Whiskey Hollow has a buyer. One of the men behind the purchase is Austin entrepreneur and philanthropist John Paul DeJoria. He and a group of three other former tequila executives have moved the distillery and its equipment to Weber Ranch to launch Weber Ranch 1902 Vodka.
DeJoria, who has lived in Austin for the past 20 years, made it big by co-founding hair care product giant John Paul Mitchell Systems. But it’s not his only claim to fame. He also co-founded The Patrón Spirits Company and venture capital conglomerate, The ROKiT Group.
Before the hair product company exploded in popularity, DeJoria was homeless, going door-to-door selling shampoo and encyclopedias. While he was working, a community of Hell’s Angels bikers helped raise his 2-year-old son.
Though he could have returned home to his mother in Los Angeles, DeJoria chose to live out of his car. He frequently went into vacant lots to collect soda bottles on the ground to sell at grocery and liquor stores for two to five cents apiece.
“When you’re that down, you look at going up,” DeJoria said in an appearance on In Depth With Graham Bensinger. “You can’t sit there and feel sorry for yourself. Because if you do, you’re going to stay there.”
He later took out a $700 loan to start John Paul Mitchell Systems with hairstylist and personal friend, Paul Mitchell. At the time, the company didn’t have enough money for advertising, but DeJoria knew he and Mitchell had a good product.
However, with no brand recognition, DeJoria got the door slammed in his face many times by salons. So he made a deal with the ones that would take on his product. If in 30 days, JPMS was unable to convince hairdressers of how good the product was, he would come back and take every bottle the salon was unable to use or sell.
For the first five years, only one bottle was ever returned, DeJoria said in a CNN interview. JPMS most recently reported an annual revenue of $1 billion in 2022.
DeJoria later got the idea to begin Patrón almost ten years later when he was sipping tequila but thought it was too rough. He said he wanted a product worthy of what aristocrats would drink. But he bumped into problems there too.
His product was too expensive. At the time, a bottle of Patrón would cost $37.95 to produce while the average tequila cost between $4 to $14 per bottle. Similar to his success with JPMS, DeJoria convinced distributors by giving them free samples.
DeJoria’s ambitions outgrew his distributors at the time and Patrón dropped them, which led to the increasing popularity of the drink as the company began to produce more bottles.
“People realized that it’s ok to pay a few dollars more if you treat yourself,” DeJoria said.
Eventually, DeJoria sold Patrón to Bacardi Ltd. in a deal that valued DeJoria’s company at over $5 billion in 2018.
Beyond hair products and alcohol, DeJoria has also made appearances in and produced movies like “The Sound of Freedom” and “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan.”
Some might also recognize DeJoria from his season 5 appearance on “Shark Tank” where he filled in as a guest shark and invested $150,000 in Tree-T-Pee, a company that makes cones out of recycled plastic meant to cover the roots of young trees.
DeJoria made the Forbes 400 in 2022 and its list of billionaires in 2023.
