Building a D2C Brand: Food Huggers' Story [Video]

It's a dog-eat-dog world out there for brands, and it's not every day that a new product comes along and becomes a household staple across the world. Food Huggers is one of those D2C unicorns that started as a pet project and became a smashing success. Oprah Magazine called it, "Equal parts clever and cute," capturing the essence of Food Huggers' simple, yet ingenious patented design.

In this episode of "Ask the Ecom Experts," co-founder of Food Huggers, Adrienne McNicholas, shares her story of bringing products to the online and offline markets. Get a behind-the-the-scenes look at how Food Huggers handles challenges that cripple businesses big and small, like multichannel fulfillment, counterfeits and more.

Watch "Ask the Ecom Experts" Episode #7

The Full Transcript

Skip to a Section:

• What Are Food Huggers? (0:01)
• Figuring Out the Supply Chain and Funding (3:45)
• Fulfillment Challenges As a Brand New Online Company (8:42)
• Managing a 100% Virtual Team: Then and Now (10:24)
• Outsourcing Fulfillment to ShipBob (11:28)
• Evolving from a Product to a Company (12:41)
• Getting Started on Amazon and Fighting Knock-offs (14:30)
• The Power of Good, Honest Communication with Customers (19:49)
• A Minor Setback From COVID-19 (23:51)
• 10 Rapid-Fire Questions (26:33)

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What Are Food Huggers? (0:01)

Pauline, Director of Marketing, Zentail
Hi everyone. It's Pauline here at Zentail with another ‘Ask the Experts’ edition. Today I'm really excited to speak with Adrienne McNicholas. She is the CEO and co-founder of Food Huggers. Adrienne, great to have you on. Good to see you.

‍Adrienne, Co-founder, Food Huggers
It's great for you to have me. Thank you so much for inviting me.

‍Pauline
Absolutely. So we came across you, and I was so excited. I love your product. I'm a believer through and through. But for those who are watching who may not know—can you just give us a quick overview of your product and your background?

Adrienne
Sure. The beginning of the company is the namesake product, Food Huggers. And Food Huggers are silicone covers that you can put on a half lemon, half a tomato or half an onion. We've all had that [experience] where you use a little bit of a fruit and a vegetable...and then you've got the rest of it that you want to save and keep fresh. And some people throw them in plastic baggies, but that creates a lot of single-use plastic waste. Or, they wrap it in plastic wrap.

So we wanted to have an option that kept the fruit and veggie fresh, and [was something] you could reuse over and over and over again. And so we created the Food Huggers. They’re just silicone covers [with] a patented fit so that when you push your little fruit or veggie inside, it folds itself down just enough to ‘hug’ the fruit or vegetable enough and keep it safe when you put it away in the fridge for when you need it next.

Pauline
So smart. Again, I use this all the time, so I get it. What was your inspiration? What was your ah-ha moment to turn this frustrating experience into a solution for the world?

Adrienne
We'd been working on different variations (myself and my partner Michelle) and we had been working on ideas. And a lot of things [involved a full] container for the entire half...but the challenge is you want to prevent a lot of air being exposed to the piece of fruit or vegetable. You want to contain all the moisture. 

As we were trying to minimize and minimize and minimize how much air circulation was happening around the fruit or veggie, we realized we only need to protect the part where the skin has been removed. And we realized that long before we got here, Mother Nature had designed a really great cover for this fruit or vegetable, which was its peel. 

So, all we needed to do was cover the side that had been cut. And once we got to that ah-ha, then it was a fairly quick process for us to figure out how to get something that would fit and adjust. I mean, it's not like it was effortless. It took a lot of thinking and testing.‍

Pauline
Yeah. So what was that iterative process for you?

Adrienne
A lot of credit for this goes to my co-founder, Michelle, was figuring out how to get the piece to adjust itself because tomatoes come in every shape you could possibly imagine. Same with lemons and onions. You really need to have something that fits exactly whatever is being put inside. 

So we were lucky. We did a round of prototypes and we thought, ‘Okay, we could do it a little bit better than this. We can adjust this a little bit.’ And then we did another variation, and that was pretty much the version that we patented.

Pauline
Wow. That is incredible. So, I guess with testing and all of that, your patent went through, and it just proved, again, how it hugs it and just removes the air. 

Adrienne 
Yeah, exactly. It's the way that it fits onto the fruit or vegetable that is the patent—the utility patent.

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Figuring Out the Supply Chain and Funding (3:45)

Pauline 
Nice. Okay, so you got product design down. So now you have this great product. It works. How did you figure out your supply chain and find your suppliers? 

Adrienne 
We were also fairly fortunate that we had been doing product design and development for 10 years before that. So we were sort of familiar with the process of product design, and, previous to Food Huggers, had actually been a product-development-team-for-hire both as individuals and together. So we had experience with manufacturing. 

We were also quite fortunate that there was a factory we had worked with in the past, and we had several years of relationship already with this factory that ended up doing the production for Food Huggers. And so we had a factory that we could trust right out of the gate. And that's a blessing. Yeah, that's a huge head start, and that was a real blessing for us.

Pauline 
A definite gift of experience there.

Adrienne 
Yes! It helped a lot that it was not our first rodeo. We had been doing this for a little bit for other companies, but it was the first time we had ever taken a product to the public ourselves. With Food Huggers, when we had the invention we were like, ‘We really like this. This is working really well. This is exciting.’

We had just been looking in the year previous to that at Kickstarter. And Kickstarter was just starting to take off. (That was 2013.) And so for us, we had always been looking over the fence for the six months before that. [We thought,] ‘Well that looks like it could be kinda fun. We could take a product right to the people and, you know, bypass all the gatekeepers and just put it out there and see if people like it.’ And so for us it was a new experience to go to Kickstarter. And that was the first time that we had done something, and it was the beginning of the company.

Pauline 
Really cool. Kickstarter has been the starting point and launchpad for a lot of really successful companies, brands, etcetera. I think that you have another product out there live today, but I'm curious to hear your experience about Kickstarter in terms of funding a new business...Did you look into anything other than Kickstarter? Did you try to grassroots raise any funding?

Adrienne 
No. I think when we went to Kickstarter, we were looking at it very much as [just a] product at that stage. We didn't quite yet realize that we were going to be a company; we were a product. And so we were looking at it through that lens when we went to Kickstarter. In 2013, Kickstarter was a slightly different animal than it is today—because of the number of successes and the size that it's grown to, there's a lot of satellite businesses now that help you succeed on Kickstarter, whereas before it was much more sort of grassroots.

The whole Kickstarter experience in 2013, to me, felt almost like being a camp counselor. We had all these enthusiastic people and we were chatting with them, they were chatting with us. It was all very person to person, which was a really enjoyable experience. It was probably the most fun I've ever had professionally, actually—that Kickstarter campaign. It was so much fun to just be talking to people directly in the moment when we were working on [Food Huggers].

Pauline 
That is awesome to hear. That's great. Okay, so you go through Kickstarter, had some solid funding, had a supplier...then you gotta deliver upon everything, right? So again, you went to your supplier. That seems like it was pretty seamless. What happened from there?...I'd love to hear how you got from 1.2 to now you're, like, 10 steps down the line.

Adrienne 
Yeah, we were very fortunate. The fulfillment wasn't too problematic. We had a bit of a learning curve on fulfillment—I mean, we had to kiss a few frogs before we got to the warehouse that we're with today. But that happens, and it was nothing tragic. It was just a matter of figuring out what we needed, and also systems and the way our warehouses have evolved over the last seven years. So shipping and fulfillment was okay.

Then we started selling on our website. We opened up a Shopify store and we were selling online, and we had our backers. We were very fortunate also. I think we're blessed that in 2013, a Kickstarter campaign was a really novel thing...It was still a really cool thing to tell your friends about. It's like, ‘You know what? I did this thing, and I backed this thing.’ And they’d go, ‘What's that? What's Kickstarter?’ People didn't know about it. There was a lot of word-of-mouth. And the people who had backed us also told their friends who told their friends, and so we got a lot of spillover that way.

Pauline 
That's amazing. Word-of-mouth. It's like the ultimate goal, [but you] had that to start.

Adrienne 
Yeah.

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Fulfillment Challenges As a Brand New Online Company (8:42)

Pauline 
Can you talk through some of those fulfillment challenges? And, what were your needs? How have they changed over time? And then, how do the suppliers fit or not meet those demands and requirements?

‍Adrienne 
One of our first challenges was because we were so small. When you're really small as a company, a lot of warehousing systems expect that, well, everything will average out in the end. So for some packages, you may get overcharged. For some packages, you may get undercharged. But if you do a thousand packages, then you can expect a fairly smooth bell curve for how things work.

If you're just starting out and you only have a hundred packages, and all of a sudden 15 of them are way overpriced or they're going international...we just got [to the point] where the fulfillment end of things was difficult to predict the expense, and [there] wasn't a real-time dashboard where we could see in the moment. So we were being told on the 15th of the month, ‘Oh hey, by the way, last month? Crazy expensive for you.’ And [we responded],’No. We need to know when things are happening.’

And that's when we switched to different warehousing fulfillment centers that were a bit more focused on ecommerce fulfillment as opposed to ‘flash sale’ fulfillment or Kickstarter fulfillment. (Our first fulfillment house came to us through Kickstarter...when you have a Kickstarter campaign, you get contacted by people who are offering supporting services. And so we had picked one of those.)

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Managing a 100% Virtual Team: Then and Now (10:24)

Pauline 
Makes sense. So you guys are a totally virtual company. Your staff is literally spread across the world. [Did you know] that this was gonna be the route for you—that you wouldn't you wouldn't own a warehouse? You always knew that this retail route was right for you guys?

Adrienne 
Yeah...It's funny to say that we always knew it would be like this. I think we always knew that it would not be a big headquarters somewhere with a parking lot and a receptionist.

I think it still feels novel to me—even now—that none of us are in the same place. I mean, just recently for the first time, there's two of us in the same city in Madrid. But otherwise everybody is in their own corner of the world. But, with tools like Slack and Asana and email and Zoom, it's really easy to close that gap and to recreate that kind of face-to-face. I think everyone is very acutely aware of this right now—that you can have a lot of team atmosphere and you can do a lot of great work together, even when you're in your own locations.

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Outsourcing Fulfillment to ShipBob (11:28)

Pauline 
Yes. Cheers. Agreed. We might have to come to you for a couple notes on how to make this ongoing, because I think that's where we're headed. So, real quick, I believe that you guys are using ShipBob right now as your fulfillment partner?

Adrienne 
Yes, we are.

Pauline 
So they've been able to help you scale. What is something that they've provided for you now that you didn't know you needed? Now you're like, ‘Oh, I can never live without this.’

Adrienne 
It's funny. I would say ShipBob has provided for us. They have some good analytics, and the dashboard is great. They also have a very helpful, like, the pick fees are all standardized. The way you can anticipate that you don't need to worry in advance. So that's fantastic. 

And...we've grown a little so now we merit our own account person, which is a wonderful thing. We can call a particular person and say, ‘Hey, can you help us with this?’ or, ‘Hey, we have this question.’ 

We do also have a secondary warehouse where when we bring things off the boat for the first time, we hold things in a special warehouse first, and then we figure out how to move it across the country from there.

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Evolving from a Product to a Company (12:41)

Pauline 
Makes sense. So it's come up a couple times already, but...something that you said earlier in terms of, ‘We are a product and not a company.’ And so, what was that point in which you were like, ‘We're legit, you guys. We're a company.’ What was that for you?

Adrienne 
I think a part of it was we had retailers reaching out to us who wanted to sell the product. We hadn't been planning on that in the Kickstarter stage. When we were on Kickstarter, we weren't picturing that we would have a warehouse or would be selling to stores or they would be selling [Food Huggers] to their customers. But it was a popular product, and it does a good job, and so we got some stores saying, 'Hey, I'd really like to carry this.'

We had to cultivate a wholesale business that would suit eco and independent stores, and we created packaging that was suitable for retail, which is a very different item. When you're selling something online, you can show a video of how it works. When it has to go out onto a store shelf and tell its own story by itself, you need to develop packaging and other ways to frame the story. And so that was probably when we became a company. We said, 'Okay, now we've got a B2B channel.' We've got a wholesale channel. We're also selling direct-to-consumer (D2C). So it was probably around then.

Pauline
Way to go. Nice. And so what time span was that? Remind me what year did you launch your first Kickstarter?

Adrienne
2013.

Pauline
That's right, 2013. I'm sorry. So between 2013 and when you're in stores, wholesaling, how long of a time frame was that?

Adrienne
That was about two years, actually.

Pauline
That's a busy two years, Adrienne.

Adrienne
Yeah. It was about two years. We just kept going from there and selling to more and more shops.

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Getting Started on Amazon and Fighting Knock-offs (14:30)

Pauline
So cool. All right. So, you mentioned a couple already—you have your Shopify. You have your wholesale business. You are out in marketplaces. I've seen you in the Uncommon Goods catalog. You're everywhere. How did that happen? It sounds like some of it was organic. Were there any channels that you guys just outright pursued?

Adrienne
Well, we pursued being in Amazon. That's for sure. And a part of that was you can't neglect it. Another part of it was knock-offs. We were knocked-off. The Kickstarter was not even finished before there were listings on Alibaba for our product using our logo, using our photographs. And so, factories were offering knock-offs of our product before we even finished the Kickstarter.

Pauline
Wow.

Adrienne
So for us, yeah, it was quite something.

Pauline
It's like a form of flattery like they say, but no thanks.

Adrienne
Exactly. You know, they keep saying it's the sincerest form of flattery. But for us we also needed to get in, roll up our sleeves and get in there and start fighting on Amazon to get the knock-offs taken down. And so that was a process for us—that we needed to make sure partially to protect our customers [and make sure] that there weren't cheap knock-offs being offered...

We thought, 'Okay, we want to really make sure that if anyone ever buys a Food Hugger that we know for sure that it is 100% food safe, that it is FDA quality silicone, that it's been vetted through all of the standards that we vet, Prop 65—all of the safety standards.'

And to do that we really needed to make sure that we could clean Amazon up. To Amazon's credit, they were very helpful with that, first with the Brand Registry and now with Project Zero. We did a training course on Project Zero, and now...if someone puts up a knock-off, we can take it down ourselves almost immediately. So it's been super helpful that way. But that was one channel we had to sort of dive into and address.

Pauline
Yeah, really smart. I mean, knock-offs and counterfeits are a part of, unfortunately, every brand's life right now. It's good to hear that Amazon really helped you respond to that. So now that you've kind of nipped it [in the bud], do you find that it's still an ongoing trend? Or has it kind of hopefully calmed down?

Adrienne
No, it's an ongoing trend. Even this morning, I was logged into the dashboard. We use a software service that crawls Alibaba, AliExpress, DHGate, eBay, Amazon, Walmart. It goes through all of the marketplaces and it pulls up anything that...the robot thinks is a fake, and then we verify and say, 'Yes, that's a fake.' And then they petition to have it taken down. Today there was something like 142 fake avocado huggers we had to take off of DHGate. People loaded up 10 listings in Italian, 10 listings in Spanish, 10 listings in German, 10 listings in English, and so we've got to go in there and get them all taken down.

Pauline
Wow. Way to go.

Adrienne
It's our photography. I mean, it's just sorta funny. The picture that they use is like my kitchen table. It feels personally violating.

Pauline
Wow. That's a crazy story. Every day, it's like you got your coffee, open your email and you go and look at knock-offs.

Adrienne
Yeah. To be honest, it's not every day any more. For a while it was twice a week, but now, we sorta go in there, bundle it up and get everything taken down.

Pauline
That's good. I was gonna say, similarly attached to knock-offs, you have some pretty close competitors nowadays that look and do similar things. So how are you handling that?

Adrienne
Well part of it is confidence in our product. What we want is for people to find ways to be sustainable at home without having to reinvent how they do everything. Our goal is to make it easy for people to adopt sustainable habits in their kitchen. And if we do a good job of that, then we can just focus on doing a good job of that. Some people will choose to do things in different ways. Some people will choose to buy a different product. I think our product works better than other products—I wouldn't offer it otherwise.

So for us, there are competitors out there, but so far we've managed to keep focused on what we're doing. We figured if we do what we do well, and we offer good solutions, then that's great. If a customer says to me, you know, "I don't use Food Huggers. I use this other thing instead," it's their kitchen. I don't feel the need to bully my way into every home. If you have something you like, then good for you. I just think that there's a lot of people who would prefer not to use plastic baggies and plastic wrap and foil. They want a better alternative, and we're trying to offer that.

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The Power of Good, Honest Communication with Customers (19:49)

Pauline
Absolutely. Good for you. Way to stick to your brand and stick to your values. That is really important. Similar to the competition on Amazon...I'm curious, do you also have resellers for your brand or it's just you?

Adrienne
On Amazon?

Pauline
Or other places.

Adrienne
It's just us.

Pauline
Okay. So...it sounds like you don't necessarily have to monitor for, like, net pricing or anything like that.

Adrienne
No. Most of our [retailers] have their own websites, and they sell in their stores. And the other thing, I think they also appreciate that because of the existence of knock-off products and the prevalence of it, we really need to have a [zero-tolerance] policy because that makes it possible for us to detect if there's anything amiss. So if anything is off, then we take it down.

Pauline
Smart. So marketplaces, it's just you, but [Food Huggers is] available in other [sites]. So, I guess, how do you handle your resellers in terms of, I guess, customer satisfaction? Again, making sure that your product delivered through them arrives nice and neat? You know, all of that.

Adrienne
We have a great customer service team. So we were talking about how the team is in all different places, and our customer service team has people in Toronto, in Alabama, in Jamaica, in Kenya. We've just added another person in Canada. So we've got a good team of people, and we keep a close eye on orders that come in. We've always got somebody available to hop on for a question. We value our customers so much that if they need something, we want to give it to them. And so we make sure that things ship on time, and we make sure that if there's a problem, people know ahead of time. We never try to hide that there's a problem coming ahead. If there's a bump ahead in the road, we'll just tell all the passengers on the bus...so good communication and great support from the team.

Pauline
Very good. Two things. One, if you ever need to open up a Hawaii office, I'll go. Just call me. And then the second thing is, to your point of communication down the line, just a personal story real quick; for everyone watching it is, like, mid-August right now. I ordered something back in June for Father's Day. It's still yet to come. And I think [according to the most recent update] it's gonna come in September. It's terrible. It's so bad.

Adrienne
I mean, some companies are really struggling to get logistics. If you had any iffiness in your logistics before this summer and this spring, then to try and run a system that's a little bit broken right now is incredibly difficult. And so I feel very grateful that we have great suppliers and great support. I just believe—and so does our whole team—that it's so much better to come forward and say, 'Hey, thank you so much for your order. We're so grateful. It's not gonna be ready on this date. It could go this date. And if you want to cancel it, that's fine.'

We don't want to say, 'Oh no. You bought it. You have to keep to promise.' Like, if we can't deliver it, that was our promise, and we try to make sure that we try to avoid that wherever we can. Any kind of delay or out-of-stock or any kind of idiosyncratic, any kind of bump in the road takes a lot of extra work and effort. And we prefer that everything go smoothly. So we try to stay prepared.

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A Minor Setback From COVID-19 (23:51)

Pauline
Yes. On that note. What is something you weren't prepared for? What is something that really kind of took you guys by surprise in either a good or a bad way?

Adrienne
Well, listen. We're not alone. It would be the COVID pandemic, I think, without question. But for us in particular, Food Huggers has never gone to a trade show and exhibited. We'd never had a booth before or anything, so we were super excited that our very first ever trade show was Expo West. It was gonna be Expo West in Los Angeles. [To prepare,] we flew in team members from different places. You know, we built the booth. We were painting table legs, and we were putting up the wall. We were already in the Anaheim Trade Center assembling the booth for opening the next day when someone came down the aisle and said the show is off. And we were just like, 'What do you mean it's off?'

Pauline
Wow. They cancelled on the spot?

Adrienne
They cancelled the day before it opened, which at the time we were like, 'What? It's cancelled? We travelled here.' But when you look back through 2020 in hindsight, that was the right decision. I applaud them for having the guts to do it.

That was probably our biggest 'wow, we're totally not prepared for this' moment. Because as a young company in your first ever trade show, we really geared up for that. We expected it to be a big hurrah...and then it just didn't happen.

But also to the organization's credit, the people who organized that show, it was called New Hope, and they put together a $5 million fund to help the companies and exhibitors who had gone and lost business...it wasn't able to cover all of our expenses, but we did receive some support from that fund for the fact that we had flown and booked hotels and had done all those things. So I applaud them for having the forethought to cancel it because that had to be a real gut-wrenching move for them, to cancel their show on the day...That's a tough decision, and they obviously made the right one. But then also they organized this fund, and that was very much appreciated by companies like us.

Pauline
I got chills when you said that. That is tremendous. That's really good. Take care of your people, right?

Adrienne
Yeah, exactly.

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10 Rapid-Fire Questions (26:33)

Pauline
That's awesome. Okay. I could go on and on and on, but I have these 10 questions left at the end...they start off maybe a little deep, similar to what we just talked about, and then they get a little bit lighter and more fun.

Adrienne
Okay.

Pauline
Adrienne, let's see. What advice do you have for other D2C brands just starting out? Obviously you benefited from a lot of experience and connections, things like that. What would you suggest to someone else who maybe wasn't in that position?

Adrienne
I think the easiest thing is you gotta check all the details. People like to say that 'God is in the details' [meaning opportunities come when you dig through the details]...but sometimes you have to just let something go, and get it out there in front of your customers, and get the feedback. Because if you wait until you've perfected it...the other way I've heard that said is, 'You can over-polish a snowball, but if you keep polishing the snowball, it just melts away.' And so sometimes you just have to get it out there, and if your customers tell you that it's got a flaw, then you can fix it. But you'll never know that it has a flaw if you don't get it out in front of them.

Pauline
So smart. Great. What has added the most value to your organization as you've grown?

Adrienne
I mean, Skype, Zoom, things like that...when we started, it was Skype, but since then it's been Google Hangouts. It's been Zoom...We're using Loom a lot right now...Loom is good. It's like leaving a video voicemail so you can just show someone your screen, what you're looking at, what you want to try and achieve and then they get the video link. So it's like a voicemail but with video. It helps.

Pauline
Really smart. Yeah, and as it pertains to products, that's gotta be so helpful.

Adrienne
Yeah.

Pauline
Okay. So what has actually been one of the biggest hurdles you've had to overcome?

Adrienne
That's a good question. Some of it is logistics. Some of it has been the knock-offs. That's always been a constant battle, and it's had different chapters to it where we've had to fight different people in different cases. So that might be it. The flattering copycats have caused some trouble.

Pauline
Thanks but no thanks, yeah. That's fair. That's certainly a hurdle that, again, is ongoing.

Adrienne
Yeah.

Pauline
So, let's see. What do think your customers love about your products?

Adrienne
They love that it works...but also that it's easy to use. Like, it's a problem that everybody has that you could have the half lemon, half onion. We've also done a version for bowls, actually—a giant Food Hugger that just fits on the bowl you have at home. And so we just make it easy. I think that's part of it. You just do it. It doesn't need a lot of complicated steps. You don't need to read a user manual. It's like you just put it on, and it keeps things fresh. That's what they like.

Pauline
I agree. Yeah, so again, big fan. It's so simple. It's just like a simple, elegant solution. It's not over-engineered. It's not over-complicated. It just works, and it's easy. So keep doing what you're doing. Okay, great. Let's lighten things up a little bit. What is your morning routine?

Adrienne
Coffee first before anything else. And then I like to take my coffee on the corner of the sofa, and I read. No Instagram, Facebook, no email. Just read for a bit, and that's it.

Pauline
Very good. What is your favorite food?

Adrienne
Oh...I would have to go with a really good pizza, actually.

Pauline
What is one of your hobbies? Reading, clearly. What else?

Adrienne
Yes. Travel. So traveling is a huge thing for us, and I like to do that a lot whenever I can.

Pauline
Very cool. What is an item on your bucket list?

Adrienne
More travel. Japan is pretty high up there. I've never been. I would love to go. We have a distributor in Japan now, so I have a good excuse. Hoping that I can make it over there sometime soon.

Pauline
Yeah, fantastic. I hope so for you as well.

Adrienne
Thanks.

Pauline
Let's see. Do you have any COVID goals? Like picking picking up Japanese? A new language? Trying to, you know, make the most of your time during COVID.

Adrienne
I had COVID goals. I think now I'm far enough through to realize that...who I am is not changing based on...I'm keeping to my usual habits, I think. But yeah, I had a few COVID goals, but I haven't really seen any of them come to fruition. I am who I am.

Pauline
You're busy enough, and you're doing some good things for the world, so you're good in my book. Let's see. Last one, kind of a heavy one again. So what has been one of the most impactful life lessons for you? Again, personally or professionally.

Adrienne
I think impactful is really something that I had to learn repeatedly. A lot of times when you think that there is a crisis, like your adrenaline spikes, and your heart stops, and you're just like, 'Oh my gosh. This is a disaster. What a horrifying event. I'm devastated.' We survive all of it. I think that as more time goes by, it's a lot more difficult to get me panicked, whereas, you know, earlier on, something would happen and you'd think, 'Oh my gosh. This is going to be disastrous.' Now you sorta realize every disaster has [another side]. Every problem has a solution. And a lot of times you just have to take a breath, be patient and figure your way through it calmly as opposed to...I try to avoid the panic that I used to have.

Pauline
Yeah. Way to go. That is super.

Adrienne
I try. I'm not saying it doesn't ever happen anymore, but that's what I try to do.

Pauline
You and your products are an inspiration. This is awesome. I'm fan-girl over here, so thank you for your time.

Adrienne
Thank you so much, and thank you so much for inviting us. This is so flattering. Thank you.

Pauline
Same here. Thank you. Take care. Bye.