Turning an Ancient Japanese Beauty Practice into a $500 Million Dollar Beauty Brand with Vicky Tsai, Founder of Tatcha

Aug 10, 2020

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Vicky Tsai, founder of Japanese beauty brand Tatcha, had a nontraditional path to eventually founding one of the top skincare companies today. About 10 years ago, Vicky decided to leave her thriving career and travel the world in search of happiness and meaning in her life.

In her travels, when visiting Kyoto, Japan, Vicky had a life-changing meeting with a Geisha. She learned some of their natural skincare secrets which healed her skin & soul in the truest sense and she wanted to bring the same experience back with her to the US.

However, when launching Tatcha, there were many barriers she faced: Asian skincare wasn’t popular, direct-to-consumer businesses weren’t common, and consumers weren’t interested in clean products. Fast forward to today, Tatcha is available in Sephora & QVC and is the second fastest growing women-led company on the Inc 5000 list. And last year, Unilever acquired Tatcha for a reported $500 million dollars.

Vicky is passionate about giving back. Since inception, they have partnered with Room to Read in their mission to educate girls globally and have sponsored over 3 million days of school.

In this episode, we’ll talk to Vicky about:

* How 9/11 impacted Vicky’s perspective on life’s meaning and purpose [4:00]

* Vicky shares how she used business school to do introspective work on herself [6:28]

* Vicky discusses her career trajectory and why Howard Shultz, CEO of Starbucks, played a big role in her leaving her corporate career [10:57]

* Vicky shares how she thinks about social entrepreneurship and using business as a vehicle for social change [15:52]

* Vicky describes why Kyoto, Japan made such a big impact in her life & truly healed her from the inside out [18:02]

* How Vicky thinks about money, risk & success and key tips she shares with entrepreneurs when starting a business [20:28]

* How Vicky sold her engagement ring to buy 10,000 blotting papers and bring Tatcha to life [24:32]

* Why Vicky decided to not raise money from investors early-on & the personal sacrifices she made to keep the business afloat [26:54]

* What Tatcha looked like in the early days and how she eventually got the product in Sephora & QVC [33:45]

* Vicky shares her advice on raising money with institutional investors [44:37]

* Vicky describes how she felt when stepping down as CEO and the immense growth the Company saw when she stopped caring about what others think [45:48]

* Vicky shares what it was like to sell her company for $500 million dollars and the legacy she wants to leave behind [53:20]