Or did you think it was gonna kind of be a side hustle? Because it sounds like in a way.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  It was definitely not a side hustle in the sense that I worked 70 hours a week doing it. I took one day off in the hospital when I gave birth and then I went back to work. So about two weeks after that, I flew.

• 51:00Guy Raz?

  After the birth of your.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  After the birth of my daughter.

• 51:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Maybe it was more like three weeks. I was flying again, either consulting or going to Japan and continuing to research this. And it was horrible to leave a newborn.

• 51:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Wait, you were, you were doing part-time consulting gigs, like to make ends meet in addition to running a company?

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:21Guy Raz?

  And how, how long did you do that? Like, how long was it? Was it before you were able to stop doing outside work and just focus on the company? Was it like two years, three years in?

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Three to four years.

• 51:34Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  And then about a year into it, I had exhausted my search for those other ingredients that I had found in Japan and used. The rice powder, the mineral powders, the camellia oil, the things that had healed my skin were not available in the US.

• 51:55Guy Raz?

  Even in San Francisco was an incredible Japan town.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Japan town, no, Japan, I went to Japan town, Chinatown, Koreatown. I went to traditional Chinese medicine places because there's a lot of herbal treatments there. I went to eBay. I mean, I went everywhere. It's just not here.

• 52:09Guy Raz?

  You were looking for that like Rice Bran, whatever like foaming powder that you were using and the camellia oil and you could not find it. I'm surprised you could not find that.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Could not find it. And then even then I did not realize how unique it was. And so on one of my trips back to Japan, I actually flew to Tokyo. And I just went to the department stores and I went straight to the cosmetics counters for the Japanese brands. And they all sort of looked at me like I was crazy too. And Yoko was like, yeah, they don't sell that kind of stuff. People don't use that kind of stuff here in Japan anymore.

• 52:44Guy Raz?

  It's for like old, it's like what, for like old fashioned people or like?

• 52:48Speaker 01

  It was things that like their great grandmothers or grandmothers had used.

• 52:51Guy Raz?

  And you're like, no, no, this is actually really great stuff.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm like, no, this is super legit. I have no idea why it's super legit, but it is.

• 52:58Guy Raz?

  So it seems like at this point, Vicky, you were thinking of selling these products because you knew you couldn't make a go of it just doing the blotting papers?

• 53:10Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And then I started working with scientists to develop these formulas.

• 53:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you found a lab in Tokyo.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Yes, and I got really lucky because it turns out that they are some of the most famous skincare scientists in Japan.

• 53:23Guy Raz?

  By the way, from what I understand, like, the three main ingredients in a lot of these products are green tea, rice, and algae seaweed.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  That's, yeah, that's exactly right. Those were the ingredients that I had first used that healed my skin, and then we went really deep. So we interviewed a dozen geisha. We went to old texts, including the oldest beauty book ever written in Japan, which was written in 1813. And the more that we dug, the more that we realized that the Japanese traditional approach to beautiful skin was not some sort of exotic flower that only grows on the dark side of the moon. Like many other cultures, hundreds of years ago, when women found that their skin was dry, or patchy, or breaking out, they go to what's within reach. And what's within reach is in the kitchen. And so the basis of the Japanese diet is the basis of their beauty. And that's it.

• 54:17Guy Raz?

  It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  It is. Straightforward.

• 54:19Guy Raz?

  So they started tinkering with different products. And what did you say? You said, I want to do a lotion, I want to do a face cream, I want to do, like, was it that specific?

• 54:29Speaker 01

  I brought them things that I had been using that the geisha had shown me.

• 54:34Guy Raz?

  And this was to wash your face, or to clean your face, or to do what?

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a camellia oil that you use to melt off your makeup. There is a rice powder that you use to enzymatically exfoliate your skin.

• 54:46Guy Raz?

  Got it.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  And then a moisturizer that was made out of silk extracts. And when I showed them the things that I was hoping to create, I remember that they laughed a little bit because they said, why do you like these old fashioned things? Nobody will like this. Nobody uses these anymore. And I was like, because they work. I don't, I don't really care what's sexy. It works for me.

• 55:07Guy Raz?

  But it's interesting, because they were old fashioned, right? Like, but, but you understood that if you just updated the design, it could appeal to people in the US. Because so much of, so much of these things is about design, right? You have a great product, and the design sucks, no one's gonna notice it.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. You know, the way that most beauty brands come to life these days is, you know, if you've ever wondered, how does this model, or this actress, suddenly come out with a? ADP Skincare Collection. What does she know about skincare? It's pretty easy if you want to do it the fast way. You go to a contract manufacturer. They have stock formulas and stock packaging. You pick it, you put in 0.01% of a marketing level ingredient. You put your name on it, you pick a fragrance and it's out the door. And that is how the vast majority of skincare is made in the world. And I will be completely honest, I did go to labs in Japan and say, "Do you have formulas like this?" Because no brands are making anything like this. And they said, "No, we don't make formulas like that."

• 56:04Guy Raz?

  You were looking for like a potential white label product?

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Because that's the way you make things in the beauty world, yeah. And so they would take me to their like glass cases, where they would say, "We used to make something like that 120 years ago, but no, we don't make that anymore." And so that's why I had to find my own scientists.

• 56:25Guy Raz?

  How were you able to? I mean, at this point, did you get some outside money? Because how are you able to pay that lab and those scientists?

• 56:34Speaker 01

  At that point, I had gone and started doing a friends and family round. And by friends and family, it was mostly my family.

• 56:41Guy Raz?

  This is like 2010, 2011?

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And so I went to my mom and my dad, Stanley, my co-founder, and then some people who eventually started working for Tatcha, they invested as well. And so it really was, it was just us.

• 56:56Guy Raz?

  Were you able to raise more than a million dollars?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  I think it was, I think it was, over the course of a few rounds, it added up to a million.

• 57:03Guy Raz?

  And that was going to be, certainly going to be enough to get the lab to come up with?

• 57:08Speaker 01

  The formulas.

• 57:09Guy Raz?

  The formulas, yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  We also did custom packaging, which is unusual as well. So building our own molds and from scratch and...

• 57:16Guy Raz?

  Molds for bottles and tubes?

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And the molds are expensive because they're huge and they're made out of steel. And so having custom molds made and the engineering and the design that goes into that, that's quite expensive as well.

• 57:30Guy Raz?

  So in those first, like, you know, while you were developing the product line, like, what was it? Were you burning through cash?

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Yes. And, you know, you asked me about the fundraising. And I mentioned that over the course of a few rounds, it was, it came to maybe a million dollars, eventually two, but it was not an organized affair in any way.

• 57:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  It wasn't like we had a thoughtful business plan despite having multiple Ivy League MBAs on the team.

• 57:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  We were all finance people. We should have known better.

• 58:03Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  And been able to stick to a budget and a forecast and a business plan. And that didn't happen at all. And we ran out of money over and over and over again. I couldn't afford a salary. My partner couldn't afford a salary. I couldn't afford rent anymore. My parents had bought a place in, near the airport at that point.

• 58:24Guy Raz?

  In San Francisco?

• 58:26Speaker 01

  In San Francisco, in Milbrae. And they let me move into there.

• 58:29Guy Raz?

  Wait, where was your husband?

• 58:31Speaker 01

  My husband moved with me, but we couldn't afford the apartment in the marina anymore.

• 58:35Guy Raz?

  But he had a job.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  He did, but every single dollar that he had, I took and I put into the company.

• 58:41Guy Raz?

  Right. So you moved into their apartment for how long?

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Into their house for seven years.

• 58:47Guy Raz?

  For seven years?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  And worked out of their garage with no salary.

• 58:51Guy Raz?

  So I'm just, I'm just curious. You were making essentially a high-end brand, right? You were making a beauty product that was gonna appeal to people who had money to spend. And you, you could not live that kind of life, certainly at the beginning. But I guess at the same time, didn't you kind of present yourself that way a little bit, like, kind of as glamorous and, you know, just at least to, to people you were talking about the product to?

• 59:25Speaker 01

  I tried to hide and not meet them in person and only speak with them or send them letters. And you're right, one of our first customers, and I don't normally mention our customers, but one of our first customers was Donatella Versace. And we had this really, really incredible high-end clientele. And, and I was, I was working on my mom's garage.

• 59:47Guy Raz?

  Wow. All right. So you launched the product line and...

• 59:52Guy Raz?

  You already had a customer base. Were people buying the product in 2012 when it started?

• 59:59Speaker 01

  No. When we launched the skincare, this little four-piece collection with just a cleanser, an exfoliant, a serum, and a moisturizer. I was so fortunate in that I had sort of the holy grail of press hit the same week or weekend that the products launched online. And so that was, it was like a two-page spread in vogue. It was a feature in Oprah. It was the Today Show again. And we had this website set up and it was beautiful. And I remember we sold exactly one serum. And then that was maybe on a Friday. And then that weekend, I was trying to figure out how to create a promotion code. And I made a mistake and I zeroed out all the pricing on the website. And I didn't know it for two days.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Finally, a woman that I knew from Starbucks, who had seen a Facebook plea that I had put up, like, please come check out my website. She went through the website and saw that everything was $0. Purchased, made an order, and then forwarded the order to me and was like, hey, girl, you shouldn't give your stuff away. And I realized, gosh, even with-

• 1:01:03Guy Raz?

  Wait, sorry. There was like a glitch on your website?

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Yes. And so the weekend after we got the holy grail of press, the only order that I got for $0, because I had zeroed out all the pricing, was from someone I know.

• 1:01:16Guy Raz?

  Got it, okay.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  And no retailers wanted to carry us. And they said, I don't think this is interesting or compelling. I don't think that anybody will think that Asian beauty is compelling.

• 1:01:26Guy Raz?

  And you needed retailers? You needed it to be in Sephora and in the department stores for it to work? You couldn't just do direct to consumer?

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  I had hoped that I could do a combination of direct to consumer in retail, but there was no traffic to our website. Even when I made the prices zeros, nobody came. Even when I had great press, nobody came. And then all of the retailers said that they weren't interested, with the exception of Sephora, to their credit.

• 1:01:53Guy Raz?

  And by the way, at this point, how many people are working for you like in your mom's garage in Millbrae?

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Up to 15.

• 1:02:01Guy Raz?

  Every day?

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Every day, yeah. And the orders, because then around that point, I started going on QVC and QVC volume is significant.

• 1:02:10Guy Raz?

  How did you get onto QVC?

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  I begged and begged and begged and begged for an introduction and I was turned down swiftly, at least four times to even get a meeting. And then finally, this one merchant was kind enough to take a meeting with me and then they gave me a chance to go up there and we sold out.

• 1:02:32Guy Raz?

  You went onto QVC as like the pitch, the pitch person?

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, yep.

• 1:02:37Guy Raz?

  What was that like? Were you nervous? Because it's live TV, right? Were you, or were you just like, yep, I'm here, I'm ready to go?

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  I wasn't nervous about the TV part of it because I just, when I get too stressed out, I just sort of leave my body. But I was nervous about whether I would hit my sales because if I didn't hit my sales goal, I didn't know how I was going to make salary. And I had already called my mom, probably by that point, four times for an emergency loan to pay salaries. Because 15 people means 15 salaries or 14 salaries because I didn't take one. And then I would come home and my house would be full of half-packed boxes and they would go from floor to about five feet up in every single room of my house. There was inventory coming in from Japan and then there was orders going out through tacha.com and then for QVC. And so it was just boxes halfway up the wall.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  At one point, we lost the baby in the boxes.

• 1:03:28Guy Raz?

  Wow. All right, when you went on QVC and you're talking about the product and the story and, and how much of a turning point was that? I mean, did the QVC sales like lead to, you know, online sales from your website?

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  It was symbiotic, but the, what happened in between, which I, I think I jumped over, is that after we launched the blotting paper, we had two acquisition offers within a few weeks of starting the company.

• 1:04:04Guy Raz?

  In 2009?

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, 2009, 2010.

• 1:04:08Guy Raz?

  Wow, and, and what was the story? I mean, that's pretty great.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Um, one was a retail partner and the other one was a large strategic acquirer. And I had no intention of selling the company, but one, the strategic acquirer said, and it was a mentor of mine who, who I really, really respect, he's a beauty veteran, and said, "You have lucked into a brand that has the potential to be one of the greats. And if you love it like you love your child, then you'll give it to a mother who knows how to raise it, because you do not have what it takes. You don't have the money, you don't have the know-how, you don't have the team." And I had a newborn child at home when he said that to me.

• 1:04:51Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  And, um...

• 1:04:53Guy Raz?

  Wow, I mean, if it was me, I would have taken the deal. I would have said, "Yes, please, throw me a lifeline." And, I mean, I think it would have been crazy of you not to have considered it at that point.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  I did consider it, and it would have been just enough to pay down the debt. And that's what was, that was crushing me at that point, was that I had been, I'd taken my parents' retirement, I had taken money from my friends and family who were not rich.

• 1:05:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Um, we were probably 800,000 in debt at that point, and maxed out all of our credit cards. And then, when he said, "You don't have what it takes," I felt terrified that I had bitten off more than I can chew, and that I would lose people's money and disrespect a culture that's not my own. And so, I was going to do it for no, no personal profit, but just to, just to get out.

• 1:05:46Guy Raz?

  Just to pay everybody back.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  And to let the brand live on.

• 1:05:49Guy Raz?

  And you would have no equity in it.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:05:53Guy Raz?

  So you were gonna do it and why didn't it happen?

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Um, right when we thought we were going to do the deal. I wake up one day and I turn on the news and there had been a tsunami. And then a radioactive incident with the nuclear.

• 1:06:08Guy Raz?

  This is after the earthquake in Japan.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  This is the earthquake in Japan. And then, um, the acquirer pulled out.

• 1:06:16Guy Raz?

  They pulled out?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  They pulled out.

• 1:06:18Guy Raz?

  Because of the earthquake in Japan?

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  You know, they didn't really give me a reason at that time. They just, within 24, 48 hours, they were out.

• 1:06:27Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:29Guy Raz?

  And, and so you would have taken that deal had they not pulled out?

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  I would have taken the deal.

• 1:06:33Guy Raz?

  And we would not be talking about Tatcha today?

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Uh-uh, not with me, with them, yeah.

• 1:06:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah, wow.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  And so I think the reason I told you this story is because you asked if I was ever scared or did I know that it was gonna work out? And no, at no point did I think it was gonna work out. I just, at some point, I realized that, um, the fear finally went away when, about three years into it, we formed a partnership with an organization called Room to Read. And they are one of the leading nonprofits globally for children's education. And they have a special fund for girls and fund girls' education, including, um, second skills, life skills training throughout Southeast Asian Africa. And I always knew that I wanted anything that we created to give back.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  And so we created a one-to-one model, um, where every single purchase funded a day of school. And before we started that partnership, I wanted to make sure that what we were going to tell our clients we were doing was actually happening. So I flew to Cambodia and I spent a few days with the girls in their schools, with their teachers, in their houses, um, seeing what Room to Read was doing firsthand. And when I saw that, that's when my fear evaporated because I was surrounded by children who had no electricity, no running water, maybe no parents, not a lot of personal safety over their bodies. And yet, they showed up every day with hope and with courage about the fact that their

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  past wasn't going to define their future. And they, they look like my daughter.

• 1:08:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  They look like me. And so that completely reframed for me what risk is and what sacrifice is and what's dangerous.

• 1:08:20Guy Raz?

  And how did the brand, because I think by like by 2014, I think your revenue was like $12 million that year. I don't know, once people started to buy the product, did it just, was it just kind of like a self generating process where it just grew and grew just organically?

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:08:37Guy Raz?

  No.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  We were not profitable for the first eight years, so we had to personally finance the losses. And then when we ran out of money, we would have to go to friends and family and ask for help. But no, every step of the way was like figuring out from scratch again how to, how to make sure that people knew that we existed.

• 1:09:00Guy Raz?

  If you started the business in 2009, it took you like eight years to get to profitability. So you weren't really profitable until like 2016, right?

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:09:11Guy Raz?

  Or 17. I mean, like, at what point did you start to kind of breathe a sigh of relief a bit? I mean, at what point were you able to say, okay? Because you had been through, you know, periods where you almost accepted a deal, right? To basically take care of your debt. And you had to borrow money and you were constantly worrying about paying your team. And nobody was making a whole lot of money. They were all, you know, promised equity. Like, at what point did you start to feel like, okay, this is going to be okay? Was there a point?

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Every year, it felt like a high wire act where the wire was getting moved higher and higher and higher. And it was probably only when our private equity company came in two and a half years ago. And it was the only institutional round of capital that we did, that I started feeling less alone.

• 1:10:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:10:09Guy Raz?

  And it was probably easier to attract that at that point because you had proven the concept.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And they, they were wonderful partners. And so that, that was the first time I started to breathe a sigh of relief. But it came with its own different pressures because private equity doesn't invest for very long. And so I knew that the second that they invested, the clock started. And there would have to be another capital event to buy them out. And it was at that time that one of the operating partners told me that he thought I should hire.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  A real CEO. And it was, it was a gut punch.

• 1:10:51Guy Raz?

  This is in 2017?

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  This was in 2017 or 18. I have to double check the timeline.

• 1:10:58Guy Raz?

  And, and it was a gut punch because you were like, I'm the CEO.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I had founded this company and been the CEO for, at that point, nine years and had led it to, you know, pretty meaningful growth and meaningful in our industry and meaningful to our customers.

• 1:11:20Guy Raz?

  I mean, I think 2017, you're probably doing like 30, 40 million dollars in sales, I hear.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Probably. I would have to go look at the numbers, so.

• 1:11:29Guy Raz?

  I mean, you had a degree from Harvard Business School. I mean, you clearly were qualified. So what, and I'm not trying to disparage this person. Maybe they were really genuinely trying to give you advice in your best interest. But what was it that they felt you didn't have?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  I asked that question and the only answer that he gave me was if you are willing to hurt the company for your own ego, then we can have that conversation.

• 1:11:58Guy Raz?

  But why, but why would you be hurting the company?

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  And that's what I said. I said, I would never hurt the company. I love the company like I love my, my family. It is my family. It's in my house. I mean, what are you talking about? So I never actually got an answer, but it, it took the wind out of my sails.

• 1:12:13Guy Raz?

  But what was it? What do you think? I mean, if you could step out of your own body and get on the balcony and look down, what would you have said about your leadership if you were being critical of it?

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  I was definitely learning on the fly, but I would say that most founder CEOs do learn on the fly because the job changes every day.

• 1:12:31Guy Raz?

  Yes.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  I was trying to negotiate between being Vicky and Victoria. Victoria is, is what a lot of people see on QVC and in magazines. And Victoria is always zen and Victoria is always grateful. But, you know, Vicky is an executive leader who needs to manage an agile and demanding business. And I didn't have a model of female leadership that.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  I had seen before that I could look up to. And so I never really felt comfortable asking my team to do things if they didn't want to do it. I think I needed to be liked too much. I didn't want to come across as a difficult female leader. So I hadn't grown into my own skin, I think, as a leader. The results were there, but the confidence was not. And so when, when he suggested that I go and find a real CEO, I, I, I did.

• 1:13:41Guy Raz?

  I mean, that must have been really hard. It's your baby and your company and, but at the same time, you want what's best for your company in the future and all these people who'd invested some money into it and hadn't seen a return yet. And not just the, forget about the private equity guys, but the, you know, the employees and your parents and the friends and, right?

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:14:02Guy Raz?

  And I'm sure that was a lot of pressure on you.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  It was. It was a ton of pressure. I was, I was burning out. I was on the road 250 days into the year, missing my child's childhood. I missed Thanksgiving. I've left my husband and daughter in line at Disney World to catch a flight to go on QVC. And I would have never told this story. You're the only person I would ever tell this story to. And it's because your listeners are thinking about starting their company or they're running their own companies right now. And if I could do anything over again, I would have told myself at that time that you're actually doing a great job. And if you want to hire a new leader of the company for all sorts of reasons, that's okay. But you shouldn't doubt yourself, especially just because you're a woman

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  and especially just because this is your first time at the rodeo. So if I have one regret at the company, it's that I didn't believe in myself. And the good news is it did lead me to hire a new CEO who is the light of my life, the best partner I could ever ask for, for this stage of growth of the company. And it gives me the freedom to focus on what I love most, which is taking care of our clients and creating formulas. So it all ended up great, but it, it gutted me at that time.

• 1:15:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah. In 2019, you get acquired. I'm assuming that this was a long, drawn-out process. Unilever bought Touch, it's been reported for about half a billion dollars. How did that happen? Did they approach you? Were you guys, did you at this point feel like, look, the investors are all in. We should shop our brand around and see if we can partner with a bigger brand at this point?

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  We were not intending on selling the company at that point. We had gotten acquisition offers or interest almost annually from our first year. And every time, we said no, outside of the one time where it just fell apart. And after we did a private equity deal, we assumed that we would be independent with a private equity company for five to seven years.

• 1:16:15Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  But then I had to sit back with myself and really have one of those hard-to-heart conversations with yourself about, why did you really start this?

• 1:16:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  What was this all about? It was, we know it wasn't for the money. And what I realized was that I created it because at that point in my life, I very much felt empty. And when I went to Japan, I had experienced a beauty and a kindness and a humanity and a craft that I had never seen in my life. And it healed my skin, but it healed my soul. And I created this thing to share what I was learning because I needed it in my life. I needed it in my heart. And I have always believed that a brand is a promise. And it's a promise that I can't break. And I want it to live 100 years. I want it to outlive me.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  And so while I love running it and I wish it could be independent forever, I have no intention on living forever. Like dying is definitely on my bucket list. And so I know that eventually I have to find it a home. And then I met Unilever and I knew nothing about Unilever and had certainly never thought about them as a strategic partner. But there was this woman, Vasiliki, who was creating a group within Unilever and the rule was that they had to be purpose-driven brands and they had to have a purpose above commercial. And we had a conversation and she brought me to tears. And she's a mother and she's a female leader that I admire. And

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  one of the things that she loved most about the brand was the giving model. And so that's when I decided, while I would love to run this myself independently forever, I know that's not possible. So I would, I would rather than get it into a forever home where it can be protected and I stay with it. But then that's, it's a forever home.

• 1:18:12Guy Raz?

  So, I mean, when, when that became clear that they were going to acquire you, I mean, how has that changed, you know, just changed the way you work? I mean, is it, I guess in a sense, like I interviewed Jamie Simonoff, who sold Ring to Amazon. And now he works for Amazon. And he loves it because he really, really is just a tinkerer. Like, he loves to just go and invent things. And so he doesn't have the pressure of having to like, raise money and talk to investors and do all that stuff anymore. Like, he now can just do what he loves. And, and he's, he's great with that. Is that, is that how you feel?

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  I feel so incredibly blessed. We're completely independent from Unilever. But they are very much a purpose-driven company. And it got put to the test with COVID because they made this acquisition. And everybody can talk about values and purpose when things are going great. But it's when things are difficult that you really get put to the test. And the truth of it is, when we sheltered in place here in San Francisco, and the stores, you know, we started getting nervous about the safety of everything. We shut down our office, we pulled our field team, we shut down our warehouse because we wanted to put everybody's safety first.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  And that meant that for the first couple of weeks that this was happening, we were down like 80% a day in sales.

• 1:19:46Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  And I said, I know this is going to really hurt financially, but I have to protect my people. They didn't blink. They didn't even hesitate. There was never a but. They said, pull your people right now.

• 1:20:00Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  And tell them that their jobs are okay and we're going to keep paying them from home.

• 1:20:05Guy Raz?

  Wow. I mean, in some ways, you're very, I mean, it's almost so fortunate that you did accept the acquisition deal because you're part of now a huge, well-financed multinational company that can insulate you. Had you been independent, it could have been a rockier road right now.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  If we were independent, I think there's a very good chance we'd be shutting down the company right now.

• 1:20:29Guy Raz?

  Wow. Do you, when you think about all the things that have happened to you and the success of the brand, the business, do you attribute most of that to your intelligence and your work ethic? Or do you think a lot of that had to do with luck?

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  For sure not intelligence. I am no smarter than anybody else. I think when you start any company, the most important thing is to show up every day. You just, you just have to, you just have to keep showing up for the game. I did get very, very, very blessed with amazing people who believed in us when there was nothing to believe in and who stayed with us. So our scientists from day one are still our scientists today. Our packaging partners from day one are still our packaging partners today. Our retail partner, Sephora, who did believe in us in day one, I just couldn't afford to be with them until year five because it requires more investment. They're our best partners today.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  So I've been really blessed, but I'm definitely not smarter. I'm definitely not more strategic. And that's why I love what you do. And that's why I love this podcast. And I wish, I wish it was around when I first started because it would have been my lifeline to believe in myself and it would have felt less lonely to do this. And so I'm so grateful for this opportunity to tell you this story because the

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Other hundreds of times that people have asked me over the last 10 years about building this company, they've only asked about the highlights. And so I think about the entrepreneurs and hopeful entrepreneurs out there who read stories like the ones like mine and think that it was sort of leaping from one gilded lily pad to the next, that just got getting better and better and easier and easier, and that I'm at home meditating and it's all been very zen and beautiful. And it has been very zen and beautiful, but it has also been death-defyingly difficult and treacherous. And it has broken me down to my very core and caused me to question who I am as a person and what I'm made of.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  So I'm just a really big believer that if I can do it, and it's in the cards for you, then anybody can do it.

• 1:22:47Guy Raz?

  That's Vicky Tsai, founder of Tatcha. By the way, remember back in the early days when Vicky first sent samples of blotting paper to professional makeup artists? Well, one of those artists was Daniel Martin, who went on to do the makeup for Meghan Markle when she married Prince Harry. Anyway, Daniel Martin has just signed on to work with Tatcha in a leading creative role. And his first project, a 10th anniversary reissue of those original blotting papers.

• 1:23:18Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write us, our email address is [email protected]. And if you want to tweet at us, it's at HowIBuiltThis or at Guy Raz. Our show was produced this week by Jed Anderson, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Julia Carney, Candace Lim, Daraith Gales, Niva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 1:23:55Guy Raz?

  This is NPR.