It has been a big year for Suzy Batiz. The Poo Pourri founder stepped back in as CEO in April, after passing the baton to Jeff Berry in 2020. “It has been really rewarding for me personally, coming back in and saying, ‘Oh, hold on, I am a completely different person,’” Batiz said.
Her company, which centers on natural deodorizers, recently entered the home and personal care categories with a natural women’s deodorant, Pitt Pourri, a foot deodorizer, Sole Pourri, and an air care product called Home Pourri—the latter of which exceeded forecasted launch sales by 1,320 percent. Poo Pourri also launched a humorous partnership with Super Coffee, pairing healthy coffee drinks and “Vanilloo Latte”-scented Poo Pourri.
D CEO recently caught up with Batiz for her thoughts on leadership, 2021 milestones, and more.
Q: What was it like to return as CEO, and how did it come about?
BATIZ: “The CEO I had in had a couple of family members that were going through some medical conditions, and he also lived in Los Angeles, so whenever we were coming back into the office, it seemed like timing didn’t work out. So, instead of getting another CEO, I decided to come back. I really missed it. It’s always funny: It’s my baby, and the company seems to always do better somehow when I’m there.”
Q: How did your leadership style changed during your time away?
BATIZ: “Believe it or not, this is the first year we’ve actually had KPIs. We’ve always just run and had a very creative organization. I brought in a lot more structure than we have in the past. And that’s working out really well. I’m glad that we didn’t have a lot of structure early on, but I can see also the benefit. I think sometimes some of the larger companies almost have so much structure that they’re not creative at all, and they can’t move quickly. And we were the opposite, where we were mostly creative, but we had very little structure to hold things in place. So, now I’ve found a middle ground between creative inspiration and creative action and proper structure that holds everything together…
“I was just innocently saying to a friend that if I had another company, I would want all contractors. It’s a very clean agreement, right? It’s like here’s a service, here’s some money, you come back. You don’t have a lot of emotional responsibility. It’s literally like I’m paying for a service. So, that was my inspiration. I thought what if I can come back in and put KPIs [to say] ‘Here’s what I’m giving you in exchange for your check.’ And yes, we have an amazing environment. We have a great culture, and we have all kinds of perks, but at the end of the day these tasks are what I’m actually handing money over for and what you’re actually receiving money for…it also takes the stress off of the organization, because people know what to do.”
Q: You’ve launched one product per month for the past three months. What has the rapid buildout and launch been like?
BATIZ: “I’ve been developing products for other product lines for at least 12 years. We just never launched them because after that first video in 2013, I had decided to go into lots of categories: pet, home, all of that. I had hired DDB of Copenhagen to do a creative project with us—a rebrand—and there was an amazing lady there, and she said, ‘Excuse me, but I know that you’re self-funded and you guys have kind of a limited bandwidth. So, why aren’t you determined on being the Red Bull of your category or the Bandaid? And why are you doing all these other products that take the focus away?’ And it was perfect. It was one of those aha moments. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re right!’ That’s going to take a lot of attention.’
“So, for the past seven years since that conversation, we’ve been really focused on gaining distribution and becoming leaders and holding that spot of being the leaders of the category that we’ve created. Now that we have that, and we have distribution in Walmart, and Target, and most major retailers, now is the time for us to actually launch these products…Next year, we have lots of other products coming out. They’re going to be pet, baby, anywhere you can you have odor.”
Q: What was that moment like when you realized you had made it in your industry?
BATIZ: “It was just this moment when we started looking at where are the opportunities, where are the number of doors that we’re not in, and we realized that we’re in about 60,000 retail doors, and it was sort of that moment where we kind of sat around like ‘We’re in 58,000 retail doors.’ And that’s when we really said ‘OK, I think now that we’re in all these doors, we can start bringing in other products.’ It was also this proud moment of realizing, ‘Wow, we did go that far. Not only are we in all those doors, we really are the leaders of the category. We have very little to no competition in those categories.’”
Q: Tell me about this new partnership with Super Coffee.
BATIZ: “I had developed a coffee-scented Poo Pourri years ago, and I’ve really been looking for a partner to launch it, and I thought ‘Oh my God, it’s so funny. Coffee makes you poop.’ Most people know that. And one of my friends is an investor in Super Coffee and he introduced me to the founder, and then he and I are on the phone and I’m like ‘Dude, I made a coffee-scented Poo Pourri. We should collab,’ and he was like, ‘Oh my God, this is the most genius thing ever!’”
Q: What trends are you seeing in consumer goods as the pandemic continues to evolve?
BATIZ: “The trends are people are more focused on buying online. People are more focused on health and wellness, which I think is amazing. People are also more focused on quality over quantity…We value community and our homes a lot more, which helps us as a business because that’s the business we’re in.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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