Connect with Jordan Erskine:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanerskine/
Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to this episode of the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Jordan Erskine. Jordan is an innovative founder with 20 years of experience in the cosmetic contract manufacturing industry. Jordan co-founded Dynamic Blending. Since then, Dynamic Blending has seen over a 12,500% growth in less than five years. Jordan talks about breathing new life into a stale industry and how you can innovate within your industries. Jordan, welcome to the show.
Jordan Erskine: Thank you, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here.
Lisa Ryan: Please share a bit about your background and what got you started in manufacturing and the cosmetic contract manufacturing industry.
Jordan Erskine: It's a crazy story. I graduated from high school when I was 18 years old. I didn't know what I wanted to do with myself. In my neighborhood, there was a guy who started a contract manufacturing company. I didn't know what that was. When I graduated high school, he said, hey do you want to work with me? At the time, there were ten employees or fewer. It was small. I said sure because at 18 years old, I didn't have any prospects for college. I enjoyed it.
I was learning how to develop cosmetics and skincare products from scratch. I learned a lot of that is chemistry and that knowledge, but it's an art form too. It was fantastic to see how some of these higher-end skincare products come to be. So I stuck with it and got my undergrad in finance. I left that company and went to another company, where we are contract manufacturing toothpaste for a large Fortune 50 global consumer goods company. We manufactured four to 5 million tubes a month of toothpaste, so it was a very fast-paced operation.
I worked there for about nine years and had a lot of student loan debt. I got my MBA in international business while working there at the time. I had about $140,000 in student loan debt between my wife and me. The panic started to set in that we would never pay this off. I got this weird bug, and a light bulb went off that I just needed to start my own company. I knew how to do everything on the contract manufacturing side - from development to production to package sourcing, just everything, so that's what I did. I started putting the pieces together and met up with an old colleague who worked with the first contract manufacturer.
His name is Gavin, and he went on to be an attorney. After not talking about it for about 9-10 years, we met back up. One thing led to another, and his law firm invested a little bit into Dynamic Blending, and the rest is history. We only took on about $170,000 angel investment at the beginning. To this day, we are still privately owned by Gavin and me. It's wild.
Lisa Ryan: So, when you're talking about a 12,500% growth in less than five years, I'm sure that people are listening to this podcast with their ears perking up, saying, I would like to have a small percentage of that. What were some things that you did that set you apart in such a short time?
Jordan Erskine: I learned from the other contract manufacturers I worked for and knowing that this is my company, I want to build it my way. One thing that was important to me was the team. I started recruiting people. I got a couple of key people who couldn't afford higher salaries because we couldn't afford them. They were subject matter experts, so we gave them equity. We gave them a percentage of equity in Dynamic Blending. That sparked an interest. Some of them worked for us for a while for free until we could start affording that. The first thing is that I knew I needed the team in place in every single area to help us grow to where we needed to...
