We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tommy Nee. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tommy below.

Tommy, appreciate you joining us today. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job?

The most important lesson I learned in a job prior to starting my company, Sun Potions, is to always be proactive. If there’s something you can handle now, handle it. If there’s an issue you can foresee now, go ahead and take the steps to minimize it or eliminate it. As a business owner, surprises and things that are out of your control come up almost everyday but if you can be proactive about the things within your control, it makes those surprises much easier to deal with when they arise because you’ve attended to the other things and have the resources and bandwidth to deal with the curveballs.

Tommy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

In a nutshell, Sun Potions creates sustainable skin care products. Our flagship product is our mineral sunscreens but in the last 2 years since our conception we’ve expanded to include all kinds of sustainable skin care products. All of our products are made in small batches in Dallas, TX and we pride ourselves on being Sustainable & Human-Made. Our primary interest is to create products that are safe and healthy for people. There’s no reason why effective sunscreen, or cosmetics in general, need to also contain ingredients that are going to disrupt your hormones or potentially cause cancer later in life. There’s no reason why companies need to cut corners and use sub-par ingredients just to make a few extra dollars. Sustainable & Human-Made mean that our products are good for you and good for the Earth. You won’t find any harsh ingredients in any of our products, and when we’re able to, we use ingredients from local suppliers. We believe that companies can make products that are sustainable, good for people, and still profitable because when we focus on making things a little better, every one wins!

I’m a cinematographer & photographer by trade. I was going on a lot of video/photo trips to some pretty exotic locations like Hawaii, Panama, Brazil, the Galapagos Islands, and there was always diving and surfing involved on these trips. As you can imagine I was using a lot of sunscreen on these trips and I started going down a rabbit hole about the differences between chemical and mineral sunscreen, what makes a sunscreen reef safe, and what are the safest and most effective sunscreens.

I was pretty shocked to learn that conventional chemical sunscreen is actually pretty bad for you and the environment. The active ingredients are all hormone-disrupting and harmful to marine life, so I switched to a mineral sunscreen made with non-nano zinc oxide. I liked most of the mineral sunscreens I tried out but they were never quite exactly what I wanted out of a sunscreen. They were either too thick or not thick enough. Or didn’t hold up long enough in the water. So I set out to make my own and Sun Potions was born. Our flagship product is our mineral sunscreens but we’ve expanded to include other sustainable skin care products such as a grass fed & grass finished Tallow & Beeswax Lip Balm, a healing body balm, and even an exfoliating coffee scrub for the shower! My goal is to educate people and get people psyched about using sustainable products that are good for you and the Earth!

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

At Sun Potions all of our products are created in small batches. I personally do all the formulations. Initially, I started just experimenting in my kitchen. We’ve come a long way since then and now have a facility that does the manufacturing. I still work on the formulations for new products and when I find something I like, we begin making it in our manufacturing facility.

Finding a manufacturer is tricky, especially because we’re so vigilant about maintaining the integrity and sustainability of our products. It’s not glamorous but finding the right manufacturer just involves making a lot of phone calls, asking a lot of questions, and not compromising on the quality of your products.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

This is one of my favorite things to talk about. For Sun Potions, we have both B2B clients like surf shops, small markets, and outdoor stores; and B2C clients- people just like you! For our B2B clients, I find the best way to keep in touch is usually with just a phone call. I have a somewhat personal relationship with all of our retailers and consider them friends, so staying in touch is actually pretty easy. This is definitely by design. I like to work with other small business owners, which makes for a great working relationship and also, friendship. I think it would be tough to have a friendship with a buyer from a large grocery chain or something like that. Not because those buyers aren’t friendly but because they’re dealing with such a high volume of manufacturers and distributors it would be tough to nurture much of a personal relationship.

For our B2C clientele, I like to stay in touch and foster brand loyalty via content creation, maintaining quick response times when customers reach out via email or our social channels, and adding a personal touch to orders like handwritten thank you notes. I hate spammy emails and “salesy” social media content so I try to always make our content entertaining, engaging, and authentic. My favorite campaign we recently launched is the Sun Potions Photo of the Week email campaign. As I said before, I’m a photographer & cinematographer by trade, so this is a great way to share some of my favorite photos I’ve shot and connect with our audience in an authentic manner.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sunpotionsshop.com/
• Instagram: @sun_potions
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommynee
• Other: tiktok : @sun_potions
  faire: https://www.faire.com/brand/b_r9jq9hab3p
  etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SunPotions?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

Image Credits

All image credits: Tommy Nee (2024)