Ron Rice’s recipe for international notoriety and untold riches started with a $4 rubbish can and damaged broom deal with for stirring.
The concoction he settled on, over 50 years in the past, would grow to be Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion and, by way of Rice’s tireless promotional efforts, ultimately made Rice’s Ormond Seaside house a celebration vacation spot for a worldwide Who’s Who of the wealthy and well-known.
Rice, scuffling with declining well being in current months, died Thursday in that 12,000-square-foot beachfront house. He was 81.
From a Thursday morning Fb submit: “It’s with a lot sorrow that Ron’s household would really like everybody to know of his passing this morning. Please permit us privateness on this time of grieving. Ron was beloved and admired by many.”
“Liked and admired” for a very American fashion of blending work with pleasure.
“He confirmed us tips on how to promote your product, but additionally have a good time whereas doing it,” stated Linda Kramer, a longtime Hawaiian Tropic affiliate who remained as one in every of two on the Rice payroll till the tip.
You might inform a rags-to-riches story of a poor boy, from a dirt-poor household within the mountains of Asheville, N.C., who’d develop as much as grow to be wealthy and well-known.
Or a child who first noticed the Atlantic Ocean on a household trip, instantly grew wide-eyed and vowed to sometime return and by no means go away.
Or a summertime lifeguard in his adopted Daytona Seaside, recent out of the College of Tennessee, who noticed numerous bottles of Coppertone suntan lotion and thought, “I can try this!”
Or a struggling native highschool science trainer who used his primary chemistry data to strike gold.
Ron Rice was all of them.
“It’s virtually proper out of the Mark Twain tales,” stated long-ago advertising accomplice Allan Cohen. “Right here’s this child within the Carolina mountains, working round barefoot, promoting Christmas wreaths, working onerous like his father taught him. In some ways, I believe he was the unique Jed Clampett.”
As a substitute of effervescent crude — “Texas tea” — for Ron Rice it began with some mineral oil, coconut oil, some extracts, some this, some that — “a bit ABC with XYZ,” he as soon as defined. He employed a pair of 11-year-old youngsters to fill the primary bottles of his lotion, one bottle at a time, from that rubbish can.
Earlier than lengthy, his eight-year profession as a neighborhood college trainer and assistant soccer coach was over.
“I didn’t assume it’d go anyplace at first,” he as soon as stated. “I simply thought it’d be one thing enjoyable to do within the summertime.”
Rice initially referred to as it Tropic Tan, however quickly discovered that identify already belonged to another person, so he went with Hawaiian Tropic, bottled and offered it himself, then offered some extra, and a few extra, ultimately landed a distributor, and inside a decade was properly on his option to constructing a worldwide model.
“We have been making a living hand over fist,” Rice stated just a few years in the past. “We didn’t know what to do with it.”
A job with perks
Rice was an early participant in what would grow to be generally known as guerilla advertising — getting a product’s identify within the mainstream by way of quite a lot of promotional strategies, a few of them unconventional.
It labored, as Hawaiian Tropic turned a mainstay on the cabinets in drug shops, grocery shops and T-shirt outlets the world over — a far cry from the surfside distributors who first agreed to promote his wares on the World’s Most Well-known Seaside.
Finally, he absolutely cashed in.
In 2007, roughly 4 many years after filling his first rubbish can with tanning oil, Rice offered the Ormond Seaside-based firm for $83 million. However not earlier than placing collectively a number of lifetimes-worth of jet-setting enjoyable and video games, together with his annual Miss Hawaiian Tropic contests (from 1983-2010), which started in Daytona Seaside earlier than going nationwide and across the globe.
“I got here into the corporate when it was already properly established,” stated Kramer, who was Rice’s promotions director from 1985 by way of the 2007 sale. “That was when Ron may transfer away from the hustling — getting the product into shops — to begin concentrating on selling it, discovering new issues. He actually embraced the marketing. The pageants have been his large factor.”
Rice and Hawaiian Tropic turned synonymous along with his large roster of younger girls who traveled to main worldwide occasions and promoted the product. Kramer choreographed these outings and remembers it as a mixture of a lot work however a lot enjoyable.
“I believe Ron discovered the issues he loved and located a option to put himself in that sphere,” she stated. “Someway he all the time managed to search out himself there.
“We might have a good time. The ladies, they’d simply stroll into an occasion and everyone was like, ‘Oh, my, it’s the Hawaiian Tropic women!’”
A couple of years in the past, Rice acknowledged the plain: “The perks that got here together with all of it have been superb.”
Quick occasions
Among the many movie star judges Rice courted in the course of the pageant’s run was a future United States president, Donald Trump, who met his second spouse, Marla Maples, when she was a Miss Hawaiian Tropic contestant. Trump’s relationship with Rice and Rice’s annual occasion was additionally seen because the impetus for Trump’s later buy of the Miss Universe franchise.
The preliminary pageant befell on the Plaza Resort, one of some Daytona-area motels owned by Allan Cohen’s household.
“The social gathering was inside, the pageant was outdoors,” Cohen stated. “I’ll always remember, we obtained hit by a water spout. The spout hits and knocks some folks over, some folks obtained damage. And there’s Ron up on the stage, and he received’t cease. And that’s the best way he was; he by no means stopped.
“All the time doing large issues, selling. He was superb. From there, he’d go throughout, to Mardi Gras, the Ultimate 4, then find yourself on the Cannes Movie Pageant. He traveled 300 days a yr.”
Previous to the pageants, Rice was constructing the model in additional conventional methods, together with by way of motorsports sponsorships.
Rice not solely beloved high-end private vehicles, however sponsored a number of racing efforts — his most profitable NASCAR run got here as sponsor of Donnie Allison’s automobile, owned by Hoss Ellington, within the late Seventies. Allison was driving the No. 1 Hawaiian Tropic Oldsmobile within the ’79 Daytona 500 when he famously wrecked (and later fought) with Cale Yarborough on the ultimate lap.
“I didn’t have a complete lot of interplay with him, however once I did, it was all the time a constructive relationship,” stated Allison. “What we had was good. He wasn’t a hands-on sponsor, however when he confirmed up, boy, everyone knew.
“He was all the time thinking about how the automobile was working. If he didn’t name me after a race, he’d have someone else name to see how issues have been going.”
Rice additionally put his firm identify and colours on Billy Meyer’s drag-racer, in addition to the 1979 Le Mans runner-up Porsche co-driven by Paul Newman.
As for his private wheels, Rice owned the Lamborghini pushed by Burt Reynolds (who turned an in depth pal) within the 1981 movie, “Cannonball Run.”
In its “civilian” life, that Lamborghini was parked at Rice’s Ormond Seaside house, the rambling, art-filled home the place he spent the majority of his grownup life. It’s tucked in behind roadside foliage on A1A, throughout from Oceanside Nation Membership’s second inexperienced, however there have been occasions when it was the middle of the social gathering universe.
Regionally, the city would buzz for days after phrase unfold about Rice’s most up-to-date blow-out at his beachfront unfold, which features a disco and an indoor-outdoor pool.
The roster of invitees was a large combine {of professional} athletes and A-Checklist celebs of the day. Amongst them: O.J. Simpson, Joe Pesci, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carey, Benny Hill, Jim Kelly, Julio Iglesias, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chris Farley and Leslie Nielsen.
‘By no means stopped working”
Over the previous few years, in an effort to chronicle his superb life, Rice collaborated with writer Jeff Snook on an autobiography, “Nice Occasions and Tan Strains.” Work slowed down at occasions for varied causes, and up till his ultimate days, Rice was serving to kind by way of pictures and writing captions for the e book that may now be printed posthumously.
“When Ron lately turned critically in poor health, I spotted he in all probability wouldn’t reside lengthy sufficient to carry his printed autobiography in his fingers, and that breaks my coronary heart,” Snook stated. “It’s onerous to consider he’s gone, just because he was one of many hardest and most resilient guys I ever knew. I’ll miss him, his big chuckle, his dry humorousness and our conversations, however I’m honored to have had a component in telling his complete story to the general public.
“I’ve by no means met anybody fairly like Ron Rice,” Snook added. “To say he was a self-made success is the biggest understatement I may ever make. He grew up a poor nation boy from Asheville, and began working odd jobs as a toddler simply to make a nickel or two, and it appeared he by no means stopped working till the day he died.”
The truth is, lately, after honoring a non-compete clause within the sale of Hawaiian Tropic, Rice began a brand new suncare line, referred to as Habana Brisa. It has but to hit the market because of supply-chain points, however will ultimately be manufactured and distributed in Ormond Seaside.
Coincidentally, historical past has repeated itself with this endeavor. The product was initially referred to as Havana Solar, however like “Tropic Tan” 5 many years earlier, that identify was additionally taken and Habana Brisa was born. Historical past additionally repeated when it comes to Ron Rice’s drive to construct a product.
“Even on his deathbed,” Cohen stated, “Ron was selling Habana Brisa.”
Rice was married twice, together with a short second marriage within the early Nineteen Nineties to Darcy LaPier, an aspiring actress who’d been a Miss Hawaiian Tropic contestant a number of years earlier. They’d one daughter, Sterling. Rice, years later, stated he and Darcy rekindled a friendship and remained expensive pals thereafter.
Although he counted pals from the south of France to the west aspect of Manhattan, from Southern California to Honolulu, he claimed to have by no means, at coronary heart, left the Florida surfline. Or, judging from a Carolina accent that by no means absolutely subsided, the hills of Asheville.
“You ask me what it’s prefer to be Ron Rice,” he as soon as instructed a TV interviewer. “I used to show college and I used to make $4,300 a yr. 4 thousand of that was the educating half, $300 was the teaching half. I did that for eight years. I may return to that if I needed to, however I’m not saying I need to return.
“It’s enjoyable and there’s lots of further toys concerned, and lots of enjoyable occasions, and I drink a bit better-quality wine, after all, however I’m nonetheless a rustic boy.”
He additionally recalled the earliest days, when he sat atop a Volusia County lifeguard tower as a way to complement his educating wage. He noticed lots of Coppertone in these days, and hardly the rest, and a seed was planted.
“I assumed, there’s room for an additional product right here,” he stated. “One thing good can come of this.”
https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/sports activities/2022/05/19/ron-rice-dies-81-made-hawaiian-tropic-household-name-worldwide/9753489002/