We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bree & Jason Goldwater. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bree & Jason below.
Alright, Bree & Jason thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
Bree was a skin care junkie, and I worked as a professional creative at an ad agency coming up with ideas to help bring brands to life. It was 1999, we’d been married for a few years and neither of us had a clear sense of where we were headed in life or a big education to help get us there. We often joked about how what we lacked in brains, we made up for with a great sense of humor and an even better sense of style.
Little did we know, that was our secret sauce.
One day we were driving around joking about the bikini waxing class Bree was taking at the Beauty School she was attending and I said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we opened up a bikini waxing salon and called it BOX?” We laughed, leased a space a few days later, and primping people’s private parts has been our family’s business for nearly three decades.
Back then, the independent bikini waxing shop didn’t exist. Licensed Aestheticians provided waxing, but it was typically done as an add-on service, performed in the back room of a nail or hair salon, and “quality” isn’t a word widely used to describe the experience.
We had $6K to our name, and opened with the sole purpose of grooming vaginas. We trademarked BOX®, juxtaposed the tawdry euphemism with tasteful brand conversations & meaningfully designed spaces, and bought the category URL bikiniwaxing.com. Oncce we became masters of the bush, we broke out the body parts (e.g., lip, chin, brows, legs, toes, nose, etc.), put a price to each and became masters of those, too.
Our original location was unintentionally located right next door to a transgender bar in Las Vegas, which gave us conveyor belt of all things below the belt and allowed us to expand into new areas. We built pop-up shops in high-end zip codes like on Manhattan Avenue in Manhattan Beach, CA, and on Main Street in Telluride, CO — both of which created an even bigger conversation about us.
A few years ago, we sold the name BOX® for just shy of $1M, and maintained the rights to operate our existing shops in Las Vegas and Manhattan Beach, CA. We built another shop in Nosara, Costa Rica, and we’re slowly getting ready to open it. Sac & Crack® has since become a super popular deodorant exclusively formulated men’s downstairs’, and it’s only sold in-store or online at bikiniwaxing.com.
We now go by the name Human Landscapers®, so if you’re in the market for the best wax this side of a backside, please look us up.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Bree always wanted to be in the skin care industry, because she’d grown up with bad skin and dreamed about helping people with similar issues one day.
I was an ad guy looking to level up to a national agency, and the only way to get there was to come up with a big idea.
BOX was our “it”.
Bree had a customer service background that was second to none, thanks to a career that catapulted her to the highest ends of Las Vegas’ celebrity restaurant scene. Add in my desperate need for the afore mentioned big idea, and voila!
The most difficult part of any idea is the execution.
We were a first-of-a-kind business, our individual skillsets matched perfectly, and we were just the right amount of stupid, which made it easy for us not to overthink anything.
Bree made everyone comfortable, regardless of how uncomfortable (or painful) the situation was. I designed spaces that made people forget why they were there, and together we did funny stuff that kept people talking about it all while garnering national attention in newspapers like the New York Times, and all sorts of beauty magazines.
I wrote long copy on doors, opened pop-up spaces in wild places, we threw nostril waxing parties on street corners, Bree gave a Sac & Crack wax to all the guys on an episode of Showtime’s Gigolos, etc.
Basically, we made ripping the hair out of people’s private parts with hot wax a good time — And we still do.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Never go into business with your spouse.
Bree and I were lucky to come through it unscathed, still very happily married and even better than the best friends we started out as.
We share an unbreakable bond that’s more rare than the Hope Diamond.
But there were so many moments where we walked a thin line between making it as husband & wife, or losing everything we had because we’d become business partners.
I couldn’t show up at work every day like a normal business partner, given the nature of what we did. Bree carried the whole work load while I stayed at home with our kids thinking up funny stuff to do for BOX. That was like a resentment stew.
Our kids saw every argument, every tough financial moment, every mistake. There was never any reprieve from any of it, because BOX became our life.
Neither of our kids (now 18 and 23) sees being an entrepreneur without seeing how difficult a path that is first.
Of course, they do see and get to experience the fruits of our success, which is awesome considering how challenging it is to keep a small business alive for this long.
But in hindsight, Bree and I would tell you that starting a business together was the best & worst decision we ever made.
To make it through that gantlet, you have to have to have a special kind of love and still be a little bit stupid.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
We made it through the housing crash of 2007/08, and lost our family home. But the Pandemic is what nearly killed us.
Bree was like a clandestine operative secretly waxing vaginas behind closed doors. The world might of shut down, but she did not.
As a result, we now operate in a significantly smaller spaces at a Sola Salon in Las Vegas. Our shop in Manhattan Beach is more aligned with our original brand, but we sublet the front half of the space to an amazing nail salon called Jaunt Beauty Co. to help offset the rent.
Along with our niche line of small batch ointments for balls, breakouts & boo-boos available at bikiniwaxing.com, we also sell Tiny Shops to anyone looking to break into our business.
We grew an entire industry, and almost thirty years later, we keep it growing by thinking small.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://humanlandscapers.com/
- Instagram: human_landscapers
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/jasongoldwater