Jessica Alba on the Honest Company, Family, and How Fame Affects Her Credibility
Enthusiasm
is infectious, unstoppable, a primal force of nature. Kind of like
malaria. Those of us born with a natural immunity to it are called
pessimists—or journalists. (The terms are pretty much interchangeable.)
We are adept at spotting the canker in the rose, to paraphrase
Shakespeare, and truth be told, we strain to see it even when it's not
there.
That
is why I feel sorry for any journalist who has to profile Jessica Alba,
an actress of uncommon beauty who has become an extraordinarily
successful and savvy businesswoman. Her enthusiasm is genuine, her
success is earned, and her disarming smile and sweet demeanor make you
ashamed of all the mean questions you wanted to ask.
Launched
in 2012, Alba's Honest Company (she is a cofounder and the chief
creative officer) has grown into a robust online subscription business
that markets a whole host of household and beauty products positioned as
safe and mostly naturally derived. Honest was valued by Fortune
this year at $1.7 billion, making it a real live unicorn, a term
generally reserved for start-ups valued at $1 billion or higher. (Though
"real" and "live" are probably not the best modifiers of "unicorn.")
Recent history shows that those hypothetical billions can evaporate into
bankruptcy as fast as you can say "dot-com bubble." But Alba's business
seems robust: Aside from its loyal online following, Honest works with
powerhouse retailers, such as Ulta Beauty (for beauty), Target, Costco,
Nordstrom, and Whole Foods, to name a few.
Alba
is perfectly composed and ladylike, sipping a glass of rosé in the
plush restaurant of the New York Edition hotel on Madison Square in New
York City. I am sweating like a pig (actually, pigs don't sweat much,
which is why they wallow in the mud to cool off, but I digress), having
sprinted across town, knocking over several members of the clergy,
pregnant women, and gawking tourists along the way, only to arrive 15
minutes late. (I'm sorry about the clergymen and pregnant women; the
tourists had it coming.) Noticing my, um, glandular condition, Alba
takes pity: "Is the fireplace hot for you? Why don't you sit here?" she
says, gesturing to her own place. She is gracious and tries not to stare
at my sorry, drippy state. Though why a big gas fireplace, the mantel
of which can only be described as faux baronial, is blazing away on a
sultry summer evening is anyone's guess.
I
think about this as I try to formulate a relevant question for her
about the direct relationship between luxury and carbon footprint—so
glaringly obvious at that very moment—and try to will myself to stop
sweating, which of course has the opposite effect. My mind wanders to
those stories about Richard Nixon cranking up the AC in the White House
as the world closed in on him so he could gaze into a roaring fire for
solace. I do not bring this up
We're
not here for my free associations but to talk about Alba's new
ventures: a line of hair-care products under the Honest Beauty umbrella,
new palettes of makeup colors, a jeans collection in collaboration with
DL1961, and oh, yes, an action movie, Mechanic: Resurrection,
costarring Jason Statham. If this is the part where your eyes begin to
glaze over, I completely understand. It sometimes seems as if every
actress or reality-TV oddity or millennial with more than 1,000
Instagram followers has a lifestyle brand.
Alba
is aware of the saturation. I wonder aloud whether she's ever
considered that if she didn't have the background she has in such a
looks-based profession, if she weren't as beautiful and glamorous, her
passion for natural products wouldn't translate so readily: "Are people
buying into your lifestyle because of who you are, not what you make?"
"I think it's a double-edged sword," she says without betraying the
slightest annoyance at the question. "It also makes people skeptical
when they see a celebrity attached. Sometimes it makes you interested,
but sometimes it could be really bad: Are they just doing it for money?
Is this just an endorsement? The products have to be great. Yes, I have a
platform because of what I do, and I have access to media in ways that
other people don't, so I can spread the word. [Customers] may be
interested because of that and try [the products]. But you can't convert
people because they're interested. What's going to convert them is
[realizing], 'Oh, my God, this is amazing.' I get messages all the time
about our products. We change people's lives."
She
proudly tells the story of a woman who sent her a message on Instagram
saying: My daughter suffered from really bad eczema. She's six years
old, and it made her feel bad about herself. We switched over to your
laundry detergent and your shampoo, and now she walks around like a
normal kid. All her rash has gone away. "That changed a six-year-old's
life," says Alba with obvious pride, "and that's real."
I
am genuinely interested in Alba's business experience and how this
35-year-old actress with no college education and no formal business
training has built such a powerful enterprise. And I gradually realize
that my initial notions are pretty much completely wrong.
We're
not here for my free associations but to talk about Alba's new
ventures: a line of hair-care products under the Honest Beauty umbrella,
new palettes of makeup colors, a jeans collection in collaboration with
DL1961, and oh, yes, an action movie, Mechanic: Resurrection,
costarring Jason Statham. If this is the part where your eyes begin to
glaze over, I completely understand. It sometimes seems as if every
actress or reality-TV oddity or millennial with more than 1,000
Instagram followers has a lifestyle brand.
Alba
is aware of the saturation. I wonder aloud whether she's ever
considered that if she didn't have the background she has in such a
looks-based profession, if she weren't as beautiful and glamorous, her
passion for natural products wouldn't translate so readily: "Are people
buying into your lifestyle because of who you are, not what you make?"
"I think it's a double-edged sword," she says without betraying the
slightest annoyance at the question. "It also makes people skeptical
when they see a celebrity attached. Sometimes it makes you interested,
but sometimes it could be really bad: Are they just doing it for money?
Is this just an endorsement? The products have to be great. Yes, I have a
platform because of what I do, and I have access to media in ways that
other people don't, so I can spread the word. [Customers] may be
interested because of that and try [the products]. But you can't convert
people because they're interested. What's going to convert them is
[realizing], 'Oh, my God, this is amazing.' I get messages all the time
about our products. We change people's lives."
She
proudly tells the story of a woman who sent her a message on Instagram
saying: My daughter suffered from really bad eczema. She's six years
old, and it made her feel bad about herself. We switched over to your
laundry detergent and your shampoo, and now she walks around like a
normal kid. All her rash has gone away. "That changed a six-year-old's
life," says Alba with obvious pride, "and that's real."
I
am genuinely interested in Alba's business experience and how this
35-year-old actress with no college education and no formal business
training has built such a powerful enterprise. And I gradually realize
that my initial notions are pretty much completely wrong.
Misconception #1:
Alba is a dilettante who breezes in from time to time to sprinkle fairy
dust about the office and isn't really involved in product development
or day-to-day operations.
Reality:
"When you're a founder of a company, there's really nothing going on
that you're not part of…so when it comes to the design of the site, the
display ads, our marketing strategy, I'm part of all those discussions
and involved in all those creative assets."
Misconception #2: She slaps her label on preexisting products from eco-friendly manufacturers and markets them.
Reality:
"We don't own our own factories. We find best-in-class manufacturers,
and then I go work with their chemists to create our formulas, or we
make our formulas in-house. It's a very rigorous process of quality
assurance and quality control. We have a sourcing department. We have a
product-development and R&D department—those are the chemists. And
then the product-development creative is on my side. So I say, 'It needs
to feel like this; it needs to smell like this; it needs to perform
like that; it should be delivered in this type of package.' And then I
work with the creative-marketing team. It takes about 18 months to make
it and to test it. And then I work with my retail team and the online
team so the product feels exactly the same online as it does [on a
shelf]."
Misconception #3: Alba is an environmental absolutist who thinks all chemicals are evil.
Reality:
"Everything is a chemical. Water is a chemical. I'm not against
chemicals. I care about human health, and I want whatever is safest and
healthiest. Some people can have very extreme points of view. I created
the Honest Company because I'm not extreme. I couldn't identify with
people who wanted to do everything completely 100 percent from nature. I
don't have a garden growing my own organic fruits and vegetables. I
don't have an organic farm where I'm raising my own livestock. That's
not my reality. So I want the best options that work for me without me
feeling like I want to compromise on health or safety. Honest is about
that happy medium, and not extreme."
More sanity:
She has had her two daughters, Honor, eight, and Haven, five,
vaccinated. She firmly believes in modern medicine and all the benefits
it affords. At work she surrounds herself with experts and, she says, is
learning every day how to translate her formidable instinct about what
products people want into a solid business practice. She believes that
even when a beauty line, for instance, is aspirational, it still needs
to be attainable. Put another way, she is very sensitive to price and
doesn't think a "foundation has to cost $75 to be good."
Sometimes
a person inadvertently tells you something about herself, something
completely off the cuff, that goes to the core of what inspires her,
what drives her, what gets her out of bed and into her stilettos. It's
the non-BS answer that she's not necessarily supposed to reveal, but in a
moment of honesty, she does. As a journalist, it's your job to sniff it
out (with varying degrees of success). On the rare occasion, and with
the rare celebrity who decides to drop her guard, the results can be
particularly refreshing.
And
that is exactly what Alba did near the end of our time together. I had
finally stopped dripping, and it was in response to a question about
what motivates her.
"A,
I'm a hustler. B, I've been working since I was, like, 12. I've lived
all over the world; I've worked all over the world with adults and seen
all these different dynamics. I've been part of a lot of businesses'
marketing strategies, and I see how they utilize someone like me. I love
learning. I'm a sponge. I haven't lost my thirst and desire to learn.
Every day is different, and I'm working toward something that I feel
really good about. So it's supergratifying."
Hustle. Work freaking hard.
Be endlessly curious. Be grateful. Be satisfied. And do it all again.
It's a recipe for happiness that even the most sour-eyed pessimist has to (perhaps grudgingly) admire.
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