Guy Raz

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Tom Rinks

Cocoa beach just sounded like a good place for a sunscreen company, right? Like Cocoa Beach.

Guy Raz

Cocoa Beach.

Tom Rinks

So we got a PO Box in Cocoa beach, and then we, you know, all the calls were getting transferred up, you know, and then we.

Guy Raz

They were getting transferred up to Grand Rapids.

Tom Rinks

To Grand Rapids? Yeah.

Guy Raz

Like in the middle of winter.

Tom Rinks

Yes. So we'd be on the phone, you know, nobody ever lied. But we did say, you know, if they call and ask how the weather is, just tell them it's unbelievable. If it's snowing outside, whatever, because then you're not lying. It's unbelievable.

Guy Raz

Welcome to How I Built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Tom Reinks knew that a yellow gorilla on a wood grain background would be the perfect mascot for a sunscreen brand and built Sunbum into a $400 million business. A few years ago, on this show, we interviewed the founders of Method, the cleaning supply brand. And if you heard that story, you might remember that one of the co founders, Eric Ryan, talked about how they spent most of their seed money on designing a bottle for the liquid dish soap. They wanted that bottle to look cool enough to make people leave it on the countertop rather than hiding it under the sink. And even though Eric and his co founder, Adam Lowry also focused on the quality of what was inside the bottle, they knew that wouldn't really matter if they couldn't capture the attention of a casual shopper. And the way to do that was through better design. A well designed product can have a massive impact on the decisions that consumers make. In fact, this was the exact conclusion in a study published in 2013 in the journal Psychological Science. The researchers found that brand design is more important than price when the average consumer has to decide between two similar products. And this might help explain how a sunscreen brand called Sunbum came out of nowhere in 2010 to capture a significant share of the suntan lotion market. A market that had been dominated by legacy brands like Coppertone, Neutrogena and Hawaiian Tropic. More than a year before co founder Tom Rinks launched Sunbum, he thought about every inch of its design. A now iconic wood grain pattern bottle with a yellow gorilla face staring right at you. That bottle, as you will hear, drew on inspirations as disparate as 1960s surf culture, mid century modern furniture designers like Charles and Ray Eames, Northern European typography and Japanese streetwear. But even before Tom launched that design, he was already deep into the mechanics of branding. He had designed and sold T shirts, a luxury brand of tequila, even produced a line of Christian videos, all made using principles of design thinking. And one of his most iconic contributions to the world of branding, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, as in yo quiero Taco Bell. An ad campaign you might remember from the 1990s. At the time, Tom did not get credit or compensation for the Taco Bell Chihuahua. So he sued Taco Bell and ended up in a five year long legal battle, which you will hear about because it is a wild story. Anyway, for now, what you need to know about Tom is that he grew up in Long beach in Southern California. His mom was a teacher and his dad was, as Tom describes it, a Christian fundamentalist minister. Tom's strict Christian upbringing eventually turned him away from organized religion and toward his true passion, drawing and painting. He ended up studying art at Hope College right outside Grand Rapids, Michigan. He got married pretty young, and after college he and his wife settled in Grand Rapids, where Tom went to work as a salesman at a furniture store.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, it was just a big chain store. They were out of Detroit and they were opening one in Grand Rapids and I, I was one of the first ones to apply and actually open that store in Grand Rapids on 28th Street.

Guy Raz

So you were like a floor sales rep?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, it was just a full commission, no salary. You.

Guy Raz

Wow.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, it was really known in Michigan as like the shark infested waters because the salespeople wouldn't get off you. And so if you don't sell something, you don't get paid. So you could work for weeks and get nothing. So they did everything they could to sell you. And it was retail, so it's crazy hours every weekend which is brutal on my wife, for sure.

Guy Raz

Yeah. All right, so you. You're working at this at the furniture store, and you're a young guy. You're in your, like, mid-20s. So did you start to think about what else you might want to do, or were you happy doing that and didn't have, like, a big plan or anything like that?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, I wouldn't say I was happy doing that, but I was being successful. I was supporting my wife. We'd had a kid, and she was able to stay at home. So I was feeling good about that. I was just learning how to sell, which was. It would end up be everything. There's a. I think his name's Ogilvy. Ogilvy and Mathers. He's like the father of marketing. I believe he said something like, you know, in the modern world, you could be as creative as you want, but unless you know how to sell, you're just not going to make it. You know, you have to be able to sell your ideas. So I think those years, those five years at Art Van, it was called Art Van Furniture, were just hugely, hugely important for my career. I ended up becoming sales manager there because I was getting so good at it. And then people would come to me and ask me, as they had different people on different types of furniture, what to do. And I give you an example. Like, if somebody was on a leather sofa, if it was a woman, I would send a guy salesperson over there, and he would use words like soft and sexy and smooth as he touched the leather. And if there was a man customer on the same leather sofa, I would get a woman salesperson to go over and use words like strong and sexy and cool and rugged. And if it was a family, big family jumping around on it, I'd send the old timer in and to talk about what a great investment it is, how it wears like iron and it's easy to clean. So just knowing what those customers wanted to feel about what they were purchasing.

Guy Raz

Hmm. So it was almost like a game. Like it? Right. Sounds like it was a total game. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Rinks

We'd say, you know, customer pickup for Johnson, door three. Customer pickup for Smith, door five. Just to get a frenzy going with nobody picking up anything. Just to.

Guy Raz

Oh, you would just get on the loudspeaker and say that. Customer Pickup, Door 5. Even though there was no customer pickup. Just to kind of create the impression

Tom Rinks

that people are buying stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, yeah. Anyway, learned a lot. It was a great experience.

Guy Raz

I guess while you're there, you start to like, just play around with sketches that you turn into a T shirt. Tell me, what was that all about? How'd that start?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, I was at. I was with my wife at Holland State park, which is a really nice beach there in Holland, which is 45 minutes from Grand Rapids. And there was surfers in the water. Wow. Yeah. They were on longboard. And I was just in shock because there's no waves, really. You know, I would learn later that there actually was waves. Most of my kids learned to surf on Lake Michigan, but these guys were out there, and I thought it was funny. And I commented to my wife about it, and I went home and started sketching some cartoons. And I made, like, an old guy sitting on a long board with a beard and really skinny and cobwebs on him, and it said, surf Michigan. Waiting for the big one.

Guy Raz

You thought it was funny being from California?

Tom Rinks

Totally, I thought it was funny. It was just kind of a joke. And then I ended up deciding to make a T shirt with it. And I made one T shirt on a Hanes beefy T shirt. Big neon letters on the top chest said, surf Michigan. And then it had the drawing and then a little caption underneath it. Waiting for the big one.

Guy Raz

Surf Michigan.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. And, you know, without really even knowing what I was doing one day at Art Van Furniture, on my break, I called Meijer, which is a chain of about 100 stores.

Guy Raz

Grocery stores. Right.

Tom Rinks

They're like a target.

Guy Raz

Target.

Tom Rinks

So I called there, asked for their surfware buyer, and got a hold of an assistant or somebody, and I said I was a rep from a surfware company. I wanted to show a surf line.

Guy Raz

You said you were a rep from a surf brand.

Tom Rinks

I was a rep for a surf brand. I had one T shirt. So I. I got an appointment, and then on my day off, I went to that appointment. It's this big, huge corporate offices. Super impressive. And they told me to wait, you know, over here in the lobby, and there was guys with rolling racks. And I think somebody had one of those big, huge cell phones at the time. And. And I had one T shirt in a little suit bag. I was sitting there in my bad corduroy suit. I almost left when they called my name and said to go set up in one of the rooms and so. And wait for the buyer. So I walked into the room. It's this huge room and has this big grid on the wall where you can put all your, you know, your sweatshirts and T shirts and hats and everything. You just make. You could show it all I just put my one T shirt on the thing, a little wire hanger, hung it up, turned the lights on, and spread the drawings out and waited. And then Vivian Dreyer walked in as the buyer, and she.

Guy Raz

You still remember her name?

Tom Rinks

I still know her. I still talk to her.

Guy Raz

Wow.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. She changed my life. Yeah, she. Yeah, she walks in and looks at me and looks at the wall and sees that one T shirt sitting there, and I just came clean. I had only one choice, just to come cle. And I just said, hey, I work at Art Van Furniture. I'm not a surfwear rep. I just was at the beach a few weeks ago and saw this. These guys surfing and thought I was funny, and I'm so sorry for wasting your time, but here it is. And she looked at me and said, let's take a look. So she looked at the shirt, looked at the drawings, spread them out a little bit, smiled, and ordered 1800 T shirts.

Guy Raz

Wow. She ordered 1800 Surf Michigan T shirts.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. Which for me at the time was a ton. And at the time, you know, where

Guy Raz

did you get them printed?

Tom Rinks

I got printed at a place called Perrin Screen Printing, a guy named Carl Perrin in Grand Rapids. I just found him in the phone book, and he was cool enough to make me one T shirt, you know.

Guy Raz

And you just bought. He just bought, like, 1800 Hanes T shirts. And then.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, I did all the art, took them there, printed them. And I, at the time, you know, you can't do this anymore. But I put them back into the Hanes BVT box and put the right name on them and delivered them myself and then went back to work.

Guy Raz

Wow. So you had a bona fide, legitimate side hustle going while you were selling furniture.

Tom Rinks

I did. I did. I did that for a couple of years.

Guy Raz

And you turned into a business. You called it new agenda.

Tom Rinks

That's right.

Guy Raz

And meantime, this is like. This is like the early 90s. And an opportunity would come up, which is the basketball team in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan is about to blow up. This was the era of the Fab Five. They were like, freshman starters who were just incredible players. They got a ton of media attention. Some of them would go on to have these amazing NBA careers like Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard and Chris Webber. Right?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, yeah. They were kind of like, just changing college sports as well. They were rebels, and. And they were cool. And they were. They were wearing black socks, and they're the ones that started wearing the really long shorts.

Guy Raz

Yeah.

Tom Rinks

And I was at Meijer And I was looking for a Michigan shirt and the only shirts with Michigan with basketball was just said Michigan XXL basketball or Michigan with like a clipart ball going through a hoop Basketball. And you know, there was nothing cool. And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't figure it out. So I again, on a day off, I drove to University of Michigan and talked to the AD and actually got the license for Michigan.

Guy Raz

How did you get in with the athletic director there? That's a big job.

Tom Rinks

I mean I just walked in and at the time he was the one that ran the licensing. That was part of his job. Later it would go to, you know, there's this college licensing companies now that just handle all of the licenses for all the schools. But at the time it was done in house at the school.

Guy Raz

Wait, you, you went there with designs saying, hey, I could do a better shirts for you guys?

Tom Rinks

No, I didn't. I showed them nothing. I just asked what it would cost to get a license. I still would have to get the designs approved, but I didn't have to show them anything. I just had to get a license. So I.

Guy Raz

How much was the license?

Tom Rinks

It was nothing for the license. It was just a percentage. Just had to pay them a royalty, which is I think 10 or 20. Yeah, it was insane. So I got the license and went back and I came up with a shirt called Slam Dance that I did on my living room floor.

Guy Raz

And what did it look like?

Tom Rinks

It just said big navy blue letters that slam and then a Michigan M in between it and then at the bottom it said dance and the University of Michigan written underneath that, but in the middle was a huge M and a guy that kind of looked like Weber swinging from the rim. And I had Carl make it at Perrin Screen Printing and he thought it was cool. And I, on one of my couple of days off, I took it to University of Michigan.

Guy Raz

And I guess you what, you just like walked into different stores on campus and sold it to them. Like the managers just ordered your T shirts based on that one design.

Tom Rinks

So yeah, so I went to Moe's Sports Shop in Ann Arbor right on campus. It was really cool. It's not there any longer. Rows of institution there for so many years showed them, they bought it. And then Ulrich's is the bookstore there and sold it to them. And they sold 10,000 shirts that season.

Guy Raz

10,000 because you're doing this a few months before March Madness. I mean they get to the finals, you sell 10,000 of these shirts that say Slam dance.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, yeah, it was Huge.

Guy Raz

So that clearly was the impetus for you to leave your job selling furniture because you're making serious money selling T shirts.

Tom Rinks

Well, I knew it. I knew it was getting exciting. I started adding some schools, but I wasn't making serious money. Not enough to think that I could support my fam forever. I didn't know if it was a fluke.

Guy Raz

What schools did you go to after Michigan?

Tom Rinks

I mean, obviously the ones that were close by. Michigan State, Notre Dame, Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgetown. But I had. I didn't really know. Business.

Guy Raz

Yeah.

Tom Rinks

So I was. I had huge inventory and huge fees from Perrin for the printing. And, you know, I just didn't have any concept of margins, what it really took to have a business. So while by the end I had 400 and something licenses, while I had lots of licenses, I wasn't super profitable.

Guy Raz

And I guess around 92, you meet this guy named Joe Shields. I guess you meet him in. In Grand Rapids. Who you would go on to start a new kind of design business with.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, I was at Parent Screen Printing and I saw this guy's work that was also being printed there, and it was really cool.

Guy Raz

What was it?

Tom Rinks

It was these characters and I thought it was super cool. I just saw it as art. I was a goofy little doodle cartoonist. Right. This guy's a real cartoonist. So saw some of his designs that he was working on for. For T shirts and said, hey, I know how to get reps and stuff. Why don't we start a company ourselves? And then I felt like I wanted to bring something to the table. I was putting, getting the reps together. It was for the line. There was two lines. One was called Mosh. The other one was called Caveman that he drew.

Guy Raz

But these shirts were like kind of abstract humans or like cartoon character ish kind of animals. And it would say. Would it say something on the shirt?

Tom Rinks

No, just said Mosh. It was just. It was just a stylized version of these people dancing on the front of shirts in different position. It just said Mosh on the top. Right. Which was kind of cool because. The mosh pits.

Guy Raz

But who. And who would wear those shirts?

Tom Rinks

Well, nobody. Nobody. Nobody would wear those shirts, Guy. Actually, nobody would buy. No, I don't think one. I don't think one person wore those shirts. But while we were getting ready to do them, I saw an article in a magazine that had Madonna. This is like in 94 with her Chiquita, her chihuahua.

Guy Raz

It was a photo of her holding her chihuahua.

Tom Rinks

It was a photo of her holding this new dog. That she just got called Chiquita. And at the time, right, Because I'd been looking at, okay, what's going on in the T shirt world. And when a line gets popular, it's popular by the cool people, the college age kids, the high schoolers, right, they start buying it and then their younger brothers see them wearing it and then they want to buy it. So then it gets a little younger. And so then that's the first sign it's going to be trending, starting to trend down on the cool factor. And then when the dads start buying it and then the dads are wearing it, then those cool kids stop wearing it. And so then they're going to be looking for something new. So I saw that kind of happening and I saw Madonna and Chiquita and I was like, took that to Joe and we called it Psycho Chihuahua.

Guy Raz

You took that picture of Madonna on the chihuahua and you said, let's do something with a Chihuahua.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, let's do something with Chihuahua. Let's do one more line. So not just those two lines that we're going to do, let's do this Chihuahua line. Because I think, and here's why he loved it, he drew this really badass little small shaking chihuahua and we put words on it. So Psycho chihuahua, you know, 1923 or something. And then these Mexican.

Guy Raz

It was supposed to be funny. Like, look at this little psycho Chihuahua. That's fierce but not really dangerous.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, exactly. That's what it was. So it said things like, on the backs of the shirt, they said things like, you know, I don't roll over and I don't play dead or bite me or fetch this or big dog suck.

Guy Raz

Big dogs suck.

Tom Rinks

And so we sent the, we made some shirts at Perrin and we sent them out. I found some reps, they said they liked them, they would take them and try to sell them in. And if it sold, they would take the line. If it didn't, they wouldn't. And these couple of rep groups took it out to see what it, see what the temperature was and called me back and said, everybody wants Psycho Chihuahua.

Guy Raz

Everybody wants Psycho Chihuahua. And how like, do you remember how many orders you guys got? This is like 94, 95.

Tom Rinks

I mean, you know, we're selling tens of thousands of shirts, right? We weren't being, getting rich by any means, but we had something. We had, we could feel the pulse. So we were going, I was going with new agenda to a, a trade show called the super show, which is no longer around, but it used to be the Biggest trade show in the world, at least for apparel. And I got a booth space and Psycho Chua just was blowing up.

Guy Raz

Explain that to me. You're standing at a booth.

Tom Rinks

Yep.

Guy Raz

When you say blowing up, everybody passing by was like, oh, my God, I have to have this Psycho Chihuahua Dog T shirt.

Tom Rinks

I know it sounds stupid, and. No, not everybody guy, but. But enough people compared to the other booths. Right. But by blowing up most booths, you're kind of looking for people to talk to. Our booth had people there. We were doing interviews. We couldn't write the orders fast enough.

Guy Raz

All on the strength of the Psycho Chihuahua T shirt. This is. I mean, it wasn't like you were like, yeah, we have. We've. We've got, like, nuclear fusion. We've achieved it here at this booth. It was. It was Psycho Chihuahua. And it was just. That was the thing that people were like, oh, my God, this is so cool.

Tom Rinks

It was fresh. It was so fresh. And we thought. We thought we had discovered gold. We thought it was fusion.

Guy Raz

So I guess you guys decide around that time to see if you could license this product. And I guess there was a convention that was like a licensing convention where you bring a product to see if anyone wanted to license it.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, that was part of the timing. Right. I knew we had to make as much money as quickly as we could.

Guy Raz

Yeah.

Tom Rinks

So there's a show called the Licensing show at the Javits in New York.

Guy Raz

New York. Yeah.

Tom Rinks

You show your stuff. And if I had a lunch pail company and I wanted to put Power Rangers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Baywatch or Snoopy on my lunch pails or my sleeping bags or my mugs or whatever kind of company I have. I go there and I see all of the licensable properties that people own, companies own, and I make a deal with them. So that's what that show was. We got a booth. I got us a really great placement next to the first Jurassic park and Rugrats.

Guy Raz

And what happened? Was it similar to the previous trade show? Was there a lot of buzz around this little dog?

Tom Rinks

There was, yeah. People had started to see it around a little bit. I forget all of the people that came, but Minolta came by. They were making camera. Yeah, they were making a little small camera. They were interested in licensing it for their small camera. So they'd have a little mascot for

Guy Raz

it, the Psycho Chihuahua. Minolta dog.

Sponsor/Announcer

Yeah.

Tom Rinks

I mean, it never went past the trade show, but we. But we talked for quite a while at the trade show about it and just Other companies, you know, they're just looking for who is the demographic? Who's our demographic? Our demographic was young high school college boys, you know. Yeah, I don't remember who else other than the big one, you know, Taco Bell came by Taco Bell.

Guy Raz

So Taco Bell comes to your booth. Two senior reps from Taco Bell, and they were like, this is awesome. We love it. Like, right away.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, Ed Alfaro was the main guy. I don't remember who he was. He's, like, in charge of brand at Taco Bell in California. They were actually there looking for a mascot. They were looking for something to license. They had been looking forward and working on it with different ad agencies for a while and had sent Ed there. And so they were just looking for ideas, and they stumbled upon our booth, and we had a great conversation. We got, obviously, super excited about the possibility of that. We sent them home with some T shirts and all the information and all the stuff that we had, and we spent some time with them talking about it. We flew to Irvine. Irvine. And we knew we were over our heads a little bit with this thing. So we got an agent, Arlene Scanlon.

Guy Raz

Just like a creative. Like a licensing agent.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, she was a licensing agent. She'd worked, like, she'd gotten the deals for, like, Pink Panther and Owens Corning and Snoopy.

Guy Raz

It's like a talent agent for people like you.

Tom Rinks

Exactly. So she could represent us and strike the deals and make sure we're doing everything right. Because, you know, just as we were just talking to him, even on the phone and through email, we knew it was getting. We needed some help. As far as what this was going to cost, what the fees would be. They were asking about the fees and all that. And we worked with them for 18 months. We were on the calendar of when it was going to happen. They were planning on testing it.

Guy Raz

What kind of designs were you working on?

Tom Rinks

We were doing their tray liners. We designed their uniforms. We designed their hats. We designed their posters. We wrote the commercials. I wrote the commercials. Joe storyboarded the commercials and.

Guy Raz

But it wasn't a cartoon Chihuahua, right? You moved to, like, a real Chihuahua?

Tom Rinks

Yeah. Early on when we just probably, like, like, second day, when Joe and I were thinking about it, we realized that if this was gonna be for tv, it can't be a cartoon anymore. It has to be a real Chihuahua. Especially as we started storyboarding it, we had to take it and just turn it into a real dog. Kind of like Garfield could turn into a real cat. So that's what we did.

Guy Raz

All right, so you're working with Taco Bell. And this is exciting. This is a big deal. I mean, for a tiny little shop like you guys to have a massive brand like Taco Bell say, yeah, do our campaign. I mean, that must have been super exciting.

Tom Rinks

It was the most exciting. It was creatively. It was just. It was over the moon. Yeah. Designing the toys that they would give away. The little dogs were just. We were just. It was. Yeah, it was getting good.

Guy Raz

So anyone who was like conscious in the late 90s would know where this is going, which is the famous Taco Bell Chihuahua ad, which is amazing. I mean, it was an incredible. You were working on this thing and you're working on what is about to become. You didn't know. An iconic concept. And they stopped taking your calls one day.

Tom Rinks

Yeah.

Guy Raz

They just stopped answering your calls in 1997.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, they did. We were just rolling so well along with everything, and like I said, everything was slated to go. And all of a sudden Ed stopped calling us back.

Guy Raz

Like nothing happened. He wasn't like, no blowout fight. They just. No nothing.

Tom Rinks

They just ghosted you. Completely ghosted us. And we were getting nervous.

Guy Raz

I mean, yeah, yeah, we just thought

Tom Rinks

they weren't going to go with it. We just thought they were going to. We just thought they've had another idea because we knew they were working with some other agencies on some different ideas too. And so we thought.

Guy Raz

So you just figured, okay, that's it. We're.

Tom Rinks

That's it. But it would have been cool if they had called us. Come on, Ed, what happened? You know, we were your best buddy and now you won't even say goodbye.

Guy Raz

And so presumably, I guess you guys just figure, well, I guess we just move on.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, sadly. Sadly, we didn't know what else to do but to move on. But, yeah, we were. It took the wind out of our sails for sure because we told everybody about our families, knew everybody was asking about it. We were high fiving daily.

Guy Raz

Yeah.

Tom Rinks

Yeah.

Guy Raz

All right. Then about three months later, all of a sudden, a commercial, an ad campaign comes out with a Chihuahua. And at the end, the Chihuahua says, yo quiero Taco Bell.

Tom Rinks

Yeah.

Guy Raz

And what do you remember when you saw that ad? What do you remember thinking?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, they. They tested that ad in the Northeast, which just happened to be where I was in Michigan, and I just lost it, you know, because it was the commercial that I'd written. You know, the first three commercials were our commercials that we had storyboarded and shared and sent. So it wasn't a. It was the. It was. Everything was the same. Wow. And it was just like a knife to the chest.

Guy Raz

When we come back in just a moment, how the Psycho Chihuahua episode turns into a five year legal drama and how Tom eventually moves on to a brand new mascot, the Sun Bum Gorilla. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built this.

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Tom Rinks

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Guy Raz

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Tom Rinks

Taco Bell had, like, the best law firm in New York. I forget the name of it. And they had Sidley in Austin and Chicago, a big one. And la in house and grand. They had some.

Guy Raz

It's intimidating.

Tom Rinks

Super intimidating.

Guy Raz

This would take five years of your life. Just start by saying that. Actually longer, but five years until a final decision was made. But in 99, at a US district court in Michigan, they did grant summary judgment to Taco Bell.

Tom Rinks

Yes.

Guy Raz

And so essentially. Basically denying your claim.

Tom Rinks

Correct.

Guy Raz

And that could have been the end of the story, but you decided to keep fighting to appeal that.

Tom Rinks

Yeah.

Guy Raz

Now, it was kind of a crazy risk that you were taking. Right. Because I'm sure that it was really stressful on you and your family and probably hard to focus on your business while you're fighting this lawsuit.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, it was. The Chihuahua in me, I guess you could say. Right. It was fighting for the little guy, and the big guys just were taking advantage, and I'm pretty relentless when it comes to that kind of stuff.

Guy Raz

How were you focusing, Tom? How are you and Joe continuing to do your work, your business?

Tom Rinks

Well, we kind of. It kind of pulled us apart a little bit. Yeah, it was stressful. And we had done all this work, and I don't know if we blamed each other. I don't think we did. But it was just, you know, it was kind of over because now Taco Bell owns this little Chihuahua. So even our shirts stopped selling because everybody wanted the Taco Bell Chihuahua shirts. You know, we were just a knockoff. So sales of that dropped off. So we really didn't have anything to work together. So he did his thing. We had offices right next to each other. So we saw each other all the time and consoled each other all the time. We were still friends, but we stopped working together.

Guy Raz

Meantime, everyone around you in Grand Rapids knows you're in this lawsuit. And was that what people would talk to you about every time you saw them? Didn't that just get tiring because you knew that you'd go to school pickup or the whatever. Like the grocery store people go, oh, Tom, I heard that Taco Bell thing. How's that going?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, it was super distracting. I was the guy suing Taco Bell. And everybody had known before, or everybody, my friends had known that we were doing it. So when the commercial started airing, when the super bowl ad ran and all that, people from all over in California, everywhere were calling, congratulating me for the campaign. Thought it was amazing. Congrats. We got everything. All the congrats in the mail and phone calls all the time. It's so exciting. I was like, yeah, that's not us. They took it.

Guy Raz

I can't. I don't know what I would do. I would be so mad and stressed and anxious and then like, just people talking to me about it all the time. I would just hate that. I'd hate it. And I'd hate that Taco Bell wasn't settling this. I'd hate it, you know?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, yeah. They never. They never. If they would have. We met with Sidley and Austin, their lawyers in Chicago. We drove down there with our lawyer. And if they would have offered us. They're gonna hate to hear this right now, but if they would have offered us 200,000, we'd have taken it. If they would have, because we just wanted to get paid for our work. That's it. You know what I mean? We wouldn't have needed anybody to even say it was our work.

Guy Raz

They wouldn't even settle for that.

Tom Rinks

They didn't offer us one dime. And if they would have, over those five years, we had taken it in a heartbeat because it was beating us up so bad. And like you say, it was hard to concentrate on anything else. And we didn't think we could win. We didn't think we could make it to trial. Cause it was gonna cost so much.

Guy Raz

I mean, it's a cliche to say, this is the ultimate David and Goliath story.

Tom Rinks

Oh, yeah, totally.

Guy Raz

All right, so meantime, you're fighting this, but around this time, this is like 2001. You start something entirely new, which was a departure from what you had been doing. I guess you start a venture to make, like, Christian oriented films. Can you tell me about that? Because I know when you grew up, your dad was a minister, but from what I understand, you kind of rejected it, like all that stuff when you were young. And then maybe you went to church again a little bit after you had a family. Just tell me about it.

Tom Rinks

Sure. My wife liked going every Sunday and we had little kids and she wanted them to go to church too. And it was okay. I just, just didn't listen. But then this guy came along, Rob Bell, and he was like a guest speaker. He was young, fresh. He like felt like he swore. Even if he didn't, it felt like he was swearing up there and listened to the same kind of music that I listened to and moved referenced movies that I liked. And he was a real dude, he was a real guy that I would like to hang around that actually believed in God. It was somehow making it work. And we decided to go to his church when he opened a church. So he opened this little church in this warehouse with not that many people. And he was just so good, man. He just had it. His sermons were just insane and they were so relevant. And then one day he had a couple other friends all get together because he wanted to talk about getting his cassette ministry cleaned up. So, you know, they record the sermons and he wanted to get his message out to more people and thought he could sell his cassettes or make them available somehow through the church. And we were just saying, okay, yeah, that sounds great, do that. And I kind of, you know, there was no light coming through a window, but just hit me like, you can do this, Tom. Why don't you step up and do it?

Guy Raz

All right, so you start working on this new product basically, which is going to be these kind of Christian inspirational videos. Was the idea from the, from this video business to, I mean, how was it going to make money? Was it. Did you see a path there to build a big business?

Tom Rinks

No, in fact, I made it a non profit business.

Guy Raz

Oh, wow.

Tom Rinks

It was originally going to be, you know, the brand of Christianity, if you will, because that's what I've kind of gotten good at is making brands over the years. The brand of Christianity was just horrible. Like the only message. It wasn't beautiful, it was kind of ugly. All the protesters and, you know, people killing abortion clinic doctors and things like that on the news and just the perception of Christianity was really not that good. And so I thought maybe we could actually try to change the brand a little bit by this thing. So made it a non profit and started to try to think about how to make this thing happen.

Guy Raz

All right. But meantime, you're not done with Taco Bell because as we said earlier, you and Joe decide to Appeal that case. And this goes to. This is a federal court. And now you have to focus on the trial. And what do you remember getting cross examined. Do you remember just being nervous about testifying and all that stuff?

Tom Rinks

Yeah. I was on the stand, I think, for three days. It was a three and a half week federal trial. The first time they offered us something was at the trial. It was just before it started. They had lots of lawyers on their side. We had our little three lawyers on our side. And the judge came out, everybody rose. The jury is in. And they went up and said they'd like to see everybody in chambers. And so the judge asked us all to come in. And Taco Bell, I don't remember the number because I was dazed, but they offered us a few million dollars to settle right there.

Guy Raz

Wow.

Tom Rinks

Five years after everything they had been putting us through. And I just looked at Joe and he looked at me and gave me a little nod. And then I looked at our lawyers and they're like, oh, please. Oh, please, do not say yes. Please. We've worked five years to get to this moment to take these guys on. Don't say yes. And I looked at him and said, no, let's go. And we walked back in and three and a half week trial. It was super hairy. I was crazy cross examined, but they really. They didn't have anything. And. And I think it helped us being in Grand Rapids. I think our lawyers were so good, and their lawyers were super slick.

Guy Raz

So you testify at this trial.

Tom Rinks

Yeah.

Guy Raz

And eventually you're brought back in to hear the judgment.

Tom Rinks

Yeah.

Guy Raz

Tell me what happened.

Tom Rinks

Well, we got notice that the verdict was in. So we all went back to the courthouse and judge came in, jury came in. We all were standing there holding hands, and they read guilty on all counts.

Guy Raz

Wow. Did you cry? Did you collapse? Did you.

Tom Rinks

Oh, dude. Yeah. Just probably cried. Like, probably just the emotion of it being over and of having taken these guys on and beating them. It was just overwhelming.

Guy Raz

Wow.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. And awarded us what we asked for, which was the contract. You know, we'd. At one point, we'd given them the contract. They had asked obviously what kind of price we were going to want on it. And Arlene Scanlon had given them the terms of everything, which was a piece of the profits from the toys, a piece of the advertising budget, a piece of all these things. And so the claim was just an implied contract claim. So it was, you know, we were asking for that contract, and the jury agreed that we deserved that contract.

Guy Raz

Yeah.

Tom Rinks

So, yeah, we all cried. We Hugged. You know, the people in the audience that were there on our side were obviously ecstatic. And Taco Bell side just dropped their heads, packed their bags, and we just looked at them, scowled at them, and they walked out.

Guy Raz

The jury awarded you guys $30.1 million, plus another $12 million in interest. And did Taco Bell pay that right away?

Tom Rinks

I mean, now, now they appealed right away, and then a few months later, they settled.

Guy Raz

And were you. I mean, you had up until this point not necessarily been. I mean, you were making a decent living, but you weren't rich.

Tom Rinks

No.

Guy Raz

But when that Taco Bell money came in, like, you were in pretty great shape financially for your. I mean, now you could really kind of, I guess, breathe a sigh of relief a little bit, right?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, for sure, I could breathe a sigh of relief. But it wasn't as much money as everybody thought. You know, everybody thought I had $40 million under my mattress, got 33% to the lawyers, plus hard cost, 25% to my agent. Me and Joe split the rest. TAC government took the rest. You know, it was not as much.

Guy Raz

So in the end, you might have 5, 6 million bucks, right?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, you're right on the money. But that was still absolutely gigantic for a family like mine.

Guy Raz

Yeah. Meanwhile, while you were working on the Christian videos with. With this nonprofit, I guess you met this guy who would wind up helping you with that project and then who would become your next business partner. His name is Renee Canetti. Who is Renee Canetti or who is he?

Tom Rinks

Rene worked at an agency, a little design agency that was a couple of doors down from the little office that we had. He had just gotten here from Copenhagen. He grew up in Copenhagen. And he was just amazing brand designer. And they were expensive. It was like $200 an hour, which is a lot for nonprofit. But, you know, as I realized, I couldn't afford to keep using an agency and I was going to hire somebody. And he said, I'll do it. And I said, I can only pay X amount, which was half of what he was getting. And I was like, why would you. And he was. He was basically grew up an atheist. You know what I mean? He hated the church. He didn't believe any of it. And I was like, why would you want to come and work do this? And he said, because I have never looked for God or looked for spirituality or anything, because there was no on ramp for me. A person like me and Renee helped open my eyes to what needed to be said to create those on ramps.

Guy Raz

I guess you. I mean, this reminds me of the story with Joe, Right. This is a guy you meet in the T shirt printing shop, and then you start something with him. Rene is a guy you meet a couple doors down and starts working with you guys in these films. And clearly you see talent, a lot of talent in him. And the two of you decide to basically join forces and build a branding agency together. In 2007, you called it Rinkskinetti.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. Yes.

Guy Raz

And you were gonna do branding work for whoever. But how did you even get those accounts?

Tom Rinks

Well, when we did Rinks Kinety, the word was kind of getting a little bit around about us on the brand side of things, just word of mouth. He had a lot of talent on the design world that he had brought with him from Copenhagen. So the accounts that we worked on that we got initially were the Rockin Republic, the Daily Own Tequila. And the idea was, we'll make. We know how to make brands. We'll make a brand for you. And you pay the fees for us to do that. And you gave us a piece of your company.

Guy Raz

Right. So somebody would come to you and say, hey, I want to do this or I want to do that. And I guess one of those things was somebody came to you. Maybe it was a friend of yours who came to you wanting to make tequila. High end tequila.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. He was my best friend growing up. He was also a pastor's kid. And we kind of saved each other's life by sneaking out and going out to clubs together. And my childhood was great because of Brent.

Guy Raz

His name's Brent.

Tom Rinks

His name's Brent Hocking. Yeah. And he ended up being a mortgage guy and just crushing into the mortgage businesses and. And just one of the best in the country, but was just getting tired of it and wanted to start a tequila company. He wanted to get into the spirits business.

Guy Raz

What else do two children of ministry do but start a tequila brand? That's the natural path.

Tom Rinks

It is. So he wanted to do that. He knew what I did. He knew about me and Renee doing this thing and some of our work.

Guy Raz

I mean, the whole point of this was to take this and turn it into a brand. And so you guys were doing your job was to make the bottle and to make the logo and to make the. To style this thing.

Tom Rinks

Yes.

Guy Raz

That was what you were charged to do.

Tom Rinks

Correct.

Guy Raz

Did he know about tequila? Like, was he experienced? Was he a distiller?

Tom Rinks

He wasn't. But, man, he fit the bill. You know, it's all about feeling when you build a brand. Right. People buy things because the way they make them feel right. You buy a Louis Vuitton because you think it makes you feel rich. You buy old surf van because you think it looks cool. You buy athletic shoe Nike because you think you look more athletic or whatever the type might be. I know there's other things, but everything you do is based on how this product or brand makes you feel about yourself or think other people feel about you. So when it came to tequila and looking at the tequila business, when Brent called me, it was pretty easy. If you're. If you're ordering tequila at a bar or whiskey at a bar, just straight up tequila on the rocks, you're trying to be a badass a little bit. You know, you're not ordering a cosmopolitan. And so he fit that bill. He was. He had just such a great aesthetic, but he was big guy, tough. He's great in the clubs. He knew lots of people. He was a great businessman.

Guy Raz

And so he could basically source tequila. Like, that wasn't hard. Like, he knew he could get it distilled from, like, a white label distiller to his specifications.

Tom Rinks

Correct. He found a Fabrica plant, a place where they make the tequila down in Jalisco somewhere, which is where they make all the tequila down in that state in Mexico. And he got that and then just needed a brand behind it.

Guy Raz

Did you have a name for it?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, they were from Lyon, so. Which means lion. So we called it Daily Own Brain actually came up with that name.

Guy Raz

Daily Own tequila.

Tom Rinks

Daily Own Tequila and had Bill Wahl, you know, make a cork. Bill Wall was like a jewelry to the stars. All the skull and crossbone and all that stuff were rock stars. He was the guy that made them all. And he had a shop in Malibu, and Renee mostly designed this cork that had skulls and snakes on it, and they cast it out of a ball of sterling silver, and he carved it for us. And it looked badass. It looked like something. I think the cheapest bottle was $125 a bottle, all the way up to $850 a bottle.

Guy Raz

Wow. And you guys, as part of the sort of agreement, you also got a piece of the company.

Tom Rinks

Yes.

Guy Raz

So you were incentivized to make this work because it was your company now.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, it wasn't my company. It was Brent's company. But, yeah, I was totally incentivized because that would be the bigger. The larger payoff.

Guy Raz

Right.

Tom Rinks

So that's what Rings Kennedy did. We got paid for making brands. But then you had these little chips you were putting down on this roulette wheel. And if one of them hit, you got a bigger hit.

Guy Raz

All right, so we've talked about t shirt, surf, MI and psycho Chihuahua and Christian videos and a Tequila brand. I mean, a very wide range of things that you were kind of building. And then in the midst of all this, while you're launching Tequila, somebody else comes to you with a concept for or an idea for sunscreen.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. That's around 2009. Who approached you?

Guy Raz

What was the story?

Tom Rinks

It was a friend from my school that my kids went to in Michigan, and he wanted to be in the sunscreen business, him and a couple of his friends. And so asked me to come and take a look at what they were doing and see if I had any suggestions or see if I thought there were. Was a hole in the market and see if I was interested in making it for him.

Guy Raz

And they figured out how to finance this or that's what they're working with.

Tom Rinks

The guy was super rich, so he could handle the money part of it.

Guy Raz

So they come to you and they say, hey, we want to do. And they had no name. They had no concept at all. It was just like, they just knew where they could make sunscreen.

Tom Rinks

No, they were trying to do sunscreen. They had some different names out there doing it, and it was failing, and they were losing money. So they. They wanted me to come and look at it and see what they were doing wrong, basically.

Guy Raz

What did you think when you got

Tom Rinks

there, they were doing it wrong? Yeah.

Guy Raz

What was it called?

Tom Rinks

They had three. They had Race face, which was for nascar, for NASCAR people. They had Game Face, which was for colleges, which would never approve it. And then they had Sun Bum, actually, that was. Had a little carabiner on it and a little clip art. Hammock guy on the COVID of the bottle.

Guy Raz

And what about their concept appeal to you?

Tom Rinks

Nothing, Nothing, nothing. I told him he was never gonna make it. None of them were gonna make it. They were horrible. Like NASCAR people don't use expensive sunscreen. There had to be licensing with colleges. I knew colleges, but it was just horrible. It was just horrible design, horrible ideas, and they didn't know what they were doing.

Guy Raz

Given that the branding was so terrible and you already had a bunch of different accounts. You were working on brands you were building. What appealed to you about this idea of working in sunscreen?

Tom Rinks

It was local, so that made it easy. We didn't have to travel as much. And I knew the surf world. I knew the beach world, and I liked it. And I just didn't say yes right away. I Looked at the industry, I looked at what was happening in the space, and I saw just gigantic hole that you could drive through. Playtex had just bought Hawaiian Tropic a couple years earlier. So it was just all these big players. There was no authentic sunscreen brand. Only thing that was out there were stuff that my kids didn't want in the car or on their towel. It looked like their mom left something in their car behind if it was, you know, there was nothing that fit their world. And I knew I could create that. And I knew, like I said, there was a space for it.

Guy Raz

What was the first thing you did? You said, ditch these NASCAR and college brands and focus on Sun Bum.

Tom Rinks

No, I said ditch it all. And then we started our process and it's.

Guy Raz

Tell me how you did it there.

Tom Rinks

It's a three month process. So the first month is research, looking at the industry, looking at the holes, looking at how to do it. Second is ideation. Just creative thinking together, Renee and I. And then the third month is laying down the design work. And so that's. That's how it began.

Guy Raz

All right, so tell me what you. You started to think about building this brand and what it was going to be.

Tom Rinks

At first, it was just. We designed it. Renee and I's office was in Grand Rapids, and we were walking to Subway for lunch, and we passed a contemporary museum of Art, and there was a Ames lounge chair in Ottoman sitting there. I looked at it. I saw the wood grain and I saw the curves, and it was like wood. Like wood grain. That's. That's good. And Renee liked it as well. So we kind of developed a little wood grain pattern. And we realized nothing in. In the market was wood grain. We liked it. It felt good. It felt natural.

Guy Raz

You were thinking wood grain bottle, wood grain bottle, bottle.

Tom Rinks

And it would be, you know, there was every color in the rainbow already there. And you kind of want to own the block. And then my son Drake's Billabong Thrift Store T shirt was yellow and brown. I brought that in one day. And. And we like those colors. Yellow is a good color. Got brighter over the years, but yellow is the first color your eye sees. You know, that's why caution tape is yellow. It's great for brands. We hated the name Sun Bum. But then when I came up with Trust the Bum, you know, for a tagline for it, and then Protect yout Lazy Ass, it kind of all started to come together. And then the name didn't matter. And then the other thing about when you're naming A brand, which. It's good when the brand is in the name.

Guy Raz

Yeah.

Tom Rinks

So there was no sun. You know, you need sunscreen on a sunny day. You're going out in the sun. And there was no brand out there with the word sun in it. And so that made it really good because you're already saying half the name. It's like if your drain is clogged, Drano is the perfect name. Or if you need Home Products, Home Depot is good. Or Office Products, Office Depot. And if Office Depot is taking Office Max, you're already saying the name, so it's good. And I mean, I went to a haircut place called Coifiteria, and they play on quaff in cafeteria, and nobody knew what they did there, and they went out of business. So sun bum kind of grew on us. And then we started figuring out how the rest of it would look and how to mash it up.

Guy Raz

So you had, of course, a lot of experience, previous iterations with characters, obviously Psycho Chihuahua. And did you think about, like, we need a character, like a mascot for this as well?

Tom Rinks

Yeah. As crazy as that sounds like such an obvious idea, it just wasn't. But realizing the strength of a character, realizing the Budweiser frogs, the Eminem guys, the Energizer Bunny, they live forever. Mickey Mouse. Right. They don't get old. They don't get DUIs like founders or celebrities or. Right. They could just keep. They're good. They can. They could keep going. And then figuring out initially we were drawing surf characters and guys would look like hippies, and then we kind of landed on Animal, and then it went to monkeys and then ape.

Guy Raz

How come monkey?

Tom Rinks

Well, everybody likes monkeys. A. Yeah. And then as part of the mashup, you need everybody to like it. I think if surfers would have made this brand, they would have had two cross surfboards and called it Woody's, and it'd still be in surf shops today. And that would. Or maybe it wouldn't be.

Guy Raz

And it would be a wooden bottle called Woody's.

Tom Rinks

Woody's and cross surfboards. And that's it. But. But to do what we did and to do what you need to do to be like a global brand, you got to have a wider demographic than just a niche.

Guy Raz

When we come back in just a moment, why Tom and Renee decide to place their new sunscreen brand in Cocoa Beach, Florida, even though it's not really based in Cocoa beach or Florida. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built this. Success is a journey, especially when it comes to your finances. One of the most common obstacles in our financial journey is dealing with high interest debt. It can often leave people feeling trapped, but it doesn't have to. If you're dealing with high interest debt, there is a way forward. A Sofi personal loan could consolidate all your high interest debt into one low interest monthly payment, helping you craft a roadmap to paying down your debt. It even comes with no fees required, getting you a financial win right away. Keep pushing on your journey to financial success. You could even get as soon as the same day fund funding. View your rate for a Sofi personal loan@sofi.com guyraz loans originated by sofi bank na member fdic terms and conditions apply nmls 696891 fast funds term apply@sofi.com guyraz when I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talk to on this show. Because the best ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way Great founders engineer their products. Mobil supreme plus premium gas helps keep engines three times cleaner cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it three times cleaner compared to Mobil Regular gas in port fuel injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilefuels.com for details. Hey, welcome back to How I Built this. So it's around 2009 and Tom and his partner Rene are working on the packaging for Sunbum. The colors, the fonts, the facial features for their gorilla mascot. And for inspiration, they print out a series of creative panels and hang them on the wall, kind of like storyboards. And each panel has a different theme.

Tom Rinks

The first panel would be hippies, van life, skinny, long hair, tattoos, that whole freedom feeling that you think when you think surf, counterculture, you know, the beach culture. So it's that the second one was seeing this furniture, right? The Scandinavian mid century modern furniture design that, that led the way for the wood grains and the curves in the bottles. And then you know, Rene was from Copenhagen so he was really up on northern European typography and layout. So super clean, negative space on even the ingredients. Just the way they're laid out, everything was considered and spaced, all the Bauhaus fonts and those types of things. Next page would be Japanese in New York street, where lines like Supreme Bathing Ape, Undefeated. And then the last page was collectible vinyls. Rene had a lot of kid robot stuff up on our shelves and the graffiti world and brought that into this somehow. So that looking at all of those pieces, I think Sonny, who's. The logo, the gorilla logo, that was Led a lot from Japanese street art.

Guy Raz

You know, Tom, this. This reminds me a little bit of something that you mentioned to me before this interview started called the Elvis Principle that you. You mentioned. What. What's. What's the Elvis principle that you. What is it and how do you use it to develop a brand?

Tom Rinks

The Elvis Principle is kind of similar to the mashup that I talked about, except this is more on the personality. I was watching an Elvis special or something about him, and I got really intrigued with him. And he came out. When he came out on the scene in the 50s, he was rock and roll. He was dangerous. He's sexy. Shaking his hips like crazy, right? And then he got banned, right? He was just too. He was too sexual. You could have had to film him above the waist, right? And so then he came out with a gospel album and the parents that had been, you gotta burn the records or you can't go to an Elvis concert. Which is. Which made people want to go to the concert more. Once he did the gospel albums and showed that side, they were like, oh, he's a good boy. It's okay to listen to Elvis. He's a good boy. And so it's this juxtaposition of edge sex, good, kind, humble. Like, mashing all of that together. It's kind of what people want. It's. That combo is what's a really interesting personality for brands for people. So I was very conscious of that in using that when I did ads and all that stuff, I was kind of making that personality type.

Guy Raz

So you start to work on this mascot, right? And it's a simple. I mean, I think a lot of people can picture it. It's basically an oval, a yellow oval with a brown line through it for the mouth and an X for the nose and, like, sunglasses and a little sort of. It's a very simple design. Did Rene design that or you, or.

Tom Rinks

Absolutely. Like, I was sketching stuff and he was sketching some stuff, and a couple times he thought he had it and was, you know, fired up and looking for a high five and I hated it. But he was the designer, not me. I was just kind of creative directing it. And then one weekend he called me. I was at our cottage on Lake Michigan with my family and he called me and he just said, I got it. But he'd said that before a couple of times. Right. But I could hear it in his voice.

Sponsor/Announcer

I got it.

Tom Rinks

And I walked into the office on Monday and he, you know, sat me down and prepped me, and then he pulled it up on a screen. And it was exactly what you see today. It was perfect. It was just magic.

Guy Raz

How did you know it was perfect when you saw it?

Tom Rinks

Because I loved it. I just. As soon as I saw it, I loved it. I knew how strong it was. I knew how powerful that logo mark was. You know, that's the other thing. You know, if you take it, Sonny, the logo, the ape logo, and you put it next to all the other big brands out there, right? Forget about the copper tones and banana boats, those are just names. But if you put it next to, you know, the Nike swoosh, the Adidas mark, you put it next to the Disney mark, you put it next to the Ford logo, you put it next to the Apple logo, and then you put this badass ape in sunglasses staring at you stone faced. I knew it would be a great sticker. I knew it would be great everything. And we knew we were gonna graffiti market the shit out of this thing so we.

Guy Raz

You could literally take just the image of that ape and not even put sun bum on it. And the idea was people would know that was sun bum.

Tom Rinks

Correct. And you could put it on anything and make them think about not sun bomb necessarily, but think of sunscreen. So we put it on footballs and frisbees and paddle sets and towels and hats. No word sun bum on it. It just was that we did ads, we did billboards and just had the ape on there. And people didn't know that we stickered the crap out of every surf town in California. And then we decided to take it to the January 10th Surf Expo.

Guy Raz

This is the Surf Expo in Orlando.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. So that would be the first show. So all the surf shops in the country come, and high end hotels that are on the beaches and stuff, come to buy products.

Guy Raz

And what happens at that trade show? Do you get a lot of orders?

Tom Rinks

It was not so much the orders, it was just the buzz. I mean, it was the skaters that were there. So all the skate brands are there as well, and all the surf brands are there. So the skaters were coming by and taking the stickers. And I'd walk over to the skate vert ramp and see our stickers on the ramp itself. People were sticking and the kids were coming by asking if we had more stickers of just the Sunny guy, Just the character, Just the monkey.

Guy Raz

Just the ape.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, yeah.

Guy Raz

And then it's an ape or a monkey. I'm sorry.

Tom Rinks

It's an ape. Monkeys have tails, so.

Guy Raz

Yeah, let's say ape. I'm sorry.

Tom Rinks

Oh, that's okay.

Guy Raz

Pay some respect to sunny. Okay, so the sticker. But the sticker. You just had like thousands of stickers available. People could just take them. And the idea was you wanted them to put them on the back of their skateboards. Maybe on their surfboards.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, exactly. And so they were doing that. And then women that. That owned boutiques up in Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and all that were trying it and smelling it and buying it. And some high end hotels came by and they were buying it.

Guy Raz

Wow.

Tom Rinks

So immediately it was this. It's like, okay, this is not normal, this wide of a demographic. It's really hard to get that. And I knew we had it that first day of that show.

Guy Raz

It was basically validating your assumption here that this would be appeal to people. This yellow ape and these colors and this wood grain. But it was, at the end of the day, suntan lotion. Right. And so people had to feel like it was better, a better product.

Tom Rinks

Correct. And we did have a better product because we, we were making it for us, you know, and that's basically what you do you should do all the time, is not make it for other people. You make it for yourself. And so it had to be safe, it had to be clean, it had to be great. Everybody had to like it. I couldn't just have my kids like it. I needed my wife to like it, my wife's friends to like it. I needed my kids surf friends to like it. I needed that wide demographic, I guess,

Guy Raz

at that trade show. When you saw the enthusiasm for it, you and Rene decide to shut down your brand agency and to put all your effort into Sunbum and to basically become employees to join it.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. The guy that owned the company asked me if I would take over, but actually for me to take charge. He asked us if we'd come work for him. And so I went to Renee and talked to him about it, and we had a long talk about it. It was a tough decision. Right. Because all of a sudden I was going to be the boss and not as much partners anymore.

Guy Raz

And you saw the potential in it.

Tom Rinks

Just saw the huge potential. And there was really good money behind it to be able to do it the right way. And so we closed down Rings Kanati and took over Sunbum.

Guy Raz

And the founding partners were sort of silent partners. They were happy with the direction you were taking it in. They were like, go for it. You do your thing.

Tom Rinks

Yep.

Guy Raz

So now you are. You're Sunbum. I mean, you're. You're not Rings Kineti anymore, and you are running this business. And. And you had. It was a small team at first, just like four or five people and based in Grand Rapids.

Tom Rinks

Based in Grand Rapids at one of Bob. The owner's offices that he let us use, and just three or four of us, but then just had to figure out the whole thing because I was just planning on. Renee and I were just planning on, you know, making the brand for them and saying, here you go, good luck, like we'd done before. But with this one, all of a sudden, we had to take it on.

Guy Raz

One of the interesting things I came across was that it never said Grand Rapids, Michigan, on the bottle. It said, I think Cocoa Beach, Florida.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, Cocoa beach was the. You know, there was a direct flight to Orlando and Daytona was up the beach a little bit. But Cocoa beach just sounded like a good place for a sunscreen company. Right. Like Coco Beach Cocoa sounded like internationally. I kind of want a sunscreen that's made in Cocoa beach, kind of cocoa butter.

Guy Raz

Oh, my gosh.

Tom Rinks

Yeah.

Guy Raz

If you're going to. Back to Tokyo after your trip to Hawaii, you're like, yeah, this place does mean Cocoa Beach, Florida Beach.

Tom Rinks

Exactly. And that sound good. So we like that. So we got a PO Box in Cocoa beach, and then we, you know, all the calls were getting transferred up, you know, and then we. Yeah, we had a couple.

Guy Raz

You mean the customer service calls?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, customer service calls.

Guy Raz

They were getting transferred up to Grand Rapids.

Tom Rinks

To Grand Rapids. Yeah.

Guy Raz

Like in the middle of winter.

Tom Rinks

Yes. So we'd be on the phone. You know, nobody ever lied. But we. We did say, you know, if they call and ask how the weather is, you know, just tell them it's unbelievable if it's snowing outside or whatever, because then you're not lying. It's unbelievable. Right? And they'll think you mean unbelievably good, but it's unbelievably bad. And if they. If they pushed it on anything or waves or any of that, just say you're. We were up at the Great Lakes office, actually. So we were that and then we really quickly got a house down in Cocoa beach and made it a legitimate office. And that was our first office. And we hired some people to work there. And then so eventually we thought we'd all be moving down there.

Guy Raz

So would you go back and forth between all the time?

Tom Rinks

Oh, yeah. I mean it was a Florida brand through and through. It was made in Florida. The first real office was in Florida and our reps were in Florida. Our first stores and everybody that took a chance on us were in Florida.

Guy Raz

Yeah, I mean it's hard for me to just to realize that it only launched in 2010 because it today feels like such a dominant sunscreen brand. Like, you see it in airport stores, you see it at Target everywhere. But to get to that point, right, what got it to like, how did you create the awareness around it?

Tom Rinks

It was hard. When I was at that first surf expo, I was looking for reps. We didn't have any reps at the time. And everybody was saying, you need to get this guy named Michael Lacera. If you can get Michael Lacera, he can take it. He's done it before. And so while there was other people that wanted to potentially take the line, I got a hold of him. He on the phone and sent him some product. He wanted to test the product in the water. He's a surfer and he'd done vans and a bunch of other big brands.

Guy Raz

He was a sales guy.

Tom Rinks

He was a sales. He was an independent sales rep. So he'd done it for a lot of other brands. But then he single handedly, you ask how he did it. It started with him. Without Michael Lacera, we wouldn't have made it. He was relentless. He was hopping fences, he was stickering every off ramp with stickers and every sign and every.

Guy Raz

I've seen pictures of sun bum stickers on like the nozzle for like gas tanks, like when you fill up your car. That's him.

Tom Rinks

That's him, man. We had all size stickers and so everybody, I mean radio stations were getting calls. What's the ape? What's this ape we keep seeing around? And they. Nobody really knew until, until they did. But he was amazing and we had great displays.

Guy Raz

Yeah, would you send the display like, because you had like these plastic apes and like a whole, like sometimes there'd be like a life sized cutout of an ape or would you send it to every store that sold the product?

Tom Rinks

I mean a lot of it from the beginning was you had to buy the whole thing. We weren't, we didn't let you cherry pick. Michael helped us with that. No cherry picking, which means you can't just buy two bottles and put it on your shelf with all the other bottles. Because we knew that wasn't going to do it. We knew we needed it to seem bigger than it was. So we went to Ike Kia and got these big bookcases that they had on sale for like 50 bucks or something, these tall bookcases. And we redid the holes so they would fit our sunscreen bottles perfectly and stickered the side of them and put the ape on top. And that's what we showed at the trade show. So if somebody looked at it, they'd say, how much for this? You'd say, you have to buy the whole thing, which included the footballs, the Frisbees, the T shirts, the sunscreen, the guy on top, and you got the display. So if you wanted to carry sunbum, you had to carry this whole thing. Big display. But then that's what everybody looked at. That's what drew everybody to it, because it seemed like something. And not just two bottles of sunscreen on the bottom shelf.

Guy Raz

So this really. I mean, this. The growth of this business really. So year $100,000. And so was it like doubling or tripling or quadrupling by year two?

Tom Rinks

Year two, we did 1.1 million. Wow. So, yeah, so that was a nice chunk jump. But it was in the right. It was in the right stores. Right. It was the best surf shops. It was the best hotels. It was Casa D Estes, the Breakers. Some of those people early took it. Richard Branson and Joan, the end of the first year, they. They saw it and bought it for. To be their exclusive sunscreen on Necker Island. And we used that like crazy. It's exclusive on Necker Island.

Guy Raz

Yeah.

Tom Rinks

And then the Four Seasons and the Standard, and then all those just started falling one at a time.

Guy Raz

And then you're rolling a few years into sunbum. I know that the original owners got out of it and sold it to you and you guys left Michigan, right. Like, you moved the company to California in 2014, right?

Tom Rinks

That's right.

Guy Raz

And then in 2019, which is 10 years after it was started, really nine years after its launch, some of them was purchased by S. Johnson and reportedly for $400 million. Amazing. Incredible exit after just, you know, nine years. That, from what I understand, that was. That was the plan all along. Right. Like. Like the Tequila brand and the other brands that you worked on to. To basically build it and then eventually to sell it.

Tom Rinks

Yeah, that was the idea. And I've. I'd made mistakes before with this because I was basically running it. I was the CEO and I'd heard about that Harvard business model that says, you know, creatives usually start companies and then they. And they're really good at creative, that's why they make companies. And then they start hiring people and doing the P&Ls and managing people and all the stuff they suck at. And by year three, the curve starts going down and by year five, the company's over. And I knew that track and so about. It was about year three or four when I got called from Adam Francis, who was a guy in Australia who was ex pro surfer. He went to Harvard. His wife Tegan was a lawyer and they had done a lot of good businesses. And he was getting ready to start a sunscreen business and he saw a sun bum in Hawaii and said, I can't beat these guys, I gotta try to join them. So he called me. I knew who I was talking to. I was talking to my next CEO. So I said, will you be our CEO? And I got out of his way.

Guy Raz

You think that you did not have the skills, your skills were better suited for branding rather than managing a company?

Tom Rinks

I don't think. I know. I was even in Michigan when we took over the company three years later, trying to get financing. Man, the banks, they were like clamoring to help us until they saw my book and then they were like, I'm sorry, Tom, we can't help you. And I didn't know enough about margins and scalability and production and all that kind of stuff. I'd never really built anything to that scale. And it's hard to give up the CEO role. Most founders don't. But I knew I had to do it.

Guy Raz

I think at a certain point, Sunbaum was doing 70 million annual sales. Significant company growing. You know, you could have kept it going and built a billion dollar brand. So why did you decide to sell in 2019?

Tom Rinks

Yeah, I mean, I think it is a billion dollar brand now, but we decided because, you know, just like I had taken it and we had taken it as far as we could in Michigan and then came to California. And we always thought we'd go international. We had all the trademarks and we were trying to go international. But sunscreen's a drug, so it's regulated because it says it's going to protect you against getting a disease, which is what makes it a. So it's got the FDA's in every country and there's so many regulations, and they're all different rules and regulations of what ingredients and what you can do and can't do. So we were hitting that wall, and we wanted to go international. We were being asked from day one to go international. So we realized to keep growing, we would need a partner that had boots on the ground, manufacturing facilities, offices in all these countries that could handle that. And landed on S.C. johnson.

Guy Raz

You know, it's interesting because you also. This is one of the first interviews you've ever done in your life.

Tom Rinks

Yes.

Guy Raz

Probably the first really intensive interview you've ever done.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. Other than the depositions for the Taco Bell trial, which were more intense than this, trust me. Yeah, but. Yeah, but I've not done this before.

Guy Raz

And you're basically. You don't even exist online barely. Right, right. Like, it's really hard to find anything about you. And. And you'd been through this very public trial around Taco Bell, and why did you not want to be in the public eye at all?

Tom Rinks

I grew up, so probably insecure, poor, maybe not feeling accepted. Kind of like the furniture store. Right, the furniture store. You know, it was a hard place to work, and I kind of felt like maybe even my wife's parents were. Were like, why'd you marry this guy? I'm not saying they thought that, but, like, you were dating all these really rich guys, and then you married this artist guy and he works at this furniture store. And I just didn't want to ever make anybody feel that way. So I was very conscious about bragging, and I just didn't like braggers or about being out in front of something. And this. Quite frankly, I didn't think I could help in a lot of the. The circumstances. You know, I wasn't. I wasn't the brands that I was creating necessarily. I wasn't the big surfer. I wasn't the big tough guy for tequila. I wasn't a big Christian guy. You know, there were people like that that were better than me at it. I suppose if I would have done like a brand of T shirts for tall, skinny guys, I probably could have gotten out in front of it or something. Or a picky eater food brand. If I would have done that, I could have probably been that guy.

Guy Raz

It sounds like what you were saying was you didn't want to be out in front because you weren't the tequila guy, you weren't the surfer guy, you weren't the Christian guy and that. Which sounds like reading between the lines, what you're saying is like, in your mind you felt like consumers maybe would expect that the brand would come from a person like that, and so maybe that's why you didn't want to be out in front.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. And when I had the Taco Bell lawsuit, I went from being this creator guy to the guy that sued Taco Bell. So any interview, the only thing you could find at the time was Taco Bell lawsuit. So I was the. That's what people wanted to talk about. And that would hurt the brand that I was trying to promote and not help it. I didn't want to flex. I let other people let other people flex. I flexed by doing the work, and I felt really good about that.

Guy Raz

Tom, when you think about all that you've done, I mean, you're 60, you've got a new venture you're working on. I think you're probably going to work till you drop dead. Just knowing you from this conversation, how much of what's happened to you and this success do you think is because of all the work you put in and all the sweat? And how much do you think has to do with some of just the lucky breaks?

Tom Rinks

I think it's a combo, obviously. Probably everybody says that. I think there were so many lucky breaks. Right. Vivian Dreyer back at Meijer, you know, giving me those that order for 1800 T shirts. Like, all the people that I met, all the stores that said yes, all the buyers. It's really the lucky breaks of people taking a chance on me and believing in wanting to take the ride with me. But I also. So it's also a ton of work. It's also doing it more. You know, like Kobi said, you just practice. You gotta practice more. So practicing more than anybody else makes you better than anybody at it. And I've practiced a lot because I love it, because it's kind of my art. It's kind of my paintings. You know, these brands are kind of my paintings. So it's like the extension of what I was doing my whole life. So I just absolutely love, love it. It's art to me. So, yeah, yeah, it's both.

Guy Raz

That's Tom Rinks, co founder of Sunbaum and the mind behind many other brands, including Made by Dentists, which was, in fact, founded by two dentists, two sisters, actually, from Ireland.

Tom Rinks

And they. They were killing it in Ireland, but they tried to come to America and it wasn't working. Yeah, then they thought maybe I could help. So I told them I would if I could just blow it up and start it from scratch.

Guy Raz

Just like Sunbung, basically.

Tom Rinks

Yeah. I mean, the products were great because they're dentists. They're so authentic and they're so passionate and they're. And they're. You know, again, you went back to that question. You know, why aren't I. Why aren't I in front of this brand? Right. Because I don't. I'm not a dentist.

Guy Raz

Not a dentist. But Tom did do all the design work for the new brand, and one place he got really creative was around Made by Dentists line of toothpastes for kids with flavors like alien blood and eyeball juice. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the Follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter@guyraz.com or on substack. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtina Rabloui. It was edited by Neva Grant. This archived episode was produced by Kerry Thompson. Our production staff also includes Sam Paulson, Chris Masini, John Isabella, Alex Chung, Karla Estevez, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built this.

Tom Rinks

Sam.