EP28. Beauty Entrepreneurship with Jo Chidley of Beauty Kitchen

Hello and welcome to the Formula Botanica Green Beauty Conversations podcast. My name is Gemma Ortega Perez and I am your host. And I'm so pleased that you could join us for this podcast. If you want to find out a little bit more about what we do over at Formula Botanica, then head over to our website, formulabotanica.com and check out our free sample class. This week I'm interviewing Jo Chidley from the fabulous Beauty Kitchen and we talk all about the entrepreneurial journey. Journey. The entrepreneurial ecosystem and how she built Beauty Kitchen from the ground up as a sustainable business. I hope you really enjoy this one as it was one of my favorite ever podcasts to record. Hello and a lovely welcome to the podcast, Jo.

Hi, Gemma. It's good to be here today.

I know we've been trying to arrange this podcast for I think the better part of a year now.

Yeah, possibly, yes.

Everyone's schedules being so busy and, you know, ups and downs of the year. But I am so glad that you're finally able to join us. We've been wanting to have you on the podcast for a really long time and since we met back in. Well, since I met you. I know Lorraine has met you a couple of times before, but I met you for the first time at the Natural Beauty Roundtable in Brighton, I think at the end of 2017.

Yes, it was probably about this time last year.

Yes, it was. Yeah, exactly about this time last year. And I just remember you so clearly from that roundtable as you had so many interesting and innovative things to say. So, yeah, it. It was lovely to meet you and I am so glad that you're finally on the podcast.

No, thank you for inviting me on. I'm excited.

Yay. So am I. So I obviously know a bit about you, but for the benefits of our listeners, I would love for you to introduce yourself and. Yeah. Who you are, what you do and chat us through your brand.

Yeah. So my name is Jo Chidley and I'm the co founder of Beauty Kitchen. We're a young independent beauty business looking skincare, bath and body and gifts. And really the foundation of what we do is around being the sustainable beauty company. And I will talk a little bit more about that as we go on this morning. My sort of background is that I'm a chemist. My professional background is not necessarily as a development chemist, but I have always had a big interest in the beauty industry and would probably class myself as a beauty junkie. Pretty much prepared to push the boundary in all areas. And that's really what we try to do here at Beauty Kitchen is really push the boundaries of our own business and hopefully influence the industry.

Yes. So like I said, lots of innovation. And you're going to hear more from Jo on that theme probably as we move through the podcast. So we had some interesting conversations obviously in the build up to this podcast. Just chat. You know, we always interview guests before we actually record a podcast, just to thrash out what we would like to discuss. And one of the things I would love for you to share, Jo, is a few of your steps or a little bit of your journey of how you became to be a beauty entrepreneur and what that has meant for you. And I know you mentioned really interesting terms like the entrepreneurial ecosystem. So yeah, I'd love for you just to chat about your journey as entrepreneur.

Yeah, I mean, for me, I have been really fortunate in the fact that there is such a lively entrepreneurial ecosystem, not just locally in Scotland, but in the uk. And then when you get further afield as well, the other great thing, and actually on Friday, it will be 100 years to the day that women in the UK got the right to vote. And that really has made me think about female entrepreneurship. Although I class myself as a beauty business person, irrespective of whether you're female or male. But there has been a lot of guided support recently around what it is that women actually need within business or to start business. And that's, you know, one of the real reasons that I love what you guys are doing. Because although I maybe don't know the stats, I imagine you have a much higher percentage of women starting their own beauty business than men. And that is such a unique thing to create because unfortunately, women don't start businesses as quickly as men do. And I think we should be able to change that. And one of the parts of today was to really see to the listeners that ask or research or network and find out what support is actually there. We have been going for, we've been trading for just over four years and we have grown considerably. Our turnover last financial year was just over 3 million, which is rather large. We're in this sort of scale up phase at the moment and we haven't taken any external investment. So our support has come from either public funding, accelerator programs, networking support from the retailers that we work with. And for me, I almost want to get the message out to the listeners. Please ask for help and support because it's definitely out there.

And so what, you know, let's take a little step back. Where did the idea for Beauty Kitchen come from.

So my husband and I, Stuart, wanted to start our own business and we felt that there was a big gap within sustainable beauty, which incorporates, in my head, you know, natural and organic formulations. And we felt that in that space it was either terribly expensive formulations or products.

Yeah.

Or they tended maybe to be just a little bit boring and not much fun. And I wasn't sure how many messages they kind of got out there. So I kind of felt that we at Beauty Kitchen where the fun of Lush with the efficacy of Neil Yard. So we are in the middle.

Yeah, it's such a great description and.

That'S what we hope to be.

So you came up with this idea, you saw a gap in the market and you thought, okay, let's start our own business. So did you start off by looking for support as an entrepreneur right away or. You know, I'm just keen to understand how this journey evolved for you because, like you said, obviously your turnover is 3 million. I'm sure it wasn't all always that way. I'm sure there's been several stories to how you got there.

Yeah. So what we did initially is we wanted to understand what our business model was. And, you know, I was fortunate to have a co founder. So I do encourage people because trying to do it on your own is a tough gig. And especially in those days when you. Everything is going wrong, nothing is going right for you, you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. And when you've got a co founder, then actually you've someone to lean on. So when you're having a bad day, they can have a good day and hopefully vice versa. That really helps from a support perspective. It took us probably about three years before we actually started the business. So we were doing lots of things like farmers markets, craft fairs, almost anywhere where we could get out to customers to find out was there actually a need for what Stuart and I were creating within Beauty Kitchen. I also did a lot of direct selling with friends and family. So I would go to the houses, you know, a few friends or family or extended friends and family would come round. To be fair, there was probably a bottle of wine there as well, and I would basically, you know, make the products there and then and sell them to friends and family. So I. I have, you know, in terms of some of the farmers markets at this time of the year, I have had my ski outfit on because it is so cold and you've paid, you know, 50 quid to have a stall there and you sell hardly anything. But what it does is it actually builds up that resilience, I think, or that's what it did for me anyway. It builds up that resilience to see, you know, is that my market that I'm trying to target or is there another business model that I should be using? And that probably took about three years. So I was still working full time, Stuart was still working full time. And every other hour and weekend and holidays we basically spent on Beauty Kitchen. So that's like part one. Then what happened is that we were fortunate enough to be. A friend of ours had been at a Holland and Barrett supplier conference. And the beauty buyer there was describing her strategy for Holland and Barrett Beauty, because they're not known for beauty. The category had only been going for about five years at that time. And everything that she was describing to David sounded like Beauty Kitchen. And David called me up and said to me, can you get me some slides over so I can present this? And when I did that, I managed to get a meeting with the Holland and Barrett buyer. And that was really when we realized we did have a business. We need to set it up, we need to start trading. And that was September 2014.

All right, so already quite a journey up until that point. Yes. So what happened after that?

So I had a two hour meeting with Holland and Barrett. However, the buyer was late, there was problems on the road, and she was an hour and 50 minutes late. And I had 10 minutes. Yeah. So I had prepared, you know, all these slides and all this preparation of this big, you know, this is what Beauty Kitchen could do for Holland and Barrett. And I had 10 minutes and I was like, what do I do? So I do work well under pressure. We decided to meet in Starbucks rather than in the hotel. I quickly got some salt, some essential oil and a carrier oil, and I basically made her a freshly made hand scrub in the middle of Starbucks and gave it a mini hand treatment. And that was it. And everyone in Starbucks were wondering what was going on. You know, my ultimate was, I've got 10 minutes. How do I get the next meeting? Because that's all I was focused on at that time. And that's what got me the second meeting.

Okay, so I'm hoping the second meeting was a bit longer than the first.

Perhaps we did have longer. And what the buyer wanted from Holland and Barrett is that she had seen our little stall, if you like, Beauty Kitchen stall in Glasgow, and she'd said, could you make a mini version of that for her first more store that we're opening, which was a much Larger footprint size for Holland and Barrett. And I was like, okay, yeah, I think we can. So I went down Blue Peter style. And I apologize if people don't know what Blue Peter is. It's a children's show where they encourage you to create your own stuff. And I basically, Blue Peter styled a Create your own unit for customers to be able to create their own body scrub in store. And she loved it, which was great. The next problem was she then said, well, you've got this amount of space, which was 3 meters by 2 meters, which most people would think, well, that's amazing. You've got all of that space. But it was one store that she was giving me that for, and we had to create 140 products that were retail ready in four months.

Okay, challenge accepted.

Well, the thing is, in my head, and again, this is not everybody's way of working. It's just my way of working. I'm a big believer in saying yes and then working out how you get it done. Get a foot in the door. Because I thought, if I get into this one store, I've developed all of these products. This is the flagship store for Holland and Barrett. You know, I'm then very sticky. And that's actually what happened. So we did create. I mean, the development chemist that I worked with on a consultancy basis, I may add, you know, he was pulling the hair out of his head. Stuart, fortunately, is very, very good at designs and labels and all of that stuff, and I basically just plugged in wherever I was needed. So we launched that alongside seven clip strips of lip balms in all of their stores. What was really interesting at that time is that Holland and Barrett were prepared to take such a big risk on such a small. In the nicest possible way. Nobody company, however, we had presented this big plan to say, we might be small, but we have big ideas, and they bought into that. So that's one of the other key messages to get across here. Just because you're one person or two people and you're very small and you're maybe only selling a hundred pounds or $100 of product a week, don't think that someone bigger will not be interested in your innovation and ideas.

Mm. And I think there's also something to be said about your passion and your drive because, you know, having met you, your enthusiasm for what you do is so contagious. And I think. Do you think that they picked up on that as well?

Yeah, I mean, they knew that. I don't know how I did it, actually, but, you know, I really don't. I kind of look at myself and think, how did that happen? They just believed that I would deliver and because I delivered on that one store, they then knew this is somebody, this is an organization that even though they're small, they are delivering on everything that they have said. Now don't get me wrong, you know, it's, I've aged considerably in that time. However, it has grown our business from a turnover of around £20,000 to We Are now in a scale up phase in four years. It is possible you would be surprised at how many large organizations are let down by other larger organizations who say they're going to deliver on innovation, on price, on promotion, on customers, on pr, on all of that stuff that large retailers look for and then they don't come up with the goods and you just have to be there at that time. Ready.

Yeah. And you were. And so you showed yourself to be passionate, reliable, focused and hard working.

Yes. And a little bit mad.

I think that's what a lot of really successful entrepreneurs have in common. If I'm. I think you have to be slightly mad when you're trying to push forward with these big ideas.

Yeah, yeah, okay. You know, there's reassurance and we talked about this the other day. If it doesn't feel uncomfortable what you're doing or challenging, then it probably isn't the right thing because if it's easy, everybody does it.

Yeah. I mentioned something to Jo that I was reading the other day from Brene Brown that was talking about this. You know, if you're challenging yourself all the time and you're moving ahead with these big ideas, then you are going to feel constantly uncomfortable and it's something I think you just have to plow on through and just do. So I know that we talked about as well in our conversation about this idea of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. So I mean, at some point, obviously things have gotten big. You know, we all have limits to some of our skills and sometimes like, you know, the journey can wear you down. So when did you start understanding that you needed to have a good support network? When did you start looking for connections and contacts and just people to talk to and talk about your journey with?

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm naturally curious, you know, not just about people, about things and the environment. If I don't actually know something, I would rather keep on asking questions to find out more. In Scotland we would call that being nosy, but everywhere else everyone's really polite and they call it curious. So I think I do have a natural instinct to one, ask for help and two, be curious when I just didn't realize that there was all of this other support out there probably until we got the first. And it wasn't an order from Holland and Barrett, but it was a letter of intent. Because obviously from a cash flow perspective, if we are being asked to invest a considerable amount of money and we've not got any cash coming in, the bank want to see something to reassure them. So we were given a letter of intent and someone said to me, have you gone to Business Gateway? Now that's what we call it in Scotland. I think there's a variety of different names in the rest of the UK, Business Link and the Department of Trade, etc. But it's basically a public organization that supports small businesses and I believe it's maybe called Business Link or it can be under the Department of Trade elsewhere in the uk. So generally, if you actually go on and research online, put in small business grants, doesn't matter which country you're in, it will come up with all of the available small business grants and generally because it's a grant, it will be coming from a public funded organisation. So Business Gateway is part of Scottish Enterprise, which is the Scottish Government's Department of Trade, and they offer support, as in a business advisor, and they also offer grants, but they also introduce you to this whole other ecosystem that I just didn't know was available. I thought when you started up your own business, you had to always use your own money if you were maybe fortunate enough to get a bank loan or an overdraft, but that doesn't really happen these days. I didn't know that there was so much other. Not just financial support, but support on your knowledge and also business support in terms of if you're having a sort of challenging day or a challenging week, that there's other people that can support you. And I do think that has really opened my mind over the last four years of how much support is out there. I have made a sort of short list just to maybe go over my particular journey and then some of the resources that I haven't used yet, but that would be more relevant to maybe some of the other entrepreneurs that are listening. First thing was I went to Business Gateway. They assigned me a business advisor because I had the letter of intent from Holland and Barrett. I was actually given access to several different grants, one of those being a financial readiness grant. And what that did is that actually created or supported the creation of my business plan, which meant that I could then go to the bank to see, this is now my business plan, this is my letter of intent. Can you give me any other funding? And that then supported the bank funding. I then entered or Beauty Kitchen entered a competition which is called the Edge Fund is based in Scotland at the moment, but anyone that has a business in Scotland can apply for it. And we won £30,000 of grant funding through that process. Once that happened, 12 months into our business journey, we had grown enough to be given an account manager from Scottish Enterprise which then gave us access to other European funding. And that funding helped us employ our first person because they paid 50% of that person's salary for the first 12 months. And this is just some examples of the funding that is available. And it depends on the business, it depends on what you require and what support next. We joined an accelerator program. It's UK wide and it's also available in India and it's called Entrepreneurial Spark. The great thing about this accelerator is that it's actually free. So with some accelerators you have to pay to join. This one is actually free and they have a variety of different programs depending on where your business is at. So even if you've not started started trading and you're thinking about a business, there's a three month program where they will help you and guide you into what your business could become. And this is supported by RBS and NatWest as a bank and also some of the larger partners. I believe KPMG and Dale EMC are two of the corporate partners that support this accelerating. So what you have with an accelerator program is you are in a hub with other entrepreneurs that are in different industries but that are on the same journey that you're on. And again, that support is phenomenal because if you're having a challenge or there's a problem that you can't resolve, generally speaking, within that hub you will have someone that's either gone through it before or they know someone that's going through it and they'll connect you.

Sounds really inspirational.

It is. I mean, you know, and it's not for everyone. So it worked for me and Beauty Kitchen. For some people they come into the accelerator and it's just not. It just doesn't work for them. And that's okay because there's so many other tools and programs that are available. You just need to find the right one for you. And then one of the other I think has grown over the last few years is called Startup Grind. And this is a monthly program that you can go to where you hear another entrepreneur speak, there's other entrepreneurs that are actually at the evening or the day and you get the chance to then network again within, you know, your ecosystem.

Okay, wow. Yeah. So there's potentially a lot of support out there if you're tapping into the right networks. And I guess it's just about finding what network operates in your region, in your country. And if there's not one, think about starting one up.

Well, that's what startup grind do. You can actually start up your own if there isn't one in your area.

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, that's very interesting. So take notes guys, as Jo's talking. And obviously, as always, always the links to everything that Jo mentions will be included in the show notes. So moving on slightly from this topic, which is all the topics that we're going to talk about intertwined. But I know that you always wanted to build in sustainability into Beauty Kitchen and you touched on that earlier in the podcast. And I just wanted to talk about why that was so important. And do you think it's contributed to the success of your business, given that people can see how important creating a sustainable business is to you?

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I'm a big reader, you know, I love to read books and I read the Cradle to Cradle book about five years ago and I was just blown away by the concept that a sustainable business strategy that actually replicates the cycle of nature. Nature in which waste is reused. So in our world at the moment, because of the industrial revolution, we have a cradle to grave approach which is basically to decrease waste, but ultimately everything ends up in landfill. And we've, you know, Obviously the last 12 months, particularly in the media, you know, that is just not sustainable. Whereas in nature, when a tree or an animal dies or creates waste, then that waste is broken down and those nutrients become used for another process. And the Cradle to Cradle book describes how that can be possible in this world of plastic, dare I say it, and technology. And I just think that concept for me is about how to ensure your business has longevity and will be still here in 50 years plus.

Okay. So I mean, that must have contributed. Like, did you talk about that quite a lot in business meetings and in all the networks?

No, I didn't. And the reason why is that actually it was so far ahead that when I either had it in my. So I have a one minute pitch, a three minute pitch, and a five minute pitch that's already, you know, on PowerPoint. And I can, you know, talk through that depending on the audience. So whether that's, you know, the bank that I need to speak to, or whether it's Holland and Barrett or another retailer, you know, you have these pitches organized. And I did try to weave in Cradle to Cradle and it just fell on deaf ears, to be honest, because everyone was just about recycling. So I just kept it under my hat for a few years and waited. And then Blue Planet happened and all of a sudden we have had such interest from large retailers across the globe because there is very few beauty businesses that are sustainable beauty businesses. And that has opened so many doors in the past 12 months.

Wow. I guess. So that's another interesting point to note, I guess if all of your, what do you call them, concepts or ideas for your business aren't being received at that moment, it doesn't mean that they're not going to be received a bit later on.

Very true. And it's ultimately, what Beauty Kitchen. You know, I like to talk. I get really excited and I am quite out there in ideas. Sometimes when I see a look on someone's face or a tone in someone's voice, if I'm speaking on the phone, I just switch on to something else because I know that I'm not being received positively and I don't want to waste my opportunity. So I just shut up.

Yeah. I mean, that takes an incredible amount of emotional intelligence, really, to pick those things up.

Yeah. You know, I think everybody knows when they're boring somebody.

Really. I don't know. I've had people really talk on at me, even though I can probably my body language is showing that. Or I might politely say, oh, maybe we should just move on from that. And they're like, no, no, let's keep talking about it. And then I get, you know, I'm lost. Yeah.

And that's the thing. If you've lost your audience, the quicker you move on, then find the hook that the they want to talk about. Brilliant. So our most recent launch, we have just recently launched a product in which is called Naturaline, which is 0% petroleum jelly, 100% natural.

Okay.

Yeah. And we have sat on that product for about six years because it just wasn't the right time.

Yeah.

And actually because hindsight is a great thing. If only.

I know.

You know, because there's so many things where we've gone to market and we've gone, why did we do that then? We should have waited. Anyway, we waited with this one and the initial results have been phenomenal and I just can't believe how well it has done. But timing is key. For lots of things. And just because you've got the idea doesn't mean to say you need to act on it. But always keep it in your back pocket, because one day it will be relevant.

Exactly. I remember going to an entrepreneurial event and this woman saying she had this concept for a beauty brand, so an ayurvedic brand. And she's from India, grew up in the uk and she said, you know, as she was coming up with the concepts and looking at the market, she knew it was a good idea, but. But the market wasn't quite ready and she delayed her launch, I think, by 18 months. And then when she did launch, it was just the right time.

Yeah. And that can be the making or the breaking of a small business as well. And that's where, for me, what we've done is we have launched products that weren't perfect or weren't Joe's perfect. We launched, for instance, our hand wash with metal springs in the pumps, because at that time, there just wasn't a way to not do it. And it's the only way, really, to dispense a hand wash. So, you know, was it my ideal product to launch? No. However, we are now changing to fully recyclable pumps. So timing takes time.

Yeah. I guess you just got to do what you can in increments, I guess.

Yep. And don't beat yourself up.

Yeah. And I wanted to, because yesterday when we were having a chat, you said something. What was it? Fail quickly, fail.

Yeah. So fail fast, fail cheaply, and just. And move on and learn from it. That's the best thing to do, especially within beauty. The great thing about this industry is, you know, we love innovation and we love something new and we love a little tweak. Even if it's just the color, Color of a bottle or the color of a soap. It doesn't need to be huge, big jumps. It can be just little evolutions. And as long as you keep that as part of your DNA within your organization, you will always come out on top.

Wow. That is really good advice. The DNA of your organization. I love that. I love that quote. Okay, so I think, think, unfortunately, this is about all we have time for, although I'm sure we could go on chatting for ages about all of these things. So thank you so much, Jo, for joining us and for sharing your wisdom and your story. I really appreciate it and I think that our listeners will as well.

I hope that, you know, what you guys are doing and what all of these entrepreneurs are doing are changing and industry that really does need disruption. And I just think it is testament, you know, the CEW award that you guys have just recently won, Lorene has won, you know, just blew my mind because it just was getting recognition in the right place at the right time. So, no, thank you for supporting me as well.

Anytime. Jo, we love what you're doing at Beauty Kitchen, and I was fortunate enough to be able to try some of your products a while back, and those are lovely, too. Sadly, my moisturizer is now finished, so I'll have to post up an empty shot and go and procure myself some more. And we are thrilled, obviously, to hear from entrepreneur to entrepreneur that you are doing so well because we know the passion and drive that you've put behind Beauty Kitchen.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you, Jo, for being a wonderful guest.

No, thank you. And have a great Christmas and a happy hug. Money, as we would say in Scotland.

Indeed. Thank you so much for joining us and taking the time to listen. And I hope that you found what Jo had to share valuable as usual. All links and resources mentioned will be included in the show notes that come with this episode. If you're interested in making an impact and joining the conversation as part of the green beauty movement and the global green beauty computer conversation, then find us over on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram ormulapotanica. You can also actively join in on the shaping discussions about the global green beauty movement over on our big Facebook group, the Skincare Entrepreneur Mastermind. Please join us. We would love to have you there. And once again, thank you so much for listening.

Sa.