Ron Rice became a multi-millionaire by creating Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil and lotions marketed through hundreds of bikini pageants for almost thirty years.
His life was filled with fast cars, beautiful women, celebrities galore and “so much money we were rolling in it”.
He came from humble beginnings up in the mountains of North Carolina, when fresh out of the University of Tennessee as a summertime lifeguard, he sat atop a Daytona Beach lifeguard tower, watching tourists with their floats, surfboards, umbrellas and beach towels scattered across the white Florida sands.
He spotted people slathering Coppertone, one of the few suntan lotions available in the late sixties all over themselves.
Struggling financially as a high school chemistry teacher and football coach, he came up with an idea.
With a $500 loan from his father, a $4.00 20 gallon garbage can, Rice mixed mineral oil, coconut oil and some extracts together in his garage and stirred it with the broom handle.
He hired a pair of 11-year-old neighborhood kids to fill the first bottles of his lotion, one bottle at a time.
The first bottle of Hawaiian Tropic was sold on the beach July 20th 1969.
He recruited his football players to use the products and with great tans they hit the beaches applying lotion to the tourists and sales took off.
I first heard about Hawaiian Tropic when I had a high school friend of mine attending nearby Stetson University. He told me he was selling suntan oil on the beach and making $50 a day in 1970.
Next Rice blanketed the surfside vendors on the “World’s Most Famous Beach and poolside at the hotels lining the shore.
Within a few years he had a factory in Ormond Beach and was distributing products worldwide. He encouraged his employees to wear jeans, shorts, and sandals and let them off work every Friday at noon to go to the beach
Hawaiian Tropic became a mainstay on the shelves at drug stores, grocery stores and t-shirt shops the world over in a few years.
Ron Rice was not even a tan man, tall, strawberry blonde hair, almost fair skinned, he never bronzed, but in short order he became “the King of Tan”.
After getting the products into the stores, Ron started to concentrate on promoting the name with beauty pageants.
In 1983 beginning in Daytona Beach, the Miss Hawaiian Tropic beauty pageants were born. The contests began at local bars, restaurants and expanded to regional, national and televised events in Las Vegas and Hawaii with over a hundred bronze beauties competing for major prizes.
While a vice president at Paramount Pictures in early 1990, I brought Leslie Nielsen and Rodney Dangerfield, promoting their movies to spring break in Daytona where they hosted the Hawaiian Tropic beauty pageants at the bandshell on the beach, where thousands of college aged “horn dawgs” cheered the bikini clad girls.
Ron and a host of the most beautiful Hawaiian Tropic models traveled to major international events promoting the products.
The Hawaiian Tropic girls would just show up at the Cannes Film Festival, the 24 hours of LeMans, Mardi Gras, the Super Bowl, major NFL & college games and the Final Four.
His celebrity judges and new friends included Burt Reynolds, The Beach Boys, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Kelly, Troy Aikman, Chris Farley, John Travolta, OJ Simpson, Joe Pesci, Hugh Hefner, Buzz Aldrin, Jim Carrey, Benny Hill, Julio Iglesias, Jerry Lee Lewis, Alan Thicke, Fabio and many more.
Donald Trump was a judge at one of these contests and met his second wife, Marla Maples when she was a contestant. Trump wanted to buy just the beauty pageant’s, but Ron said the sun care products and pageants would not be sold separately. Trump turned around later and purchased the Miss Universe franchise.
“The harder and harder and harder you work, the luckier and luckier and luckier you get”, Ron said.
Lubricated by all of his suntan lotion money, Rice lived large. He built a 12,000 square foot house on the ocean in Ormond Beach with a disco, two swimming pools, a huge sailing yacht and this became a party destination for the worldwide who’s who’s of the Rich and Famous. Fortunately I was invited to about fifty parties there. The best being his yearly Christmas party, where he gave presents to all the children of his employees and the Halloween party where the dress was always barely there.
A truly American Style of mixing work with pleasure, he plastered Hawaiian Tropics name everywhere on billboards, sailboats, NASCAR vehicles, elite race cars and sponsored events across the country such as rock concerts, comedy showcases and ski races. The yearly trips to Aspen were always a blast.
His life he said was guided by one rule “if it’s not fun, don’t do it”.
As for his personal wheels Rice owned a Lamborghini driven by Burt Reynolds in the 1981 film Cannonball Run. When working at Fox at the time, I was on location in Long Beach when I saw Burt driving the car “I said it looks familiar, he laughed and said “it’s Ron’s”.
In time he had 13 factories making Hawaiian Tropic and he would sell over 4 billion dollars worth of lotion over 38 years.
He was a marketing genius.
Hawaiian Tropic sold to Playtex products for $83 million in May 2007, which was later acquired required by Energizer Holdings.
Ron died a couple of years ago at 81, but over the last 10 – 20 years, I would call him when driving close to Daytona, and whether I was alone or had a film crew with me he would say “come on over”.
One of a kind success along Route 1.
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Location: Ormond Beach, FL
