Andrea Lisbona grew up in Barcelona, Spain, in a family of entrepreneurs. She knew she wanted to follow in the family tradition and start her own company, but she wasn't sure where to start. Ultimately, she started looking for a product category that was mature the transformationbut it wasn't in a space with a lot of competition.
Ultimately, she settled on hand sanitizer. This was in 2014, and Lisbon believed that hand sanitizer could become more of a daily routine product, like skin care—if only it looked and smelled better. “Nobody expects to clean their hands,” she says. “This has been done primarily in the health care space.”
So she and her husband launched a range of hand sanitizers in Barcelona, but struggled to establish the brand in the European market. “We knew we had a good idea, but to make it really take off, we had to leave our families and cross the Atlantic to the US,” she says. “That's what we did in 2018.”
They moved to Miami with their disinfectant company, Touchlandwhich, ironically, was doing well until the pandemic – when everyone suddenly asked for hand sanitizer. Supply chains collapsed as all kinds of companies scrambled to capitalize.
“Everyone thinks Touchland is one good luck from covid – nothing could be less true,” she says.
But through all the chaos, Touchland stuck to Lisbon's vision of making hand sanitizer in a way that people would want for everyday use. By 2021, Touchland had a small presence in Sephora stores. Each quarter, sales were good enough that Sephora gave Touchland more space. Today, they have 163 endcaps at Sephora with 1,000 expected next year, along with retail partnerships at Ulta Beauty, Target and Kohl's. This year, Touchland expects to sell close to 20 million bottles of hand sanitizer. Next year's revenue is projected to be more than $100 million. All of this made Lisbon a finalist on our Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 list of 20 innovative leaders.
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What made big retailers like Sephora believe Touchland's hand sanitizers would sell?
Sephora saw our products sell three times more than skincare brands, even in the small spaces they gave us, so they gave us more space little by little. In two years, we took over the shuttered stores.
Two years is not long. How did you deal with the challenges that came with scaling your operations so quickly?
We've grown by triple digits year over year since 2021. No one thought a hand sanitizer company could do this. For us, it is surrounded by best-in-class partners. They must be great professionals and even better human beings. When you're growing so fast, you can't do it alone.
How have your relationships with those partners evolved?
It's about transparency and planning, and not trying to do more than you can do. We can be anywhere as a brand, but we have obligations and commitments to our partners. We look first at our obligations to our partners. When they predict a brand, they never know how well it will turn out. We have always exceeded expectations. It was to be a good partner.
Did you turn down some opportunities to get Touchland products on more shelves?
Yes, we did and it's very hard to say no. For example, we had a chance to launch internationally with many Sephora stores and we said no, we're going to start with one market, the United States. It would be great to be everywhere, but it's important to start in one market and execute. We started with one place and little by little we will grow. That's a very difficult thing to do, but I think if you want to build a brand that's here 20 or 30 years from now, it it doesn't happen overnight.`
How did you make sure you had enough strategic partnerships to grow the way you wanted?
When a supplier has a lot of business for us, they help us qualify another supplier to bring in more business. It's best for everyone to diversify.
Did your growth in retail stores — brand awareness — also help you grow online?
yes. Across TikTok and Instagram, we have 170 million organic impressions with a total of 720,000 followers. We also grew on Amazon and in many countries.
The magic of it is that we've never had to pay anyone to talk about the brand. Celebrities, micro-influencers, it's just been organic. I think this shows the quality of the product.
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