YouSaid · the spoken record

Susan Griffin-Black

lines on the record: 107
first: 2019-07-15
most recent: 2019-07-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And when you looked at products in more natural products and natural food stores, everything had a leaf on it or a flower or really bad type and not very nice colors. So we just went very minimal and chose a beautiful typeface which was Dido, which is of similar typeface to Vogue, actually, as it turns out.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And again, nineteen ninety five, so many things are so easy now. You can just get Shopify to put your web store online. You can easily find a company online that will make labels for you, that will even do fulfillment and shipping. How, for example, did you, like, because you had to slap labels on these little bottles and it had to look nice because it's Bloomingdale's. You cannot mess around. How did you do that, for example?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so 1995, you guys decide to launch your own company, and you called it EO Products, which stands for essential oils. Yes. Pretty simple, right? Yes, okay. And how significant was that order? Was it like hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars? What do you remember about it?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know he said sure, and we had to think of a name for the company then. And these were very small bottles. So, you know, we didn't have a lot of room on the label. And aromatherapy just seemed like way too long of a word. So we just came up with the initials EO. And then we did four blends for Bloomingdale. And that started the company.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'm just out of curiosity who was buying essential oils at the time in the early 90s and mid 90s because people would put it, I guess you could rub it behind your neck or you could use it as aromatherapy or use it in a bath. Who are your customers?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It wasn't, and it was because you know we were importing, so we were basically schlepping glass bottles halfway around the world and then reshipping them to other stores. And we got it up to a certain level of sales. I think it was half a million in the US. But we could still see how we could do it ourselves and do it for less money because all of that shipping and do it our own way. Gave them six months to find a different distributor. You gave Niels the”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, no, no, no, no. We were scraping, but right along with that stress was the question of what else would I be doing? You know, there was always like, yes, you're stressed. And, okay, what do you want to do about it? You want to get a job? No. Do you want to do something else? No. And then it would sort of just settle into this is what we're doing.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Susan, you're basically running this little company that is trying to make a go at it with essential oils. How are you guys doing financially? Was it sustainable?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. And was the oil like being delivered to your little, I don't know, warehouse that you guys were running like in tin drums or in glass jars or in giant bags of oil? Like, how did it come to you?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And essential oils actually aren't oil. They're called essential oils because it's heavier than water. So when you talk about lavender, lavender grows many places, but the best lavender is from France. And, you know, there's a certain taste level, just like with food and wine about, you know, what smells best, what's the best quality. Can you source that? Can you make that a consistent part of a formulation? Because essentially oils are finicky. You know, the reason that people stopped using them and went to synthetic fragrance was because it was way less expensive. Sure. And it was consistent.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you would ask around, you know, and then, hey, I don't have a lavender. This person has a lavender. Or, hey, I need an orange. Where is orange grown? All right, it's grown in Florida. So then you would, you know, go through the yellow pages.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we did learn a lot from Neil's yard because they were a small manufacturer. So we could suss out the processes. I was very interested and studied aromatherapy with a bunch of different people. So I understood the... Properties of essential oils and the blending of essential oils, which I've understood how to do that.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just out of curiosity. I mean, today, if you want to figure out how to make bath salts or things like that, you can just go online. In 1993, 94, when you're doing this, how did you figure out how to make this stuff? Do you just buy a bunch of salt and add essential oils to it?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, really what we did is we started from hand pouring into bottles to adding equipment. And, you know, gravity feed is one of the ways. But yeah, it's really taking it from the funnel and moving it to a machine. And then instead of one a minute, you have the ability to do eight a minute or 10 a minute or 50 a minute.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like such the I Love Lucy show when you walked into her. And, you know, of course, I saw the numbers as well. And I didn't know anything about essential oils really. I liked how they smelled. I didn't know how to really make anything, yet I can kind of figure out most things. You know, at Maniac, we made our own products. And so I learned how to sew. And, you know, learning these things from a mechanical aspect was pretty straightforward for me in terms of like, okay, well, this is just what you do.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had two employees and a part time bookkeeper because we had several accounts by then. Sure. So we were learning how to make things by hand, and I knew someone introduced me to the marketing person at Birkenstock, and she said, why don't we do a little foot care kit like Gift with Purchase of like a little foot salt and a little foot soak? And so he did a prototype, and she gave us an order for $32,000. It was $320 for each gift box, which meant I had to make $10,000. And then Brad came down the hall, and I'm like, how are we gonna do 10,000?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were selling Neil's yard and we had that. We were making a few products for Neil's yard because we wanted to learn how to make stuff. So we would make bath salts and Anything that you could cold mix and then pour.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And another opportunity was working for a SOC company out of Japan. And the third was working with Susan. And so our relationship started to develop. And there just were opportunities and we were good together. And so that's how our relationship lost them.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, kind of what was happening on my side of things is that we decided to shut the business down. Right. And then that kind of opened up a pocket for me. Well, you know, what am I going to do? And were we dating at that time? Probably.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I raised a little bit of money from friends and family, so we'd have a little bit of a cushion. And also be able to increase inventory and our accounts and eventually had to get a space in the same building where Brad's company was.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So she was basically selling you the oils at cost or a little bit above cost. You were then marking it up a little bit and that was it. So it was, it really was like a distributor relationship. You weren't like an equity partner with her.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How did it work with Romi Frasier and Yiles Yar? Did you have to pay her up front and then she would ship you the oils? Or was there like a partnership where she just shipped it to you and didn't charge you off the bat? Like, how did that work”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“didn't happen that quickly. You know, Susan had no money and I had less. What really, I think, sustained the relationship and made it exciting is that it was never a no-brainer and it still isn't after 30 years. But I was full on in my clothing company and we wanted to help out each other.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you were essentially trying to make this import business of essential oils work. And Brad, do you remember, what did you think about this idea? Did you think, oh, this is a no-brainer? Or were you just like, yeah, I want to help Susan because I like her?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We weren't really dating. I think we were still good friends. I think Brad had a girlfriend. And we would spend more time together because he was, I was in the neighborhood and I was working out of my garage and then he would ride his bike, open the garage door, and I had a little teeny office in there. He would help with business plans and we would commiserate about he was still in the clothing business then.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so you're back in San Francisco, and by this time, like 1992, you've got a five-year-old kid, and are you and Brad dating yet or not yet?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Essentially, I tried to put a plan together for retail stores, and I could see that that would never work because you needed people who were very well versed in all of these alternative modalities in aromatherapy, in homeopathy. And I was running out of money So I thought best to wholesale and see who's interested, who wants it. And then I could have them pay for half of the order. I could import the product, which I did in my garage in Petrol Hill. And then have the retailers who wanted it pay half up front, and then I deliver it and get the rest of the money. So that's what I did.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, she also was a small company. I think at the time they had a couple of stores. She could see how sincere and interested I was. And also, you know, from being in the clothing business, I did have relationships with buyers and merchandise managers and owners of specialty stores. I had some access to understanding distribution.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And let me just out of curiosity. Obviously, you are super talented, super smart, and driven, but you had no money. You had no access to immediate capital. You had no track record selling essential oils in the U.S. Why wouldn't she even consider working with you?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She said, if you're interested, you know, I mean, the retail is the heart of what we're doing. I was mixing herbal tinctures in the back room and doing all sorts of things, and I loved it. Then we met after, and basically the idea was to open retail stores like that in the US.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So so like, what did you do at that point? Did you like contact the founder and say, hey, I want to work with you or be your distributor or sell this in the US? Is that what happened?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I had sort of lived that lifestyle. So I think, you know, I was searching really. What made sense and what was real, and what had heartened meaning for me. And so that just opened up a new path and something new to learn. And I was very passionate about it.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're in that store, and what? You're there and you're thinking, I got to figure out how to do something with this. Like this is what I want to do.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know around that time there were all those awful candle stores and all sorts of stores that you would go in and it would have a really synthetic clawing smell, as did a lot of perfume, most perfume, right? Someone would get on that elevator and be like, oh Lord, you know. This was like being in a beautiful garden, you know, I mean, it reminded me of great parts of my childhood, just like being in my grandma's watering tomatoes, the smell of lilacs. It was real and it was very different.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, right next to Neil's Yard Dairy. Yeah. So upstairs, you could see an herbalist or an acupuncturist or a homeopath. And then you would come downstairs and get your prescriptions filled in this little apothecary. And so the reason that it smelled the way it smelled was because of the essential oils and the herbs that they stocked. So I picked up this little bottle of lavender essential oil and I inhaled and everything changed. I knew what I wanted to do with my life, you know? The body shop sort of helped me pay attention to that segment of product and the market. Was like, oh no, this is the product. Wow.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yes, you know, we would go to trade shows, you know, fabric trade shows. It was the way to sort of interpret street fashion and up-and-coming trends. And so I was in London on a buying trip. And I was sort of running through the Covent Garden area. And I ran into this little store and I was just taken by what it smelled like in there.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I guess this all kind of begins to come together for you when Esprie sends you to London to go buy stuff for them on a buying trip. Is that right?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I had met Anita Roddick from the body shop, and she was opening franchises in Northern California. And I loved her, but I wasn't totally crazy about the products. I've always been a product person. I feel like I've been ahead of it and trust my instincts, I think, eventually anyway. So when I see something that I like, even if it's a little bit off, as soon as people learn about it and understand it, they'll like it too.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh yes. And also at the time, you know, during that time, Doug was very interested in transforming the company into a more sustainable environmental. company and looking at all the processes that were involved in manufacturing. And at that time, there were just so many incredible people coming through, whether it was David Brower, the environmentalist, or Yvonne Shenard or Anita Roddick from the body shop. I mean, it was a portal for me into really thinking about and looking at sustainability.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your friend. Yeah, we were friends. All right, so you guys start meeting up. Susan, you are working at a spree, this company that really was just like crushing it in the 80s and 90s. I remember everyone wearing either a Beneton sweatshirt or an esprit sweatshirt.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was really resonance right off the bat, and after Susan left I got her business card and this was June of 1988. I wrote her, dear Susan, you know, thank you for your time. We just connected and we kind of stayed in touch. She would help us a little bit or I would help her. We were really struggling entrepreneurs and we were able early on to engage with each other. Like she always got me. And I always got her. And even now, you know, I mean, it's like it's been 30 years and she can start a sentence almost and I can finish it. Wow. But it really started that way in many respects”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Originally he was. Yeah, Esprit was a huge brand, definitely in the 80s and 90s and still around today. Alright, so this is like the early 90s. Both of you, Brad and Susan, both of you are in San Francisco. Both of you are working in the apparel business. I guess at one point Susan, you happen to go into maniac, into Brad's store, and is that where the two of you meet?”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I wasn't stressed financially. I took a job because I could see that I would get stressed financially. So I ended up doing some consulting for friends in the clothing business and helped a few friends start their companies. And in 90, I took a job at a spree working for the late Doug Tompkins.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I guess I had fallen into what was considered at the time. I'm a free spirit and I really liked the whole art scene, which I wasn't really doing much of anymore. And all of a sudden it was like waking up one day and feeling like I was at the wrong party. Like I didn't really know or really relate to the people who were there. I had this doorman, a kid, a French nanny. And it all looked good and it just started to feel fragmented. My conversations, our conversations were pretty stilted and got very tense because I really felt like Bill had sold out and he was sort of on the wrong side of things. I just felt like it just wasn't my life. And I couldn't make it my life. So when Mark was two and a half, we split.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, we were, I think we were in an apartment by that time in the marina. He passes the bar and goes to work for a big law firm. And things were much cushier eventually. We went from the marina to a very nice building in Pacific Heights. He was working really hard. I had a store on Sutter Street. Mark was born. My son was born in 1986. All looked very good. It didn't feel very good to me, but it looked good.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was a great little store, and we got written up in the chronicle probably within the first couple of weeks. And so that gave us a great start. And, you know, we're part of a local design community. And it was a really vibrant time.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Business was kind of secondary to lifestyle. We were living at large, you know, entrepreneurs in San Francisco, and this was before the dot-com internet thing hit. And it was very vibrant, a little gritty, yet artistic, and we could really own it. And, you know, we would pedal our wares and we sold to Nordstrom and we sold to the hardcore rock climbing shops. Yet we didn't really ever make money. And when we had the opportunity to make money, we just never, I don't know if we were mature enough or that we saw the opportunity that was in front of us yet. We didn't make money.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You do? We started a clothing company called Maniac, and Maniac is spelled as in the state of Maine, M-A-I-N-E-I-A-C. And, you know, we held the space of kind of like rock climbing and mountain biking. This was the time, late 80s, where the whole active wear thing came alive, Stucy, Massimo. And so it's active wear. And then that tied into our lifestyle. So then we would mountain bike and we would rock climb during the day and run the business. And then we would go out and party at night all the time wearing our clothes, which like who doesn't want to show off what they do? And if you make your own clothes and we made our own clothes and we would sew our own clothes, I mean, you know, much of it via... Ignorance How”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My initial motivation was to move to Australia, yet this is pre-internet, and I didn't know anyone in Australia, so I had a couple friends in San Francisco. And, you know, I sold everything. I guess I had like $2,000 or $3,000 in the bank account and moved in with one of them who was on Hate Street.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Years, and once it actually started to take off, it could have unraveled because the co founders split up, their marriage collapsed. But we'll get there. For now, let's start on the years before Brad and Susan met in the late 1980s. They were both living in San Francisco. Brad had just moved there from the East Coast after leaving a job in computer sales.”
2019-07-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · EO Products: Susan Griffin-Black & Brad Black · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT