Wendy: Hello, my name is Wendy Liebman and I’m the CEO and Chief shopper of WSL Strategic Retail and this is Future Shop. This is where I chat with guests about the future of retail, not just looking through a crystal ball future of retail, but what retail needs to look like in the future and you know what the heck to do about it. So, not just blue sky, but how we get on with it. You know, over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about how companies need to think differently about how they engage with shoppers, not only coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, but as we move through this time of social, political and economic turmoil.

You know, one of the things that struck me over the last few weeks is how Americans, how Americans as consumers as shoppers, and now really challenging us all, as they are trying to take control in very chaotic time. They’re questioning why they should trust us, as brands as retailers as businesses as companies they work for. So as we think about that pragmatically, what does that mean to be a brand and a business that these shoppers feel passionate about? passionate to support, and businesses that they want to spend their hard earned money on in these times of chaos. Coming up? You’re going to hear a discussion about building trustworthy brands and companies be they product brands, be they retailers, be they organizations. That’s what we’re going to talk about now.

My guest today, I’m delighted to say is a good friend. And great inspiration. Craig Dubitsky. He’s the founder of Hello Products that’s that crazy oral care brand that made us all realize that cleaning our teeth is actually a happy, healthy, friendly and joyous activity. Not that sort of germy deep cleaning scary chore that some of those big toothpaste brands would have us believe. So I’m delighted to have him here. Hello. Hello, welcome.

Craig: Hello. Hello Wendy and thank you for having me.

Wendy: Oh, I’m delighted. I’m delighted. How are you? Where are you, tell us.

Craig: I’m doing well all things considered. I’m in lovely Montclair, New Jersey. 12 miles outside of Manhattan and enjoying all things from the third floor of my my house. How about you?

Wendy: Yeah, same Well, I’m between New Jersey not that far. I will drive past you today, heading back into Manhattan missing Manhattan Of course. So back and forth and safe and sound and happy to be wherever I happen to be at the moment. So no complaints at my end. You know, it’s interesting. Doing this today took me back to December, which seems like a century ago, when you were kind enough to join us at our Well, our big business of Well symposium in Manhattan. And we sat down town at the at the World Financial Center and talked about all the opportunities emerging around health and wellness and how to innovate and disrupt around that. I know you hate that term, disrupt, disrupt around that business. So it seems to me incredibly timely that here we are sitting in a in a health crisis, to talk about your business building brands. But actually, I want you to talk about something you don’t often get to talk about is not just reinventing an aisle or or a category, but actually thinking about reinventing retail, so we’ll get to that.

But let’s begin at the beginning because not everybody will know you. So let’s talk a little bit about at how you built Hello, and the unique culture and business you’ve created. And you know, what made you successful and why they heck you sold it to Colgate? No, we’ll get to that.

Craig: Sure, sure. Wow. Well, let’s see. Hmm, something I’m trying to address the first part, which is like saying you don’t really get to talk about so I don’t really get to talk a lot about and trust me, it’s gonna segue into the the meteor part of the question, the sun, they don’t really get to talk about that much my built in support system, you know, I’m the entrepreneur and I get to have a met, you know, amazing moments like this. But, and I don’t mean to sound cheesy, corny, fluffy. But honestly, without my wife and my family, there’s no way I ever could have even embarked on an entrepreneurial journey. Even though I was a little kid as an entrepreneur. I wouldn’t have had this journey or this experience. So now I don’t really talks about that so much. So I just wanted to layer that in there. My wife is unbelievable and I totally married up and I hope everyone who is lucky enough to have someone else in their life as a partner feels like they also are with somebody who makes them better. So I have to throw that in there then the team at Hello Is everything, just everything. And I can’t say enough about them though I’ll try in the limited time we have just how awesome they are. But the quick the quick version of hello and where and how this came to be. Is I am truly a lifelong entrepreneur, hyper visual. I love architecture and design and art. everything to me is art, everything and I don’t put a price tag on art though a lot of people tend to do that. I think art is is visual, and available and creatable by just about anybody, even though we all have limitations as to you know how skilled we may be. And my moment with Hello came when I was walking through a big chain drugstore on Sixth Avenue and I think 26th Street in Manhattan. And I happen to walk by the oral care set, I didn’t go in there with the intention of exploring the oral care set. It’s just the oral care set kind of screamed at me, as opposed to sing to me. And what was screaming at me were these visuals of extracted teeth. Everywhere I looked, there were these pictures of extracted teeth on the products and some of them had holograms of extracted teeth. Some of them had beautiful artistic renditions of extracted teeth, you know, highly stylized with little, you know, concentric circles around them and things. And it really shocked me because I thought, isn’t the whole point of this stuff, so that the teeth stay in my mouth? Like why are they showing me extracted teeth I just thought was really antithetical and just weird and scary to look at. And it just kind of hit me. And the other thing that hit me was, as I picked up product, everything in that whole category seem to be driven by fear and shame. You know, if you weren’t whitening you’re frightening if you weren’t killing or eliminating or destroying something, you know, it was going to end poorly for you at your next dental visit which by the way, you’re probably six months overdue for anyway. And everything again just seemed very masculine and aggressive. And, and I thought that’s really kind of lame. And I thought you know, there’s no war waging my mouth. The only thing I want to be able to do is be able to say hello to you. When I see you not be worried that I’m gonna like blow you away with bad breath or my teeth are gonna be the wrong color. Or the dentist is going to have a field day with me when I finally get my butt in the chair. So I thought what’s the friendliest word I could think of it was Hello. And it just sort of hit me I’m like, you know what, there’s there’s a need for something fun in this category and fun is in proxy for ineffective I really thought we can make something really really effective, but also make it fun. And the other big thing that was missing for me, when I looked at these other products were the ingredients they were filled with with all sorts of things that I thought didn’t belong in my mouth and in fact, some ingredients and other categories were already banned by large players in those categories things like you know saccharin being banned from diet sodas and, and Triclosan being banned from hand soap and all of a sudden these things and alcohol by the way, you know, all these these ingredients I was seeing all over the place in oral care products. And I thought, that’s the last thing I want to put in my mouth or my kid’s mouth. So it was a combination of things. So what to call it and how to make the category truly friendly, because everything about it seemed unfriendly. So that’s how it got started.

Wendy: So and then your wife said, What are you nuts taking on oral care, Craig?

Craig: No, no I’m used to hearing that from her

Wendy: And everybody else no doubt.

So when you began that business, and as it grew, you talked about the people that you have around you and you have created an incredibly unique culture of people. And I think about these times. And I think about, I interviewed Halina Foulkes who, you know who was amazing, yes, and Hudson’s Bay Company. And she talked about things like, you can change a culture in a crisis. And I thought Craig has a very unique culture. And is that the right culture for the crisis? Or this is just the right culture for anything big companies, small company?

Craig: That’s a great thought. Well, first of all, whenever there’s crisis, I mean, it’s obviously unfortunate and harrowing, and forces you to take a deep breath and a giant step back and evaluate and reevaluate things. And quite often, very, very quickly, not under the easiest of circumstances. That said, whenever there’s a crisis or any kind of shake up any kind of volatility, because in my prior life, I was a trader and I had I traded a lot of things including volatility. There’s always opportunity, always, always, always so it does typically present a great opportunity if you’re up for it, too. change some things.

Wendy: So how does the culture Hello actually enable you to adapt to that current volatility?

Craig: It was always based on things that now seem very in vogue. Right? It was like I never even wanted titles at Hello. That came a little later, unfortunately, even then our titles are kind of fun and funky, right. So you’re like the friendly supply chain manager like nothing is really too overly corporate Hello. But I never even wanted titles because I thought that would create artificial strata, and sort of these these lines and barriers and silos that I thought were really kind of antithetical to productivity, frankly, because I subscribe to this notion that good ideas can happen anywhere that no one has sold dominion over good ideas. And if someone in supply chain has a really, really brilliant idea for creative, why would we ever say no, we don’t want to hear that. And if someone on the creative side has a really great idea for for finance, believe it or not, it can happen. Why wouldn’t we do that and by the way, Our finance guy cracks me up on the daily like, why wouldn’t we get some fun ideas from him? For creative like it again, it’s just like breaking down the barriers and the company, the premise of the company is around friendliness. And being naturally friendly, that’s not a contrivance. It’s been in there since day one. And that’s why we have, literally there’s a Skype button on our website. I always want it to be reachable, not because it’s about me, it’s about other people, if they want to talk to us, we should be able and willing to talk to them any way they want to, they email great if they Skype is great, I give up my cell phone number all the time, you know, 9173921000 anybody wants to call me or text me or FaceTime me, you can do any of those things. And I think that that truly is the culture of Hello, that things aren’t off limits. There’s no that’s not the way we do it here. I like to say there are no layers in the legacy that get in the way. So it’s been really lovely to unleash people and I think to transition from that part. Hello to some of my new Colgate stuff, you know, can a large company can an enterprise start to evolve their culture?

Wendy: So can a large global company really evolve its culture? I mean, isn’t it quite artificial?

Craig: I’m very new in this role. But I’d like to think that the short answer is yes, absolutely.

Wendy: But that was what that was where I was headed to because it’s as you move and one of the things you said at our Well symposium, you talked about being an intrapreneur versus an entrepreneur, and that we often think of entrepreneurs as those wild and crazy guys like you who develop these things because they’re inspired. But that doesn’t happen within big companies. So now that you’ve moved from, you know, the friendly side to the other big side or something, however, we say that more elegantly, what does that mean? What do you see there as the opportunity and what you can bring and this brand can bring to a large corporation in these times in any time. But in these times.

Craig: I think it’s less about what I can bring in what the enterprise is allowing me to bring. It’s really fascinating to me and I’m so excited. So specific to Hello. I’d like to say we joined Colgate likes to say people join Hello, they don’t transact and buy Hello, they join us as a brand. And I feel like we also joined Colgate. It’s a really cool partnership. The really exciting part for us was they operate in over 200 countries around the world. So for us, you know, the big idea was to make the products as friendly as we can make them meaning, thoughtfully sourced, delicious, highly effective and affordable to everybody. Let’s say we’re for the hundred percent enough for the 1%. So to be with the biggest player in oral care in the world, that is also the most penetrated brand in the world. I didn’t know this till, you know, fairly recently, but Colgate is a single most penetrated brand on the planet. Over 60% of households around the world have Colgate.

Wendy: I grew up on Colgate. So when I came to live in America, it was very odd. And I didn’t know what for example, excuse the expression crest was, I had no idea that wasn’t, you know, the brand we grew up with either cleaning our teeth or washing our hands.

Craig: So for us, it was like, wow, we get to partner with Colgate and Colgate said, and I one of the many reasons why I love the people Colgate is they recognize that we did have this unique culture and they said, we want to learn from you. We don’t want to mess with anything, keep doing what you’re doing. Anything we have where we can be helpful. You got it. And other than that, like we’re gonna leave you be we want to learn from you. And I didn’t really know until very late in discussions with them that I would have this other role inside of Colgate.

Wendy: And what is that role?

Craig: The chief innovation strategist for Colgate. So basically, I’m helping them think about a lot of different things in a lot of different ways from, you know, a cultural perspective. From a brand perspective from a design perspective, and I don’t want to, I don’t want to sound I don’t want to overly corporate or overly ambitious, I’m so in love with the people there and the fact that they are giving me an opportunity to share some of the things I’ve learned with them because they have some incredible brands. And as good as the brands are, the people are just unbelievable. So to be able to unleash them, that’s what I view this gig as, like I’m there to help them tap into the entrepreneurship that exists there that may not have already outlet to bring it forth into the world. So I’m going to help with that.

Wendy: Yeah. Is it right that within this short moment, you worked with this? This product called safe hands

Craig: Yes. Oh my god. Yes. Yes. Yes. So this little makes me like I’m blushing. I’m wearing a red shirt and I’m like, looking in the camera picture and I’m like, my cheeks are kind of matching my shirts. So, I am still very, very new in the world of Colgate and COVID had just started, you know, to show up in different parts of the world. And it was still very early days in terms of its arrival here in the US, and I thought, you know, so supposedly really helps contain any kind of virus you need. Washing your hands is really, really important. And I very sort of demurely wrote an email saying, you know, I believe Colgate it’s the largest liquid hand soap manufacturer in the world and, and one of the biggest soap companies in the world, and it’s doing business all over the world. And stores are going to be closing and people are having a hard time and in keeping with what I understand the, the culture, the purpose of Colgate to be. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we brought soap to the world in a new sort of way and gave it away? And wouldn’t that be really great and I think I were, you know, a little more eloquently than that, but that was kind of this This germ of an idea like, wouldn’t that be great, and, and I just sort of put it out there very gently, I just sort of wanted to posit it. And I didn’t expect really anything. I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen. I was very, very new and long story short, I got an email back very quickly with a handful of really incredible people copied on it. And boom, like meeting started. And there were just a handful of people that were in this working group. And we basically work non stop for, you know, I don’t know, maybe 10 days non stop. I mean, like, really non stop. And we came up with this practice. I have it on my desk, I’m showing you on the screen. Yeah, it’s called safe hands and hashtag safe hands. And basically partnered with the World Health Organization and gave away 25 million bars of soap to people in the most dire of need and first responders and stamped into every soap is a little message also. And they’re all different. Everything from thanks to 40 seconds, just lots of little things. Little affirmations, and just, you know, like moments of gratitude, because, and thoughtfulness because obviously, this is an incredibly hard time, but the fact that the company was able to do this, yeah, and do it all over the world, and do it at scale as quickly, I mean, and apart from the 25 million bars of soap, there was $20 million worth of cleaning equipment and, you know, product. And another, you know, large chunk of capital also donated and raised from Colgate people directly with a corporate match, which was just beautiful. And it was the scale and pace that really was so heartening.

Wendy: But I think that’s one of the things that we’ve learned in these discussions, Helina brought it up again, in our discussion about it, the speed at which companies have been able to respond that we shouldn’t assume because it’s big. In fact, in some ways, that’s an advantage because of the scale but the ability as one of the great learnings from much of this.

Craig: It’s so great. It’s like when You’re a small company. I think that like you were describing, there’s this fallacy that the little company, you know, like, it’s a dirty little secret that the little company wishes they were the big company. And in some ways, a big company wishes they were, you know, as nimble and agile as a little company. But if you if you can bring a lot of spirit to a big company, the assets and I mean, people, really, it’s all about people, those assets, forget about the scale, you wouldn’t have the scale if you have the people. So it’s having the right people and the right spirit and the right attitude. And I think it was Lou Gerstner who said, the elephant can dance. I think that’s where that line comes from. And it’s great to watch Colgate like, really be light on its on its toes. And yeah, make this happen so quickly. It was really great.

Wendy: It’s a great inspiration, and it does talk to opportunity and the silver linings that come out of these things. So I don’t know that anybody’s actually asked you about how do you look at retail, but the fact that you walk down an aisle and saw an opportunity if You now step back with your, your view of the world your unique visual, artistic, inspirational architectural view of the world. How do you think about retail today? Because if anything feels like it needs to be delightfully disrupted, and that’s an inside joke, it feels like that the experience at retail, so So tell me what you think about that. And what do you think should be done about that?

Craig: Well, I think it’s, it’s clearly been on this path of change for a long time. And you know, there was a lot of pushback from retail, when e-tail started becoming interesting. And now it’s been embraced. The idea that you were going to order online and pick up in store oh, people won’t do that. I don’t understand. There’s e commerce it’s like, e commerce on its own. It’s very expensive to ship things. Part of the magic of retail is the consolidation of shipment and the consolidation as a shopper being able to do more in store. So combining all these things is actually pretty magical. And I keep going back to products like retail is also a product and that product typically is an experience. So it goes back to heightening the experience. Even when I look at most websites, this is gonna sound really bad. I don’t mean to sound bad. I mean this as a fan of retail, but I feel like the user interface the user experience is still pretty much like dos or like Windows 2.0 It is so early yet, and the bar is so low. I mean, what are some of the magical moments of e commerce now that people know that the shopping cart is you know, typically on the top right corner, and that the homepage access in the top left corner, like like these are the rules of engagement and there’s like, you know, even scroll all the way to the bottom and learn more maybe there’s like the bar is just so low for what the experience could and should feel like online. And I think Some of the magic of how you could replicate what is so popular online in store is also an amazing area of opportunity. And I’ve only watched a few people kind of bridge all these things I’ve watched, you know, Amazon play with that and put actual comments, you know, you’re reading customer reviews. And the number one search engine for product is Amazon, right? So you could be in a Target or Walmart and people are reading reviews on Amazon. Bringing reviews to life in store would be amazing. And I’ve only really seen Amazon as one of the only players to do that in the handful of Amazon stores that are out there. So I think things like that tend to humanize the experience.

Wendy: You know, it’s interesting that you talk about humanizing the experience, Craig because you remember when you participated in our big business of Well symposium in December, Dorn Clark from Nordstrom talked about creating a more human store when they design their new Manhattan store and that was a unique kind of new messaging in all of that.

Craig: It doesn’t even matter what the category is I’ve been in, you know, maternity stores and baby stores and you’ll see two expectant moms. First time moms and they will talk like they’ve known each other for 20 years, because there’s this unique shared experience and who you trust has changed dramatically. So now you’ll trust complete strangers who will post a review, you have no idea who they are doesn’t matter. Used to be you trusted the retailer. Oh, I got it there. If it’s not good, I’ll bring it back. Now you trust a complete stranger. Mm hmm. And it’s interesting, because trust like that has changed all over the place. Now you’ll trust a complete stranger and get in the back of their car, where you are, you know, a couple months ago, you would now you know, we’ll see.

Wendy: Not just now, Craig. I mean, a decade ago in our how America shops research, one of the big insights we saw was that people trusted what we call friends and strangers more than they trusted institutions or companies or big brands or retailers. I mean, this was a decade ago. That’s why I guess we called retail futurists that that was already emerging. So anyway, sorry to interrupt, continue.

Craig: So the idea that the retail is just going to put stuff on the shelf, and merchandise it the right way. Like that’s not enough. And I think the other thing that’s really important is the stuff itself. I keep focusing on this stuff, because a lot of times it is about story or merchandising, but tell me about or how quickly you’re gonna get it. Oh, I’m gonna get it curbside. I’m gonna get it because a third party is going to go in the store and shop for it and bring it to me. It’s all about like, how quickly can I get it? Oh, we can deliver same day we can do an hour, you can book your window. And I think at the end of the day, I don’t care about how I got it. I care about what I got. And I want to have a better experience with how I got it. Not just it showed up when I clicked like what did I get?

Wendy: That is so rich and so packed with so much insight. Is there a place you have shopped in the world, digital physical local down the street that you feel gets this?

Craig: Well, I, I will say that I think a lot of the bigger players are really getting it right. And I think a big part of it is they know their audience really well. So I’ve had really great experiences at least recently and I’ll go down a list this is in no particular order. I’ve had great experiences with Costco. I’ve had great experiences with Walmart, great experience with target great experience with Whole Foods. And I’ve had over many, many years I’ve had incredible experiences even now with Trader Joe’s, because it’s retail theater there. There’s, it’s like every time you’re in there, it’s a moment of discovery. Same with Costco. I mean, we’ve all talked about treasure hunt before but I think they really get their shoppers so well. And they’re so focused on getting it right whether the right is price, you know there’s a value equation whether the right is design, whether the right is just making you feel special. When you walk in the door because a human being says hello to you, or what the people that work in that shop, are taught about how to express themselves. Those little touches that humanize things, I think change everything. And I think the bar is really low. So when someone just does a little thing, it ends up having a huge impact.
Wendy: It also feels like at this moment in time, as we are all rethinking our lives, and that notion of trust, and humanity seems to come to play in that a lot. So we could talk forever, of course, because now it’s, you know, our time is running out as always, well now, what do you Well, you know, we can continue on but, you know, what do you know now that you didn’t know when you launched Hello?

Craig: How much time do we have? Huh? This would be a really, really, really long list. Um, what do I know? Um, well, I always knew that things would take a while and if I’ve learned anything, Everything basically takes a little longer than you ever hoped for. And I think part of the curse of being passionate, entrepreneurial person, versus an entrepreneur, just an entrepreneurial person always looking for new ideas, you tend to see things with immediacy. And not everybody else does, frankly. And then those and some of those people may be your own people, your own team, who you partner with. So it’s very, very tricky. So what I’ve what I’ve learned more than anything, is, everything takes more time than you think. And also, you have to let people bring their magic to things. And I think that’s really important. And as much as I thought I knew that before, or it was conjecture, and it sounded good. I know it more than ever. Part of the magic of starting something or working within a big company, is making sure you can have insanely happy, passionate people. And usually what gets people really happy and excited, is they’re bringing their own ideas and touch to things. So a big thing I didn’t think that much about beforehand that I think a lot about now is how do you get out of the way the right way. way, so people can really shine. But still make sure that you’re keeping the integrity of the idea, the concept, the vision, the mission, the look feel vibe of what got you so excited in the first place. And making sure that that’s extensible and extendable. And so other people can own that too. And I and that I didn’t really think about beforehand. Because you know, when you think of something in your, you know, one person in a room by yourself, you’re not thinking about that. But now that we’ve grown and now we’re part of a bigger company, it’s how do you infect other people to use a term, which is a scary term and COVID time? But how do you sort of create a positive contagion? And it makes sure it gets better with each person that it touches.

Wendy: But I’ll tell you, and thank you for that. One of my fond memories of you is bumping into you in the lobby at Target headquarters in Minneapolis and there was some of your team and you popped up and somebody said, oh, there’s somebody over there and you turned around and like sort of a bunny rabbit went bouncing off to on the mission of engaging with that senior target executive, and then came bouncing back and everybody was so excited first of all that they sent you on a mission without giving you much direction. And you knew exactly what your job was, and you can bouncing back. And they would just, they were just so happy and joy seems so happy and joyous. But it was also your responsiveness to you know, your role. So I think a lot about Hello as a culture. And I’m excited to see what that will look like, as you make safe hands happy hands at at the Colgate company worldwide.

Craig: Thank you. Thank you. I’m very excited. I feel very, very, very lucky every day. Yeah.

Wendy: Now there’s so many things we could talk about. But I think you’ve you’ve captured a lot of it right here today. So I thank you as always, it’s a pleasure.

Craig: Thank you. Great to be seen. And while I have Have you in front of maybe a live audience somewhere? I have to say a major thank you to you. Because you’re one of the very first people I met when I started on the CPG journey a long, long, long time ago, talking about things like method even before there was an iOS and talking about all this stuff. So I can’t thank you enough. You play such an important role in my life, personally and professionally. And I know you do in the lives of so many others. So I just want to say thank you.

Wendy: So here’s the thing. What we’ve learned from Craig are some really important guidelines for the future. First, we’ve learned that in time of volatility, there’s always opportunity. That said, you need to have a culture that can adapt to it, and embrace it. Secondly, you know, he talked about part of this is unleashing the talent you have in the room. And I will say that, you know, that opportunity to unleash the entrepreneurship that’s already there. Whether you’re in a big company or a small company. is really important. That’s not relegated just to a small company. And how do you do that in a way that creates a positive contagion, so that it spreads throughout the organization, excuse the bad pun. But so you really build that kind of unleashing of the talent that you have in the room. The other thing that’s really important is you know, we’ve all been cowered by e commerce, this conversation about Amazon that just Royals out our day to day lives. But that this conversation we had today is really that the user experience leaves so much to be desired. And we say this a lot. We see it a lot in our how America shops research that, in some ways, buying online is very operational. And as Craig said, it’s like dos it’s like Mac 2.0. It’s in an old world and there is a huge opportunity for retail at large to understand that and change the overall experience as we operate in an omni channel world today, there’s also the opportunity that you know, retail is not just about how I got it. But what I got. And that reminded me of some work we did that we call build my magic box a number of years ago, and that’s what a shopper said, build my magic box. And a shopper said, when I get a crush on a brand, it owns me, it owns me. It is that opportunity not just to think about how did I deliver it to them, but what is the it that I’m delivering. And that becomes hugely important. You know, this notion of not having aisles screaming at me, but having a singing to me as a shopper. So ultimately, in the end, the thing to remember is that we are at a moment where we have to build trust, again, rebuild trust, it’s an imperative within your organizations with shoppers, especially in these times, and that’s the most important thing we can deliver today. So that’s the thing and last but not least, thank you for being with us today. Um there’s much more of this content at our website www.wslstrategicretail.com you can share our latest how America shops insights, our latest report on the evolution coming out of the crisis. You can sign up for our new what’s up WSL and just immerse yourself in all things shopper. Thanks for joining me, Cheers for now. Just a reminder, the content of this podcast is the product of WSL strategic retail, you can’t reproduce it or repurpose it without asking us without written consent. So don’t forget that. Copyright wl marketing in 2020 Thanks for listening. I really enjoyed the chat. Please join us next time. See you around.