573: Building a $74M a Year Beauty & Community Empire | Trinny Woodall

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary: Building a $74M a Year Beauty & Community Empire | Trinny Woodall

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
• Host: Nathan Chan, CEO of Foundr Media
• Guest: Trinny Woodall
• Episode: 573
• Release Date: July 18, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 573 of The Foundr Podcast, host Nathan Chan engages in an insightful conversation with Trinny Woodall, a renowned TV icon turned successful entrepreneur. This episode delves deep into Trinny's journey from her television career to building Trinny London, a flourishing beauty and community brand generating $74 million annually. The discussion covers her strategies for bootstrapping, scaling her business, fostering a strong online presence, and cultivating a vibrant community without unnecessary fluff.

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Trinny's Journey into Entrepreneurship

Trinny Woodall shares her transition from the television industry to entrepreneurship, highlighting the pivotal moments that led her to establish Trinny London. Starting with limited resources and at the age of 53, she embarked on her entrepreneurial journey by selling her designer wardrobe and leveraging her expertise in makeovers to create a beauty brand tailored for women aged 35 and above.

“I started a business and employed myself because I wanted to make it easy for women to know what makeup to wear, making it portable and accessible online.”
— Trinny Woodall [02:09]

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Building Trinny London: Product and Audience

Trinny emphasizes the importance of understanding and honing in on an underserved audience. By focusing on women over 35, she identified a gap in the market and created products that resonate emotionally rather than being solely product-driven. This emotional connection differentiates Trinny London in a saturated beauty market.

“Your point of difference has to be something that's very emotionally driven. It cannot be product driven.”
— Trinny Woodall [04:08]

The brand launched with 49 SKUs, primarily in makeup, leveraging Trinny's extensive experience in makeovers to develop products that empower women to feel confident in their appearance.

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Growth Strategies: Bootstrapping and Scaling

Trinny discusses the challenges of bootstrapping her business, including raising initial funds and managing finances carefully due to limited investment compared to competitors like Glossier and Tilbury. Despite these challenges, Trinny London achieved remarkable growth, expanding its product lines and geographical presence.

“We've grown over six years at 120% a year. When you grow, you build a business on a foundation block, not on quicksand.”
— Trinny Woodall [06:00]

Key growth strategies included focusing on customer retention, leveraging cohort data to maintain a loyal customer base, and expanding product verticals strategically, such as launching skincare after establishing makeup.

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Community Building: The Trini Tribe

A significant element of Trinny's success is the creation of the Trini Tribe—a robust community of over 150,000 engaged members across 34 tribes in 17 countries. Trinny highlights the importance of fostering a sense of belonging and emotional connection among customers, making them feel part of something larger than just a brand.

“Our community feels vested and part of something, allowing them to be the person they want to be in this environment.”
— Trinny Woodall [17:35]

The Trini Tribe operates through Facebook groups, enabling two-way communication and organic growth. Trinny’s hands-on approach, including active participation and engagement in these groups, ensures that the community remains vibrant and supportive.

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Marketing and Distribution: D2C and Retail

Trinny elaborates on the dual strategy of Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) and retail expansion. By localizing distribution in key markets like Australia and establishing permanent retail stands, Trinny London enhances brand visibility and trust among consumers. This approach mitigates the risks associated with relying solely on D2C channels, especially in fluctuating advertising landscapes influenced by platforms like Facebook.

“We have Permanent stands and pop-ups strategically placed in premium areas to ensure our brand is visible where our target customers shop.”
— Trinny Woodall [37:08]

She also touches upon the evolving nature of e-commerce marketing, emphasizing the need for brands to adapt to changes in advertising algorithms and consumer behavior.

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Fundraising Insights

Trinny provides a candid account of her fundraising journey, highlighting the challenges and lessons learned. She underscores the importance of bootstrapping to achieve proof of concept before seeking external investments, thereby ensuring better control over the company's direction and financial health.

“Bootstrapping for proof of concept means when you go to fundraise, you won't be shredded in terms of the cap table.”
— Trinny Woodall [29:19]

Trinny recounts her experience raising a total of £7.6 million, noting that careful financial management has been crucial to maintaining positive EBITDA and sustainable growth.

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Community and Marketing Strategies

Trinny discusses innovative marketing techniques, such as leveraging micro-influencers and creating authentic, targeted campaigns that resonate deeply with their specific audience. She highlights a successful strategy employed by a young jewelry entrepreneur she mentors, who built her brand through targeted in-school influencer programs rather than traditional micro-influencer marketing.

“She started off on a minute level with girls who went to schools and created really targeted micro-influencers.”
— Trinny Woodall [28:41]

Additionally, Trinny emphasizes the significance of understanding customer behavior and preferences through personalized tools, enhancing customer experience and loyalty.

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Advice for Early Stage Founders

Trinny offers invaluable advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, focusing on the balance between product development and sales strategy. She warns against perfectionism and encourages founders to launch with a solid enough product and iterate based on market feedback.

“Spend too long on the product development and too little on how you are going to sell it.”
— Trinny Woodall [25:07]

She also highlights the importance of patience, resilience, and maintaining a clear vision despite the challenges and uncertainties inherent in building a business.

“Patience is the biggest thing. Fundamentals remain the same, even as methods evolve.”
— Trinny Woodall [31:39]

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Trinny Woodall imparting words of encouragement to founders facing solitary and challenging moments in their entrepreneurial journey. She emphasizes the importance of perseverance and staying open to unexpected solutions.

“There are days when you're going to just think, will it ever work? Remember that there's something behind the closed door.”
— Trinny Woodall [49:33]

Nathan Chan thanks Trinny for her time and insights, underscoring the value of her experiences for the Foundr community.

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Key Takeaways:

• Emotional Connection: Building a brand that resonates emotionally with a specific, underserved audience can differentiate it in a crowded market.
• Community Engagement: Cultivating a strong, engaged community enhances brand loyalty and organic growth.
• Balanced Growth: Combining D2C strategies with strategic retail expansions can stabilize growth and reduce dependency on any single channel.
• Fundraising Strategy: Achieving proof of concept through bootstrapping before seeking investment can lead to more favorable financial and operational outcomes.
• Patience and Resilience: Entrepreneurial success requires patience, especially in challenging markets, and the ability to maintain a clear vision amidst adversity.

Trinny Woodall’s story serves as an inspiring blueprint for entrepreneurs aiming to build meaningful, sustainable businesses that prioritize community and emotional engagement over mere transactional success.

Transcript

[Nathan Chan]

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[Trinny Woodall]

Let's dive in, hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder podcast with Nathan Chan.

[Nathan Chan]

Trini, thanks so much for taking the time. Round two.

[Trinny Woodall]

Good to be back here.

[Nathan Chan]

So the first question that I ask everyone that comes on for those are not familiar with who you are in Trinity London, how did you get your job, AKA how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today?

[Trinny Woodall]

I got my job because I started a business and I employed myself. But I knew that I want to get back in DC. I'd done it before when it was not even DC. I just call it online in 99. I think we spoke about that, about challenges, the starting business, what you learn from a failure. And I think I had gone round the world making over women and I realized the one thing that challenged women was knowing what makeup to wear. So I want to make it easy for them, portable for them. I want them to be able to Buy it online, whatever their age. And I wanted to actually focus on a target of a 35 plus woman because I felt she was underrepresented in the market. And so that's what we launched.

[Nathan Chan]

I'm curious to hear from your perspective. Besides this incredible, like, range of products and the brand that you've built, what do you think has really caused this? Really strong on gross.

[Trinny Woodall]

I think it's a mixture of honing in on an audience that feels it hasn't been spoken to and speaking with a message that resonates because there's a lot of noise out there. There are squillion beauty brands, there's a ton of online beauty brands, and there's a ton of legacy beauty brands. So it's about how do you cut through? And it's got to be mission led. And we are a mission led business. So for me it's about how can we leave every woman feeling better and more joyful and happ. And we do that with products, we do that with community, we do that with content. You know, we're kind of more than just selling you a lipstick. So I feel to break through in any industry, your point of difference has to be something that's very emotionally driven. It cannot be product driven. It has to kind of have that whole emotional halo because that's how we most respond to things in life. You know, we need to have that draw. We. It needs to pull on something inside of us that makes us think, this could shift me or this will make me feel better or this is gonna bring something else into my life. So we do that with everything that we. When we talk about Trinity London.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah. And how has it evolved over time? Like, what was the suite? What did you start with?

[Trinny Woodall]

We started with kind of skus. We started with a hundred skus and we launched in fact, no, we had 49 SKUs when we started. And then we quickly added in two things that had quite long ranges. Started with makeup because that's what women would see when I did makeovers on them. And I used to travel around the world doing makeovers. And they have a complicated relationship we all do with body, hair, face. But if you do someone's face and they love it, they then can see everything else. You know, they're sort of think, okay, that's good. And then they'll look at the hair and look at the body. And so I felt this is the element that if we can get that right and make it really easy, you know, there are so many women who just don't want to really do makeup, because they think, where do I start? And there's other women who've done it the same way for a long time, and they think, I'm kind of embarrassed to go out to the department store counter and say, help me to rethink how I do it. You know, so we needed to give messages that would let women know that we were there for this kind of woman. And I think that's what we do. Yeah. And so over the last. I mean, if. Compared to when we start. I remember when we started in the day we started and we did like £6,000 or something, it was just so exciting. You know, we were on Shopify, and it was like, you know, the bing, bing, bing. And you're watching it. Any entrepreneur knows this feeling of that, just that kind of the ping. And I remember we all sat around this little. We had a table like this, and there were not so many of us. And it was so exciting because you've, you know, worked on something for a long time, but that day that you actually launch it, people actually putting their faith in and buying it is a huge step for anybody who is, you know, doing a business which has a commercial product in it and it isn't a service. So then it just grew, and it grew really nicely each year. You know, we've grown over six years. You know, if you're proportionate, we've grown 120 a year. And I think when you grow. When we. When we grew, I knew that we wanted to have a very good retention. And at the time, I think we spoke about this before, but at the time, it was all about new customer only and not retention. I mean, what we speak about, anyone raising money today, it's about, what's your attention? You know, that is the key thing, retention, ebitda, you know, that triangle. It's got to be those three things of, you know, a number of customers, et cetera. So we had got this very good retention, and we had really good cohort data. And I think each year those early cohorts have stayed with us. So in a way, you're really building a business on a foundation block, not so much on quicksand. And you feel that strength. And it goes back to this old adage of word of mouth and getting somebody who, you know, somebody who's a Trini London Star customer, which is about, I think, 65% of our customers. Well, 65% of revenue, but actually 20% of our customer is this person who actually comes in and she buys really deeply into the brand. And that is our perfect kind of customer. Because they're like, I don't have to look any further. I've come here and I feel that's helped us a lot in our growth because then as we develop a new vertical and last year I think I just launched skincare when I saw you last time. And now we've been, it's been over a year, but it's now about 35% of our revenue.

[Nathan Chan]

Oh, wow.

[Trinny Woodall]

Already. And they're more, you know, they're more replenishable Skus, you know, you might add to the collection of makeup, but skincare is a different proposition in terms of retention and looking at retention of customer and retention products. So it's an interesting when you swivel because a lot of people who start as makeup in one area and going to another, it's about how far can you stretch, you know, how many verticals do we bring out as we grow? So for us, growth has been around bringing out a second vertical when we know we want to do more after that and proving that vertical. So we've proved in 18 months that revenue growth, then it's about location. So last year we had just started to localize and we did distribution in Australia instead of shipping from the uk. So actually implementing all those warehouses, all of that, that's a big deal. And you've got to be of a certain size to be able to handle localization. Two warehouses, double backend system, integrated ERP system, that's all been a nightmare, but you know, they always is. And just warehouse integration for anyone who has stock, it's a challenge. But doing that then enabled us to grow more in Australia. We used to be about 15 or 12 Australia and it took us to about 20 Australia because suddenly there was that low hanging fruit of the customer who'd person who followed us for a long time. But shipping of $1326 was a lot. And now she could buy two products, Discover the brand and then buy into the brand and the same time retail. So the play of retail and Ecom, which I think we'll get on to, is really interesting. And I think a lot of businesses now who are in, who have been totally D2C and they're looking at what they need to do in retail. They've got maybe investors who are saying to them, hey, you've got to go straight to wholesale, you know, or there's some people who are finding it challenging to raise money. It's a very interesting area. Where is ecom going? So for us to date We've expanded our geographicals, we've expanded our channels and we've expanded our range and I think that really is how you grow.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned retail versus D2C. It's really interesting. One thing I've noticed, I've shared this before, all of my successful E Com friends, the ones that were purely D2C when, you know, challenges happen with paid advertising past couple of years, versus the ones that had a good mixture of D2C and retail, they would not hit nowhere near as hard.

[Trinny Woodall]

Yeah.

[Nathan Chan]

And I'm seeing more than ever now businesses are moving into D to move into retail. Yeah, 100%, I think.

[Trinny Woodall]

I think it's a mixture of. I think it's a kind of. Not a perfect storm. It's the opposite of that. All right. But we had the iOS release, we had Facebook changing everything. So that has affected people. You know, our LTV over CAC is still healthy. We have a decent ROAS of like 200%. But you know, it's about what's the maximum you can push on meta each day. And you know, we look at, you know, I'm sure lots of people who are in the business, it's like, shall we do everything the Facebook way or shall we do it our way? And I speak to lots of other companies like there's some interesting people out of Israel, there's some great tech in Israel of really having that layer on of their own data scientists layering on top of Facebook. And we are now, we implemented Snowplow last year which gives you first party data. So it enables us to really look at what is that customer, where are they coming from, what ads are they coming from, what's resonating? Because there's one thing Facebook telling you what's working and they definitely take, you know, the attribution. Yeah, attribution is such a. They just, you know, they really like to own it all, you know, otherwise it would be my 120% would be meta. So it's looking at that. But I think the funnel has changed and you know, speaking to people at Facebook and I've got a few decent people there, it's all about how you change the proportion of spend in the funnel. Because it used to be you'd be doing 100% on, on click. And now it's actually brand awareness and I'm talking about DC brands, I'm not talking about legacy brands like Coca Cola and stuff who are doing the brand awareness anyway. But for us it's about taking some ad sets and thinking all Right, what If we do 30% brand awareness and 70% click?

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah, yeah. Direct response.

[Trinny Woodall]

Yeah.

[Nathan Chan]

So I'm curious, so when you launched, how much did you raise? Can you share how much you raised?

[Trinny Woodall]

Yeah, we raised. Well, I. Initially I did. In England, you can do an SEIS scheme, which is an enterprise initiative scheme, but you can do a junior one. So I raised 150,000 and that lasted me about a year and then I ran out and I sold clothes. I ended up. I sold my house because I couldn't afford the mortgage. So, you know, you got to bootstrap. And we talked before about Gary Vaynerchuk and like, what can you sell? So I had that journey of what would I have to let go of in order to start the business? And I did that and then we raised 2.5. The first raise, when we were about a year before we launched, and then a year after we launched, we raised 3.1. So we've raised 7.6 in total. And I think to get to our revenue on that, amongst our competitors, it's comparatively. So maybe glossier. And Tilbury, at this stage, which is the only other maybe, would have raised 20 million. So it's good and it's bad. It's good in so much that, you know, we have a positive ebitda, but the momentum of having a lot of cash behind you is not available to us. But it makes you also careful with money. And so, you know, we look at Tilbury, which has been phenomenally successful, but really probably launch more as a retail brand and covert, they pivoted and they became more D2C and maybe they're 50, 50, I don't know, glossier. The other hand, they had to go to retail post Covid because they had such an issue with, you know, I mean, there are times in any brand's life when you're going to use a lot of people to build and then you're going to get off some of the fat, you're going to get lean and you're going to do that and it's going to happen in every single company.

[Nathan Chan]

So I think what I love about this story is a lot of people would look at you and go, oh, well, you're a celebrity, you know, you're on tv. It's easy to build a brand, right?

[Trinny Woodall]

Well, I wasn't on TV when I built this brand. I think raising money did it get me a meeting. You know, I emailed 250 people and I got 49 meetings, so one in five. And of that one person invested, and then consequently other people did. But, you know, that initial thing. So maybe it gets you in the door. But equally, people have preconceptions which aren't always good because they might think, oh, you work in tv, what do you know about running a business? Or they might think, you know, I mean, I had a lot of interesting comments when I was sitting in front of investors around, are you too old to start a business? You know, do you have a big enough social media following? You know, who's actually going to run the business? You know, do you know how to read a balance sheet? Lots of that kind of stuff. So you will perhaps. You know, I think from fundraising, I would say, oddly, it's not an advantage, although. Because I think everyone has. Has to have the hustle, you know, and if you have the right hustle, you can get a bloody meeting. It's being tenacious, it's getting to know the EA of somebody you want to get to. It's showering them with loveliness. You know, I had a husband who was so utterly brilliant at that, and he would always just get to know the assistant of somebody he wanted to get to and just he was utterly charming to them and he always got a meeting because they wanted to put him in for a meeting, you know, because he was tenacious. And so instead of sending the email always to the person you want to get to, find out their ea and maybe, you know, if you've got two or three refusals or nothing, no acknowledgment, go via the EA and charm her or him. Let's not be discriminatory here. Sorry.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah, it's all right. No, look, you got to find the gatekeeper.

[Trinny Woodall]

You've got to find the gatekeeper.

[Nathan Chan]

That's. That's how I started with founder, and first four months I got interviews. Richard Branson, find the gatekeeper, off you go.

[Trinny Woodall]

Right, yeah, exactly.

[Nathan Chan]

So, okay, so, yeah, I love this part of your story that, you know, because most people would go, oh, well, you had a massive social following. You had a ton of money, and then you've just kind of attached this brand. This is a real business that you've built 62,000 followers.

[Trinny Woodall]

It wasn't a massive social following, I have to say, even though this is like 2013 or 14, but I didn't particularly. And when I did the first, you know, P L and looking at the projections of the business, I literally had to do it all as a conversion of a percentage of people who followed me on Social would buy. So I said 3% because I thought 3% conversion online feels right. So I just said that and then I thought, what? How much will they grow per year? You know. And so we did the projections on that and when I did a. I had one of our investors who came in the second round and she then left that investment house and she sent me a frame thing when she left and it showed our five year projection and you know, showed that nice sort of hockey stick we all want to see. But she just put in it, you are the only company that came to me with the five year projection. And exactly the figure you said is what you did.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah.

[Trinny Woodall]

Which is kind of like, you know, that's impressive. Well, I think it was luck.

[Nathan Chan]

I have to, I was gonna say.

[Trinny Woodall]

I'm gonna say it's luck because, you know, we can think of a year, maybe two. But tell me, anyone listening? Any entrepreneur list?

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah.

[Trinny Woodall]

Really? No, it was luck. Yeah, but it was nice luck.

[Nathan Chan]

Okay. Yeah, yeah. I think you've done an exceptional job then if you've gone from 62,000 followers because these numbers of vanity metrics really building a strong community and connecting with.

[Trinny Woodall]

That community and the depth of that community because our, you know, we have followers so. So, you know, across all channels we might have 4 million followers. All right. But we have a community which is about 150,000 people and not all of that community are customers. But the Trini tribe we have, you know, in Victoria we have six and a half thousand. In New South Wales we have nearly 7,000. So they're just vested and they feel a part of something and they feel a connection to other women and maybe they're also being allowed to be the person they want to be in this environment. And they're people who are not naturally people who would be on social all the time. You know, you kind of think my daughter's on TikTok the whole time, you know, but when you get to like 40s and 50s people, everyone is on, you know, we have, you know, I'm also doing a book here. You know, in the queue there were two 75 year olds who were like so dead lamb. And then I do this and I love what you said on stories yesterday. And you know, it's like you think this is fantastic. I love that.

[Nathan Chan]

So tell me how did you came come up with the idea of the Trini tribe?

[Trinny Woodall]

Okay, wasn't us. And I think the success of the Trinity tribe is that we didn't start. Was started by a woman in northwest England called Kelly and she followed me and I think we hadn't even launched. I don't know if we'd launched Trini London yet, Paris this year. No, she's not. We hadn't launched Trinity London. I don't think. I don't think we had. I speak of Claire and Dyno, but I don't think we had. But she just followed what I did. And. But it was very close to. It was like three months before. And then after about. After going for about six months, we noticed all these sort of Facebook groups that had taken a tiny bit of our logo or a picture of me, and they just were dotting up all over the shop. And so we reach out to them and we said, look, you know, do you want to kind of come together as a. As a group? Because you're all doing the same thing. And. And some people don't know which tribe to join and. And they're all like. So we said, should we, should we regionalize you? You know, because it would be natural to do it geographic. And so we did that. We have a community team now who we get about 13,000 comments a week through different social channels. But for us, it's always been really important to allow that community to feel we're always there at the end of a piece of social. And so there's now 34 tribes in 17 countries, and some of them are tiny, some are 500 people. Like Dubai probably has 500 people, and then Victoria Australia has six and a half thousand. So they are, you know, engaged. We have each of them who are admins of the pages. We said, do you want to call yourself ambassadresses? And then after like another year, we said, look, the few days before something launches, we'll send it to you so that you can. Because they're kind of, you know, their local tribe look to them and say, what do you think of this? So we then give them the chance to try it, but we never, I think we give the ambassadors may be a little discount, but it's actually more an emotional give and take. And I think that's why, I think when these things are monetized too much or they're started by the business, there's a certain commercialization which doesn't allow for better organic growth. And I think something like this, you want to let that organic growth flourish. Also. They're your biggest champions and they're your harshest critic. So if we do something and they're like, da lum, we kind of. They're real sense check for stuff. And you need, as a business, you don't want to get, you know, you don't want to get over here when you, you need to hear what's going on. And they are really good at that.

[Nathan Chan]

So in saying that is, is it just Facebook groups that you guys are using or.

[Trinny Woodall]

They're Facebook groups. There's a few and there's lots of use Instagram. But what's good about Facebook is it's a two way communication tool. Instagram isn't. Instagram is a platform and you leave your comments. It's a two way tool on DMs, but it's not a two way tool in community. And meta is still, you know, Facebook is a community. It's the only platform on social media which is a true ability to have a community. And I don't think that would change as much as people might dis. Meta, whatever. There is a very strong community there.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah. So what advice would you give to early stage founders that want to develop like an incredibly strong community like you guys have?

[Trinny Woodall]

It's interesting, I think. Does it depend on the age of the customer you're getting to? Does it depend on the attitude of the kind of customer you're going to acquire? Because you can look at customers attitudinally and they could be any age or you could look at them like it's a millennial, it's a Gen Z, whatever it might be. And then it's about where are they chatting, where are they chatting with each other? And, and how do you just get involved in that chat? How do you in a way do something which makes them talk about you? And it's about so understanding what maybe is lacking in their life and being able to be that voice that talks about it. And I think in anything, whether it's Gen Z or Millennial or Baby Boomer, if you're talking about something that people are thinking about, they look to hear more.

[Nathan Chan]

And in the early days, how often were you in the, in the groups?

[Trinny Woodall]

In the groups a lot. I mean last night I was, you know, we did some events. We, we arrived here two weeks ago and we did Sydney and you know, we did a lot of press in Sydney and we had a tribe event and then we went to Brisbane. So then I look and I see what they're all posting and I like comments and you know, always late at just go through and I'll like comments And Instagram, I do it all myself on my channel but on Trini London we do it. But I just feel it's really important to, you know, I might Get, I don't know, two to 400 comments a day. But you get a sense of things. It's. I remember this guy who started a competitor to British Gas in England and I sat next to him at dinner. He was a very cool founder. And in fact, I think, did Rich Benson also invest a bit in him? I can't remember. But you know, he's a cool man. And he said his office was in customer service. That's where he actually put it because he wanted to hear what people are thinking and talking about. And when people don't get the response they want, they DM me, you know, so I hear what could be a problem? What is a problem? You know what they love?

[Nathan Chan]

So early stage startup founders, if they want to start a beauty brand, very, very, very competitive. Now more than ever. You look at AI, it's so easy to create a business now. You look at Shopify and the tools available, much, much easier.

[Trinny Woodall]

So much easier. I came out of Shopify before they launched Shopify plus we went into commerce tools and I'm like.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah, multiple. Back then you couldn't even have multiple stores. You had to have multiple separate stores.

[Trinny Woodall]

And now that's all changed.

[Nathan Chan]

So a lot has changed.

[Trinny Woodall]

So technically, much easier, correct? Getting the customer more challenging.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah. So what advice would you give to early stage startup founders that want to start a beauty brand? How do they stand out?

[Trinny Woodall]

I'm going to say one thing first, is I think some of the reasons people fail and don't get it off the ground is they spend too long on the product development of what it is and too little on how are they going to sell it, you know. And Barbara, who we both love Shark Tank, we so love Barbara. You interviewed her, didn't you? She's so fab. She was like, do you remember the thing? 87% is good enough. So challenging for an entrepreneur where 100% has got to be the norm. But I never forget her saying that. She said that to one of the pictures and I was like, that's so true. And I was lying in bed next to my partner and I just thinking when I was being trying to be too perfectionist and I just thought it's got to be, I'm at the very beginning, you want to be 100, 100. But so that's the first thing I'd say is whatever you, you know, you've got to feel, yeah, you got to feel it might be a great product and you might feel you have got a point of difference in the market, but go out and See, where are people buying whatever it is you're selling and how are they selling it? So is your physical product different? Have you invented some incredible new raw ingredient or is the packaging and branding phenomenal? Because in the world we live in today, packaging and branding can definitely get a product off the ground, but they will not ever make it a legacy brand. And it's like you don't want to build to have something in five years just die, you know, I think we all want to build to have something which is there and becomes establishment. It's always maybe a bit rock and roll, but it, you know, you don't want to do those turns so it has to have substance. So for me as a beauty brand entrepreneur, you know, we went to for skincare, we have our own lab. So for me, being in control of what my product is and developing it so that it feels incredibly unique so that we can talk about it with authenticity to show its point of difference in the market and it gives you the passion in which to talk about your product. So I think that's really important in terms of that Making it and cutting through the noise is about understanding what's out there now or if you're filling the hole, then where, where is it going to resonate the most with those people, you know, and how like there's a very, I, I mentor a few people in the UK and there's a girl who has a jewelry branch started when she was 18, she's now 21, maybe she's 22. And she did this thing where she started off on a minute level with girls who went to schools where there was like a sixth former who was influential and she sent them product. So she didn't go to influencers, she went on a real, I mean we talk about micro influencers talking about them for 10 years, all right. But I found this whole strategy where she was getting literally into a school of 500 kids. She knew that that 13 to 16 year old looked up at the 17 and 18 year old and that she would get them to do stuff. And she created these micro influencers in incredibly targeted, that is, those are the places. So she has started with like 25 school schools and she's building up a really good business and she's turning over a couple of million. You know, I'm not going to say the details but you know, that's how focused she became is like, I'm making this jewelry, who's going to love it and who's going to want it even more, you know, because who's going to love it is the people who will tell the people who's going to want it even more by how they tell them and talk to them and communicate in their language.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah, it's much easier to compete if you, if you get your target market so dialed in, like that niche so.

[Trinny Woodall]

Dialed in and really like putting them on the wall, you know, get your, whoever your target is. I like to take things sometimes out of online and put on the wall, who is that person? You know, this is really old fashioned marketing. Like where do, what do they look at on social? You know, where are they buying from right now, who are they hanging out with, who are their influences? All these things are just know that customer.

[Nathan Chan]

Do you think you need to raise money to start?

[Trinny Woodall]

I don't know. It's really tough because raising money, you can get your throat slit. Right now it's a ruthless market and fundraising is really challenging and there's a lot of people sitting on money right now not investing because they're thinking, that sounds like something I invested in a few years ago. So it is challenging to raise money. And I would say bootstrapping if you can for proof of concept will mean that when you go to that fundraise, you will not be shredded in terms of the cap table because otherwise you will. If you raise too early and people are saying I'm taking a big punt on you, they're going to be really greedy in the cap table and then you're going to find you're a couple of years in and you might even already be closer to being minority. And you need at least if you're a, I feel if you're a founder, you have a sense of what your product is and your market is. If it's, you know, a D2C brand and you need to protect your sense of it because you come up with the idea and there might be people along the way. There's definitely going to be people on the way as you grow who will know more than you in different areas. But if you get people in too early, they might direct you to a way that is where they feel the market's going. And maybe you have a real intuition where you feel you have the vision to see something else. And it's very difficult sometimes to define what do we trust in our vision versus where are they telling me something I need to hear? And that's, you know, going out to see investors. Even if you're not fundraising. I mean it takes a lot of time out of growing your business, but it's interesting to understand the market. It's interesting to see what's launching. It does give you information, but it takes a lot of time out and if there's other ways that you can do it just for the first sort of six months or a year, I think people are looking, you know, people, when I raise people did pre revenue, but doing pre revenue now is very challenging in this market.

[Nathan Chan]

So do you believe it's possible to build a successful beauty brand not raising any money, starting really small? You said you started with like 40 SKUs. Maybe just starting with one skew. Like a very simple.

[Trinny Woodall]

Like for sure you have got brands who have. I'm just like trying to think, oh like there's a brand called Gizu which is like a hair brand and she was an influencer and she started but I don't know if investors went to her and then they, they financed it. You have some people who might literally start with one product. It's, it is challenging and it depends how much time you feel you have to have the patience to grow it. Years ago I went to see. Not years ago, two years ago I went to Leonard Lauder, whose mother's Estee Lauder, big purchaser of beauty brands. But in our conversation he said to me, Trini, biggest thing I can tell you, patience. Which is interesting because sometimes, you know, we think and I'm going to say this like, but I think myself, we're the young ones, we know what we're doing. I'm saying this like I'm nearly 60 and he's like 80. But it's important sometimes to look at those people who have founded billion dollar businesses very different times. But fundamentally you're selling a product to a consumer. So even if the method by which you're selling it has changed for the area you live in, some of those fundamentals are actually identical and they never changed. And so when he said that to me, I always noticed that when I strategically make impulsive rather than intuitive decisions is when I don't have my patience. It's just an interesting one. So going back to your question Nathan, of should you fundraise or should you be. You know, it's requires patience. It's very challenging financially because you've then got to be in a position where you think, you know, do I rent or do I live with my parents? I mean if we're talking to people who are in that situation, then you know, can I do it out of my parents garage for a bit? Can I make that my office? How can I fund my Product. Because when you're funding product, if you're going to self fund, the cost per SKU is going to be more expensive than if you can order more and grow the business. So there is that point before you get to that inflection point where you're actually going to have a better gross margin, where it's more expensive for you to do it. But it means that you can get to a stage where you could have a positive impact, where you're not having to wait for your next revenue to buy your next stock. And then when you go to an investor, you'll be in a far stronger position. But I think there is no right or wrong way. It's really how you are emotionally as a person and what motivates you as to which route and also the markets.

[Nathan Chan]

And how big you want to go.

[Trinny Woodall]

Well, all right, so if you're listening, I don't know there's anyone listening who would say, I just want to grow a really small business. Have you ever had somebody sitting opposite you, Nathan, who said, I actually just want to grow a small business?

[Nathan Chan]

Never.

[Trinny Woodall]

Okay, fine. So the world is your oyster. You know, I sat down with a woman who founded Net A Porter, Natalie Massnay, and she said to me, she gave me some lovely bits of advice. So she said, trini, from day one, you're a global brand. Never forget it.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah, you make an interesting point around kind of, how big do you want to go? And this kind of, is it ever enough?

[Trinny Woodall]

Well, the truth, are they two separate things? Because is it ever enough? Is a state of mind. And I don't know many entrepreneurs who go, it's enough. Okay. So I think that's like, that's the burden you carry as an entrepreneur. It's kind of never enough. And that's what propels you forward all the time. And it's just there are people who like that and there are people who, like, they get to stage where this is enough. And I look at people sometimes like that and I think, think it would be lovely to have your life because it would be a life of far less worry. You wouldn't be so kind of challenged every single day. You wouldn't be kind of pounding the streets, you know, like, I was coming to you today and I had my team with me staying at this hotel and I was like, I had so many things on my mind. I had to walk fast and get away from everyone, you know, So I was literally crossing the streets and they were all like behind me going, she's just where the has she Gone. But it was just because there are a lot of thoughts inside my head right now. And, you know, the challenge for me is I'm running a business, there's over 200 people in it, and I'm here promoting the business as well. And that's my most challenged time, is wearing those two hats and feeling far away from a lot of decisions I'm making right now around the business, when I also need to be here, focused 100% on this. Yeah, that's my biggest challenge.

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah. Because, yeah, the personal brand, you're doing it so well, and it's really driving the growth, or partly. Partly driving the growth. But then operationally, you're the CEO.

[Trinny Woodall]

But I have a great coo. I've just hired a really good cfo, CRO. I combined that role and I found that I combine that role because it's like cash and cash out, you know, that's interesting.

[Nathan Chan]

That's an interesting profile, like to meet that person.

[Trinny Woodall]

I know, because generally, you know, I mean, I interviewed lots of CFOs, and I met this one and I thought, actually, this is interesting.

[Nathan Chan]

Okay.

[Trinny Woodall]

Yeah.

[Nathan Chan]

So you've got a strong leadership team.

[Trinny Woodall]

Strong leadership team, good C suite team, great leaders in each department, I think, building up a team and looking at where the focus is each year. So right now what I'm doing is I'm looking at where is our focus now, you know, so do we have. Who are the people in the business we need for where we want to go now? You know, so I am looking now at. We need to look more at what would wholesale look like? If we get to wholesale, what does retail look like when we're doing, you know, those are roles now that probably three years ago, two years ago, COO can do that role, you know, and just leave that because it's such a small proportion of our business. It's 10% of our business. But as we grow into retail, we need to look at what that is. And I think, think the challenge for DC brands now is whatever market that you're targeting, people need to, in order to trust you as a brand and believe what you are, they need to see the physical manifestation of the D2C brand. And if they don't see it, it's kind of like it's here today, gone tomorrow. And there are a lot of DC brands that are here today, gone tomorrow. So having the pop, you know, like the way we've done Australia is we have these, these kiosks and that we call them pop ups, but they're actually Permanent stands, try and do them in front of a Sephora or we're opening an Emporium here in Melbourne, our second one in, in November and we need people to see that so that, you know, even though when we localized here and we just, you know, it was fantastic for online, as soon as we localized they would then see, you know, I've got, you know, I was looking today at the area and I went into Emporium before I came here. So people sent me videos and I was like, where are we going to be? It's really interesting about this is the interesting thing about when you do your physical, where you're going to be. So mostly you'd sort of say got to be where all the premium brands are. We've got to be where Aesop is, we've got to be where Camilla Mark is, Zimmerman, all that. And I looked at that spot today and I thought great. You know, but outside of those areas, pop ups aren't necessarily allowed. Then you look at traffic and you look at route in which they're going to get to the stores in which they might do other parts of their life, that kind of customer. And they have to come off Lonsdale street and they go up and they hit Nike and then they go right and then they take the escalator to go to Zimmerman and Camilla Mark and they'll pass us. So we want to plonk ourselves right in front of them. And Mecca's just there. So it's about, you know, whatever your brand might be, if you're going to do a pop up, what does that look like? How are you going to make that noise which then you put on your social channels which people then see and think, look how physical they are. Because everyone ultimately, and there are some stats which show that Gen Z shot more in store than Millennials because they, you know, they spent a lot of time during COVID Stuck and they want to be in stores, they want to be out, they want to be sociable. So the concept that you're going to buy everything online. Yes, but they want to go in store. So what are you doing about it? If you're starting a business for a Gen Z, how are you going to be in that location where you're going to attract those people?

[Nathan Chan]

Tick tock. Tick tock is the rage.

[Trinny Woodall]

Tick tock is the rage. Yeah, Tick tock. It's interesting.

[Nathan Chan]

Talk to us about your experiences there.

[Trinny Woodall]

Okay, so I feel we have a long way to go with Tick Tock. I feel that there's certain, you know, if we look at our target demographic, I think they're on TikTok with the. Their daughters. I think that when I, you know, my daughter will always show me stuff on TikTok and then I'll look at TikTok and it kind of takes you down the rabbit hole. I think the algorithm is so fundamentally different. So when you're doing organic growth on TikTok, it's. You got to kind of reset everything if you've been Instagram or Facebook. And for us as a brand, it's also, how do we spread ourselves to do all those channels? Because we have a lot of, you know, we are really deep into meta in both Facebook and Instagram. So do we spread ourselves too thin? Do we have enough people to create that? Otherwise then I could do more on my TikTok and just, you know, grow that sort of quirkiness on TikTok. So when we were posting and at the moment we just post and re. Repurposing isn't working. Repurposing is not the way to do TikTok. It's got to be.

[Nathan Chan]

Oh yeah, it's got. Yeah, you can't do.

[Trinny Woodall]

So there's been a bit of repurposing, all right. And I just think that's not working. So the one successful viral that I had on TikTok, which is like, when I get back, this is my kind of thing of how am I going to influence that we grow. Tick tock. Because I do believe there's. There's people there and I do believe there's an audience there. And I do see a lot of different age groups now on TikTok, I had a. There was this viral thing about Zara with its sizing and I kept seeing it on TikTok and whenever my daughter, I said, it's such crap. You know, they were saying it's a triangle for this, it's a circle means zero. It comes up small and it's square means it comes up big or something. And I said, that's such crap. So I just went into Zara and I sort of went just so you know, whatever this viral thing's going around is crap. Because the truth is this means Zara home. This means Zara woman, and this means trf. It's just a different brands within Zara. It's nothing to do with sizing. And I got like two and a half million views on it because Lila said, I said, Lila, she's 19. My daughter, tell me how I put it up so it will immediately. She said, okay. The first 10 seconds. We're not going to use your voice, but it's going to turn into your voice and we're going to do this type face and da la la, two and a half million hits or whatever it was. So I sort of feel on one hand, should I just get my daughter to be in charge of TikTok and she can do a side hustle. She needs a side hustle. Anyway, I'm feeling she's becoming a bit entitled at university. And I was speaking to the team and they're all saying, we did, you know, jobs at the weekend at uni. And Lila's like, but I'm in Spain. I couldn't speak the language to do the job. And I'm like, okay, well, let's think of another one. But it's definitely there. We definitely need to work on it. It's not a primary conversion for us, but it's a market that you need to be in. Because also as a brand, when you have an audience that's not a Gen Z audience. Well, actually any, any brand that has a target audience, how do you get those people who are going to become that age? So you as a brand are here and you launch with those people where it resonates. But how do you make sure those people who are currently 30, that when they become 35, 40. Yeah, we will be the brand that resonates with them because otherwise you grow old with your customer and then you fall off a cliff. And some beauty brands are a little bit too legacy slash dinosauric. And, you know, some of the big conglomerates have got that kind of, you feel it's a brand for your grandma, are nearly. So we are a brand definitely for a grown up woman, but how do we always be the brand for that woman when she reaches that stage in her life that we are relevant to her? Which means that although the DNA and fundamentals are there, life changes, you know, we're in different decades. There's new technologies, there's new things happening, which leads us to AI. Okay. And VR. I just, I'm just giving you the. Yeah, I'm giving you the dovetail. Let's do it.

[Nathan Chan]

Yep.

[Trinny Woodall]

All right. So. So when I was looking at the algorithm we built Match to me, it was based upon how do you make it easier for an audience who's not used to buying makeup for the first time online, maybe a replenishing to actually have the confidence to buy online. So it was about build. You know, we did 3,600 women that we analyzed to look at what Their skin, hair and eye combinations would be. And then we match makeup to them. So, so we built that and 75% of our customers use that as a tool. And the AOV on those people is about 20% more than the. The AOV on somebody who doesn't do much to me. So it works. We know personalization works. So I'm going to kind of strip out personalization, sort of VR AI. All right. And so we, so we have that. That's all kind of personalization. Then during COVID a lot of brands who are retail focused knew that they had to do things to get customers online. So they did virtual try on. All right, so virtual try on, we had perfect core out of Korea, quite a few of these brands. It was bought by l' Oreal, and so l' Oreal did it themselves and they developed medium technology that you could try it on. Some worked well, some didn't know how to use the technology because, you know, coming out of COVID I look on their websites and I think they've really hidden it because to them they're not. Not D2C first. So it's like it was relevant when all the stores were closed, but now the stores are open, it's not so relevant for us. It's always been relevant because also then I know so much about our customer. The more personalized we are, the more I understand about our customer and therefore I can deliver more relevant product, products to her. So when we launch our skincare, so we had three bits of information on our customer, so we launched skincare and that now goes to 30 bits of information on our customer. So we know now the age. We know skin, hair and eye. We know sensitivity, we know dark spots, we know that emotional things. You know, when you're doing all of these new technologies, the hardest, most challenging thing is how do you get information out of them, which gives you emotional intelligence. Because going back to what we said at the very beginning, emotional intelligence is what sells around. So we look at where we go next and there's definitely. You can look at our journey of when people do the personalization and where there's a drop off. So we've changed a few things to kind of lower the drop off in some areas. But virtual try on, interesting. But to me it's like gamification, because I'm not a brand which believes in filters. And a lot of virtual try on literally puts a filter on your face first and then puts on the makeup. And I'm like, this is so against everything we stand for. It's like, be the best version of yourself, but don't put a filter onto face life. So don't think so. But then there's analysis. So for us, subjective opinion on who you think you are versus who you really are is very important to us. And a lot of people might say it's like when they go to the hairdresser and they say my hair's too red and the hairdresser looks at and thinks it's a big green. All right, it's subjective. So when they answer skincare, our skincare questionnaire, they're still saying subjectively what they feel. So the next bit that I will fold into my side is being able to identify skin in great detail because skin identification was very rusty, like it couldn't identify because it wasn't good enough yet. And it changes every three months, difference between a spot and an age spot. So cystic acne or an age spot couldn't tell the difference, but now it can, literally in the last four months, five months. So we are now at a stage of phase three of what a personalization journey means, which is we can take over for you where you're not sure of what answer to give which might delay you completing it, we will actually help you. So we're going to implement a few things. So that's our kind of next stage. And then there's a further stage, which I can't quite yet, but it is. You want things that are relevant for your audience to understand that they know will help them to get to a solution. But just to do it for a game or just to do it to keep up with the crowd isn't the reason to do it?

[Nathan Chan]

Yeah, no. Look, we have to work towards wrapping up or almost at time. But that's really interesting how you guys are using that personalization. That's like almost a form of like it's, it's kind of a competitive advantage, right, to be able to do that against other brands. It's really smart. So, last question, Trini, before we wrap, any final words of wisdom that you would love to share with our community of early stage startup founders, particularly e commerce founders, just about to launch something, recently launched something, or they're just post revenue.

[Trinny Woodall]

You. I think there's days when you're going to just think, will it ever work? So I'm just going to address those kind of days because I think that's the most challenging thing because you can feel quite alone as a founder. You can feel, you know, if you're not doing it with a partner it can be a solitary existence at the beginning. And if you know you're giving it your all, then it's to remember you never know what's behind the closed door. Because we can kind of of, you know, take the narrative and make it really that there is no solution to what you. You might be looking for. And it's just to be open to. There could be something, you know, so for me, I need to remember that.

[Nathan Chan]

Awesome. Well, look, thank you so much for your time. It's great to see you again. This was a fantastic interview. And yeah, I'm. I'm excited to see how far you take this thing.

[Trinny Woodall]

Great. Nice to see you again.

[Nathan Chan]

Hey, founder fam. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and if you. If you enjoyed this episode, please take the time to leave us a review and let us know what you think. This podcast is 100% free. We work so hard to go out and find the most successful entrepreneurs and founders in the world. Your feedback helps us grow, improve, and even bring on more incredible guests and insights. So if you have a second, please take a moment, leave us a review. It really makes a difference. Thanks again for listening and I'll catch you on the next show.