Most businesses start with an idea before getting the right resources to make a product. With Beekman 1802, it was the other way around. Founders Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge had bought a farm together in upstate New York in 2006. Once they lost their New York City jobs in the recession that followed, they had their mortgage to pay and a bevy of goats (owned by a friendly neighbor of theirs, grazing on their land).
"We Googled 'What can we make with goat milk?'" Ridge said on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. The first thing that came up, unsurprisingly, was cheese. "But you have to become a Grade A certified dairy, and there's a lot of expenses with that. The next thing on the list was goat milk soap."
Ten years later, their beauty business is a successful one -- it accounts for 90% of company sales. This is in no small part thanks to the couple's skill at marketing it on air at QVC and HSN (by way of Evine, now ShopHQ), Facebook Live and YouTube.
"I always say TV retail is like door-to-door sales except you are knocking on 120 million doors at once," Kilmer-Purcell said.
Ridge added, "That's what unlocked the potential of the brand. Otherwise we'd have just kept growing very slowly, very organically."
The two joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast to talk about starting the business with "less than zero" dollars, cold calling department stores and their interest in investment considering the very ripe beauty M&A scene.