Show notes
Zero: Beginnings
—Sharon welcomes Blair and introduces him as someone who as “created something out of what seems to be nothing … I love meeting people who know how to think about how to solve problems and to think outside the box and to build something that's worthwhile and they care about.”
—Blair reveals when he was 17 he lost his father to heart attack. When he was 23 his mother died after a two-year battle with cancer which is “your worst fear as a kid growing up … it’s probably one of the most terrifying things I’ve been through.” He compares his father’s sudden death with his mother’s experience: “My dad was gone overnight and didn't get to say goodbye. Um, but mum, you know, got to say goodbye, but at the same time, having the pain of watching someone slip away like that. So I don't know which what I would choose.”
—Blair talks how he “loved” brands, “even a six, seven year old. I think that came from my dad … a lot of that was sort of squashed out of me through school. Um, it was when mom and dad passed away, it was almost a bit of a reset, to be honest, it was like that. I had really no expectations of what I should do.” He dropped out of uni and his mother approved: “She said , ‘You weren't meant for university, go and build your own thing.’”
—He moved from the suburbs to Port Melbourne where he started his tanning salon, so without his mother’s death “I wouldn't have started the business. While I'd trade it all to have my mum back, um, it really kicked me into that.”
—Sharon says Blair’s “playground is right here in your head.”
—He agrees: “I’m always looking at the next thing. It gets tiring after a while, because I don't know if I'm ever going to be satisfied, but then at the same time, I don't think I'd want to be because I enjoy, enjoy chasing the next thing. And that's, that's where I find my enjoyment. It's not about, it's not about the end goal.
—Sharon asks one message from Blair’s father than has stayed with him.
—Blair: “He just used to say to me that I could do anything. He just believed you could do whatever you needed to. So I definitely got that from him. Mum was definitely a lot more pragmatic than that. She was a psychologist. It didn't matter who mum was speaking to. She was, you know, she was the same person all the time. Just a really calming influence. My dad a lot more high pace, a lot more, ‘What's next?’”
—Blair doesn’t like being the centre of attention: “At high school, I would do anything to skip school. Yeah, it's really been I reckon the last six years where I started to feel confident talking about the things that I care about and the things that I would like to have an impact on.”
10.21: Building a brand
—From the start Blair and partner Shaun Wilson knew they wouldn’t “represent the personality of the brand” because the positioning is female-oriented: “We needed someone that could talk directly to that young consumer.” Molly Quinn, who worked in the tanning salon, looked after social media early on: “She really, I felt typified the voice. Fun, engaging, never said a bad word about anybody. It was just a friendly face. And that’s what I wanted to be the front of Bondi.”
—Bondi Sands has been “a very quick journey”, Blair says: “We've just been so aggressive with what we've wanted to do with the brand. We had a global view for this brand from day one. We believed we could be the number one selling self-tanning brand in the world from day one. And I think we used to talk about that before we even sold one product.” Vision came true last year when they launched it to the US: “Once you've achieved a big goal like that it frees you up to then think about what's next for the brand. It doesn't always become solely around numbers and how many products you sell. It's more about know, how do we look to give back, or how do we do, how do we build a better business? So I think that's been, that's been an interesting progression for the brand over the last 12 months.”
—Sharon asks what it was that told Blair and Sean they would have a number one product.
—Blair talks genesis, saying the direction around wanting an Australian branded self-tanning product went back to an experience he had playing basketball in the US when he was a teenager and “that bronzed Aussie was just such a strong perception of Australians all around the world. So that, that stuck with me.”
—Sharon: “When did you realize that was a branding proposition? Because it's one thing to realize there's a perception of Aussies, but it's another to convert it into a branding proposition.”
—Blair opened his salon in 2006 and four years later started working on Bondi Sands. “And it was really at that time that we really started to understand that, you know, the Australian lifestyle that was very well known all around the world. So that was really just connecting the dots. We chose Bondi probably because the most famous beach in the world, but I think to Australians, it felt like that was an iconic Australian image that we could sell to the world.”
—At the same time he was doing customer research in the tanning salon. “It was getting to the point where we couldn't fit any more clients in. And I would start suggesting products that they could buy from a local pharmacy that they could just buy off the shelf. And so you're getting all this feedback of, ‘It doesn't last long enough, it stinks or the color is bad’. So I still look back at that those seven years as you know, some of the best market research you can ever do. I think we know tanning consumers better than anyone in the world. And it does come back to those seven years of talking to customers every single day.”
—18.23 Connecting the dots and evolution
—Sharon says not everybody would have made the connections that Blair did: “You don't know until you look back why it was smart. Is that how you see it?”
—Blair: “I definitely look at it as smart. I do connect things a lot on a daily basis. Most of your next steps in life comes from obviously where you are today. Most of the things I've done have come as evolutions of the occupation that's come before. So that salon moving into Bondi Sands was really an evolution, it wasn’t a brand new step.
—Sharon notes Blair was looking at going bankrupt after the Victorian government outlawed tanning salons and while others did, he was entrepreneurial enough to spin the demand for tanning into a fake tan product.
—Blair says Bondi Sands was in motion before the tanning bed ban. “That's one of the things that Sean and I do very well with Bondi. We're always thinking what's next, what's next? The amount of products we bring to bring to market and the speed that we do that that makes us an incredibly tough brand to compete with because we're constantly pushing out something new and in today's modern age where people are just on social media, they're wanting to see something new. I think your consumers need to see that you're trying something new. You're looking to further yourself and that's what we do as a brand.”
—Blair says Bondi Sands has developed “very organically” and that in their initial brand presentation back in 2011 they had sunscreen on the slate. They eventually launched a couple of years ago. “So we had directions really built out for how this brand was going to roll out probably six, seven years ahead.”
—Sharon notes Blair earned his stripes doing suntanning six days a week, every 15 minutes. He says, “around races time it was like some of the girls were there spraying until 11 o’clock at night.”
—Sharon recalls working seven days a week for two years, burning her own CDs, doing all my own production for the vision that I had. I knew there was a bigger vision there. I didn't know where it was going to go. I didn't have it as clear as you did. But I knew it involved. I've got to get out of the one-on-one and into the one to many.”
—Blair talks the early days, handling customer inquiries, packing orders and walking to the post office to post them: “Definitely not the most efficient way of spending my time. But, um, that was, that was just what we had to do in the beginning … something that was highlighted to us very early on was that people did want to support an Australian brand. You know, it's funny. We just never saw that it wasn't going to work. I don't mean to come across arrogant. We never entertained that it wasn't gonna work. We knew our product was great. We knew it was good value.”
—They had early challenges and one product failed stability and it turned green out in the marketplace: “I had some interesting moments in the beginning.”
—27.57 SALES STRATEGY AND PARTNERSHIPS
—Blair talks Bondi Sands relationship with their biggest retailer Priceline: “We remained exclusive with them for close to five, six years before we went anywhere else.”
—Sharon notes Bondi Sands has been “so careful to price competitively for your demographics so that everyone can afford” and Blair respond: “Yeah, it was funny. Like a lot of people talk about our pricing and ask about the strategy and it was, there was no strategy. It was literally, I believed our consumer was 17 through 20 year old females. I believe that a lot of them probably would have spent spending pocket money or money from a casual job. Um, and so I wanted them, I wanted those consumers together to come in and buy our product and get some change from a twenty dollar note.” Said three main pillars were built around the product: Australian made, affordable and accessible. “That's their values that we still adhere to, regardless of what territory we go into.”
—Sharon notes they keep coming back because of the quality and price point.
—Blair says one of the issues with brand development now and new brands coming to life through social media is “it's all about the marketing and not about the product. Um, you know, you see very few brands coming to market today that spend the 18 months like we did developing our first range. There’s become a bit of a disregard towards brands that are are built out of repeat purchase. We have a 92 per cent retention rate globally. So we know once we get a product, someone starts using Bondi, they'll stay with the brand because it's hard to match that quality at that price point.
—Sharon talks TCI’s retention model where clients pay a monthly retainer. “So the more that builds up, that's more of a measure of how we're doing. And we've got a stick rate of like 96 per cent. That I only had to acquire a raving fan once, and then they stay The cost is in the acquisition.”
—Blair’s fiancée buys “so many” brands online and “every time she buys something, she’s disappointed.”
—33:12: Where Kylie Jenner fits into the picture
—Sharon notes Bondi Sands paid Kylie Jenner $270,000 in 2018 for a single Insta post that was a hit with her 112 million followers, ensuring a great launch for the product in the US market.
—Blair says Kylie had used the product before she was approached was “incredibly exciting.” Says the strategy around it was they wanted to show American retailers they were willing to invest and that Bondi Sands would support them if they put the products on their shelves.
—Asked how many ads on old school TV he would have had to have paid for to match the Jenner result, Blair says around the same time they launched a product at Coachella at a private estate at Palm Springs and Emily Ratajkowski turned up: “We actually got more PR out of, out of her, turning up to our event. Um, and it was close to a billion reach off the back of people just resharing the fact she was at our event.”
—Says while influencers have been “a huge part” of our strategy, they want to do it in an “organic” way: “We do like to align with people over long periods of time and not just have them doing random posts. Obviously with Kylie Jenner is’ts an expensive process to have a long-term engagement.” They launched around the same time as Instagram, which was “a modern gold rush for brands.”
—Talks influencer Steph Claire Smith, one of Australia’s biggest influencers and now an entrepreneur. “Back in 2013 we were meeting with our PR agencies and it was at a time where people were starting to emerge that may have had 30, 40,000 followers on Instagram. So our PR agency was suggesting a lot of influencers to us, but at the time they were more celebrities that had jumped on Instagram quickly. There wasn't a lot of people that were just everyday people that had built a following. So we were getting presented with people like Margot Robbie and there was huge costs associated with someone that just because she was a legitimate celebrity.” Steph Claire Smith bought and posted about a product and you know, it was kinda like, this is the goal. That's the type of girl that we would like to represent our brand. And then it turns out she had 140,000 followers. The investment to get all that on board with our brand was a fraction of what a traditional celebrity was at the time. Apart from the cost saving what was important to us was that these people weren't engaged with her just because she was a celebrity, they engaged with her because they related to who she was. Um, so that was why we bought Steph into, you know, become the face of Bondi Sands.
—Since then they’ve used over 1000 influencers around the world. The business likes to align with someone for months to build credibility. “We wanted these people to be almost seen as though they were brand representatives of ours, not just someone to reshare some content.”
—40.00: To market, to market
—Blair says the brand people buy says something about who they are: “A lot of times we'll launch a new product and we don't have to market it to a lot of the people who follow Bondi because they believe in what we produce. So they will always buy a new product. And I always talk about a brand to consumer relationship is no different to a friend to friend relationship. You buy into brands that represent who you are and who you feel you're aligned with. So I think, yeah, when people skip over that brand development and building that brand equity, you're missing the most important part of building your brand.
—Sharon: “It’s not just selling product. I call it giving a shit.” Asks Blair where Bondi Sands is heading.
—Blair says becoming the number one brand globally was “a great achievement to tick off the list.” Has allowed them to think even more broadly than before and the business is now a credible brand in skincare as well as self tan: “I'm looking forward to taking more responsibility for the category that we're in, in terms of whether it be eco-friendly products, better sustainability, packaging, the product, the right way, the right ingredients, representing the brand in the right way. I feel like the exciting thing for Bondi now is we can help create change potentially around sustainability. Um, and that's something that's gonna be a big driver for us over the next two to three years, that's going to incorporate, um, potentially a bit of a rebrand, brand new packaging throughout our whole range, which is 60 products. We're looking into new territories.”
—Sharon asks if he has much to do with the team and he says it’s more Sean’s remit. Says some of the struggles they’ve had is around bringing in team members into the US who are all American: “So their perception of the brand is, is so different to yours. They still need to take responsibility for their own territory, but they need to really understand the brand heritage and understand where you're going. They need to understand the Australian way of life. They need to understand, you know, that, okay, this may not be the way you talk but this is how we talk as a brand.”
—Talks the “world first range” coming in January that is a new and very different direction for Bondi Sands. It will the sun care partner for the Australian Open in 2021, in a three-year deal with the “iconic platform.”
—51.00: Creating
—Sharon asks Blair what his creative process is.
—Blair: “It's different all the time I find, and if I'm looking for inspiration on something or I go looking for product ideas, they don't come. It's always an evolution of where we are today.” Talks 2016’s Tan Eraser product and how it came about and how one product often leads to another. In 2018, the Aero Express product became the fastest selling product in Priceline history, regardless of category.
—Sharon notes “creativity for me is problem solving. You got to go where everyone else hasn't been yet.”
—Blair talks misconceptions around creativity and that he believes it’s “the most under-utilized superpower the human race has. People always ask me, like, how do you become creative? I'm not a creative person. I feel like anybody can be a creative person. It's just a different mindset. And I think it's, it's as simple as asking questions.”
—Sharon says her “most hated” comment is, ‘We’ve always done it that way’ … “If we've been defending a status quo, what a waste of energy.”
—Blair says when someone is explaining ideas to him, “I'll just keep asking questions. And at the end of these discussions, you always ended up with a better idea or a better concept. So I think, yeah, creativity is so important and it can be utilized in any, in any field. And it's not to be confused with talent.”
—Sharon talks deduction and induction thinking and says Blair is an induction thinker: “You naturally go to what could be, which is the reason why a suntan salon for you was not the end of the road in the industry.”
—Blair is “not always interested in what other brands are doing. I want us to get an idea of trends and categories, but I'm not going to be fixated on what a category does because that's just, well, what happened yesterday. You know when you create a new product that there's no data to support that it's going to work. So it all comes down to how you create it. How you tell a story. It's one of the things that we try to get our brand team to do is just to think outside of what you've been told on a daily basis that works. The way my dad brought me up was very much like that. He just believed that if you wanted something, you had to go and create something to get there.
PART TWO:
Zero: TKTK
—Blair says his dad was “always asking questions. Talks about living in the UK when he was a kid and his father owned a business importing Australian goods. “I’ve always loved watches and cars. And there was a, a calculator watch that I wanted. It was about 11 pounds. We didn't have much money at the time. So I'd just have to work at my own way to to get it. And, um, my dad had a whole heap of Vegemite and peanut butter at the back of the store. And, um, so I took that and I cut up one of the boxes and made like a little tray and went and sold the whole lot. I made about 33 pounds and I bought the watch. Dad was like, ‘You can’t take my stock and just sell it’ but deep down I think he loved it. And I think that that really set something in stone for me, that it was like, well, if you want something, there's an opportunity to go and get it. You just need to go and do it.”
—Sharon says for most people, “the reason to dig a hole for themselves is they think the problem is going to be solved by staring at the problem. I won't get the answer there.”
—Blair says he has had push back from his team in the past over new ideas “But you know, this is what consumers want to see. They want to see new things from the brand they love. There's been, you know, ideas that have been dialed down or diluted. And then two years goes by and then you go, well, that, wasn't what it should be. And I've learned to trust that now. I think if f you're going to push a new idea, it needs to be as out there, or as forward-thinking as it possibly can be because by the time it gets to market you then dial down by cost restrictions and retailers and marketing expectations and claims and all those things. So if it wasn't something that was really out there in the beginning, it's going to end up being very boring by the time it gets to market. So that's something I always think about like, is, is it enough to love that, that first idea? Are we going big enough in the beginning? Cause I know it's going to get stripped away.”
—Sharon says her best ideas have come from “really bad ideas or horrible situations because I've had to be so inventive. One of my sayings is when my back is to the wall, the best in me comes out. So I, my most creative and innovative when I have to be, because then I'm just going to come charging through the walls.”
—Blair enjoys the development process: ”That branding side, that creativity side has been there since I was a kid and I. But do get a buzz out of it.” Talks new hair growth brand Growth Bomb.
—Sharon notes he loves a project: “I don't think you even feel you have a business as such, you have big projects and you always need the next big project.”
—He says male influencers don’t really work for Bondi Sands: “Women like to relate to who's given them the message so I think that's why women buy into influencers more. I think men buy more into brand message and the old school marketing.”
—Talks their hybrid strategy of building a brand on social media but also looking at mass ways of marketing: “So, you know, just because something's worked in the past, doesn't mean it's gonna work for everything. Um, and it's about learning and adapting.”
—M
—Blair says in 2015 Bondi Sands was “all about girls in bikinis” and “now I think you're seeing people now find their niche and become experts within those fields. And now that's what people, consumers are wanting. What followers are wanting from these influencers is they want to want to see a level of expertise about what they're talking about, not just posting a nice photo.”
12.48: School’s out for creativity
—Sharon says creativity isn’t encouraged in schools, and discusses a study that shows kids have one hundred percent creativity when they start school and within five years it’s dropped drastically.
—Sharon: “I believe the lack of creativity is one of the reasons why we have so much trouble having dialogue that's mature in society now. And when we don't trust ourselves and we don't trust our innovation and our ability to think and analyze and critique, we rely on authority. And when we rely on authority, we have to blindly believe it because we don't have any criteria. So authority becomes the substitute [00:15:00] for us thinking creatively.”
—Blair: ”Starting to become creative is a very simple thing. And I believe is about just asking questions. That's it.”
—Sharon disagrees: “Not all people know what to do with the answers. If you don't know what to do with the answer, it can't go into your neural net to produce something different because it's basically orange plus cloud equals dog.”
—Blair: “Uh, I think it's just about getting that frame of mind, first of all, the first part of it is, is just trying to think in a way where there may be more. It's just accepting that there may be more than what you've been told.”