'The Honest Company' With Jessica Alba | Power Trip | Marie Claire
Over the past 10 years Actress gone Entrepreneur Jessica Alba has broken barriers and paved the way with her company "The Honest Company." Alba joined us at Power Trip, Marie Claire’s annual conference bringing together some of the biggest and brightest female leaders and execs. During her conversation with Marie Claire's Editor-in-Chief, Sally Holmes, Alba shared some words of wisdom that she's learned over the past decade of building her brand.
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00:00 You are, I would say, the OG celebrity founder.
00:05 You have been 10 years of Honest Company.
00:08 - Little more than that.
00:11 - A little bit more than that?
00:13 - Totally.
00:13 - Okay, tell us, how does it feel 10 years later?
00:18 - With me in the business,
00:20 I was so hard on myself for so long.
00:23 And then I got to a place where I gave myself some grace.
00:26 I take in the lessons of the challenges or the hardships,
00:31 and also allow myself to receive the wins.
00:36 I used to be, up until not too long ago,
00:38 wildly uncomfortable with taking in anything that was good.
00:43 I felt so undeserving.
00:46 So I think that's another thing,
00:48 is maybe when there's so few of us at the table
00:53 in those positions of power,
00:56 especially, we do make up 50% of the population,
01:00 but we're so wildly underrepresented in business,
01:04 in a lot of power rooms.
01:07 And when you don't see yourself,
01:09 you feel like maybe you don't deserve to be there.
01:11 And that's fake news, right?
01:13 It's the conditioning that we're used to,
01:16 that we grew up with, that we have to unwind.
01:19 So it's been an amazing journey,
01:24 and very fulfilling.
01:26 It's cool how it can take on so many different waves
01:30 as you grow.
01:32 - So the company started with a more narrow selection
01:36 of baby products, wipes,
01:39 and this personal care, and it's expanded.
01:42 How do you guide the strategy
01:44 of a now publicly traded company?
01:47 - I started with 17 products
01:50 in three pretty large sectors.
01:55 I felt like I needed to test out
01:58 whether there was gonna be reception of clean
02:03 in these pretty major categories,
02:05 home, detergent space, the personal care space,
02:10 which is not necessarily beauty,
02:13 but kind of, it's like what you put on your skin,
02:16 what you put around the home,
02:18 which is the detergents and cleaning.
02:20 And then obviously, the thing that's gonna touch
02:24 probably the most vulnerable people, which are babies.
02:26 So that's why I chose those three categories.
02:29 And what I was really trying to solve for,
02:31 or tackle, is the injustice that we face every day
02:36 in being exposed to unnecessary and harmful chemicals
02:41 that actually cause lots of illness.
02:45 And these companies that are making these chemicals
02:49 that put them in the products that are in,
02:51 on, and around all of us every day.
02:54 And I was like, maybe there can be
02:58 a more human way to approach business.
03:02 And so I really was trying to tackle these
03:05 sort of like giant categories in my small, little, tiny way.
03:09 And that's why I created a company
03:11 that went into three different pretty big categories,
03:14 17 products, and I launched online
03:17 because I felt like that was gonna give me,
03:20 I guess, the ability or the leverage
03:25 to show that no matter where you lived,
03:28 you should have access to these types of products.
03:30 You didn't need to just live next to said store
03:35 to access it.
03:37 And to make this information just more accessible
03:42 also to everyone.
03:43 I think a lot of people didn't know that
03:46 if you go to the grocery or if you go to a department store,
03:49 you think if you spend more money on it,
03:51 it's gonna be safer.
03:52 Or if you go to that store that you grew up going to,
03:57 it was gonna be safer, but it's actually not.
04:00 There's no real laws that protect human health
04:05 or really protect you around your safety.
04:11 Even for pregnant women, there's no real laws
04:15 that say that companies can't market products
04:18 to pregnant women and make sure
04:21 that they're actually safe for pregnant women.
04:24 There's no laws protecting babies
04:26 that if something is marketed for you to use
04:28 on or near your baby, that it's actually safe for that baby.
04:33 And there's certainly no laws saying that anything
04:37 that comes in contact with your skin or your environment
04:40 will be safe for you.
04:43 So they're testing on us.
04:45 And I was like, what the heck?
04:49 So that's why I went into all those
04:50 different product categories.
04:52 And then can you really differentiate?
04:56 Can you really stand up against competition?
04:59 Is there a real reason for you to be there?
05:01 And can you do it at a price that's within reach?
05:06 'Cause there's a lot of things we can do
05:08 for like a million bucks.
05:10 But if you're trying to make it accessible,
05:13 can you scale the idea?
05:15 - Can you take us behind the scenes
05:17 of what it looks like to take a company public
05:20 and specifically your company public
05:22 and really navigating the seas
05:25 of a historically male-dominated stock market?
05:28 - I would say that if you have a peaceful, relaxing life
05:35 and you sleep well at night,
05:36 don't take your company public.
05:38 (audience laughing)
05:40 But who has that?
05:41 No, I'm kidding.
05:42 No, it's actually important for us
05:45 to take our companies public.
05:48 It's actually necessary.
05:50 Between 2013 and 2020,
05:52 there were over 2,000 companies that went public
05:55 and only 18 of them had female leadership.
05:58 That's wild.
06:00 It was a really brutal experience.
06:04 They really do try to throw as many banana peels
06:07 in front of you as humanly possible.
06:10 And I would say that there's probably no one better
06:13 to navigate banana peels than a woman in business.
06:18 We get these things thrown at us left, right, and center.
06:22 - So you're the youngest Latina ever
06:26 to take a company public,
06:28 which I think deserves a big round of applause.
06:31 (audience applauding)
06:33 So you just talked about how hard it was to get there.
06:36 What was it like then ringing that bell?
06:38 - It was interesting
06:43 because I think when I started the business,
06:45 it was really around this social justice
06:48 of how can I make sure that more people have access
06:53 to live their best life,
06:56 access to the information, access to products.
06:59 Hopefully if I can get the consumers to feel more empowered,
07:04 we can actually start to change other companies
07:07 and other companies' values,
07:10 and there will be a bit of a groundswell.
07:13 So now before, everyone was like, what does clean mean?
07:17 Is that a thing that only moms care about?
07:19 Now you literally can't walk into a store
07:22 without saying clean beauty,
07:24 without saying products that are clean and better for you,
07:28 basically in every category.
07:30 And I'm really proud that it only took 10 years
07:33 for that to happen, to literally create that space.
07:38 And a lot of the competitors are forced to step up,
07:42 which is awesome.
07:43 And certainly getting us to that finish line,
07:47 that it wasn't until I was writing the speech with Jen,
07:50 who's here, who's head of Marcom,
07:52 and she's one of my writer dyes, that's been with me.
07:57 And we were writing the,
08:00 she was like, you have to do a speech.
08:02 And this was like, we were the first company during COVID
08:06 to actually do it in the NASDAQ offices.
08:08 So it was like a whole situation, we weren't sure,
08:10 are we gonna do it there, are we gonna be remote?
08:13 And I realized in that moment,
08:15 that sort of, it was like a call to action,
08:19 but also a way to kind of show up for a community of people
08:23 that for the most part have never been on that stage.
08:28 And I was like, okay, so I felt that.
08:33 And then that, I guess, I mean,
08:35 I know it gave me the strength to really allow the moment
08:40 to breathe and be what it needed to be,
08:44 which is I got this far,
08:48 so that not only did I like open the door,
08:51 but I blew the doors open,
08:54 and I mowed down a lot of those hills
08:57 so that a lot more can come through.
09:00 And so I just wanted to make sure that anybody
09:03 who was watching or listening in that moment or any moment
09:08 can see that that's what me being there meant.
09:13 I felt like it was easier to control my destiny
09:16 launching a DTC brand.
09:19 And I would say, I recommend that for anyone,
09:23 having your foundational principles in DTC,
09:28 because there's nothing like that ownership, right?
09:32 It's sort of like the flagship store.
09:35 Imagine your flagship being online.
09:38 And so take care of that,
09:40 and no one can take that away from you,
09:42 and it's sort of like your nucleus,
09:44 then anything else can happen from there.
09:47 But ultimately, you have to be
09:48 where the consumer wants you to be.
09:51 And so if the consumer wants you to be
09:53 in a brick and mortar, go to make sure you have that.
09:57 If they want you to be in a retail channel,
09:59 make sure you're there, or partner with,
10:03 wherever there's more ease for them to find you, frankly.
10:08 I don't think we should be too married to any model.
10:13 I think social commerce is actually 10 years behind
10:17 where it should be, frankly.
10:19 And that's probably where it's all going anyway.
10:23 When you control the relationship with the consumer,
10:27 you just have so much more power,
10:29 and you can test and learn a lot more.
10:34 You don't have to rely so much on others for innovation.
10:39 - So my final question for you,
10:43 and to say thank you also for joining us,
10:45 this has been so fun.
10:46 In the beginning, we introduced you as an actress,
10:50 an entrepreneur, a founder.
10:53 How would you introduce yourself?
10:55 - I'm a terrible speller.
10:57 (audience laughing)
11:00 I'm an amateur chef.
11:02 I think I dream big.
11:07 I'm a dreamer.
11:08 And I believe in people.
11:14 I do.
11:16 And I believe in goodness.
11:18 And I have hope.
11:21 My job, I think, is probably to unlock
11:27 as much of that as possible,
11:28 and whether that's through telling stories in entertainment
11:32 or telling stories through products, great.
11:35 So maybe that's how I would describe myself.
11:40 And a very imperfect mom,
11:42 but my kids still tell me their secrets,
11:45 so that's cool.
11:46 - Jessica, thank you so much for joining us.
11:51 So lovely to have you.
11:52 (audience applauding)
11:55 (upbeat music)
11:58 (upbeat music)