Our Story

Eric, testing out the competition's products. He's smiling through his tears.

Jack made a fortune as an early '60's Gerber Baby but later squandered it on horses and fast women.

Nancy Boy sprouted to life in a San Francisco lavender garden. Its owners spent their days as executives in advertising (Eric) and finance (Jack) in the go-go '80's and '90's when "sustainability" meant you could stay out all night and go to work the next morning looking awesome.

They learned how good companies prospered and how bad ones self-destructed.

In finance, Jack witnessed a transformation from an era when financial institutions performed valuable, necessary economic functions to one characterized by a casino mentality. Meanwhile, Eric worked at multi-national ad agencies on Levi's to L'Oreal to Clorox to Estee Lauder. He discovered that high-end personal care products are "all sizzle, no steak," with everything spent on marketing and pennies left over for the actual product.

Over countless hours in the small urban garden Jack and Eric refined their vision for a business that would reflect their own values of fair dealing and value-for-money. Not to mention super shiny hair. And a singleminded focus on 100% essential plant oils for their natural fragrance and traditional healing properties.

Bucking their traditional business backgrounds, the business plan was heretical. The brand would never advertise. The unspent marketing funds would be redeployed into hyper-premium product ingredients. As a result the products would be superior to the competition, users would notice and the business would grow through word-of-mouth. Nancy Boy launched in October, 2001 with five products.

That was more than ten years ago. Today Nancy Boy sells 100 products across an array of consumer categories, including personal care, home cleaning and organic beverages, to customers on every continent.