BTS of Creating a Beauty Brand (Spoiler: It’s Not All How You’d Think)
Main image – Michelaravasio/Stocksy
Ever wondered what it’s like to be the founder or CEO of a big beauty and wellness brand? Us too.
Yep, we’re thinking breakfast meetings in LA, year-round beauty freebies, and non-stop travel.
But for the brave men and women who actually embark on launching a brand in (an admittedly pretty crowded) beauty space, what does finding success actually look like?
We went BTS with Mel Lawson, founder and CEO of mega successful supplements brand Bare Biology, to find out exactly that.
What does it take to launch a successful brand? How much money do you need behind you? And do the millions just roll in as soon as you get big?
Keep scrolling to find out.
The inspiration
In order to start up a successful brand, first you’ll need a goal or motivation. For Lawson, it was mental health. “Post natal depression inspired me to start the brand,” she explains.
Image – Bare Biology
“I’d had a history of mental illness in my family and my mother had been hospitalised with post-natal depression. When I had post-natal depression almost 20 years ago, mental health and nutrition were quite niche. People weren’t really talking about it and social media wasn’t a thing.”
She was passionate about mental health and nutrition going hand in hand. “I had always been aware of the role nutrition played because of my own mental health, so I did some research and read more about omega 3,” she says. “No one tells you these things; that when you’re pregnant the mother’s omega 3 goes to the baby, and when you breastfeed, it goes through to the baby too.
It made sense to me then that if you’re deficient in omega 3 it would affect your mental health and so I began taking it. It really helped me, and I became quite interested in the whole thing.”
She then started learning more about the quality of fish oils. “I thought, ‘actually you don’t want to just buy a run of the mill supplement.’ And there was this gap in the market for the highest quality supplements,” she explains.
With a background in brand marketing and advertising, Lawson had always wanted to have her own business. “This ended up being my big idea.”
Starting up
Ok, so you’ve got your big idea, but where do you start? Lawson says with a first product.
With a background in brand marketing and advertising, working with the likes of Mars and Coca Cola, she knew that creating an exceptional first product was the priority.
“The first thing I needed was a product and I wanted to make sure I got the best quality fish oil,” she explains. “I literally Googled ‘fish oil manufacturers’, and my children at the time were 2, 4 and 6 and I was a full-time mum. When my youngest was napping or at nursery then I’d do two hours of research. I’m a really organised person and I just worked out what I needed to know and then dedicated time to finding it out.”
The brand launched with one product, “our liquid, Life and Soul,” says Lawson.
You can’t expect everything to be plain sailing though when you’re launching a brand.
“I didn’t have a warehouse and when the first shipment arrived, a big articulated lorry stopped outside our house and this pallet got dropped in our driveway,” she says. “I thought ‘oh wow, I’ve got to sell this now’.”
Next up is sorting an online shop. “I got a little website built, using Shopify,” she goes on. “We were one of the first UK Shopify users. And I found a guy in Brighton who helped me build the site for £500.” Savvy.
And finally, you’ll need to get the word out. Having a specific strategy in mind for the best way to do that is key, according to Lawson. “From day one my strategy was to get nutritionists and health care practitioners recommending the product,” she explains.
Image – Bare Biology
“There’s a wholesaler that nutritionists tend to use so I got stocked there. I knew that if a nutritionist recommends something you just go and buy it and then you rarely deviate from that brand. It was a grassroots strategy, and the business model has worked really well for us and still works today. We now have thousands of nutritionists recommending our product and a really strong foundation of customers who love our product.”
Growing
Once you’ve got your product, and a way of getting the word out about it, you’ll want to think about how to grow your brand.
For Lawson, there was one major goal. “Getting stocked in Liberty,” she says. “Because I love the store and because I wanted the credibility of having the product there.”
She explains that Liberty had a scheme called Liberty Open Call, where they give you 4 minutes with their buyers to pitch your product. “So I queued up at about 6am and the queue goes all round the building,” she says. “You get called in and they literally hit a timer to give you four minutes. It was quite a tough sell because it was a liquid fish oil which not a lot of people would necessarily want to try.”
So did she get any bites? “I had two beauty buyers talking to me and they were really glamorous,” she explains. “I’d been a stay-at-home mum for years and I really had to believe in myself. They tried it and they didn’t seem to have a problem with it. And then they told me they liked it, said it was amazing and then said it was the best thing they’d seen all day.”
It turns out, Lawson’s self-belief paid off. “They’d both had babies, and they said they were impressed by the fact that I’d done it with three little kids.”
Image – Adobe
Like many things though, it’s not official until you’ve signed on the dotted line and according to Lawson, this didn’t happen straight away. “They took ages to come back to me and I’m not good at being pushy,” she explains.
“I eventually emailed them after a couple of months, and they replied to say ‘actually we’d like to launch it next week. Here’s the paperwork, can you hand deliver the product and we’ll do a little launch event?’ We lasted about 8 years in there, which was mega. Once I got in Liberty, it opened the doors to other retailers.”
Persistence is key then, but you’ll also need to be ready to pounce when opportunity does strike.
Slow and steady wins the race
While some brands experience overnight success, Lawson says it’s not the case for everyone.
“We haven’t experienced that explosion where some brands get an injection of cash and they hire a celebrity to promote a product, or where you’re a fashion brand and a celebrity wears your item and they sell out. We’ve never had that,” she explains. (Is it me, reader, or does that feel like a huge relief? It definitely feels relatable.)
“We’re very much the tortoise in the race, partly because we don’t have investors.”
“I ran the business myself for the first two years, with young children. The business has then grown at the rate it can grow at. But we’ve built a really solid foundation for the business by doing it that way,” she continues.
Once again though, persistence pays off. And a lack of immediate viral success doesn’t mean a business can’t have huge success down the line.
“We’ve grown very steadily, about 60% year on year,” Lawson says. “In the last couple of years though there’s been a big change, and I think it’s got to a point now where people have heard of the brand, we have thousands of nutritionists recommending us and we do seem to be bigger.”
Surprising truths
If this still all sounds a little intimidating though, don’t despair too soon. Contrary to what you might believe, Lawson says you can actually get a business off the ground with very little initial funding. “But you do have to be careful and patient,” she warns.
“People think you have to be an overnight success but if you’re prepared to wait, you can start a business for less than you think.”
“Bare Biology has never had investors, and we paid for that first shipment with savings and a credit card,” Lawson says. “I was lucky that my husband and I had got used to me not having an income and we’d adjusted our spending already, and that he was in a full-time job that was paying the mortgage and the bills.”
This obviously isn’t the case for everything though and Lawson recognises that starting a company is not for everyone. “I sometimes think, ‘why would you not want your own business?’ But lots of people can’t stand the idea.”
Image – Studiofirma/Stocksy
Another surprising truth about running a successful beauty brand? Being stocked in a huge retailer like Liberty doesn’t automatically convert to sales. “People don’t just go into a store and say, ‘great, I’ll buy that,’ Lawson explains. “A lot more goes into getting people to buy your products in store than you’d think.”
Right ok, it’s not necessarily all working trips to the Bahamas as soon as you become successful then.
Building a positive community
Brands are becoming increasingly community-focused, and Lawson says the value of community can’t be underestimated.
“When we first started, I didn’t think too much about our marketing,” she says.
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“Up until a few months ago I was writing all our copy so the tone of voice is basically me. But then as a result I’ve attracted a customer base and community that are drawn to me. For example, our social media content performs a lot better when I’m in it, even though I don’t like saying that. But I think it’s because people respond to seeing the human behind the brand.”
This might come as (another) surprise for some. Whilst some of the world’s largest mass-produced brands do well because they are well-oiled, globally successful machines, it doesn’t mean that a brand can’t do well if it is more humanised (less robotic).
“It wasn’t initially a conscious marketing strategy to build our community, it just happened. But now our customers love our newsletter, it’s our most successful marketing tool. The ones they particularly love are our opinion pieces.”
Words of wisdom
So what advice can Lawson offer to those thinking of starting up their own business? “You’ve just got to start at the beginning,” she says. “Like anything, for example learning a language, you go gradually and then suddenly look back and think, ‘I’ve actually come quite far but I’ve still got a long way to go’.”
And anything to avoid? “I had this thing where when I was hiring I would feel like the person I was interviewing was doing me a favour because I felt little and inconsequential,” she explains. “I understand why I felt like that- and I think a lot of people do – but I would advise people to avoid the temptation of feeling like that, especially when hiring because it can result in bad decisions.”
She also suggests homing in on the bits that are important for your business. “It’s really tempting to branch out too quickly and lose the quality,” she warns. “Figure out what the priority is that is actually going to move the business forwards and just do that. I’ve always done that.”
And if you’re completely new to business, Lawson says it’s all about logic. “We’re all consumers and we all know what we want from brands and businesses so it’s possible to think like a business owner even if you have a completely different background.”
The takeaway
It’s pretty clear (and rather awe inspiring) that Mel Lawson knows a thing or two about growing a brand and making it a success. Her background in marketing and advertising clearly served her well.
But it’s also encouraging that she believes that lack of budget or experience shouldn’t be barriers. A good idea, a great product, and an authentic community behind you will serve any budding business owners well, according to Mel.
But even so, there will always be peaks and troughs along the way that are unexpected when building a brand.
So, what’s next for Bare Biology? “We have two more launches this year,” she teases. “Stay tuned for more details.”
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