Elemis Founder: How UK's #1 skin brand got built after previous company went bankrupt - Sean Harrington

0:08We literally would just do the top five things every day, as simple as that. and the rest would go off the wall and to ship. And it was just about those top five things. And as long as we did those, they were game-changing moments. And we managed all our team on something so simple as that.

0:28That's Sean Harrington, CEO and co-founder of Elemis, one of the best-known skincare brands in the UK. In fact, before being bought by L 'Occitane four years ago for$990 million, dollars, they were the number one independent British skincare brand in the world. Raised by a single parent, Sean's focus has always been living life to the full. In his youth, that was something he bankrolled by working as a bouncer and taxi driver before taking a job at his father's sun tanning business. When the tanning business was brought down by the recession of 1989, he was left destitute, but thankfully one of his former clients saw something in Sean worth investing in.

1:06Through them, he found himself in a new role, co-founding a company alongside Noella Gabrielle and Auriel Frank. To this day, he cites their individual strengths as well as their understanding of one another as the reason Elemis succeeded. The goal was always to create something global, and their products are now available in 45 countries. During COVID, he was hit with a throat cancer diagnosis and given just six months to live if he didn't get immediate treatment. It pushed him to work and connect with those important to him even more than ever. Thankfully, we spoke on the same day that he received some very good news.

1:42I've actually just come back from my 26th month checkup, having beaten, in my opinion, cancer, cancer at the throat. It was a pretty scary moment and a scary time in my life and my family's. Having worked and committed to business and life and travel all my life until now, COVID was a surprise in its own right. And that came as quite a shock to me and was something I was trying to manage, especially living in Perth in West Australia, where no one was allowed in, out, left or right. It was really a secluded and isolated existence through COVID from when it started in March 2020. But then in December 2020, having enjoyed being at home with my family for a long period of time, which hadn't been a luxury I'd had for many years, I was diagnosed with throat cancer.

2:36That was not the Christmas present anyone would have wished for. And there was no clear reason why. It was more a culmination of lifestyle, priorities, general health, stress, well-being. and a combination of all of those over the years obviously took their toll on my health and it proved I was only human and I had a four centimeter tumor growing into the back of my tongue under my voice box and I was told if I didn't get treatment immediately I probably had three to four months to live. It was a very sobering moment. I don't think I've really talked about it so openly, so clearly but I do feel it's very important to because many go through these journeys many aren't as fortunate as me and I'm by no means a victim you know it's made me stronger and taught me a lot about myself and hopefully made me a better person and and you have a clean bill of health as of today I do I'm very pleased to say and I'll touch wood but I'll be having quarterly scans and checkups for another two, three years yet.

3:40Amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. How does the importance that you've put on becoming a business success and, you know, how important Elemas becoming what it is, you know, how does that compare to realizing you could have your health taken away? That's a good question, because I don't think any of us would really be that conscious of how important the priority list is in your mind at any given moment I think you're learning all the time and for me I'm like any other human being you know it was a really scary moment to hear a diagnosis where a doctor is giving you the call two days before Christmas and telling you you've got the big C no one wants that call to be with that message so I don't think I've ever had a feeling as scary as that or as empty as that or as lost as that in my life.

4:35So the two don't really compare. I've gone through a lot of ups and downs, wins and losses and difficult and simple and positive and negative situations with business. But I think when you come to that sort of experience, it's very personal, very inside you. And for that moment, you are alone, even with many people you love around you. At the end of the day, they are all going to support you and love you and get you through it as best they can, but fundamentally it's down to you. You've got to be strong enough to get through that. I often say that my wife and kids were the ones that had the tougher time once the news had broken and we were into treatment because by then I was in chemo, radio, and all sorts of strong opioids for pain management and what have you.

5:25So they had to really deal with the patient and the suffering. I was a bit anesthetized and going through treatment. Post-treatment and then in recovery, it was teamwork and positivity and outlook on life. But I don't think your wiring ever changes because the strange thing for me was the one thing I missed the most during the whole experience, if you like, or journey was people. I missed getting my emails every day. I missed working. I missed having that engagement, that need, that desire, that ambition. I felt the only thing I could focus on was my health. And whilst that was critical, the doctors really were in control of that.

6:08And, you know, what a remarkable job they do. Because they say to you, when you go through cancer, many people tell you, they say that, look, we've got to try and kill the cancer without killing you. And the reality to that journey is one that you're not in control of. So take a CEO or a founder of a business and tell him or her, you're not in control of this period. Find something else for your brain to think about and for you to focus on. And you can't work. It was a very strange period for me. So much so that actually I thought during it, maybe when I would hopefully come out the other side, if I was fortunate enough, would I have different values?

6:46Would I have different perspective? Would I have different hopes? Yeah, I reverted straight back to type. I got straight back on that treadmill, on the machine of life, and couldn't wait to get traveling, couldn't wait to get back into the business, couldn't wait to get back onto it. And in fact, in many ways, it drove me to being even more ambitious, and with more hope, and more determination, which isn't everyone's way forward, but it was mine. I found my wiring came back with more strength, just more belief. And it didn't make me feel I was untouchable or anything. I suffered from energy. I still do.

7:24You suffer from brain fog, post-chemo, hangovers, all these sorts of things. So you don't have the same capabilities. You can't think on a multi-level algorithm the way you used to and deal with multiple things all at the same time. You have to be far more structured. You have to change the way you think, the change you work. But it doesn't mean you can't work. And for me, winning in my profession was what my life was all about from a very early age. I couldn't change that wiring. That wasn't going away. Can't teach an old dog new tricks, Sean. Don't think so. Not this one. Yeah, apparently not.

7:58Well, let's start from when you were a puppy then. Tell me a little bit about growing up. Yeah, look, I grew up in North London, Muswell Hill. Very humble beginnings. Close to me. I'm in Kentish Town. Not too far? Very close to you, yeah. Well, I was schooled in Muswell Hill. Grew up with my mum. My dad had left home from an early age. Two sisters. I think a pretty happy, positive childhood. There was no differences that anyone else wouldn't experience in that environment. But always wanted more. Always had that hunger to really just get somewhere, someplace else. Didn't know where, didn't know how.

8:35I learned sailing from a very early age, thanks to my dad, albeit he was somewhat estranged. But we did get sailing from a very early age and he taught me well. So I did a lot of competitive sailing. And then I couldn't wait to leave school. I didn't like school. I liked people. I enjoyed sport, played rugby, but I just wanted to go to work. I wanted to learn by living. That was my term of phrase back then. and I kind of justified all my decisions on that basis. So I left school at what, 17, 17 and a half before A-levels and worked in nightclubs in London and I was a taxi driver. And I went sailing and I moneyed through those three different mediums.

9:21Yeah, you know what, I had the best time ever and I learned a huge amount and I made friends, Peter Stringfellow, Paul Stringfellow. I worked for those guys for many years and I kept doing the nightclub work even when I had full-time day jobs. So for me, it was kind of my nightlife, but I was being paid. So it was learning and living at the same time. That was my kind of term of phrase and my DNA. I wanted to really try and find a way in which I could earn money. To me, I needed to earn money to succeed. It was a reflection of whether I was succeeding to me at that time because we didn't have any and we grew up with very little.

9:57My dad had a business in the UK which was suntanning. And I'd missed him growing up and I wanted to spend time with him. So I joined him in his business with no qualifications. And I said, look, you can do the sunbeds. I'm sure there's a bigger picture out there. I'll do slimming machines and beauty treatments and whatever else I could think of, to be honest. and I brought in a body product that I found in France called Arnithermy, which was a body treatment range, which would basically either shrink people or cure cellulite. It was one or the other. And I went on the road selling it and sold a lot of it and sold even more and bought my flat in Kensington, which was really Shepherd's Bush.

10:46I bought my Golf GTI that looked like new but was 10 years old and thought I'd really started to make a success out of what I was doing. But I knew I could sell. And I enjoyed selling to beauty salons. I enjoyed selling to health clubs. I enjoyed selling into that sector. Because it was me and my dad, I did every job. So I was the accountant. I was the lawyer. I was the boss. I was the salesman. I was the lackey. I was the picker and packer. I was the delivery boy. Every single job. I one day came across a customer which really was like striking gold. And that was the Steiner Group, which were running hair and beauty salons and also operating on board the cruise ships.

11:29And I convinced them that this body treatment would be a great success on board their facilities. And so they launched with my brand and we started to do extremely well. But in 1989, the recession hit at that time. We lost our four biggest clients. We didn't have any money. We ended up going completely bust. So I lost it all. So I went from zero to hero, back to zero. Lost the flat, had bailiffs come around putting stickers on all the furniture, took the Golf GTI, but they couldn't take me. And that was probably my big gain at that moment. there I was with nothing left and yet I felt the same way I did the day before and I realized that there was nothing else anyone could do to hurt me now this was now up to me to pick myself up and find a way forward and I was very fortunate because the Steiner family were good people and they didn't like to see me go through that so they liked what I did and they contacted me and they had already invested in a formulation of a product that they hadn't brought to market yet called Elemis.

12:38And they said, would I like a job? I said, there's no money left to go into it. There was one other person employed, Noella Gabriel. And I could probably employ one other person, but that would be it. And we'd have to build it ourselves, fund it ourselves, and develop it ourselves. But if we did well, we could gain equity for every X percent of profit we could make. And I didn't have another job. And I didn't have anything else. So I literally went to work for them on 5 % of everything I sold and no pay salary and no income. I just did a deal where everything I sold, I got 5%. That was my pay.

13:14I had to sell. So we had to fill the products at night, mix them at night, and then sell them during the day. Linda Steiner worked with us in the business. We literally, for the first 10 years, Aurel joined us, who I knew from before. And she was at university doing marketing. and she was the only person I could convince to come in and work for free as well or on a percentage. So the three of us built the business from those humble beginnings. And the first 10 years were all about survival. They were all about literally being on the road, selling everything ourselves. When we launched the brand on the cruise ships, I sailed on one and Noella sailed on the other and we literally sailed for six weeks selling product just to make sure we could outsell our competition two to one.

13:59So, you know, we started from those really very, very humble beginnings and we grew that business into what it is today. Whilst in hindsight, you could define it in three 10-year lots, I think the reality was we were just doing the best we could with very little and making as much out of it as we possibly could, but learning along the way. So that first 10 years was very fast, very hard, a lot of building and just surviving. The second 10 years, we were able to develop the branding, the marketing, the packaging and the product. And then the third 10 years have been about really trying to build the business and being successful globally, which, you know, is fortunately where we are today.

14:46Can we go back to this very unique, very unusual founding story? so for context for people you know who were the steiner family like what was this business they took you into like what you know give us some more context on both the story like you know how like how you knew them and what you thought about um all of this back then what was the working relationship like as well like really you know the very early days because it's a very different founding story? It was a bit like philanthropy in a way because I owed the banks about£120 ,000 from the receivership process I've been in with the business with my father.

15:28They were collecting through the courts. Nicholas Steiner and Linda Steiner, in a strange way, became that mum and dad and family I never really had as a joint support package around me. Nicholas lent me the money to pay off the banks on a settlement and I worked to pay it back. Linda partnered me in the business and they both helped really support me to those early years of how to succeed and how to understand how you put the effort into the right places and into the right ways. And let's face it, Elemis really was their idea. they enabled us to embrace it and run with it which is very unusual for successful family and business to champion three very young ambitious but inexperienced people but I think they were genuine and they were genuine they still are genuine and they're still friends today and we're still very close and we had a wonderful formulator who was the technical inspiration and vision and talent behind the brand.

16:44And very sadly, he passed away last week. So Jan Kuzmarek, I wanted to mention that because he was with us on that same journey for over 32 years. And he was actually with Linda by her side before us. So Elemis is a legacy and a history of very close family relationship as if it was a family. It really is. And we refer to it as a family today. and that was Linda and Nicholas who started that and their family who are the Steiner family who have gone on to amazing successes the Steiners and the Warshaws who are the other side of that family from building the spas on board Cruise Line or Empire which became a billion dollar business their families are very successful, very well connected and they got I think a lot of pleasure and a lot of benefit and personal gain from seeing three people give their lives to something and also succeed with their sponsorship, I suppose.

17:47It's actually really clever, isn't it? Because it's rare. It's rare to find young people who have the passion to build something. Obviously, yours personally was built out of desperation as well, right? Actual financial need. But to find you still motivated and still in that seat like it's you know clearly your life's purpose that's hard hard to find those people that's a real talent to spot them and to be honest with you I think it's a really important point because it's very much our DNA here in so much as the different pieces of this journey we've been on we can attribute to the if you like guidance and mentorship and coaching of different people around us.

18:31So Linda and Nicholas and Clive and Michelle Walshaw were very much that first 10 years, that Steiner family piece. When we progressed to the next level, we were very fortunate to be part of El Caterton, which is a private equity firm. But Michael Chu, Mark Magliacano and Avic Premalik, they were their mentors then for us. We've always enjoyed having mentorship and leadership as our own, as our aspiration, and as our partners. So for us, I think, because we really wanted to keep learning and we wanted to keep thriving and growing, we weren't really ever standing still. We always wanted more because we weren't necessarily educated formally.

19:17This became our education. This was our university life, right? So to have the starters there in the beginning and then to have the El Calaton folks, which was really like a five-year crash course of an MBA that would take me 25 years to do on how to build enterprise value, how to laser focus. It was so different to the experience we'd had before. It was a really amazing piece of our journey. And then when we came out of that and we were looking for our next partner to help us grow globally, I went around the world interviewing and working with every strategic, looking at every single company with investment bankers, with all the different professions around me.

20:00And fundamentally, our final partnership in Suda came from an engagement of people, not businesses, not money, not valuations really. It was the day Reinald Geiger and Andre Hoffman, who are the L 'Occitane group, came into our life. And they're very much a family. It's very much a family organization. but there we had this amazing visionary man in Reinhold Geiger who'd hugely succeeded and this incredible compulsive winner in Andre Hoffman who just knew APAC in Asia, which is where we wanted to go. So our whole journey has been this how to get ourselves supported by the best people we can find.

20:43And honestly, that means it doesn't end. You know, we don't portray ourselves as the mentors. mentors we're the ones that are enjoying the mentorship and the drive and the focus and that's because we keep learning that's why it is a bit of a life career for us so you talk about the journey in in three parts like you say you know there's um you just give us some some you know reflections on the hardest moments of each section so remind us remind us what the three parts are as you say them well i think the the beginning the first 10 years was very much survival it was really about generating we had to generate our own cash flow you know the first 10 years because it was so survival we did a lot wrong and we needed to make sure we found a winning product and we needed to make sure we found something that was so much better than anything else and i would honestly say our business started 10 years in which is when we found the pro college of Marine Cream, which was a formulation that took us three years, that nearly broke us, that we put into clinical trials, we tried it and tried it, we kept getting results back that weren't good enough, that weren't game-changing.

21:54And then on the 54th formula and the fourth clinical trial, each clinical trial costing £50 ,000, which we didn't have, we found the eureka moment. And at that moment on, our business changed and our world changed. Then it wasn't so much about could we sell this product because everyone wanted to buy that product. It became about how we could communicate and market it, how we could make sure we gave it the stage it deserved. And that was a lot of learnings and a lot of development. I think one of the biggest lessons was making sure we laser-focused on only the things that made a difference. And I think we became very good at that.

22:32We literally would just do the top five things every day, as simple as that. So we'd have a list of 50 and we would only do the top five. And the rest would go off the wall and to ship. And it was just about those top five things. And as long as we did those, they were game-changing moments. And we focused on our time, our people's time, and we managed all our team on something so simple as that. So we were very laser-focused on making sure the UK was successful before we went anywhere else. The next step, though, was we needed to get people on knew where we were going and what we were trying to achieve.

23:07And that's why we used private equity at that moment. I left England and moved to America with my family. I got married, had two children. And that first year when I moved to America, I ran out of money. I remember we couldn't pay the rent. I had to borrow money from family members. We had private equity in and everyone thought private equity would come in, write a check and fix all the world. But actually what they did was come in and not write a check, but taught us a huge amount and gave us good guidance. but you had to just work even harder but we had I had a whole different dynamic because I had my children giving up their friends their schooling and going to a new country for a whole new culture a whole new school a whole new way of life my wife giving up everything she knew including a business and going for a whole new culture a whole new way of life and me giving up everything I wanted and everything I'd earned to start a whole new life and a whole new culture and a whole new way that was pretty wild and in four years we took a business from zero to 50 million dollars and I say we because the family did it and we did it together I worked in New York the family lived in Miami because we needed to cure our business on the cruise ships there and my wife is Australian and she didn't want to go to the cold again she'd already done London and I commuted every week Monday to Friday leaving at 6 a.m and getting home at 8 p.m on a Friday for four years I'm sorry what you commuted from Miami to New York every day?

24:27Every week, Monday to Friday. Every week. Okay, that's a lot more reasonable. I was like, wait, hold on, this guy's mental. No, I got the 6.30 flight Monday morning, I fly back Friday evening. But I loved working in New York and building a team there. The energy, the vibrance, the learnings, the speed, the pace. But there was no way we would have succeeded unless one of us moved around. You have to be there to make it work. You cannot just employ a team or plug it in or do it from a distance and that was my big learning and from that moment I knew when I wanted to come and do China and Asia the only way I could do it was moving to China and Asia which is what we did in 2019 when we joined the L 'Occitane group.

25:12Good timing. Oh there was riots it was I was walking back from work with smoke bombs going off talking to my wife going, I'm not sure about this. And then like everyone, I mean, COVID hit and we lost half our business in one day. Literally 50 % of our entire business ceased. The spas on the cruise ships, the spas in the resorts, the airlines. It was a very difficult time. However, we finished COVID twice the size before we reduced half. So four times where we ended. An amazing period. That's the point. Everything has its journey. Everything has part to play. Okay, what was actually the vision for LMS when you started?

25:54Like, what were you trying to create? And did that develop? Or did it stay consistent through the 10 years? Is it the same today? Yeah, I think it is the same today. I think our channels of distribution, our target consumers evolved and changed. But back then we were really trying to provide a product that worked. We're trying a product that made a difference. We wanted to be something that was authentic, that was the authority and that was winning. We thought the best way to do that was to work on how to create facials instead of just jars of cream and how to create these treatments that would deliver a much better performance with a customer in an hour in a chair or in a bed with the use of science technology and nature not just one and i think that put us in very good standing with our clients because we created a business in the uk that was very much about delivering facials and home care but everyone who used the home care went for a facial first.

27:00In terms of your personal failings, what have been, you know, if you had some feedback over the years of things that you aren't necessarily as good at as other people, and what do you do when you find these things out? Do you work really hard to improve them? Or do you accept that move on and try to play to your strengths? What do you think is the right approach for you as a CEO? I think that's a really, really good question. Tough one to because I think if you'd asked me that three years ago, five years ago, I would have said, oh, I bring in people that can fill the gap and I push on where I know I'm strong and I make sure I surround myself with people who are better than I could be in the areas that I'm weak.

27:46I think post being, going through my cancer journey, I try harder to change and improve who I am and what I am. And if I genuinely believe those weaknesses can be improved and on improving them, I'm a better person or a better professional, then I'll try hard to work towards that. I don't think I had the patience for that before. So even recently, I was spoken to about the fact that, you know, I've got to understand not everyone will always think exactly the way I think. And maybe I have to take a bit more time to think about the way that they're looking at the same challenge, same opportunity, same situation.

28:25You know, maybe I'm more reflective and maybe I'm more hopeful that I can improve in certain areas that need it. There are certainly plenty. You know, I like to move at pace. I'm very direct. I believe I'm very positive, but, you know, I'm very ambitious. So I probably don't pay enough attention to all the detail and necessarily everyone else's lens on the same situation. So, you know, that's where you've got to improve. And what about company values? Like how have they developed LMS? Is that something that you found to be important? You know, what are the things, what are the structures that have been in place over three decades that have really led people towards a common vision?

29:05I think it was probably the fact there were three of us, which enabled us to cover people with the same vision and the same DNA and the same culture very effectively around the world. Because at one point I was in Asia, Noella was in America and Nora was in the UK. And it worked because we all spoke with the same voice because we've been doing it for 20 odd years, 30 years. On saying that, I would say we recognized that we weren't good enough as an employer. We were building a business based on what we could afford, not necessarily what could be. And I think we needed to pivot a bit. So three years ago, when we joined L 'Occitane Group, one of the reasons we joined them is because they are probably one of the world leaders in sustainability and CSR.

30:01and employee development. And we felt we were very weak in that area. So we joined them and they gave us so much guidance and so much help. We actually became B Corp certified earlier this year. And that really is a game changer. And I think that's defining our values. That's helping us really give them accountability. We used to talk a lot about it. It's like, you know, my biggest frustration was we, I didn't understand why when you got a new job with Elemis, why it wasn't the best day of your life. And instead, we have this onboarding where you go and sit in front of HR, IT. By the end of the first day, you're lucky if you want to come back the second day.

30:42You know, it's the simplest of things. How to onboard new people? Well, you know, it's the hardest one to do, it seems. Yet, if you can do that well, and you can give them the first month of their career, the best month they'll ever have, you set them up for success you know things like that I actually learned this the hard way myself so in my previous business when it failed I couldn't really understand why we talked about values all the time we'd had presentations we had all these opportunities to you know live the values and yet I you know constantly found that people weren't exhibiting the behaviors of those values and when things were going bad when shit hit the fan people were just leaving in droves and they were not sticking around to sort of live the values that we talked about and I learned a really good lesson from failing that business which is the you know culture culture and values you know they go all the way through a business and if you genuinely want people to care about stuff like you do as a founder you've got to work super hard at integrating that into the business and that comes from onboarding all the way through to even exit interviews.