![]() But not before putting together several lifetimes-worth of jet-setting fun and games, including his annual Miss Hawaiian Tropic contests (from 1983-2010), which began in Daytona Beach before going nationwide and around the globe. In 2007, roughly four decades after filling his first garbage can with tanning oil, Rice sold the Ormond Beach-based company for $83 million. It worked, as Hawaiian Tropic became a mainstay on the shelves in drug stores, grocery stores and T-shirt shops the world over - a far cry from the surfside vendors who first agreed to sell his wares on the World’s Most Famous Beach. Rice was an early participant in what would become known as guerilla marketing - getting a product’s name in the mainstream through a variety of promotional methods, some of them unconventional. ![]() “We didn’t know what to do with it.” A job with perks “We were making money hand over fist,” Rice said a few years ago. Rice originally called it Tropic Tan, but soon learned that name already belonged to someone else, so he went with Hawaiian Tropic, bottled and sold it himself, then sold some more, and some more, eventually landed a distributor, and within a decade was well on his way to building a worldwide brand. “I just thought it’d be something fun to do in the summertime.” “I didn’t think it’d go anywhere at first,” he once said. He hired a pair of 11-year-old kids to fill the first bottles of his lotion, one bottle at a time, from that garbage can.īefore long, his eight-year career as a local school teacher and assistant football coach was over. Instead of bubbling crude - “Texas tea” - for Ron Rice it all started with some mineral oil, coconut oil, some extracts, some this, some that - “a little ABC with XYZ,” he once explained. In many ways, I think he was the original Jed Clampett.” “Here’s this kid in the Carolina mountains, running around barefoot, selling Christmas wreaths, working hard like his father taught him. “It’s almost right out of the Mark Twain stories,” said long-ago marketing partner Allan Cohen. Or a struggling local high school science teacher who used his basic chemistry knowledge to strike gold. Or a summertime lifeguard in his adopted Daytona Beach, straight out of the University of Tennessee, who saw countless bottles of Coppertone suntan lotion and thought, “I can do that!” Or a kid who first saw the Atlantic Ocean on a family vacation, immediately grew wide-eyed and vowed to someday return and never leave. You could tell a rags-to-riches tale of a poor boy, from a dirt-poor family in the mountains of Asheville, N.C., who’d grow up to become rich and famous. "He showed us how to promote your product, but also have a great time while doing it," said Linda Kramer, a longtime Hawaiian Tropic associate who remained as one of two on the Rice payroll until the end. Rice, struggling with declining health in recent months, died Thursday in that 12,000-square-foot beachfront home. The concoction he settled on, over 50 years ago, would become Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion and, through Rice’s tireless promotional efforts, eventually made Rice’s Ormond Beach home a party destination for a worldwide Who’s Who of the rich and famous. Ron Rice’s recipe for global notoriety and untold riches began with a $4 garbage can and broken broom handle for stirring when he was a fresh graduate from the University of Tennessee. Only now, he had it plated in silver.Watch Video: Ron Rice: From UT student to Hawaiian Tropic founder "He wanted to enjoy them every day."Īmong the items Rice kept in his living room was the garbage can that started it all, per the New York Times. "He's traveled all over the world and got a lot of gifts from different people he's met through his life," Navarra said. Rice filled his home with life-sized animal sculptures, framed pictures of pageant competitors, and eclectic furniture.Īmong the things that Rice kept was the garbage can in which he first created the Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion formula (bottom right). A year later, Rice sold his company for $83 million. In a trash can in his garage, Rice mixed up a combination of oils until he nailed the formula that would eventually become Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion.īy 2006, Hawaiian Tropic became the second-largest sun-care product company in the world with $110 million in sales, per the New York Times. It was during one of his lifeguarding shifts that he had the epiphany to create a product that could rival suntan lotion giant Coppertone, per The Washington Post.
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