Tom's Of Maine: Tom Chappell

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2017

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1970, Tom Chappell took out a $5000 loan to launch a natural products company called Tom's of Maine. Working out of a warehouse in Kennebunk, Maine, he created soaps, shampoos, and toothpaste free from added chemicals, and sustainable for the environment. When he sold the company three decades later, Tom's of Maine had become one of the largest natural products brands in the world. PLUS for our postscript "How You Built That", we check back with Paul Kaster, who two years ago started a company that makes wooden bowties, and is now starting Carbon Cravat — which makes bowties out of carbon fiber. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:30.0	We found after getting it into the stores that we hadn't really thought this through carefully enough,
0:37.0	it wasn't an effective deodorant, so we did a product recalled.
0:43.0	What percentage of your business did deodorant account for at that time?
0:47.0	About 22%.
0:49.0	So that's an enormous amount of product that you couldn't sell.
0:54.0	$450,000 worth.
1:00.0	From NPR, it's how I built this.
1:03.0	A show of innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:09.0	I'm Guy Raaz, and on the show today, how Tom Chappell turned a $5,000 loan into a soap and toothpaste business called Tom's of Maine.
1:23.0	Now, one of the biggest brands in the natural products industry.
1:33.0	So if you've heard a previous episode of this show with John Mackie, the guy who founded Whole Foods,
1:38.0	he explained how when he started that company in the late 1970s, natural and organic foods were part of the counterculture.
1:46.0	The kind of stores that sold organic foods and soaps, also sold crystals and new age pamphlets and windshimes.
1:54.0	And it's not like there's anything wrong with those things, it's just that now organic has gone mainstream.
2:01.0	It's big business, a multi-billion dollar industry. But chasing money isn't why Tom Chappell and his wife Kate started making soap and shampoo and then toothpaste in an old warehouse in Maine.
2:13.0	They started making this stuff because they were part of a movement.
	...

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