1. Early life & career

2. Halo Top
    Creating an ice cream brand (2000s-2011)  Product launch (2012-2016)  Success of Halo Top (2017-present) 

3. Personal life

4. References

Justin Woolverton is an American entrepreneur and the inventor, founder, and CEO of the confectionary brand, Halo Top Creamery. He founded the company in 2011, while still working as a corporate lawyer. Eventually, he left his career to focus on Halo Top full-time.

Woolverton created the original prototype of Halo Top for himself, with the aim of creating an ice cream-like product with lower sugar. After realizing there were many health-conscious consumers who might also like what he had created, he officially founded Halo Top Creamery in 2011. During the early stages, he bootstrapped the company using funds from his legal paycheck and credit card debt, taking no outside funding.

After hitting shelves in 2012, Halo Top became one of the best selling ice cream pints in the United States as of 2017.

Early life & career

Woolverton stated that he dreamed of becoming a lawyer. From his teens, he regularly visualized standing in court giving his closing arguments, stating to BusinessInsider that he thought it "would be so fun." He studied at the University of California Los Angeles, before following his childhood dream of becoming a lawyer, studying at Columbia Law School.^[1]

Woolverton started his career as a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles, California, after he graduated. In a number of interviews, Woolverton alluded to the fact he also wrote episodes and took improv classes, something he felt was influenced by living in Los Angeles. After four years, he felt had grown frustrated with his dream job and wanted to do something different. One major factor was a ten-day trip to Hong Kong for a contract arbitration case. Rarely leaving the conference room to see the city, he felt the job wasn't what he had expected.^[2]

Halo Top

Creating an ice cream brand (2000s-2011)

While working in law, Woolverton stated he would often come up with his own recipes in his kitchen instead of store-bought ice cream. The reasoning behind this was that he wanted to restrict the amount of sugar in his diet to manage his blood sugar levels. Instead of snacks with high sugar, Woolverton often made bowls of Greek yogurt with fruit, which would be sweetened with stevia.^[3] Woolverton stated in an interview with Inc. magazine that he had practiced intermittent fasting to limit his caloric intake to certain periods of the day, while also avoiding sugar and carbohydrates completely. The high protein element in Woolverton's food and diet was also important to him. He would often only consume two meals in a short period on most days, both high in protein. The main reason for this approach wasn't just diet-focused, but also about his lifestyle. He felt this approach helped "kept his mind sharp" and disciplined. This background played a big part in how he approached the creation of Halo Top.^[4]

This idea progressed over the next few months, with Woolverton purchasing a $20 ice cream maker. He put the mix into the newly purchased equipment and realized that it was a vast improvement on what he used to make.^[5] He perfected a couple of homemade recipes and very quickly began to realize that other people might like to purchase the completed product. At this point, Woolverton decided he was going to pursue building an ice cream brand.^[3]

He has never alluded to which flavor he came up with first, but his earliest flavors were made from crude equations. While working on the recipes and experimenting with stevia and other products to manage sugar, protein and the calories of the ice cream, Woolverton came up with a number of flavor combinations. While the ingredients were an ideal choice for what he wanted to produce, often the outcomes wouldn't be. Woolverton stated his first few batches were "hard and icy, like a yogurt popsicle."^[6] Once he had created and perfected the recipes, he wanted to make a much larger batch. He eventually received permission from a co-packer to use a large mixer one weekend. Woolverton again hit a problem when the mix didn't produce the same results as in his kitchen. He then took a more scientific approach, carefully balancing gums, fibers and milk proteins to not only focus on the taste but the consistency of the ice cream.^[2]

Once the flavors were complete, Woolverton then began to experiment with overrun, a process commonly used in the ice cream industry. After a year of trial and error, Woolverton had a product they could take to market.^[2]

Product launch (2012-2016)

In 2012, Woolverton launched his product. During an interview with the BBC, Woolverton stated that the first year after launching the business was challenging. "It honestly took a year of complete failure at the beginning," Woolverton stated. With his then business partner (and fellow ex-lawyer) Doug Bouton, who joined Halo Top in 2013, they decided not to raise any outside investment from seed funding or venture capital. Instead, they funded from personal savings, friends & family and credit card debt. Without outside funding, Woolverton and Bouton had to come up with a concept that would advertise their brand to a target market of their choosing. They used with social media marketing as one of the main strategies, sending vouchers to influencers in the health and fitness industry. The research group, Mintel, stated that this strategy was key to the success of Halo Top Creamery.^[3] The limited funds were spent wisely, with branding and quality ingredients both being important purchases easy in Halo Top's existence.^[2]

After blanketing the numerous Southern California natural food retailer chains, Whole Foods became the first major company to agree to carry Halo Top. This arm of Whole Foods was responsible for the Bay area. This connection allowed Halo Top Creamery to expand to other regions in the United States through partnerships with other Whole Foods regions. While the expansion of the brand was good news, the move was costing the business financially - namely, the slotting fee that most retailers charged. Having only raised $500,000 up to this point with no outside investment, the company was only running on a month to month basis. The situation was dire enough that Woolverton applied for a predatory loan during this period but was rejected. Luckily, Woolverton and his partner were able to raise the funds, before they decided they needed to seek outside capital.^[2]

Further problems in 2014 with both production and suppliers caused further problems for the brand. Sprouts announced that they would be removing Halo Top Creamery from 200 of their stores and production failures added to the financial problems. Woolverton and Bouton secured $1 million in funding from angel investors and CircleUp in 2015. This didn't only help the business grow further but gave them a much lower risk run-rate. During this period, Woolverton first experimented with social media marketing. He began to target consumers in ZIP codes, close to stores, but who also had interests in healthy eating. The results were positive, with the health industry throughout the United States becoming fixated on the brand.^[2]

In 2015, this success and promotion led to Halo Top having to rebrand. A competitor felt their packaging and branding was too similar to theirs. This setback, however, this gave the brand an opportunity to reinvent itself, which in the long run has proved to be a beneficial milestone.^[7]

Despite the success of the brand in its early days, it hit a ceiling with the social media strategy. That changed in 2016 when a GQ reporter ate nothing but Halo Top Creamery for ten days.^[8] The article went viral and gave the brand much-needed exposure away from just health and fitness. By the end of 2016, it was the best selling pint-sized ice cream in the US with 28.8 million tubs sold.^[2]

Success of Halo Top (2017-present)

By 2017, Halo Top had grown to annual sales of $342.2 million. Woolverton also spoke about how the product and model he created was now seeing similar brands for the major players within the ice cream market to try and compete with Halo Top Creamery by using the same product and model.^{[7][9][10][11]}

During an interview with Inc. magazine, Woolverton explained that he wanted Halo Top to be a remote company, with its employees working from home and communicating through Slack and other messaging apps.^[2] It was also rumored in 2017 that Woolverton had hired Barclays to shop for a $2 billion acquisition of the company, but those rumors proved to be untrue.^[12] Another unique approach by Woolverton was with regards to new flavors. He keeps a spreadsheet on requests for flavors through both the website and also on social media.^[7] The focus on social media reach new heights with major celebrities endorsing the products online. According to CNBC this included the likes of Karlie Kloss and Khloe Kardashian.^[13] The market share of Halo Top continued to grow in 2019, with nearly 4% of the entire ice cream market going to the brand during 2018.^[14]

In 2018, he suggested in an interview with FastCompany that when the business concept was heard by bigger players in the ice cream market, Woolverton stated "many believed it couldn't be done." According to the interview, this was a big motivating factor when Halo Top Creamery was struggling to grow during the early days.^[15]

Personal life

Woolverton on a number of occasions has spoken about his experiences in business and developments he has made since he founded Halo Top Creamery. He spoke in an interview about his worry for case study businesses, which are often taught in business schools as examples of success. He alluded to the fact that timing is hugely important and the business model itself can only be applied if the market is ready for it and the conditions are right.^[16]

Woolverton currently resides in Los Angeles,^[17] with his dog, Molly Bear.^[18]

References

• The Rocks of Valpré (1919 film)
• The Rocks of Valpré (1935 film)
• The Rocks of Valpré (novel)
• The Rocks Pop-up
• The Rocksteady 7
• The Rockville LP
• The Rock vs John Cena
• The Rockwell Group
• The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak
• The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak
• The Rocky Mountains (painting)
• The Rocky Mountains (Painting)
• The Rocky Road to Poland
• The Rockys
• The R.O.C. (rapper)
• The Rocturnals
• The Rodent (SpongeBob)
• The Rodent (Spongebob)
• The Rodeo Song
• The Rodina
• The Rodney
• The Rod of Light
• The Rod of Seven Parts (novel)
• The Rodriguez family (Sesame Street)
• The Roebuck