PSP: What was your original idea behind Hawaiian Tropic?

Rice: I had gone to Hawaii, and I saw the women on the beach were using homemade suntanning formulas with coconut and avocado oils. So when I came home, I started mixing the first products by trial and error in a trash can in my garage. I hired some teenagers to bottle the lotion by hand and took it to the lifeguards at the beach to try it out.

PSP: What was your original investment?

Rice: I borrowed $500 from my father. At that time I was a teacher making $4,000 a year and another $300 coaching football. I also worked as a lifeguard in the summertime. I was always looking for something extra.

PSP: So your only risk was $500?

Rice: Yes, it was just a matter of being able to sell $500 worth of products, which I knew I could do.

PSP: Were you oriented towards business as a youngster?

Rice: I grew up on top of a mountain in North Carolina. My older brother is forest ranger now. I had a lot of business ventures as a kid. I bred and sold dogs. I ran roadside stands. My father would drop me off in the morning down at the bottom of the mountain and I’d sell all day long, and then come nightfall he’d pick me up again and take me home back up the mountain. I also planted a grape vineyard and sold the grapes, had beehives and sold the honey, and even made Christmas wreaths. My sister and big brother worked for me. I’d sell and he’d carry the product.

PSP: When did you sell your first bottle of Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion?

Rice: In 1966.

PSP: What was your sales volume in 1983?

Rice: About $70 million.

PSP: How do you explain your company’s incredible growth?

Rice: Hard work, luck and just a lot of good timing. We hit the market at the right time. And we had enough energy to do the job.

PSP: When you say timing, what do you mean?

Rice: It was a new, quality item, and it hit the market before the natural products craze. The craze hit hard around the late sixties. We had the only natural suntan lotion out there at the time. We had a good organization, people liked the image of Hawaii and they liked the fragrance. The only weak link in the entire organization was that we didn’t have much money. But, had I had a lot on money to launch this product–and hadn’t started at zero–probably the product wouldn’t be where it is right now.

PSP: What were you like in the beginning?

Rice: I was driven to the point that I had to work physically and mentally all day long. I had to load the trucks myself, write the invoices, do everything before I could feel comfortable about going home at night. This was back when we had one little building. As a matter of fact, (points out the window) it was that little building right there, and that was our thirteenth location around Daytona.

PSP: When did you know that you really had something?

Rice: Immediately….but not until around three years later did I realize it was going to really grow. Then about 1973, I knew it was going to be really big. That’s when we turned the corner in the market.

PSP: What was your sales volume in 1973?

Rice: $4 million. hen it went to $15 million right away. We never could keep up with sales.

PSP: What selling methods did you use at the start?

Rice: At that time I had an old Ford Mustang convertible, and the ocean had just about eaten it apart. I just drove around to pool decks and lifeguards and little beach-front Mom & Pop stores and sold it to them. Even though it wasn’t really planned ahead of time it was a smart move to create the demand out at the beach first. After that it went into the high-fashion stores in New York and then into the chain department stores across the country.

PSP: Did you call on those store?

Rice: I did some, and I hired other people by that time who specialized in that.

PSP: Where did your sales force come from?

Rice: When I quit teaching and coaching, I brought a lot of teachers and coaches and ex-football players with me. When they saw the business growing, they started dropping off one by one and coming with me. A lot of lifeguards came over, too.

PSP: How did you get the lifeguards to leave the beach?

Rice: They saw the potential in it and wanted to move onto something different. Many of them laughed at me then, now some of those are still working at the beach.

PSP: Are any of your original salesmen still with you?

Rice: I have one guy who controls the whole western U.S. He makes two million dollars a year now. He started back here at the beginning. Another one controls the northeast and he used to run a little scooter stand here on Daytona Beach.

PSP: Were your competitors surprised by your success?

Rice: I remember when there was a turning point in 1973. My competitors finally woke up and realized that we were really going to grow beyond their expectations. And it scared them to death. So they did everything they could to hurt me.

PSP: What did they do?

Rice: They sent the government down here to try and stop me. That was a very amusing situation. It was right before the oil prices skyrocketed, and one of the biggest companies in this business hired a team of doctors to write a report–a huge thick thing–and they submitted it to every government agency in Washington, D.C. They listed every possible thing that we could be doing wrong and then they made it sound like we were doing it.

PSP: What happened next?

Rice: I got a call on a Wednesday from the FTC in Atlanta. The official said he would come down here on Monday to meet with me and talk about these business problems. I just about panicked. I didn’t know what to do. So, I said, “Well, exactly what do you want to talk about?” And he would not tell me. He just said, “You have problems with your business.” I Didn’t have an attorney at the time so I went and talked to a friend. He said, “Yeah, that’s serious. These guys can put you out of business.” So I contacted my salesman in the Northeast and told him, “We are going up there to some of these government offices and see if we can find out what’s going on. We’re going to get the jump on ’em.”

PSP: Did you think of getting in touch with your congressman?

Rice: Yes, the next day we walked from office to office at HEW in Washington. Finally we met a guy who started laughing when we said that we were with Hawaiian Tropic. He said: “It’s funny you’re here. Look at this book. Somebody gave it to me at a party last night.” Then he said, “I can’t let you read this book, but I have to go down the hall and talk to somebody. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

PSP: Did you look at it?

Rice: Yes, I did, I saw the doctors’ names and realized what was going on. Surprisingly, the major point they were making was that we didn’t use any sunscreens.

PSP: How did you handle the official from the FTC?

Rice: When he walked in on Monday morning, I asked him right away. “Are you here because of that report everyone’s got a copy of down there in Washington?” And his eyes got real big. I realized that I had just blown his ace in the hole. From that point on he was on the defensive. He had brought his wife and three teenage daughters down with him and while we were talking they were all at a big motel by the pool over at the beach. He stayed for three days, but what really burned him was that while we were having meeting, one of the lifeguards was selling his wife and daughters forty-seven dollars worth of our products. He came back the second day just steaming because his wife had spent so much of his money on our product. He went back and recommended that the agency come after us with everything they had, but they turned him down and dropped the whole thing.

PSP: You were a chemistry teacher before you started. What made you decide to quite teaching?

Rice: I didn’t get along with the administration. I had my own ideas about teaching and motivation, and they didn’t like them. I worked in six schools in eight years and got fired five times. I can’t work for anyone else. There was just too much busy work. I could do in one hour what it took other people eight hours to do. But if I didn’t sit there and look busy–then they didn’t think I was working.

PSP: What ingredient for success did you bring to your new business?

Rice: Willingness to work. A driven motivation. I was possessed. Sometimes I’d go a whole day without eating and not realize it ’til the next day.

PSP: What would you consider your strongest management talent?

Rice: More than anything else–anticipation. I haven’t had the first marketing course or even one business course. I just went strictly by gut reactions. To know ahead of time what you’re going to do, you really have to have a keen sense of anticipation. I made a few mistakes as I came along. But I was careful and didn’t make a lot of mistakes, and things went well.

PSP: When you talk about anticipation, did you learn that from your experience with coaching?

Rice: Yes, I never had a losing team. I would hand each player reports on the player who was going to be opposite him on the line before a game. We had games a week apart. I worked nonstop on planning for a game. I’d go out and scout the other team’s players, film them, then watch the film and analyze each player in every situation. Then I’d let my players know what to expect from the other side. That’s what is takes to be a successful coach.

PSP: You mentioned earlier that you made a few mistakes. What mistakes did you make?

Rice: People were always coming to me and wanting me to invest in new things. Once I went into thirteen different businesses. I realized quickly that none of them were any good and I got out real quick.

PSP: What lessons did you learn from your mistakes?

Rice: One important thing that I learned is that not everybody is good at everything. For example, take a person who is a good salesman, but he is not a good money manager. Even if he can do a fantastic job in selling but doesn’t manage his money well, then we’ll both lose. Another thing I learned was to stick to what I know and what I do best. Persistence is very important for an entrepreneur.

PSP: What was the toughest thing for you to learn?

Rice: My hardest lesson was to learn to delegate authority. I wanted to do everything myself. When I hired employees and started delegating authority, I would see other people making mistakes–and not seeing things that I could see. At first it bugged me. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t see it.

PSP: How did you grow beyond that?

Rice: I started training people by letting them make their own mistakes and then they learned from them. It was just like helping the moth out of a cocoon. If you help him out, then he doesn’t have the strength to fly.

PSP: How did you become a sponsor of sporting events and beauty contests:

Rice: We decided to sponsor football teams, basketball teams, ski races–really any kind of sporting event because these are watched by people who get out in the sun. It has paid off very well. We’ve had three and sometimes four cars in Le Mans for the past eight years. We’ve had Paul Newman drive for us. He won the Le Mans in our car in 1978. We’ve done big promotions with Burt Reynolds. We sponsored the cars in the movie “Cannonball Run.” We also sponsor charity tournaments and Olympic training.

PSP: How do you measure the effects of that?

Rice: It’s hard to measure. It goes back to gut reaction. You know that it’s doing some good so you have to put a value on it. You know how much to spend and how much not to spend. You spend as little as possible to get as much coverage as possible.

PSP: What was your most successful promotion ever?

Rice: Le Mans has been very successful, but I think the best was the beauty contest we did in ’83. It lasted a week. We had one hundred and four girls from all over the U.S. We got fantastic coverage from it.

PSP” What is the most important quality for a top salesperson in your industry?

Rice: A good personality and a good sense of humor.

PSP: Have you ever had an offer to buy you out?

Rice: I’ve had thirty or more offers like that over the last three or four years. Revlon tried to buy us out the week before Charles Revson died. That was interesting. We met with them in New York. They are on the fiftieth floor and when you got off the elevator, there is a long hallway with plush red carpet and beautiful paintings lining the walls. It looks like you’re walking through the Louvre. I took six of my key people with me, all young guys, and we were carrying our suitcases with us in order to make a plane connection. When we got off the elevator, the receptionist could see us coming down this long hallway–seven big guys with suitcases. She was about to have a fit. She waved at us, saying, “Get back on the elevator.” So we dropped our bags down beside her desk and said, “Isn’t this the Revlon hotel?” It was hilarious.

PSP: Do you feel that you’ve exceeded your original dreams?

Rice: As I look back on it now, I still get the feeling that I didn’t really think it was going to develop into this.

PSP: Did you have doubts?

Rice: No….I didn’t even consider it. As it went along and I saw what was developing, then I built the dream. I guess that as a youngster I already had big dreams. I went back to a high school reunion and one of my buddies from school showed me that I wrote in his high school annual “One of these days I’m going to be a millionaire and I’m going to buy you a Corvett.” I didn’t remember having written that. So I went out and bought a plastic Corvette, about two feet long, and put it in a box and gave it to him.

PSP: Do you think it’s easier to make it in business today?

Rice: Yes, I do. I see opportunities today that I wouldn’t have seen before, but I also understand them now.

PSP: How many people do you think were trying to start a similar business like yours back in the late sixties?

Rice: There were certainly people who started at the same time but they did not make it because they weren’t willing to put the hard work into it. And they got diverted off into other things.

PSP: Isn’t the lack of capital the prime reason that causes them to fail?

Rice: No it’s not the money. It’s the hard work. That’s what it boils down to.

PSP: Other than hard work, to what do you attribute your success?

Rice: Reading people–and understanding human nature.

PSP: To what degree do you feel that luck was a contributing factor?

Rice: My luck was in timing and hitting the market at the right time. Just about the time that my product was coming onto the market, another company was advertising a product called Tanya. Their product was only on the shelves in Hawaii, and there were three things they advertised all over the U.S.: Hawaii, coconut oil and Tanya. Well, we were already in the market and we had Hawaii and coconut oil, so people bought our product. It was selling so fast I couldn’t keep it on the shelves. We also had great packaging. Nobody spends the money on packaging that we do.

PSP: What’s your measure of success?

Rice: Being happy. Some people measure it in money. I’m happy that I’ve been able to help a lot of other people.

PSP: What do you feel is the price of success?

Rice: Having a lot on your mind. But I always want to have a challenge. A lot of people spend all their time worrying over money and then all their time is used up. All you’ve got is time. That’s all there is.

PSP: You have once been labeled the Hugh Hefner of Daytona Beach.

Rice: I do like to enjoy myself. Back in the beginning all the guys at the beach tried to get me to go out and drink with them while I was trying to build a business. Now they’re working and I’m playing.

PSP: You were playing ping-pong in the company game room when we first arrived. Who is the best ping-pong player in the company?

Rice: We’ll there was one guy who could beat me, but I fired him. (He chuckles.) No, I encouraged him to go out on his own, and he’s done very well for himself. You’ve got to listen to your own instincts and take advantage when an opportunity comes along. That’s what it’s all about.

PSP: Thank you.