Their line, Nardo’s Natural, is sold in several hundred locations nationwide. But the company’s main focus has shifted to manufacturing products for other brands.

That opportunity almost slipped away.

“This is our business. This is our baby,” DJ Mastronardo recalls thinking when a fellow entrepreneur first asked to sell their vitamin C serum under another name. “We were coddling it a little too tight.”

The brothers’ story illustrates one of the real advantages small businesses hold over bigger competitors: the ability to change course quickly when customers point the way. For Nardo’s Natural, that meant treating a farmers’ market as a research lab, walking into a hotel spa unannounced, and eventually setting aside some pride to say yes to an order that didn’t carry their name.

A homegrown operation with a simple pitch

Originally from King of Prussia, Pa., the brothers—DJ, Danny, and Kyle—relocated to Florida after Danny enrolled at the University of Tampa in 2004. He landed a corporate job right after graduation, but about 18 months in, he found himself watching the clock.

“Do I want to do this the rest of my life?” he recalls asking himself. He quit and moved into the family’s St. Petersburg condo with DJ and Kyle.

DJ, meanwhile, had been importing coconut oil from the Philippines for personal use. He had previously traveled the country hosting a cooking show and spent six months in California, “where I learned a lot about being healthy,” he says. After reading a book about coconut oil’s health benefits, he saw an opportunity to combine it with essential oils and sell it as skin care.

The pitch was simple: formulas made with ingredients customers could recognize.

“We picked up a lotion at Walmart and couldn’t pronounce half the ingredients,” Danny says. “We thought, ‘Let’s fix this, and help create an industry where you understand what you’re putting on your skin.’ Everyone’s doing that now, but we were one of the first.”

They started mixing coconut oil with lavender oil, carrot seed oil, and vitamin A in the condo’s kitchen. “There wasn’t much true chemistry behind it,” Danny says. “We did some research and just knew it was beneficial and organic.”

Kyle sold his car for $6,000—“our startup capital,” DJ says.

The production setup was decidedly homemade. They mixed ingredients in a Gatorade jug, filled Mason jars, and printed labels at Kinko’s. Sales started modestly in 2008, and they registered the company in 2009.

Customer feedback and a lucky break

At the St. Petersburg farmers’ market, the brothers found both their first customers and an informal focus group.

“We were really there to learn about the product,” Danny says. “It gave us a great test demographic to understand what we needed to do to grow this company.”

The main feedback: Improve the packaging. They did.

Seven months later, after they had “cleaned up the business a bit,” they walked into the spa at the Don CeSar, a landmark hotel in nearby St. Pete Beach, hoping to pitch their products. Their timing was perfect: The spa happened to be meeting with prospective skin care vendors that day. The brothers were ushered in—“they thought we had an appointment,” DJ says—and left with an order for a few cases and their first official account.

Within a year, the spa director sent them a letter saying a Nardo’s Natural formula was the spa’s bestseller. The brothers took that endorsement to other hotels and spas, gradually expanding across the region.

Into the tank

Even with that momentum, Nardo’s Natural remained small, with about 10 wholesale accounts and $30,000 in annual sales. Kyle bartended to help keep the company afloat, and the brothers worked out of a “storage-closet-size” office so cramped that one person had to stand up to let another pass.

“We just wanted our name on a door so badly,” Danny says. “It was still the peanut-butter-and-jelly story, but with organic peanut butter because DJ wouldn’t let us eat anything else.”

Around that time, their youngest brother, Keith, finished school up north and moved to Florida to join them. He told them about a relatively new show called Shark Tank. They watched a few episodes on YouTube and decided to apply.

Instead of filling out the application on the website, they submitted a photo of themselves in matching double-denim outfits with the caption, “Believe it or not, these guys make the world’s best skin care.” They persuaded a producer to call them by telling her, “We’re those kids who want to be the American dream.”

For their audition video, Danny skipped the prescribed pitch and instead submitted footage of his brothers lifting weights and arguing over which side of their faces best showed off their smiles.

The approach worked. They filmed in Los Angeles for the show’s third season in 2012 and walked away with a deal from Barbara Corcoran.

“I still remember holding her business card on the plane ride back—it was just so cool,” Danny says.

Afterward, they met with Corcoran’s team in New York, completed due diligence, and restructured the agreement. “We were small and honest,” Danny says. More wholesale opportunities followed, along with more production space and the purchase of a spa in St. Petersburg.

The order they almost turned down

In 2015, a spa customer who sold supplements on Home Shopping Network asked to buy their vitamin C serum and sell it under her own name.

The brothers initially said no, then went home and reconsidered.

“Someone was waving a check in front of us,” DJ says. “Why were we afraid to let them put their name on the bottle?”

The 5,000-unit order let them buy bottles and raw materials in larger quantities, lowering their costs. It also opened the door to a business they hadn’t seen coming: Nardo’s Natural Private Label.

“Private labeling is how we truly operate now,” Danny says.

The brothers found a niche serving entrepreneurs who couldn’t afford large production runs, offering a 100-unit minimum. “We hoped they’d grow, and we’d grow with them,” DJ says.

In one early exception, they sold a customer 50 bottles for an initial investment of $600. “TikTok was just starting, and she was figuring it all out,” Danny says. She went on to build a multimillion-dollar skin care business on the platform and, Danny says, “still operates out of her house,” with Nardo’s Natural handling all of her production and shipping.

Growing without cutting corners

Today the company makes both stock and custom formulas, and its in-house graphic design team helps clients develop their branding. Danny estimates the Nardo’s Natural line includes about 75 SKUs; across client projects, the company has made thousands of product variations. Its core team numbers around seven, supplemented by contractors and seasonal help.

“In 17 years of business, what we find easiest is creating formulas—that’s our true skill set,” he says. “We’re always launching something different and exciting. It’s almost like running a new company every day.”

The company is now adding warehouse space for production and client packaging. The brothers have also learned where not to economize: An early attempt to save money on lotion pumps left them with thousands that wouldn’t dispense.

“Don’t cheap out,” Danny says. “If you buy quality stuff and do quality work, you’ll create a quality product.”

For DJ, Danny, and Kyle, success carries a personal meaning. Keith, known as KJ, died suddenly in 2013.

“We want to keep growing this business in his honor,” Danny says.

What small businesses can learn from Nardo’s Natural

Treat early customers as your research team. Before landing a single wholesale account, the brothers used a weekly farmers’ market to test their products and act on what they heard, starting with better packaging. For a new business, the first customers can be the cheapest and most honest focus group available.

Move faster than the big players can. A small team can walk into an opportunity, like an unscheduled pitch at a hotel spa, and make a decision on the spot. That speed is an advantage most large companies simply can’t match.

Serve the customers bigger competitors ignore. A 100-unit minimum let Nardo’s Natural win entrepreneurs too small for large manufacturers, and the company grew as those clients did. Sometimes the best niche is the one others consider too small to bother with.

Don’t let pride block the pivot. The founders’ reluctance to sell product without their name on it nearly cost them the business that now drives the company. Being willing to revisit a quick “no” can open doors you didn’t know existed.

Spend where quality shows. An early attempt to save money on cheap lotion pumps left the brothers with thousands that didn’t work. For a small brand that lives on its reputation, cutting the wrong corners costs more than it saves.