We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrea Faulkner Williams a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Andrea, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
Tubby Todd was built as a solution for our own children’s sensitive skin. For years we struggled with dryness and eczema, and smooth skin always seemed impossibly out of reach. It was frustrating spending money on yet another product that wasn’t helpful, clean, or safe for our little ones.
Out of those discouragements came a drive and passion to create our own clean, bath products, and we spent years developing and testing them in our own home. We’ve since grown Tubby Todd into an entire line of body care basics with natural extracts that have worked miracles for our family and became the solution we had been looking for all those years.
Our product efficacy is what sets us apart from the hundreds of other premium baby care brands. We have over 30,000 5-star reviews on our site, and an army of Tubby Todd fams who swear by our products. Because our community has been the thing that has spread the Tubby Todd love and built our brand, everything we do internally is focused on building up this same community— their families and their little ones.
As Tubby Todd has grown, we have started to consistently host play dates and events across the country to give back to the community that shares and loves our products, and ensure we continue focusing on giving back to this same community. In 2023, we will have donated product or money to over 25,000 families, many of them being a part of our current Tubby Todd community. We run contests, giveaways and opportunities weekly giving our community a chance to win or gift Tubby Todd to those they love.
Other than our effective products, our community is the second thing that differentiates us from any other brand in our space. We consistently discuss how we would treat a friend and then try to model that behavior for any interaction, product development, or content that we share with our customers. It’s a beautiful, reciprocal relationship that we love to be a part of Tubby Todd mamas forever.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Andrea Faulkner Williams, and I am a mama of four who lives in Carlsbad, California. My husband and I started and run Tubby Todd together. We always had a dream of owning our own business together and for years we thought of product ideas that did not pan out. After our first child arrived and we were expecting our second, we started to develop natural bath care products. I have a background in social media marketing, and also have self-published two different books; my husband has a background in manufacturing and sales. The stars and bubbles aligned when we met the perfect form who helped us create our first product, our signature Hair + Body Wash. It met the sensitive skin needs of our little ones and also was so enjoyable to use as a parent. We did not have any funding or money for marketing the product, so we decided to send it along to friends and family with any social following and see what their feedback was of the product. This was almost 10 years ago, and we have since built a brand with over 20 full-time employees, built our family with four little ones, and are still loving our experience of building Tubby Todd.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
While I was pregnant with my third child, we had a few isolated experiences of customers finding mold in their product. It had to do with the packaging at the time, and the fact that moisture was being introduced during the customer using the product in the bathroom. The product had previously undergone testing, but the packaging and exposure to moisture was something that was unforeseeable. I was experiencing prenatal depression at the time and a very difficult pregnancy. I was miserable, trying to take care of two small children and my husband was still holding another full-time job to help fund the business. Instead of hiding the mold experience, we emailed all of our customers who had purchased the product and explained what happened. We offered to refund them and sent them a new product free of charge. it was time-consuming and overwhelming, but in the end, I felt better being transparent with our consumer and handling the situation the way I would want it handled if I had been the customer. People responded so kindly, and it gave me so much confidence as a business owner that we could weather difficult storms as a business. It also gave me reoccurring pregnancy, mold dreams that I probably will need therapy to forget, but let’s not talk about that.
Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.
In 2022 we sold a portion of Tubby Todd to a private equity group. My husband and I still sit as the operators and work closely with the private equity group as we continue to build Tubby Todd. The day the deal closed I burst into tears, hysterically, crying and told my husband that we had just sold our baby. He didn’t have the same emotional reaction, and was confused when I told him we immediately needed to go get pregnant and have another child. A possible irrational reaction… It has been almost a year and a half since the sale has closed and we still are processing the experience of building and letting go a portion of what we have built. The decision to sell a portion of Tubby Todd was made so that the brand continue to grow. It is difficult as an entrepreneur to think that anyone can help build your brand the way you can. But, as our brand reached a certain size, it was very clear that if we would allow other partners to come in and help us, we could extend our reach as a brand and opportunities for our team members who have been such a big part of our journey. The timing of knowing when to bring in partners in a small business is a tough one! I sincerely hope every entrepreneur, especially female entrepreneurs who are currently trying to build a family while building a brand, will reach out and find someone to help them make those tough decisions. Stay true to your company mission, but stay open to allowing others who know more about brand growth than you do. It’s a humbling, balancing act, but you can do it.
Contact Info:
- Website: Tubbytodd.com
- Instagram: @tubbytodd personal: @andreafaulknerwilliams
- Facebook: Tubby Todd
- Linkedin: Andrea Faulkner Williams
- Youtube: Tubby Todd Bath Co