Episode 60: How a Surf Trip Turned into a 9-figure Brand with Pura Vida's Griffin Thall

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Announcer:

Welcome to Nerd Marketing, an original podcast for e-commerce operators and marketers. Looking to level up? Drew Sanocki and Michael Epstein will bring you actionable strategies from their decades of running eight- and nine-figure brands along with interviews and insights from the leaders of some of the most successful brands in the world.

Drew Sanocki:

Hey everybody. Drew Sanokci here at the Nerd Marketing podcast. We continue to interview just these baller CEOs who have all exited their businesses. Today's guest is Griffin Thall, who is the CEO and founder of Pura Vida Bracelets, and he's sold to Vera Bradley for more than $75 million. We get that story today and some secrets to his success. So without further ado, enjoy the interview with Griffin Thall. 

Maybe we start at the beginning then. It's a really interesting story, how you and your best friend got the idea hiking, right?

Griffin Thall:

Yeah. We were just in Costa Rica, went there on a five week surf adventure excursion type of trip, and we just wanted to find a place to explore and kind of get lost after college. And we met these two guys on the beach in Dominican Costa Rica, small town. After surfing one day, we walked up to their little table, they had a little booklet of bracelets, and we asked if we can buy all of them and 400 more. Their jaws kind of dropped. They didn't know what to do. This is the biggest order they've ever gotten from one person, and they packed up their things, and that was the last day they ever worked on the beach, ever. So now those two guys, Jorge and Joaquin, they now have about 900 employees. They have a huge operation in Central America in El Salvador now, and they make all the Pura Vita bracelets, anklets, everything by hand. When

Mike Maher:

You guys went down to Costa Rica, this is like post-college, right? You guys had graduated. Did you guys have jobs or is it just like, we're going surfing, we'll figure out life after going in and just again, we want to buy all these bracelets right here and now and I mean, you had to do that assuming that you were going to start a company out of it. 

Griffin Thall:

Yeah, I mean, this was our first job out of college. We didn't really know what we were doing. We didn't have any, really any experience. I did some internet marketing internships for a month or two during college. Small stuff like build a Yelp page, nothing that's scalable. But yeah, I mean, we kind of just took a gamble, figured it out, learned how to take photos by watching YouTube videos, learned how to build a website by watching YouTube videos. Didn't know how to hire people, didn't know how to create a corporation, open a bank account, just literally just figured it out. And between us, we were probably one of the earlier brands to jump on that have kind of been in our similar space. Before us, it was, let's see, Tom's had a good exit. They exited for 750 million, and then we just wanted to go on that same path.

We just felt that our brand mission and ethos and philanthropic cause was similar to the Toms one for one cause. And we were born into the Facebook era. We went to college with Facebook a couple years after that Instagram started. So we were at the forefront of this. We didn't have to learn what this platform is that all the young kids are using. That's just, we were the kids using it. So we were experts in it. We knew how to use it, we knew how to scale it, we knew how to monetize it, and we know how to just basically put ourselves in front of the newsfeeds of millions of people around the world just by using what we use normally. And

Mike Maher:

You guys were on the forefront of creating massive audiences at the time when you really could and do it really fast and love how you guys leverage that so quickly. Was that where you found your first customers? Was that going right to Facebook and Instagram?

Griffin Thall:

I mean that plus with, we have a big wholesale business. We sell to 5,000 stores over 5,000 doors. We would do instant meetups. We would go to street fairs. We would do everything that you can locally to build a local market. Yeah, I mean, we kind of just did everything we can. We were just obsessed with building this company. 

Drew Sanocki:

Did the cause sell the product or did the product sort of sell the cause? Which do you think was more important? 

Griffin Thall:

It's funny. We've surveyed our customers about that a dozen times and there's just no answer to it. Sometimes people only like it because of the cause, and some people like it because they like the Instagram photos. So it's like, you know what I mean? How do you build a brand, right? Is a brand just photos or is a brand more what you tell the customers? The brand is through the words and through the cause and through the ethos. So it's kind of a mix between the two. We've seen customers love Pure Vita because the cause, the charity aspect, the handmade, but then we see that people love it because it makes th'em feel good. It reminds theem of their family trip in Hawaii. It reminds them of going to San Diego and laying on the beach and they don't even talk about the cause. So I think that it's kind of a double-edged reason to buy people like it because it makes them feel good, look good, but also because they're giving back and they're part of a community of people that all feel the same way. I love

Mike Maher:

What you were just talking about. I mean, the starting of the brand where you were just like you built this hyperlocal thing where you guys were showing up at whatever it took, whether it was a street fair, et cetera. I personally believe that's a great way to just build community and start to understand your customer more. And then talking about just, it seems like as you've grown, you continue to survey your customer and ask them why things happen or what they believe in other ways, because I personally believe this is really important. Have you really involved the customer in that kind of process as you've scaled? Is there anything that really stands out to you?

Griffin Thall:

I mean, we've asked customers what they want to see us make next. We have a big form on our website for people to just go in whenever they want. There's, I think 10 or 12,000 comments on this form. We're always engaging. We are the number one most engaged jewelry brand on Instagram. So we get the most likes, comment shares among or above Tiffany's, Pandora, all the massive publicly traded jewelry brands. We know where our customer is, we know what our customer wants. We know how to talk to our customer on all social platforms, email, SMS, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, everything. And I think that a lot of people, they try to build their brand and hop on a trend or change their voice or tone just to try to tailor towards what's hot and cool. But we've just always stayed very focused, very in our lane.

We know what we are, we know what our brand is, and people want to shop Pier Vita because it updates their risk game or their jewelry, or they could stack their rings or their bracelets or mix them, match them with high-end jewelry. But we know that we are affordable jewelry. We target females that are in high school, college, but also older demographics as well. We want our products and imagery to feel youthful, to feel engaging, to feel inclusive, to feel inviting. And we want people to feel like when they're wearing our products, it makes them happy. It brings them back to that time that they were jumping off a cliff in Kauai or they were skydiving or they were swimming and snorkeling and seeing fish around them. Because our products are waterproof, most of 'em are waterproof, especially the string ones. So it gives people something that is affordable, lightweight, easy, and also easy to give too. So that's kind of where I feel like our brand really is strong and we're not trying to be something we're not.

Drew Sanocki:

Did you try to get in all the surf shops in those locations or hotels in those kind of beach locations where you think the product would sort of resonate?

Griffin Thall:

Yeah. I mean, we're in every major surf store in the country. We're the number one brand at Ron John Tilly's, Nordstrom Whole Food in our category, in our space. And it's cool because people, they could buy Pura Vida at a local gift shop, but then they could also go to Nordstrom's and see it next to their favorite high end golden silver jewelry. But then they could also get their groceries at Whole Foods and then see our peer review to display there and pick out a $6 bracelet. So there's a lot of cool ways to shop, and I think that the influencers we've paired with, the retailers we've paired with are always as on brand as possible. We turn down around 90% of the wholesale leads that we get, and the people that we turn down are like a mini mart or a liquor store or a discount store or something that we feel like, why do we need to go in that direction? There's a product for those stores all day long. They'll sell waters, they'll sell Red Bulls, they'll sell cigarettes and alcohol, whatever, but we don't need to be a part of those stores. I think that's what keeps our brand such high quality, but also the demand for it is also so high because we run limited runs of a lot of our exclusive items, our collaborations, and we want to make sure that when people buy it, it does feel like not everyone in the world can get it. 

Drew Sanocki:

With the changes in the social platforms, it seems like you guys really embrace social to grow, and yet over the last five years, all those social platforms have been pushing people to paid as opposed to organic. Could you replicate the success today starting out, or do you think a lot of it was low customer acquisition costs? You were able to get a lot of organic presence in the newsfeed?

Griffin Thall:

Me and my e-comm friends talk about that all the time, and it's very hard to start a brand right now. Very, very hard. We started with a hundred dollars each, never took on funding, doubled on every order that we took with our artisans and just kept rolling and rolling and rolling. That would not work today straight up. And maybe we would not have even be here if we had to start today because we're selling stuff for literally, we have stickers on our website for $2 and 50 cents. Who's going to spend the time to hire graphic designers, house the inventory, put it in a fulfillment center for a $2, 50-cent item? It just doesn't make sense. But I think that we came in a time where we were able to leverage the organic impressions, so a follower was valuable. Today, a follower is not as valuable because it also takes a couple impressions for them to buy.

It takes three to five impressions for them to recognize it, recognize it, recognize it, maybe be annoyed, but then make that conversion because you've sent them a good image or a good offer. So I think realistically now to start a brand, you need a really good product or a really good service. It needs to be super unique. You need to have very strong branding. You can't just come out the gates with just a kind of shady website and just pump Facebook ads or else you're just going to get lost in the dust, especially with how much prices are for ads. And I just think that overall, it's not scary to start an e-commerce brand, but I think people need to start an omnichannel brand. I think they need to maybe open up a retail store. They need to offer wholesale, they need to offer e-commerce, and they need to start seeing revenue come from multiple channels as opposed to just, we put a dollar in Facebook, we got a dollar 20 out or a dollar 80 out, or whatever their metrics are because that's just going to, it's going to have burnout for the founders, especially with what's going on.

It sounds like I'm being pessimistic about it, but I just think that there's a new way to do it. I think it's an omnichannel look as opposed to raise 500K, spend it on inventory, spend it on ads, spend it on employees and hope it works. I just don't think that that's sustainable. Have

Mike Maher:

You guys embraced TikTok with our brand? TikTok feels lost on our customer to some avail, but have you guys used that as your new frontier of organic social in a way?

Griffin Thall:

Yeah, I mean, I think we did a big campaign with Charlie Delio. She has 150 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, and I think that we wanted to work with her because she's the top of the platform. Everyone on the platform knows her, everything she posts about about or collabs with kind of goes viral. We were able to hit all the national news networks publications by working with her. So there's a lot of benefits out of it. She doubled our TikTok following. I do think that it is a platform that will allow good creators to go viral, and then once they get enough followers, they can build their own brands around that. So I think that for brands to utilize it, it's tough because the purpose of the platform is for entertainment. It's for comedy, it's for how to videos, it's for, Hey, my hair looks messy now. My hair's clean.

Hey, I have no makeup. Now I have makeup on. And I think that that's sometimes difficult for every brand to be able to fit, to pivot into that hole. So I don't think that there's not a use for it. It's very unique per brand. And for us, I would say that we're doing well. We're doing okay. We have almost, I think 400,000 followers. I think it could be better, but we haven't cracked it like we have with Instagram. I think that in the beginning of Instagram, we were just gaining a hundred thousand followers a month, organic engagement through the roof, just crushing. We figured out influencers, we've growth hacked our audience. We found ways to just build the following and continue to optimize, monetize, engage. And I think that the people that are really blowing up on it are these kind of younger kids entertainers that just kind of like to create their own news, go viral within each other, these little TikTok houses, and it works for them. So I think that if they could create brands out of their entertainment, then they're going to win. But it's difficult for brands to use it right now. I just don't think that anyone's really cracked it. But I'm optimistic,

Drew Sanocki:

Mike. I think it's like you got to arbitrage a new channel 20 years ago was SEO, right? So if you were all over that, that's when EBAs and Wayfair start. A lot of the ones that just was like long tail and then it was AdWords and there were brands built off AdWords, and then Facebook, if you ride that wave when the new channel is emerging, I think you get a lot of low cost customer acquisition and then it matures and the opportunity goes away. 

Griffin Thall:

 It's almost like it would be interesting to see the brands that were born from 20 years ago to today and what their channel was. Because any founder that started the brand when it was the same time period, that social channel was growing, you think of them, oh, they're an Instagram brand, they're a Facebook brand, they're a Snapchat brand, they're an SEO brand. It's almost like we're all brands, right? We're all called a brand, but some people are a certain type of brand. And all the brands that have started within the last, I would say seven to 10 years, five to 10 years, I would call them Shopify brands and Instagram brands. It's like, oh, I saw them on an Instagram ad. So all my friends that run e-commerce stores, we're all in the same boat. We're not bidding on Google long tail terms. We're not trying to solve how to make my house paint not crack over time. You know what I mean? I feel like that's how people try to win on these Google terms because they're typing in these long how to do this type of things, but that's different for lifestyle brands.

Mike Maher:

What was that kind of, oh shit, this is working moment. I mean, it sounds like from the very beginning you guys were just multiplying over and over, but was there a moment where you came home with 400 bracelets and they just all sold out immediately or was there something else? 

Griffin Thall:

I mean, we were selling bracelets for five years from 2010 and 2015, and then one of our influencers was wearing a ring, like a waver ring that sent us a photo and was she had bracelets on, but all the comments were about this wavering and we're like, man, why is everyone freaking out over this wavering? We're selling bracelets. You know what I mean? We're like, Hey, maybe this is a good time to test out a new category. Let's get some inspiration. Let's create a product that represents the Pura Vita Beach. Lifestyle waves have always resonated in our imagery and our graphic design. We've always used waves and suns and anything outdoors, palm trees, pineapples. So we decided to make a ring, a silver wave ring, and this ring went viral beyond. I can't even describe what it did to our brand. We were selling three to 4,000 rings per day for two years.

Almost every teenager in the US has seen this wave ring. We're sold in every surf store with this wave. It’s the number one product we've ever sold by unit, by quantity. And what did that do? That just said that Pura Vida bracelets, our core trademark, DNA domain social handles now has a new identity. It's a ring. A ring isn't a bracelet, it's jewelry. So then what we did, we said, okay, well if this works, why don't we try to make a wave necklace? Why don't we try to make a wave inlet? Why don't we try to just figure out how to monetize, capitalize on this wave, but also not just the wave, but metal, metal jewelry. So then we started testing out a little flower ring and a happy face ring and all these other things that are still the Pura Vida lifestyle still the imagery that we show on Instagram and now jewelry is 50% of our business. It's crazy because we would not have grown to the scale, got the multiple, had the additional revenue if we did not add another category and alone have that category work.

Mike Maher:

What you really recognized was that at that point, your customer gave you permission to become more than a bracelet brand to become a real jewelry style brand, and that was just, that was the moment you were just like, it's on. 

Griffin Thall:

That moment was more valuable than selling the first 400. The first 400 was valuable in the moment, right? We went from selling zero to selling to 400, right? 400% whatever increase. But to know that you can grow a company double every year and then unlock a new category when you're at that trajectory is priceless because now we're able to move into a jewelry category, which is then metal. And if you look at the global or US jewelry business compared to the US string bracelet business, I don't even think there is a string bracelet business besides us. You know what I mean? Now we're in jewelry. Jewelry is this massive business. Now we could compete, potentially compete against the jewelry businesses that have been around for a hundred years, and it excites us because we come out with these new jewelry items, we come out with these metal inlets, these earrings, these stackable necklaces, ring stacks, and it truly is half of our brand. Now people enter the Pura Vita world either buying a bracelet or buying a piece of jewelry, not just a bracelet.

Drew Sanocki:

Griffin, when you decided to sell, was there, we want to position this as a lifestyle brand or a jewelry brand, which was more valuable to go to the market with.

Griffin Thall:

I think going to the market, it was more, it wasn't a lifestyle. I mean, it was a lifestyle brand, but it was a jewelry brand. Recently we've added on clothing and backpacks, which are doing really well, and we're optimistic that those categories can become a jewelry category and that the pure vita pie goes from a hundred percent bracelets to now bracelets and jewelry, now bracelets, jewelry, soft goods, and we don't know where that's going to slice up, but we are confident, and I think that when we did go to market to find a partner, it was about how do we create something that has value to a bigger party, but also something that they're confident that they could, with economies of scale, make more profitable, make more lean, make more efficient, introduce us to international, better systems, better reporting, better data, better analytics, and yeah, that's kind of what we're looking for.

Me and my partner, Paul, we're not experts in the back office functions, right? Accounting, hr, payroll, legal, all the stuff that might not be as pretty as the social media website, Instagram, but that's what we're good at, and I think that's what they saw. Multiple buyers said, your community is your most valuable asset, right? Is your Instagram following? Is your Instagram engagement, your email list, your SMS list, that's what they're buying, right? The products are good, the website's strong, but they know that when you have an engaged audience with a high repeat rate that over time they can mature higher LTV, more revenue per order, more revenue per lifetime, and I think that's kind of the most important thing that they saw. Were you

Drew Sanocki:

Were you and Paul like, Hey, now's the time to sell. We've been doing this for 10, 15 years, or did the buyers approach you?

Griffin Thall:

We were doing it for about eight years, then decided to go to market, and we didn't really want to sell. It was just like, Hey, if we could de-risk a little bit and we could find a new partner that can help us grow, and we're not looking to sell because we want to leave or because we're over it or we want to go retire on a beach somewhere, that's boring to me, so why would I want to do something if that was my outcome? It was more of a de-risk. Partner up, find ways to scale, create a good five-year plan and do as best as we can to stick to that. Have fun as much as we can, because if you're not having fun, then you're going to be demotivated. We have a great office. We have a great team, super creative. I'm really pumped on every new product launch that we have. We just did a big campaign with Disney two days ago, and it was the biggest campaign we've ever done. Our confidence was high going into it, and it kind of blew expectations, so that's the kind of stuff that makes me happy. I love going to photo shoots. I love taking behind the scenes little clips, showing people on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and what's going on at Peer Vita World because that's kind of just my lifestyle. 

Mike Maher:

The Disney thing's really interesting. Assume that's a licensing agreement or licensing deal that you guys did or something of that nature. Is that right? Yeah. Is that the first kind of large scale licensing thing that you guys did?

Griffin Thall:

Yeah, that scale for sure. We did a deal with Charlie Delio. That was pretty big. We have a couple big ones coming up this year. We have Sanrio, which is the Hello Kitty, and then we have Harry Potter, Warner Brothers. That's going to be big. We're doing a big campaign with one of the lead stars of Outer Banks, the Netflix show. There's just a lot of stuff, and then last week I got hit up by the agent of this, a-list celebrity, just a cold inbound, Hey, we want to work with you. We want to make a jewelry brand around her. I'm like, Hey, this is big. She has 50 million on Insta and she could definitely blow us up, so I like getting emails like that. Yeah.

Mike Maher:

How did that Disney one come to fruition, and as you maneuvered through that, I'm sure that's a totally different muscle to build and flex

Griffin Thall:

For sure. Well, actually, it was one of my friends from college. I guess she ended up becoming the head of licensing at Disney and just asked me, I know that sounds a little too easy, but that's what happened.

Mike Maher:

I mean, awesome. It's not what sometimes it's who you know.

Griffin Thall:

Yeah, but I mean also there has to be some credibility. They want to put their name behind the brands that they care about, so tee up, but it could have been denied just as easily as the idea happened.

Mike Maher:

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a testament to the brand that you've built. You guys built an amazing enduring brand, and when people like Disney and Hello Kitty, et cetera are showing up, that's a good sign. It's also great to see that as you guys mature as a brand, it's nice to see that continued upward trajectory. A lot of these brands post-sale kind of fall apart or lose some of their credibility or cool in a way. For

Griffin Thall:

Sure. For sure. Yeah.

Mike Maher:

You said you love to spend your time on Instagram and social. Is that still where you're able to lean in a lot? 

Griffin Thall:

I think I love spending my time being creative, finding new licenses, influencers, brands to work with and collab with. We have an amazing team that does pretty much everything else from raw materials to delivering the product to a happy customer at the doorstep. There's a lot that goes on in that lifecycle that I'm not a part of, but I know that our team works really hard on making sure that that happens. I like working on website stuff, web design. I kind of started initially as a graphic design UX designer, so I've always had a very clean eye to design customer experience, making sure there's no confusion on entering a page, bounce rate, conversion rate stuff, the Shopify apps. I'm not a data analytics person, but I love finding new ways that we can growth, hack the brand. Those are the kind of things that kind of get me excited, get me out of bed. 

Drew Sanocki:

Do you still do all that today? 

Griffin Thall:

No. We have a team that does that stuff. 

Drew Sanocki:

Are you even paying attention to bounce rates or is that just like, no, I'm not even paying attention?

Griffin Thall:

No. I mean, it's part of tests and stuff that we do, but I feel like that's the kind of stuff that I obsessed over. In the beginning. I would've Google Analytics up on my screen every single day. There's one drop in a heartbeat and you know what I mean? But I think it's that care and attention to detail that we've been able to hire for and have such strong employees of fulfill the care and attention to detail that I've had. But yeah, I mean, I think where I'm most passionate now is the photography, the video work that we do. We've hired the best talent to shoot photos and shoot videos for the campaigns that we have, the Disney campaign, all the big stuff that we have coming up. I'm very in the process on the execution of those videos, the fonts, the spacing between each letter, the fade out, the music, I'm so OCD on how these videos turn out. That is what I put my name behind.

Mike Maher:

It's kind of you leaning into that stuff and showing your attention to detail. I'm sure permeates the entire company and culture, which I've always found just to be an interesting way to lead and lead teams

Griffin Thall:

For sure. I mean, yeah, some things I go through multiple rounds of revisions, multiple rounds of increased the opacity by 10% versus 20. I know how white letters pop on black. It's just like that's how my eye looks, and if I don't see every example that's in my head, then we didn't do the best job that we could have.

Drew Sanocki:

I'm a little bit curious on how Vera Bradley, who is the company that bought you, how do they, are they buy and hold? Are they just kind of letting you do what you want, or are they dragging you into strategy meetings?

Griffin Thall:

It's interesting because the first couple years, it's been two years out of the five, five-year agreement. The first two years, it's been a lot of taking systems off us and replatforming to them, but it needs to work for our brands. It's not just like a cookie cutter and there's a big, big thing of dough and you just cut, cut, cut, cut, and they all need to work and play nice and also scale. I think that there's been very small amount of hiccups versus successes that we found, and I think that a lot of the things that they've helped with have allowed us to hire creative people, designers, e-commerce people, as opposed to filling the peer review staff with more accountants, more hr, more legal, because we have a shared services agreement where we use some of their staff and then we just get billed for the percent of that salary, and it works well because they're experts in this.

They've been doing it for over 35 years. They have probably every legal agreement we're ever going to need. They're experts in fulfillment. They're experts in package design. They've been printing stuff for 30 plus years, so there's a lot of the questions that we might have to stumble on. We'll probably figure out at some point. We've gotten this far without them, but they've made a lot of the things much easier for us in terms of category expansion, things to do. They push ideas on us, and if we like 'em and we agree that the economics make sense, there's a good margin, there's profitability, there's reasons to scale. It could work in wholesale and e-comm, then it's a good move forward, but I can't think of a time that they've really forced us to do something that we strongly disagree with and it's pushed in their favor.

It could happen, but I don't see it happening because they also want to make sure that me and Paul, my business partner, are happy because if we're happy, we'll lead a good team and we don't want to be frustrated with them. They don't want to be frustrated with us, so I think it's been a very good acquisition for them and for us, and we want to keep on cranking, keep on pumping, do whatever we can to support them if they want to find another brand or another peer V to 2.0 or whatever that is, and yeah, we're stoked.

Mike Maher:

You seem highly entrepreneurial. Speaking from my own experience, you get an niche. Do you have an itch to do something else, whether it's start another business, go in a completely different direction to come an artist. I mean, you have all the freedom in the world. Does that stuff ever cross your mind or are you just like stoke levels are still so high working with the Ravi team on Pura Vita that you're like, I am totally content?

Griffin Thall:

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm just pretty content right now. Even told my parents that recently that I'm just really content, really happy. I don't need these highs and lows and raise money and pump it on a new brand and then it fails and the next one works. It's just kind of like a lot of noise that I don't really need right now. I love this balanced lifestyle. We're all working from home, obviously. I surf every day with my friends. I like doing water sports activities. I travel a lot. I recently went skydiving, jumped out of an airplane for a peer vita campaign. I just kind of live life and I'm pretty happy with my brand and my relationships and my family, and I'm just having fun.

Mike Maher:

Thanks for hopping on the pod today. 

Drew Sanocki:

Yeah, hope to see you around Griffin. I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on.

Griffin Thall:

Of course. Thanks guys.

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