Learn how an ocean physicist turned a science communications company into the buzzy apparel brand Waterlust.
In this age of venture capitalists and side hustles that have side hustles, you’d be forgiven for thinking every entrepreneur has the same goal: Make as much money as possible, ideally in the shortest amount of time as possible. Patrick Rynne, Ph.D., the founder and CEO of the mission-driven sustainable swim and sunwear brand Waterlust, doesn’t see it that way.
“A lot of founders might talk a lot about creating something that they can make a gajillion dollars [on], or selling it and retiring to the Hamptons,” Rynne says. “But our ethos at Waterlust has always been, ‘We're in it for the long haul.’ We obviously need to put food on the table and make enough money to survive, but our team really values the impact that we have…and our plan is to do this for the rest of our lives.”
It’s a rosy outlook, but by all accounts, it comes from a place of genuine care for and dedication to the work said team is doing. Dedicated to marine conservation, Waterlust sells gear like water-friendly leggings, board shorts, sun shirts, reversible bra/swim tops, and more, in a range of vibrant marine animal-themed prints (though plain black is also an option); each print corresponds to specific conservation initiatives that Waterlust donates to and provides comprehensive education on via a series of actually interesting emails.
Rynne’s stated ethos also reflects how Waterlust came to be: a mission first, followed years later by a product created in service of that mission. Rynne didn’t set out in his career to make clothes or swimwear — not that he had much of an alternate plan mapped out, either. By the time he graduated from Brown University with a degree in material engineering, he knew he didn’t want to follow that career path.
Having grown up near the Atlantic, though, he knew he loved the ocean — and he happened to be an elite sailor. So, Rynne moved to Miami after graduation to train with the U.S. Olympic sailing team. It was in the midst of that training when he got antsy and went back to school to study marine science. The sailing team didn’t make the 2008 Olympics, but Rynne’s scientific interests were piqued enough to shift his focus completely to a Ph.D. program.
A year in, Rynne had his “aha” moment. “I was going to a school where there were biologists and physicists and chemists and geologists — the full swath of ocean science — and I was blown away by what everybody was working on,” Rynne says. “When I would speak with my non-science friends or family about the latest stuff happening at school, they had never heard of [any of it] — [but] they found it really fascinating. … I felt like there was an opportunity to bring all of this emerging research and discovery to a broader public in a more fun, digestible, entertaining way.”
That idea became the first iteration of Waterlust. Rynne created and published videos to get people interested in and excited about the worlds of ocean science and marine conservation. His storytelling clearly resonated; Waterlust built a solid following (mostly on Facebook — the primary platform of the time), picked up sponsors like GoPro and Sperry, and caught the attention of fellow grad students like his now-wife, Fiona.
The pair continued to grow Waterlust as a side project — but as it became more difficult to compete for viewers’ attention, they realized they’d need a new approach if they wanted to make both money and a lasting impression. “We were seeing that people would watch a video and then never watch it again; it was a fleeting interaction,” Rynne says. “If we were trying to educate people about a certain science topic, especially if it was conservation-related, we knew from our educational backgrounds that you can’t just make that impression once and expect it to [have] a big impact. … We needed more repetition and we needed to drive these messages in over a longer period of time.”
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The solution: clothing that incorporated their science conservation stories. “Every time a person puts an article of clothing on — especially if it’s designed to be attention-grabbing, bright, and fun — they’re going to remember that lesson and that will create a repetition,” Rynne says. After a successful run of T-shirts screen printed in their kitchen in 2014, the duo recruited Fiona’s fashion-designer sister to lead the design of Waterlust’s first line of marine species-themed leggings — “and it just kind of took off overnight,” Rynne says. “In the course of a few weeks, we shifted our focus from primarily a media company to an apparel company. Since then, it’s been growing faster than we could keep up.”
Nearly 10 years in, Waterlust remains a mission-driven company — and not just in name. It’s a thread that runs through all aspects of the business. It’s the reason Waterlust sells clothing made from recycled polyester and manufactured ethically. It’s the reason the newly certified B-Corp committed to publishing the brand’s financial performance on its website.
It’s the reason Rynne views company growth through the lens of a marathon rather than a sprint and encourages his employees to do the same. It’s the lens through which he views success — both as an individual and as a company — even when looking at a detail as seemingly simple as two strangers on a SCUBA dive boat bonding over their Waterlust gear on the other side of the world. Sure, it’s a sign that people are buying and talking about the product, a pretty clear business win. But Rynne’s key takeaway goes beyond that. “We love it because [of] the community aspect,” he says. “Environmental issues require community engagement. Everyone has to work together, and that’s a big part of our brand focus is to try to develop a sense of community and try to create opportunities to meet like-minded people and come up with ways to work together toward a brighter, more positive future.”
Ahead, Rynne shares more about how he views success, dealing with burnout, and what it really means to be a successful mission-driven company.
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Your degrees are in science, and you’re now the CEO of an apparel brand. How did you figure out this new role and industry?
“I would say science is very entrepreneurial without it formally being called that way. If you're doing a science experiment, you have to come up with your idea — like, ‘I want to go to this inlet’ or, ‘I want to go study this fish in this ocean’ — and you have to come up with a plan, and figure out how to get funding. Then you have to coordinate a team, go into the field, and collect the data — and there are always things that go wrong. There's always one hiccup after another. There's a saying that running a business is the process of going from one crisis to another with enthusiasm, and science is really similar to that. You have to just keep forging ahead and reassessing your plan.
“We typically try to hire employees who either are in or are alumni of marine science school. Part of it is [because] marine science is part of our business, our company's DNA, and we don’t want to just fill the company with people with M.B.A.s and be completely disconnected from the whole reason that we exist. But part of it is [because] I find that people who are good at conducting science, and experimentation, and fieldwork tend to be pretty good at business, too.”
As a CEO, how do you balance the desire to make more money with the desire to contribute to the causes central to your mission?
“[People] say with businesses, if there's no margin, there's no mission. We got B-Corp certified this spring; that was a big process, and as part of it, we put up a financial transparency page [on our website]. … There's a lot of greenwashing in environmentally focused businesses, and consumers can have a jaded perspective thinking that any brand — especially in the apparel industry — is just this money-making machine that's trying to use a mission to make a ton of money. And I don't blame people for that. I'm cynical about it, too, and I'm very skeptical of what I see in the world.
“You have to [be] financially successful to do anything. … But the reality is it's really difficult to get the business to be profitable — and not even hugely profitable, [but] just so you aren't going out of business — and it's a really, really fine line between being profitable and being not. That's been a huge part of my job the last few years, managing those financials and keeping a close eye on our costs.
“But I find it very instructive, because the search for profitability and balancing it with your mission is a really good metaphor for humans’ relationship with the environmental crisis.
"We talk about climate change, and emissions, and plastic pollution, and all these huge problems that we have to solve. But we have to do that in balance with people's ability to live a life and put food on the table and be happy. It's very similar to [what a] business needs to stay in business. And when you frame environmental issues in that kind of light, I think it frames the conversation with a lot more empathy.
“There's a whole psychology thing called the ‘hierarchy of needs,’ [which] we study because we try to understand what our customers are going through. We want to ask our customers to be stewards for the ocean and of the environment, [but] we have to understand where they're at.
"If you are living in poverty, it's probably very unreasonable for us to expect you to be able to contribute a lot to the environment. Whereas if you are very well off and you're very comfortable, you have more accessibility. Instead of framing conservation as, ‘You have to be [a] vegan with an electric vehicle who never flies, and if you don't do that, you're an asshole,’ the better way to frame it is, ‘Let's look at where you're at in your life and have empathy in that conversation, and then let's try to identify ways you can contribute.’ And let's not shame each other about, ‘Hey, this person did more; this person did less.’ We need to have empathy [and remember] what's accessible to you may not be accessible to them.
“This all kind of goes back to balancing what we need to survive — as a business or individual — with what we can do to make things better. At the end of the day, that's the whole challenge of it all.”
It’s a stressful job. How do you give yourself a mental health break?
“That’s something I've struggled with, especially in the last year having a newborn. But my biggest restorative activities generally relate to being outside in the ocean. I love surfing, and sailing, and kiteboarding. When I come back after a day on the water, I'm in a better mood, I'm happier, and I work better. We've been in Miami for 20 years, but my wife and I are actually moving to a small town on the water in Rhode Island, and we're doing it specifically so that we have easier access to the ocean in the ways that restore us [and] help us recharge our batteries.
“Miami has gotten really big, and crowded, and expensive — and we love it here, but we're realizing as our life changes, our needs change and it becomes harder to have the accessibility to those things. We're moving to a place that basically reduces the friction to make it as easy as possible, so that if we have an hour here and 45 minutes there, we can skip out, recharge our batteries, and come back focused, and happy, and ready to be there for our team and our family.”
Photos courtesy of Waterlust