3A: Your Entrepreneurship Story

3A: Your Entrepreneurship Story

For the past 3 years I have worked at Havana Sun Quality Sun Care Cosmetics, which is a brand-new sunscreen line made by Ron Rice, the founder of Hawaiian Tropic. Ron started making Hawaiian Tropic in a trash can in Daytona Beach. He told me that he would walk out on to the beach and find the girls with the best tans and tell them to tell people that their tan was Hawaiian Tropic. He would sit on the life guard towers and people would come and buy the tanning oil and sunscreen from him. Ron brought up the brand to what it is today, and he did it without social media, one of the biggest things we use in marketing now. When working for Ron, running marketing for his new company, I always wanted to buy ads and promotions on Facebook and Instagram. Ron would always tell me no and that it wasn’t worth the money. At first, I thought that he was stuck in his old ways, but he told me that he would rather people know his brand for what it really is, a personal experience that goes along with memorable events. He would rather pay people to go out and approach people on the beach, talk to them, give them a sample of the product, let them see how good it smells, make them smile, and make them remember you and the brand, than post something that may or may not affect someone.

(Below is two flyers, one for Havana Sun, Ron's new company, and the second for Hawaiian Tropic, Ron's original company.) 

I enrolled in ENT3003 because I have always been interested in new businesses and the excitement that goes along with them. I hope to better understand all the details of how different businesses can start and grow into successful companies by the end of this class.