How Joanna Jensen Built Child’s Farm Into A Market Leader

0:00One of my daughters came to me and said, oh my god mummy you've got to buy me this hayley bieber product because look at her skin and i thought oh my god have i taught you nothing she says she uses all her own products i said that is like 14 hydro facials that is a cast of thousands surrounding her light camera action more makeup than you and i could stick in a carrier bag and it's not real this week my guest is Joanna Jensen, founder of Child's Farm, the UK's leading baby and child personal care brand, category defining FMCG challenger she built from a kitchen table to nationwide dominance and ultimate exit.

0:40Our products are fairly simple and I think that is the reality about most cosmetics these days. If you want to do something that really, really works, you keep it really, really simple. Welcome to Screw It Just Do It, the show for those who decided to screw it and just did it. This is the podcast that brings you face to face with the entrepreneurs and business rebels who threw caution to the wind and built something extraordinary. So tell me, what was the exact Screw It Just Do It moment that made you turn a challenge maybe your daughter had into a fully fledged brand rather than just a home remedy?

1:16Oh, such a good question, Alex. I think when you're a parent and you have a little one who's clearly in an awful lot of pain and discomfort you would do anything to help them and I think my sort of my lioness moment if you like was seeing her in so much pain with red raw you know elbows the backs of her knees her bum you know it was everywhere really bad eczema and she was in a lot of pain she couldn't have a bath I mean washing her hair was agony. And I just thought there has to be a better way. And it was, I went away with my now ex-husband and I said, there has to be something we can do for Bella.

1:59And he said, and I said, there's nothing, you know, there's nothing around here. What can we do? And he said, well, if you think you can do something, you think you're so clever, you do it then. And I thought, and I thought, yeah, okay, I will do it. And it was, it's interesting. I'm part of a group called by Women Built. And they did a survey a couple of years ago of all of their members. And I think they've got about three and a half, four thousand female founders in consumer. And 98 % of them said they created their brand because of the needs that they needed personally. So it was something that was missing in their lives.

2:35And I think that is a real, that for me was exactly the catalyst. And I know for many of my friends who set up their own businesses, that was the catalyst for them. It just wasn't there. And I didn't want to sit there. I was offered by my GP an oilatum, which had been around since I was a girl in the 70s, which sort of is like having a bath in an oil slick. That smells of sort of pond weed. Or steroids. And I wasn't going to put steroids on my baby. I just wasn't. And there had to be a better way. And I knew from my own experience when I had eczema as a child, go natural and moisturize, moisturize, moisturize.

3:14And that's what worked for my little girl. And I thought, well, I did a bit of Googling. I saw that on the NHS website, one in five under fives in this country have atopic eczema. And I just thought, well, that's market. And how long had she had that before you decided to, say, start researching to turn it into a business idea? Like, was there anything stopping you before that other than coming up against the brick wall with like, and I remember the same thing with my eldest, funnily enough, just steroid creams is the only option. And you're just like, oh, God. I think it was, well, she was born in 2008 and I registered Child's Farm in 2010, almost.

3:55So she was two years old. Between then, I had been mixing my own little concoctions on, you know, in the kitchen to try anything on her. And then it was 2010, I registered the name and immediately took up with a manufacturer. So I had product available to purchase 12 months later. So November 2011 is when we launched on our website. But let's not forget, back in 2011, nobody really bought anything from a website. It was like glorified from, you know, shot window. It was the world was not was not web orientated to make our purchases. So it was more of an awareness opportunity and somewhere to send people as opposed to a thriving D2C environment.

4:47and so for me having seen you know knowing that that was the case I had to approach it very differently than you would now and it was boots on the ground you know good old-fashioned going to trade shows consumer shows banging on doors me and my white transit van going uphill down dale flogging my wares and so literally like 12 months later um you you had product it was actually it's interesting i was having this conversation with somebody yesterday and saying how quickly can you turn it around and i said we were really quick i think the reality was our um our products are fairly simple and i think that is the reality about most cosmetics these days if you want to do something that really really works you keep it really really simple unless you've got an active ingredient that is going to do something amazing keep it really simple and that's and actually my mother helped me with that because when I was young with uh ate up again to expert in the 70s and there was I mean there was nothing that even had steroid cream I think it was sort of someone waved a wand at you and hoped for the best um she used cocoa butter and share butter because as she said they'd been used in egypt for 4 000 years for windburn sunburn every sort of dry skin you know whatever and it's worked and all drugs are is that the plants split up and just taking elements of it but every plant has got its yin and yang in it so it works as a medicine and we wanted to bring a bit more of that back into children's skin and it just reminded me like our introduction was was Maxine Laceby from Absolute Collagen.

6:36So when you met her the first time, did you kind of bond over stories of making concoctions on kitchen tables? Do you know, Maxine and I have got so much in common anyhow. And we are just, I mean, she's a really good mate. We just talked about the simplicity and everyone seems to try to overcomplicate things that are new. They want to do something which is headline shaking. And, you know, it will do X and Y and Z. Most of these claims are horseshit anyhow, as we all well know. And what Maxine and I, the commonality between us was it was keep it simple, stupid. And that is, I think, the best thing you can do in food, in cosmetics, in any kind of wellness business is just keep it simple.

7:24We don't need all these added ingredients. You know, even the preservative that we use, which you have to use a preservative in any skincare product, the moment it's exposed to the air, that's exposing it to bacteria. Even the preservative we used was approved by the Soil Association. We know we weren't organic and the products weren't approved by the Soil Association, but we looked to see what they used as their best in class and followed that. And I think it's so important. We just, you know, we've got ultra high processed food shock drama headlines. We've got people living and eating off absolute rubbish and putting rubbish on their skin.

8:07And the skin is your largest organ on your body. So you're absorbing this filth into you. and and I just think people like me and like Maxine and like thousands of other female vendors want to keep it simple for us and for our children I mean think about what Maxine was doing when the body is most vulnerable you know going through menopause as your body is aging and your hormones are all over the place you don't need anything artificial to make it even worse And when you brought that product to market, were there any competitors or were there copycats springing up in the following years? Well, when we started, of course, the whole category was dominated by Johnson's Baby.

8:54And they had 32 % market share in the baby and child personal care category when we launched in Boots and Waitrose in 2014. So they were there. You had Baby Dove. You had Olsen Sots. You remember Matey. And then you'd have all those Disney princess stuff with gold glitter in it, which of course my little one at that stage thought were heaven that would just all she wanted to do is to have a bath in Disney princess and of course she couldn't because she'd have come out red raw and in agony so they did have so I went into quite a sleepy category um which hadn't been changed I mean Johnson's had been the market leader for 150 years and so over the next five years.

9:40So from that launch till in 2014 to 2019, when we became the market leader and Johnson's market share dropped from 32 % to 13%. New incumbents did come in. I mean, we had a couple of supermarkets who tried to copy us. And of course, we'd registered everything, including our look and get up as our intellectual property so we could shut them down. There was another brand that started, I can't even remember what it was called, and it literally copied and pasted our website, including typos. There you go. And I remember speaking to this woman on the telephone and I said, you haven't even been subtle about it.

10:25No, I can assure you I haven't copied anything. And I said, okay, spell recommend. And she spelt it perfectly. And I said, well, it's one of those that I can't spell. And I can tell you I know I can't spell it because it's misspelt on our website. and also yours so you were really in communication with uh with yes and i well i have to say to her you've had two letters from our solicitors i'm going to tell you now i'm going to press the nuclear button and she said okay i'll take i'll take my website down and i'll start selling the products but this you know the goal of some people you know it is literally so no no i've never heard of your brand ever before in my life right really so you know actually you know the little child you've used on your label that's actually my daughter so yeah people are utterly shameless I think as we know I think all we have to say is two words COVID loans and we understand that the vast majority um not the vast majority there is an element that is utterly shameless but you've protected yourself in every way shape or form from the early on do you know Alex this is one thing that I would just really urge anyone who's got a business no matter what age it is if you don't own the intellectual property rights, somebody else can.

11:41And so one of the first things I did when I set up the business was to register the name. Well, I couldn't register the name because Child's Farm is relatively generic, but I registered the words Child's Farm with our little B above it. So that was our sort of lock up, if you like. And I also registered our layout on the bottles and how we presented everything. So it was very clear we owned that look and feel and we did it in countries which we felt within the next five years there could be an opportunity for us to sell in and it's really simple to do it you go either go through an ip lawyer who are not expensive or you can try doing it yourself through um something called the madrid protocol and you can do it all online once you've worked out the different categories you want to go into it's relatively simple but it's as soon as you start going super international so outside of europe it can get expensive the middle east you have to everything is done in um arabic script so you have to have someone a you can read it but you also have to have a notary but it was the best thing we did and we were caught out once and that was in South Korea and we um and I'll never forget my commercial director at the time and he said oh I've invited this guy to come to the office and I said why we're not going into South Korea I'm telling you now we're not going to South Korea our focus is a hundred percent of winning becoming number one in the UK you don't need to be distracted by international and this guy came in and I said to him listen you know maybe in a few years time but lovely to meet you and he had said oh yeah we We do Ella's Kitchen in South Korea.

13:29And we didn't check any of anything that he said. And the whole lot was bollocks. And literally within 24 hours, he'd registered our name and our get-up in South Korea as his own. And that took us 18 months and about 20, 25 grand to get that back. That's brutal, isn't it? As a start-up. It's brutal. And you can't, look, we weren't, you know, yes, we should have checked his references and we should have checked he was Keisha. You know, all of those things, should have, would have, could have. The reality is we'd been so good about RIP and registering it everywhere, you know. But that could have been a lot worse.

14:06That could have happened in 10, 20 countries had we not been all over it. And that would have been two, three, four hundred thousand pounds to own our own name. And of course, the most famous one about that is Innocent Smoothies, who didn't own their look and feel. And it was only because the agency who had created it for them, they'd never actually given them the shares that they were meant to have done. And nobody had signed the agreement and the copyright agreement. The agency had actually gone into administration a year later. Somebody had bought it out of administration. And it wasn't 10, 15 years later that they realized that this hadn't been done.

14:47luckily for innocent they had a judge that said well it's too late you missed the boat they could have easily had one that said well you know these guys are entitled to us no way i never knew that i had richard's been a richard reese being a guest on the show before but never knew that that's because i remember all of the copycats that came out with that you know all of the copy on all of the products were like innocent same and they were lucky because coke had already done the final bit because they bought it in tranches and cake had already done it so it was coke's problem by then but i mean you know it happens and you know if you read the transcript of it it basically that's both parties neither of them could find this signed agreement you know i mean i i like to say i mean i always think that in my previous life i was a housekeeper of some big country house i am so organized i can't tell you i mean painfully so angely organized people used to get really cross because i'd tidy up the dropbox the whole time it's it's the devil is in the d-cell when you've got an sme it really is you need to know where everything is and what everything means and dot every i and cross every t because it will come back to bite you sound advice um and tell us How did you get to UK number one brand then in your category?

16:06How did you manage that and get that market share? Absolute grit and determination. I think, you know, there's a lot. Were we lucky? I think we worked jolly hard and you make your own luck. We took every opportunity to follow a three-strand strategy, which was stand out on shelf. So our bottles were all the colours of the rainbow. They did. That was great. brand in hand. So we did so much sampling of little bottles of the products and they look like miniature versions of the big ones and they, you know, really generous. And the third one was word of mouth because we were a small business and we didn't have the money to spend on marketing and telling everyone about it.

16:48So we gifted so much product and the product spoke for itself. And so we invested and invested and invested in getting those products out, whether that was sampling to a group of brownies to going to music with mummy or you know me stopping on a high street and handing out a load products to mums with prams and we you know as i said we went up and down the country in my transit van going to as many trade shows and consumer shows as possible so when the receptionist at boots told a lovely woman in nottingham about our brand it's because i'd gifted some to the receptionist i'd got to know her doesn't work there anymore and she retired a few years ago but it meant that she then told page sweeney that there was a product on the market that could really help her little ones desperate eczema and page bought some and pasted on a website on the facebook these this is my daughter's hands before and after child's farm baby moisturizer and look at the profound difference.

17:52And it was before Facebook was monetized and it was shared 35 ,000 times. Was that luck or was that hard work? Make your own luck, don't you, through hard work. And what were some of the secrets on, I mean, that's one way, obviously, but kind of building trust with parents in a way that those bigger brands struggle to do. Yeah, I think availability because I would be on the website the whole time. you know i would be on social media we were very transparent the way and tone that we spoke to people if you wanted to do a response i think if you work for johnson's baby and you wanted to do a response to something on uh social media the whole process would take you about a week because you'd have to go through if it was controversial you'd have to go through legal you know so we were mum to a mum, friend to a friend, empathetic, fun, witty.

18:48We tried to make it exciting. I was available. And we knew that what we were doing was right because we were inundated with letters, emails, pictures. Kids would draw us pictures and just say, this is a really sunny day because I want to thank you for bringing sunshine into my life because I can now have a bath or I can have my hair wash. I mean, all of these things. I mean, we had pinboards everywhere, even in the loo's, to remind everyone what a fantastic job they were doing in helping the poorly skins of Britain. And was the vision when you started the brand that ultimately one day you would sell the brands or was that something?

19:32And again, referencing like Innocent, I always remember Richard saying that they you know from the get-go they were kind of bombarded with offers all of the time to buy the business and in the end they cashed out i the moment i took investors on board with my business i it was a commercial enterprise when i when i started i thought let's see how it goes and let's see what we can make of this and then it was growing and i thought right okay we can really make something of this but the moment you take somebody else's cash you've made a commitment because in your debt, which is asking for cash, you're saying what your timeline is to a potential exit and who you would potentially exit to.

20:12My background was investment banking. So I'm a commercial beast anyhow. And the reality is it was a means to an end. I'd gone through a horrific divorce. I was left pretty much penniless. I had enough money to pay the rent for a year. I had put every penny I had on Child's Farm to be a success. And I really, I mean, I did put pressure on myself because I really did only have a year to make it work. And in that year, we launched in Boots and Waitrose. I brought in new investment. And we then also went on to launch in Asda and I think Morrison's within that 12-month period. And so we really progressed at pace.

20:56And then literally 18 months later was when this Facebook post went viral. So again, was I lucky or did I just work every hour that God sent to make it win? And I think that is the reality. I think there is a misnomer of late that, you know, and I think this is a legacy of COVID, you can set up a business and you can sell it within two, four years. I mean, look at Maxine. I mean, she did brilliantly in a very short space of time. She only ever had a profitable business. She did fantastically well before she brought in external support through private equity. We were in a business that was low priced, low margin, high cost relative for what you were producing.

21:38We had to get volume to make it work. So it was a means to an end. It was a means to an end. And I had some very happy shareholders at the end of it. And what does it feel like now? I think you said four years on from that. Four years ago. And it's sort of like, I suppose it's like packing off a kid to go to university. I was wondering that, yeah. And actually, my investment memorandum that we did for the deal, I talked about Charles Farm being my daughter. And it was time for her to go and sail the frothy seas of life. And so it is like, you know, at the beginning, it's agony, absolutely agony.

22:18And then it gets better and better and better. And then you actually find it quite annoying. and now i mean peter cousins who bought the business they've changed the labels they've changed the formulation slightly they've changed they've shut down the office that was in basing stake that we had you know it's all changed and and and i think bar one maybe two people my original team have all gone really yeah but you know what makes me so proud is my real winners the guys that really made a difference to Child's Farm have gone on to do amazing stuff. I mean, Will Bowler's heading up Simprove. I've got Andrew Cook, who is doing amazing things at a packaging company.

23:04I've got Andrew Rayner, who was my commercial director almost from the very beginning, who has already run and sold a business for inflection and is just about to launch his own business. I mean, we've got some really, you know, Laura Gutfield, who was my HR director. She's HR director of a children's, another children's business, which is going through the roof. So these are really fantastic legacy members of staff who've done brilliantly. And none of them would have enjoyed working for a big corporate. Well, is there something about the culture that you fostered, I guess, right? I think so. But it's also the type of people that you attract, isn't it?

23:43You know, they're gatekeepers. they want to make a decision in 24 hours they don't want to wait 24 weeks and you know 452 meetings later they just want to get shit done when did you decide to write a book was that as you were um exiting the business or has that come in the kind of reflection after after doing that oh lordy alex what a good question it was about it was about 18 months after i'd sold the business. And I was having lots of calls, lots of, I was stalked on LinkedIn the whole time, doing, being invited to talk to lots of different groups and individuals. And I realized that I could probably put all of that down in a book and share it much more broadly.

24:27And it wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't be awash with cups of coffee. And so put that together and finished it, gosh, probably at the beginning of this year. I say it, it ended up, there was so much, there's actually two books. So the intention was so many things took me six months to learn. I was a complete newbie at this. Fast moving consumer goods meant nothing to me. I've never worked in retail. And so it was a steep learning curve for me. So what I decided to do is put down all those things that took me six months to learn. You could read about it in six minutes. And so how to build a winning brand is all about the consideration.

25:05Hey, do you really want to be an entrepreneur? You know, let's just think about that for five seconds because it is going to suck up your life. And then validating your idea, what the packaging needs to look like. And then we go through to legal considerations, IP, and then how you write a business plan. And then the second book that's going to come out September next year is about how to scale. And that I've invited lots of people, including Darcy Laceby from Absolute College, and to talk about their areas that they did really well. like Absolute Conjun was brilliant at Mesa to talk about their experience and their top tips and tricks and it's really all about giving back I mean writing a book is not I'm not going to ever sit there and just sort of count my buckets of gold on the back of it in fact buckets of gold are paying for my tour and going to see I mean I'm talking to a lot of universities and I don't charge universities for me to talk at because again it's part of your philanthropic give back that you do, you know, to say thank you to all the people that bought your product.

26:10You can go and share that with their children, is my view on it. So it's been quite cathartic. It allowed me to remember a lot. I still keep on thinking of things that I've missed out. But also it allowed me to highlight all those wonderful people who were brilliant on my journey. And I include them in my little black book at the back of fabulous people and organizations, everything from the British Business Bank to the Copyright Licensing Agency to getting your research for free from the British Library and all of its hubs across the UK, to all those things that I did that helped me get stuff on the cheap.

26:46What's something that you think you may have forgot to put in the book that has come to you recently that you think would be valuable to share? Oh my goodness. Well, I had, I mean, and this was quite embarrassing. I had the most brilliant woman who did our quantitative research, Sam Rogers. Could I find her number? Could I find her email address? I mean, could I find anything? No. and then I eventually I don't know how I managed to get a hold of her I think it was through LinkedIn because I couldn't remember the name of her company anyhow eventually got a hold of her through LinkedIn so I dialed her number to phone her and it came up on my phone as Samantha Rogers Cook so I had the bloody number the whole time anyhow I've then just done an update to the book which will come in the next print round which is including her because my big chapter in the book is know your consumer.

27:41And the reason that is, is because I have seen too many brands and I see too many brands totally unaware about who that core consumer is, how to speak to them, him, her, she, it, and how to effectively deploy their marketing budgets. And too many of them haven't got a clue. They make it up. And they say, oh, one time around the other day and said, oh, it's okay, meta knows right okay so mark zuckerberg's really going to give you that into intel on your consumer or is he's just going to pump you for more cash as his shareholders so it say now i can and quantitative research i think is a fantastic way to really understand whether you are targeting the right person but it also gives you the ability to do a brand dip every year which is so important when it comes to either looking for investment or looking potentially for an exit to show that you can plot that growth of your business.

28:40It also tells you how they've heard about you. I mean, honestly, the bullshit I hear, and I read it in decks, people don't know who their consumer is and they just make it up. But you can do it through quantitative research and you can obviously, and I'll say it again, go to the British Library because every Euro monitor report, every Mintel report they purchase and it's available for you to view for free it reminds it so I worked uh Virgin startup for for a number of years Richard Branson's not-for-profit and I can remember the amount of business plans that I looked at when it asked about the marketing part of the business plan and it would literally just put you know meta Facebook Instagram but what's your marketing budget uh zero it's free and you just saw that oh my god you're just like so naive the only time can i tell you we had a marketing budget of zero for two years and we had a marketing budget of zero for two years because we were on fire organically on facebook for two years and we could barely keep up with the order so there was absolutely no point in us spending any money on marketing because we didn't have any product to sell we were literally you know if it didn't go to Boots, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Asda, you know, every single main retailer in the UK, if it hadn't gone to them, a parcel might be available for our distributor in Australia.

30:03And that's when you don't spend any money on marketing. But I'm with you. There is a complete naivety. There are other platforms other than Meta. Let me just remind you again, our three three ways of reaching our consumer were brand in hand that is sampling uh stand out on shelf looking great any brand think of even dorset cereal you know they had a radical re-change through um uh big fish when they made that little window so you could see what was inside and made them in their what i would call cost kits livery you know they didn't do any marketing it just stood out on shelf and that of course word of mouth and that to me is not a paid influencer I don't believe anyone when they say oh you know they're a famous person and they say my hair's never been so fluffy since I used this product do they then say p.s.

31:00I've been paid 20 grand to say this so I don't believe them I'm afraid the only people you believe are people like Joanna Lumley, who used to swear by Nivea. And I was getting, and sort of Catherine Zeta-Jones. That was the only product she ever sponsored, was sponsored by, which was Elizabeth Arden, because it was what her mother had used and therefore she used it. And she told this to an Elizabeth Arden executive once. They gave her share options. I think she's made more money out of Elizabeth Arden than any of her work in Hollywood. but that again is just you know i love this brand let's make it more legisimus yeah but if it's not i know i was literally having this conversation the other day i remember interviewing a lady called maria hatsis stefanis the founder of rodeo beauty brand and her saying they paid an extortionate amount extortionate amount of money for i can't remember which one but one of the kardashians to do some influencer marketing and she said it didn't even move the needle 0.1 percent and she because I'd never do it again.

32:04Because, you know, I think brands think that consumers are really stupid. Yeah, no, I think you're right. And, you know, actually even one of my daughters came to me and said, oh, my God, mummy, you've got to buy me this Hayley Bieber product because look at her skin. And I thought, oh, my God, have I taught you nothing? I've taught you nothing. I've failed as a parent. She said, look at her skin. She says she uses all her own products. I said that is about 14 hydrofacials. That is a cast of thousands surrounding her. Light camera action, more makeup than, you know, you and I could stick in a carrier bag.

32:42It's not real. It's not real. Oh, but it is. She says it's real. She says she uses it. She doesn't, love. She really doesn't. And I think there is, you know, I think there's a massive exploitation of young girls in particular. I love this brand. And I mean, I look at something like Drunk Elephant that I think that sold. I mean, that was a unicorn. And their products are absolutely, totally unsuitable for young skin. I think they're fairly unsuitable for any skin, if I'm being brutally honest. But for young skin in particular, and yet they are bright, they're fun. And all the kids just say, oh, I want that one.

33:18It's really, you know, and they have young models using it. No, stop it. wait till these owners become parents and then they'll all be wracked with guilt about what did to these poor young girls who are just you know having acid baths on their faces i got two daughters so that's horrendous um so telly i'm just gonna um last couple of questions then just got a little quick fire round to finish joanna um what does the next chapter look like for the book and also for you? Oh, my word. So we're going to keep on hitting the rose on the book to tell more and more people and hopefully inspire the 18 to 24-year-old generation, which is always such a hard time at the moment, that there is an opportunity setting up your own business.