314: From Stay-At-Home Mom to an $845M Acquisition: How Drunk Elephant’s Tiffany Masterson Made The Leap

When Tiffany Masterson was a stay-at-home mom, she was always looking for ways to make a little extra money. So when the opportunity came around to start selling a brand of bar cleanser as a side hustle, she didn’t think much of it.

Little did she know that she would soon develop a passion for skincare, cultivate her own philosophy around what skincare should look like, and launch Drunk Elephant—a brand that was eventually sold to Shiseido in 2019 for a whopping $845 million.

In this podcast episode, Masterson takes us through her unexpected journey as an entrepreneur—from having her brother-in-law as her first investor to snagging a partnership with Sephora, to building an incredible company culture.

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Key Takeaways

• How Masterson, a stay-at-home mom of four children, started selling bar cleanser as a side hustle
• Why she developed a fascination with the world of skincare
• Masterson’s skincare philosophy, and how she started to create her dream product on paper
• What it was like to have her brother-in-law as her first investor
• Why Masterson kept the launch of Drunk Elephant in 2013 as minimal as possible
• How Drunk Elephant caught the eye of Sephora
• The cost of formulating, producing, and packaging 5,000 units of six products
• The tough financial conversations Masterson had to have
• Why Masterson chose to take things day-by-day instead of looking too far into the future
• The biggest trap Masterson believes most founders fall into
• How Masterson has kept her turnover rate at less than 2% since 2013
• The reason why people get excited about the Drunk Elephant brand
• Why Masterson doesn’t believe in trying to “outcompete” other brands