How to Spot Million-Pound Business Ideas | Thea Green on Building a Global Beauty Business

0:00Sometimes when you spot a trend of something that's going on elsewhere, you actually don't have to reinvent the wheel. I've always been obsessed with the customer. I feel like every idea I've ever had has always started and ended with what the actual customer wants. Otherwise, you're just working in your own bubble. If you can't fund it, was it really a good idea?

0:15Richard Farleigh: So you can fund a good idea. I think you can always fund a good idea. Do you not? So Thea Green, lovely to have you on the boardroom. Delighted to be here. I'm fascinated to hear about your story. I'm like a typical Aussie bloke or maybe even just typical bloke I don't know much about nails it's okay I do know that you started nails Inc and that it sounds to me like you saw the idea in the United States imported the idea successfully to the UK and then exported it again somehow back to the US correct and then and then sold out and living happily ever after is that is that roughly where you're at I don't know if the end the end is quite the end living happily ever after but the The rest is completely accurate, yes.

0:55Richard Farleigh: You know, sometimes I've talked to people about the idea of bringing in ideas or technology or something that's worked in another market. Yeah. You know, because, and successfully, almost like, you know, can you disrupt, you can disrupt by price or product. Yeah. But also geographically. So, you know, you may not be doing anything at all new, but you're just taking something from one place and bringing it to another. Yeah. Can you tell us how you spotted these nail bars and why they didn't exist in the UK and how hard it was to do that? Of course. And I think that is right. I think sometimes when you spot a trend of something that's going on elsewhere, you actually don't have to reinvent the wheel.

1:30And that's a really easy way to actually set up a business. And you know that if it's already working, particularly in a market like the US, which is so similar to the UK in so many ways, you know, different size. I think it is quite an easy way to work out that you've actually got potentially a viable business. But yeah, back in. So we set up in 1999 in the UK. There were no high street nail bars. Obviously now there's nail bars absolutely everywhere. So it's like the unimaginable. But there were no nail bars and really the idea was to bring nail bars but to take it and brand it and bring our own range of product at the same time because the nail bars in the US were quick and efficient, often in kind of first and second floors, but they weren't branded, they didn't sell products.

2:10So we very early on wanted to have a product range so that we could sell product outside of the bars and actually build a brand.

2:16Richard Farleigh: So you spotted two things. There was that there were no nail bars in the UK. That was almost the smallest bit, yeah. Right. So that would be also an opportunity then to sell branded product. Exactly. Yeah. The aim was always like, you know, business plan one always said, we'll sell this product to John Lewis, boots, department stores, super drug. That was always the plan. So the brand had to be built so that the brand could live outside of the nail bars. So the nail bars for us were always a profitable revenue stream or plan to be. But the aim was that the way that you would globally be able to bring this brand, you know, out in the UK outside of the nail bars into retail and then later into other retailers globally would have to be product.

3:00More because running nail bars is very labor intensive. In the UK really there were sort of like spas and maybe some of the hair salons would also have nail services. But there wasn't a destination like prior to 1999 where you just walk in and get your nails done.

3:15Richard Farleigh: Because there seem to be everywhere now. Yeah. Manicurists. Yeah, absolutely. Were you looking for a business? Because you're a fashion writer. I was working at Tatler Magazine, and I absolutely loved Tatler Magazine, and I loved working in fashion. It had always been like my dream to go and work in that industry. But I was concerned by the pay, and I was concerned by the reality of living in London, leading this incredibly glamorous life in magazines, which you do. So you're getting freebie lunches and going to all these amazing destinations and, you know, like designer clothes, and just this amazing lifestyle.

3:45I remember really early on in my career in magazines just looking at what you know how far you needed to go in that company before the the pay became manageable it's probably the same for journalism everywhere isn't it i think so i think so and i think that's so it's a i think it's and the world has changed now because now it actually in some ways has a real desirability because it's naturally so freelance and work from anywhere and it's one of the first industries that probably went that way um so i think it does have its own like plus points and obviously with you know rise of social media there's so many more things you could do with that journalistic skill now rather than just writing for magazines which were at the time okay but it was obvious they were going to decline once digital took over

4:26Richard Farleigh: so you have uh parallels with natalie massonette yeah she was in the same team she was fantastic Natalie that set up Net-A-Porter. Yeah, you started Net-A-Porter. And I was one of the original backers of Net-A-Porter. Were you? Well done, amazing. And actually just watching her in action, you know, just the, you know, because not knowing much about fashion and, you know, just ordering something and arriving in this black box with a red ribbon. It was like, better than Christmas. Yeah, it was beautifully done. And then if they didn't like it, put it back in the box, send it back. I'm like, what is this?

4:56Richard Farleigh: And then I saw, I was with some girls and they're shopping online, buying all this stuff from Net-A-Porter. and that's when I put more money into the company. I thought, God, they're sitting around saying, buy that, buy that, buy that, next day to arrive. But I guess in the end, that sort of shows you, like, you start off, you know, both Natalie and I started off in journalism, you start off in journalism, and where that can take you, and what you can actually do. Because really what you're learning in journalism is what people want next. That's what you learn in fashion magazines. I think that when I think about how it's helped me in my business, it's trend forecasting, and it's feeling really confident about the fact that you know ahead of other people what women are going to want next.

5:32Richard Farleigh: Well, you know, before we sat down, I was talking about the colour of my watch, which you liked, which is just a complete coincidence. And then I said to you, what should I wear in winter then? Because you said that's for summer. And you came back immediately with olive green. I'm like, it was like straight away. So you're on top of every... Is olive green with a watch brand, is that just for this season or is that likely to change or is that a perennial advice? I think that's a perennial one. I just looked at you in terms of your greens and thought it was the right one for you because I complimented the blue for summer.

6:03Richard Farleigh: So by writing about it, I'm just wondering, by writing about it, do you think you were learning as much writing about it as you were when you were studying it? I think you are, but I think what you're learning is, in a magazine, part of your role is to tell people what they might want. And so I think what you learn is, it's the prediction that you learn and you get confident in, you sort of start to see these little bubbles of a trend and you'll see something, you know, you'll see, I'm making this up, you know, like you'll see Matcha initially launching in the UK and you'll go, you'll see the first Matcha place, you know, in some kind of indie style Matcha place, and you'll go, that's really interesting.

6:45I feel like Matcha could be a thing. And then you'll think to yourself, well, why wouldn't Matcha be a thing? It's so enormous in Asia. Why wouldn't it be? Why wouldn't Londoners like it? And then you'll be in New York and you'll see three matcha bars and you're like, okay, matcha is a thing. And I think what you learn as a journalist is to see those little nuggets of newness and sift out the ones that are nonsense, because there's so many things that launch all the time that complete disasters, right? And also thinking about more than just beauty or fashion, thinking about what's going on in the environment.

7:12So, for example, going back to matcha, which is an interesting example, like matcha, you'd go, matcha is really interesting because people are also looking for good sustainable energy and people are working out more and they've got very busy lifestyles and matcha is a caffeine that doesn't give you jitters. And so I think it's that. It's also thinking about what else is going on in the world of why someone would like, I don't know, I'm wedded to matcha, but why would someone else, why would matcha be right now? Because matcha's been around for years.

7:39Richard Farleigh: I think you're saying it's part of a bigger trend, which is health conscious. Exactly, exactly. Because you're fast moving, you're health conscious, you want something on wellness. Also, with anything new now is does it visually sell itself well to social media? And actually, Matcha is beautiful on social media, right? It's beautiful green. There's a whole ritual to it. It actually works incredibly well on social media. So I think it's also thinking about things today. Will it translate on social? Do you think, you know, with a business now, it's so much more important to, you know, social media, Instagram, et cetera, is so much part of it almost from before you do it.

8:17When I'm coming up with any innovation for Nails Inc. or thinking about future life, I always think you have to end with, I've always been obsessed with the customer anyway. I feel like every idea I've ever had has always started and ended with what the actual customer wants. Otherwise, you're just working in your own bubble. But I think now you're going, what does the customer want and how will she, usually I'm talking to females, how will that show up on screen? How will that look on your phone? And why will that be desirable to you? Wow. So it could be selling benefits about health and wellness, or it could be just visually it's so interesting and it just lends itself so well to camera.

8:53But I think it's quite hard today to create a product that isn't camera ready. It's certainly in my industry, and like beauty, if it's not camera desirable, I think it's really tough.

9:03Richard Farleigh: Why do you think there were no sort of nail bars, not manicurists, no nail bars in the UK that late, 1999? I mean, it's a modern world. Yes, I think that the model in the US was quite different which was it was it tended to be sort of families that set it up where you know mother's daughters aunties cousins were all working together um maybe in a first floor premises and often very short lease terms where they would take a premises in new york say on a first or second floor and then when that lease had come up they go to the next one the next one and they just you know give their customers a card to say we're moving on like pop-ups almost yeah it It was pretty hampfazard.

9:43It was a good service, but it was a messy business in the US. And I guess the reality is there was always another one on the street corner. So if you didn't go to that one, you'd use another one. We didn't have, I don't think we had that pool of employees here where you would have that kind of generational mums and daughters and aunties and cousins are all going to go and work in a salon business together. I don't think certainly 99 I don't think that sort of pool of people existed here where that would the where that would have kind of come again about sort of through a family team so it had to be done differently here we opened in department stores so we basically were trying to work out where do we get the most people the most traffic and pay the least rent you're you're a journalist yes a

10:29Richard Farleigh: fashion journalist you're in the US yeah you know nails is just one thing you might write about you with all the other fashion things yes you you see that and and there's this eureka moment you go why don't we have those in the uk yeah and then how long did you just come back and go the next next day you open one i carried on working at tatler magazine because i definitely needed the salary and started to pull together a business plan spoke to a number of people did some focus groups So, you know, focus groups in a, you know, as in we brought groups of women together and asked questions because we definitely had gaps in our own knowledge.

11:09Richard Farleigh: And when you do the focus group, you know, because I always say, you know, the first year or something is a research project of a business, you know, get the, now they call it the minimum viable product, get the viable product, test the idea because ideas are great in paper, test the idea as cheaply as possible. and there's no, I haven't really found many substitutes for spending money and releasing a product. I mean, because obviously friends and family will always say great idea. Your mum will say great idea, you know. So you've got a bunch of, without being generic, a bunch of women and you said, would you go to this nail bar?

11:47What was great was that all the people that we talked about had either never got their nails done, had their nails done for their wedding, but all knew of the fact that either them or someone they knew would have got their nails done in New York. If they'd been on a trip to New York, they probably did some sightseeing, did some fashion shopping, came back with some trainers from an American brand and got their nails done.

12:09Richard Farleigh: So your market was going to be people who had travelled? No, it was more that they just, I think it was probably a bit like the kind of coffee culture. When the States had that coffee culture before we had it, I remember being in the States, It's, I think, in LA, not in New York. And having a Starbucks coffee or a Seattle coffee company. Was it Seattle Coffee Company? It's one of those. And having that before we had it and wondering why we didn't have it in London and looking forward to the fact that we'd have it. But really, we all had coffee in our house. This was just a different type of experience.

12:39Richard Farleigh: So you came back. You did a focus group. You got positive feedback. You got a lot of optimism, a lot of drive, a lot of discipline. And so what do you do then? What did you find then? Did you go looking for a department store? So initially we opened in a standalone. So first of all, before then we have to raise money and we have a series of, you know, we go and meet some, you know, kind of institutional, you work out very quickly, it's not going to be anything institutional, it's going to have to be friends, family, other people are going to have to introduce you. A bit like what you were saying with Natalie, we definitely had people like that that went, I'll help you out, I'll back you, I like you guys, I think you'll probably turn it into something, who knows if it'll end up being nails or something else but I'll you know we had people that just took a punt on us and we got lucky with a bank manager that gave us an unsecured loan of 50 grand before we'd raised money which meant we could we could actually press play on an initial manufacture the test stage he lent you personally the money or he lent us 50k but to the business or to the business because it's quite different just so the people listening or watching you know lending to business is limited company exactly you never get your money back exactly as a person you know not you know they might have a you know personal guarantees I remember him saying to us no personal guarantee no person you how did you sweet talk could you still do that he stayed our bank manager for years I honestly think he just at the time when he he just went I'm gonna take a punt on it there's something in this where I believe and I'm gonna take but and by the way we gave him the 50k back in months because we then raised the money So it was, and we became a long client.

14:16Richard Farleigh: Do you think people can still walk into a bank with an idea? Well, I do think you could have done it then either, right? Textbook-wise, we shouldn't have been able to get 50K. So I don't know if you get it from a bank or somewhere. What I would say to anyone setting up a business is, there's a loophole and you can get something that's not, there'll be something that Claude or Chat now tells you, and you can get something else. I suppose you might, nowadays, you might go into crowdfunding. You can definitely do it through crowdfunding. And there'd be a lot of potential customers who go, I like that idea.

14:45Exactly.

14:46Richard Farleigh: $50 ,000 back then, was that enough to start up? No. We raised$250 ,000 initially, but$50 ,000 was just literally to press play on the production of the nail polish. Because when you're doing that business plan, there's a moment when you work out what the longest lead time. And for us, the longest lead time was the nail polish manufacturer, which was going to take 12 weeks to make. whereas I think we could sign the lease with four to six weeks or something to actually go in, get the shop fitting done. So you need to fit out of premises. Yeah. You need to get staff. Yeah. And you need to product.

15:20Yeah, and product had the longest lead time.

15:23Richard Farleigh: And so you've mentioned that the business idea was from the get-go you were going to launch your own product. So it wasn't going to be buying someone else's stuff and providing the service. We wanted to build a brand. Would it have been, aren't you sort of testing two business, I mean, obviously it worked, but aren't you sort of testing two business ideas? What if they loved the nail bar, but they didn't like your product? You wouldn't know. Well, the only thing I'd say to you is the margin on beauty product is very high. So I don't think that was ever going to be the challenge. You know, your margin on beauty products is 70, 80, 90%.

15:59Richard Farleigh: And is there much variation between the different, you know, knowing what you know, you know like is it hard to make a good one yeah yes it's hard to the quality in any beauty product will massively vary from a kind of one out of ten to a ten or an eleven so how are you why were you confident that you would get the eight nine ten because we did it like a customer so we literally sat down with everybody else's nail products which i do think is quite an interesting way to do a business we sat with everyone else's nail products and went this is really great because it dries well this is really easy to apply this brush is nice this so if we put all of these positives together and create this in you know in a product will we have the most supercharged product and will it be better than all the competition and it was so that was another gap in the market so so the nail polish manufacture producers vendors yeah you know there were gaps that they hadn't really twigged that there was a better product you came up with a better product as well well i think it was all of it it's a better bottle a better brush a better formulation but it's all of it coming together yeah but that was something they should have spotted or they would have had someone might have a great formulation someone else has got the good brush and somebody else has got the easy to hold bottle and someone else is still not all together I think you don't always have to reinvent the wheel do you just make it better than that the last guy did yeah I mean do you think those opportunities are still around somewhere I think you can look at anything and go you know this mic and go could this be done better but I think you can look at anything in the world I think it's such an easy way to get into a business we said you can import from another place or you can just look at anything around you and go is this good enough could this be better where did you so you're gonna open the nail bar when you when you've got the the product coming in did you did you have the order but where did it come from and it was it a big shipment it was a ridiculously that was like mistake number one the amount of nail polish that arrived to the store I don't think I'd ever really thought about I think it was like 5 ,000 bottles per shade and we must have launched with like 60 shades and it didn't fit in the stock room and we had to get away.

17:59That was again, that's you know like mistake one, you immediately have to get a warehouse, you've now got a cost of a warehouse and you've only got one store.

18:06Richard Farleigh: And so that was something you... We got it wrong. I didn't even think I'd ever logically, in my mind I really thought that nail polish was small and I never logically thought about the gap between the amount of nail polish we'd ordered and the size of that stock room. I know, I just hadn't, I remember it arriving i remember the pallets arriving and standing outside going i've got this so wrong plus also where am i selling all this to i remember looking at thinking this is so many days and weeks of sales to get yeah we had a lot of nail polish golly i mean i've done something similar tennis racket company i was so confident it was going to work i had 10 000 tennis rackets yeah made and uh that's a lot of tennis right yeah that's when well i think it really hitched doesn't it when the first customer comes through the door and they buy one yes and you go oh my god I need no 9999 more of them but mine was across like 50 60 shades I was like goodness I need so many customers and then and then you know we were you confident about which of those shades was going to succeed yes weirdly I think we did that quite I think we got that quite right I mean we had a minimum order on all the products so we had the same quantity of every shade but I think our view on what was going to be a top seller was accurate and that was correct So the reason you ordered so much, you mentioned minimum volumes, where did you get it made?

19:24We originally got it made in the UK and Scotland.

19:27Richard Farleigh: Oh, okay. And then we moved it to Paris manufacturing later. It must have been quite, you know, everyone runs off to Asia to get stuff made now. Yes. And I had a business, you know, actually one of the Dragon's End business, which didn't work out in the end, but it was an egg cooker business and he wanted to go to China. I'm like, let's just get these machines made here. Start here. Because we're almost prototype volume. let's just get it done here because a number of advantages even if we pay double yeah the same time zone no traveling same language first language you know just be so much easier everyone wants to run off and but it's a lot of just a lot of advantages doing it back in the UK I think so and also as I've gone through the kind of beauty journey of Nelsing actually the European quality on on beauty products is higher so you got this massive supply and got a bit of a shock yes and then where was your first nail bar first nail bar was South Malton Street in in the West End with the idea of that it was a shopping area but it was also somewhere people cut through on their way to work because you know you're like a single store single store and the aim was that you know you would grab your Starbucks or coffee was coffee Republic then you would grab your coffee Republic coffee and you would go and get your nails done and that whole process or you grab your lunch it would all take you half an hour because the manicures were 15 minutes oh okay that was the difference versus what happened in the UK before it was all about speed and efficiency lunchtime stopping you could you had enough time to grab a salad grab a coffee and get your nails done in an hour window Wow so it must have been exciting opening the first store the first day were you were you working there yeah we were all in there it was absolutely crazy and we had you know like it was like a phenomenon in the UK and so we had you know cues of people waiting for a 15-minute manicure we had like TV you know being filmed it was it was properly bar me well hang on And you must, that's your other, you know, your journalism skill set to get TV there.

21:18Richard Farleigh: I mean, how can you get TV to the opening of a store? We did. We did. We got TV in lots of, yeah, I mean, like, you know, obviously I'd worked at Condé Nast, so we definitely got good magazine and press coverage. So were you still working there when you opened it? No, I think I stopped just before, just in time, just before, yeah. And so you got on the phone to all your mates and like, you've got to talk about this, got to write about this. Yeah, I think so. We definitely got good coverage. I think you also learn what a journalist needs from you to write a good story. So we released a press release and samples and we also went into desk sides.

21:54We went to different magazines and newspapers before the business launched and explained what the business was going to be.

22:00Richard Farleigh: And people would agree to see you. Would they agree that to anybody or just because you knew them and you got credibility? No, I think they'd agree to anyone that has a new interesting idea. In beauty, you sample a huge amount of product and, you know, most of what a journalist receives they won't write about. You know, they'll just get so much product, same with influencers today, and they'll hand sift and pick. And what you need to do is cut through that and send something that is really a new story and a reason that forces people to have to talk about it. So whether it's talking to influencers or press, it's the same.

22:28why do you have to talk about this new thing? And you've really got to tell people that you're reinventing something and you've created something completely new and that I'm not just selling you a nail polish anymore. I'm sending you this whole freedom for women that women can now get their nails done at lunchtime and, you know, be in an office and celebrate the fact that they're enjoying beauty. And it's actually something to be really positive about rather than kind of hiding that you're female. It was that real moment of celebrate the fact that you're female and that you've got blue nails or, you know, red nail polish and be proud of that and get that done at lunchtime and tell your male boss you've done that because you have an hour off

23:01Richard Farleigh: anyway like celebrate it in a way you know you saw the the profitability of the business was the was the product the nail varnish definitely but but the story the unique story was the nail bars the story in the magazine and the journalist hook was definitely the nail bars and the profit was always the product wow service is tough as i'm sure you've had service businesses service businesses are tough to you know they're so people labor intensive you're so reliant on you know people being there on time doing the 15 minute manicure like it's like it's like working in a restaurant it's really tough tough like really tough business to run yes did you ever have anyone um anyone uh leave to start up a competing business no no no i think actually everyone that worked at nails Inc.

23:49saw how bloody hard it was. I don't think anyone wanted to do it.

23:52Richard Farleigh: And when you had the idea and you came back from the US and you had this idea, you know, I get so many people who approach me in business with an idea and they're like, I've got this idea, right? And they're like, you know, meet on the corner, you know, wear a disguise, you know, there's a password. You know, they're so precious with this idea. And I'm like, and they want me to sign like a 15-page NDA, which I've ever done anything slightly similar. will you know there's no way I can sign an NDA for stranger here whatever anyway but they they're so worried about this idea I'm like please relax because I'm not gonna nick your idea I'm not gonna do it right because there's so many you know it's the idea is just a tiny little see yeah it's worth nothing it's not you know yeah it's all in front of you you know so the idea you know don't worry don't worry about the you know the uber driver overhearing your your conversation it's not going to be taken but then particularly new entrepreneurs is so worried about that idea.

24:48Richard Farleigh: So I was just wondering, when you came back, you must have been like, I hope no one else spots these nail bars. Well, actually, we had competitors that opened up similar time to us. I think, funnily enough, you learn it through experience. It just doesn't matter, does it? You have a great idea. I mean, you think about the coffee shops. There's like three or four brands that all opened at the same time. With us, we had two brands that opened up similar time to us. And the difference is they didn't have product. They just had service. and service is a really tough business to make money. And so did that mean, you know, because you were a product business as well as a service business, and there was big margins in the product side, We won that race just because of the product.

25:26Richard Farleigh: Did that mean that you could sort of almost take a loss on the manicures? Yeah, we could. And at a point in time, like years later, department stores became very quiet. You know, like department stores, you know, lost their shine, and they weren't in a number of department stores. closed house of fraser department stores closed debonance department stores closed and those department stores you know were quieter in terms of footfall but we were building the product and the brand elsewhere that allowed us to also keep some non-profitable nail bars um for a period of time we in the in the end closed them but we kept them for a period of time whilst we were building the brand because it was sort of trying to trying to get to a point where you go the product and the brand is big enough and the consumers you're sort of nervous to close something and for people to think you've actually closed the business down.

26:12So that's a, you don't want to close the nail bars down and everyone thinks Nails Inc's gone away because that's their interaction with Nails Inc. So you want to know just outside of just.com that there's enough places that people can get to and buy and see the product.

26:24Richard Farleigh: Did you have to iterate the product a few times or were you happy with it straight away? The product was good on day one. The product was good in terms of we just looked at everyone else's product and went, let's do it better. Wow. It is that simple, which is, you know, I'm just not an inventor. I think it takes true genius, doesn't it, for someone like Dyson to invent something so new. Well, that's a mechanical product. And it's still a better Hoover, right? It's creative genius, isn't it? Creative genius. But I think it's that. But I think for most of us, an easy way to come up with a business idea is to look what already exists and just say, could it be done better?

27:01Richard Farleigh: Yeah. Well, I think so much of life is spotting patterns. Yes. I agree. And if you're exposed to something enough, you should be able to see, you know you will start to see patterns and you know it's almost like human AI or intuition you know that's the spotting patterns it's that I think it is spotting patterns going I've seen that once before remind myself what that okay yes that is a thing yes it is patterns and and so so you've got that first store it's you know you've you it's a success from day one it's on you know you got media coverage yeah and then what happened then we then rolled out a number of stores so I So that was West End, two in the city, one in Canary Wall.

27:40Richard Farleigh: This is how much later? All within this first year. We opened like four stores. And the first one was profitable, including products, the business was profitable. The first one was not profitable because the amount of product and things we'd ordered, no. We had some overheads in that business. We'd also sunk in some fixed costs in terms of rent deposits and different things. But the actual store itself on an operating level was profitable. And that gave you the confidence to raise more money, to expand? No, we did everything with just that amount of money that we had. So we literally just did deals all over the place.

28:11We didn't then give any more rent deposits away because we didn't have the cash.

28:15Richard Farleigh: So what sort of deals and how do you do these deals? So just know, like, you know, we would then, you know, the next one was, let's say, Canary Wharf. And so we couldn't give them, you know, a lump sum of cash. Did they have confidence because they saw your existing business? And also, you know, Canary Wharf's an interesting one, which is there's just like thousands of people upstairs working. that all flood down into Canary Wharf Shopping Centre, you know, in commuter hours twice a day, plus lunchtime, and obviously people have different lunchtime windows. What we became known for quickly was we were actually quite good at creating theatre.

28:47There's something visually quite nice, you know, hairdressers are the same, nail bars are the same. It's visually quite a nice experience to see women getting their nails done. It's quite theatrical, and that's why we were then approached by department stores, because actually, you know, they didn't necessarily want us to do pedicures and have feet out, but they were very happy to have a nail bar for women to sit at a nail bar, have a coffee, have a glass of water, juice and get their nails done. It's actually visually quite appealing. It's quite theatrical. So I think we won business really by having this, which we never knew it was going to look theatrical.

29:20I'd never even thought about it, but it did look, it looked like a hive of activity, which is what you, if you've got a department store, you want that hub.

29:28Richard Farleigh: Yeah, and also maybe people stay in one place for a moment rather than just rushing around like a train station, tube station. You know, having people sit there chatting away and enjoying themselves. It makes it seem more like a place to go. And a bit like your home house thing, there's a reason why you'd then come back into the department store. Because I remember when I first met Fenix, which is our first department store, asking them how many times people came to Fenix. Like, how many times does a good customer come to Fenix? And it was two and a half times a year. And I was like, wow, your best customers come two and a half times a year.

29:55Richard Farleigh: So they're not really customer-based. It's just new customers almost. It's it's you know, but they'll spend a lot of money two and a half times here They maybe buy the summer wardrobe and the winter wardrobe and then pop in another time to buy some beauty But they're not coming every month Which is probably what I thought was probably the same customer would go to Fenix monthly So it was different and so we're now saying we can get customers to come every week to get their nails done And even if they don't come every week and they hold it every two weeks or every month That's very different to what you and Apparently have.

30:24And the only place in the store, because it was Fenix at the time, the only place where they got people more regularly than that was they had a Joe's Cafe, remember the Joseph Cafe? And that had a more frequent, you know, customer, because women would meet and have lunch in the same place. So I think that's why retailers suddenly quite liked us, because we'd bring people in, and we looked theatrical and active.

30:44Richard Farleigh: Yeah, and so you said that they approached you. Yeah, Fenix approached us, yeah. So you didn't, it wasn't like, oh, let's get department stores, we'll go and find one no we'd never thought about department stores we had only ever thought about standalone stores wow and i remember as we were doing south malton street and we had kind of canary wharf and bishop's gate coming up we were having this challenge which is god we're going to need to just keep raising so much cash if we need to keep doing these rent deposits it's too much cash every time that we're doing it and the fit out costs if you know you know we weren't taking over an existing nail bar we were taking over a coffee shop whatever and having to strip it out and do it all and and and and even though the you know the shop fit was relatively affordable it was still a lot of money and then we met department stores and we met fenix we were like wow this is amazing so you've already got all this infrastructure all and all we actually need to really put in here is tables and shelves like everything else exists the floors here the ceilings here the lights are here you pay the electricity but i remember all of those moments going you pay the electricity but like all those things you've never really thought about when you're first setting up a business secure lock up and all that kind of everything and even by the way they're even going to help manage your staff right someone's not there at nine o 'clock on a Tuesday morning department store is going to call you tell you someone's not here Wow so even a happy day when you got that approach the department store sort of changed everything for us and the only reason we won department stores versus the other two competitors because we had product so we had that's what really set us apart is we could then sell products so We belonged in a beauty hall.

32:16Richard Farleigh: Wow. And so that first department store, what happened then? Department store changed everything because it just meant it was so much more cost effective. I think we also realized as well there was a bit of power with us. Like, you know, when you're a first entrepreneur, you just apologize for everything constantly, don't you? Because everything just goes wrong all the time. You're just so sorry. You're so sorry to the customers. You're so sorry to the staff. You're so sorry. Everything's just not working initially. And then I think in department stores, we went, this all makes sense because the department stores now need us as much as we need them and so actually can we now go to department stores can we go to house of fraser and and and uh debonhams or harvey nichols or selfridges and actually try and you know negotiate better terms multiple stores and is this how we're going to how much later are we and then we roll out very quickly we go through the year or two yeah i mean we we rolled out over the pace of probably 10 years in terms of like multiple nail bars but yes we rolled out in the we got to I think 10 nail bars in the first two and a bit years to it must have felt like a steam truck like a fast it was going if I was doing it again it was going too fast did you ever have any bad times oh my god I felt like giving up a million times oh really it sounds like just success a disease no no no no totally not no no no I think managing and running people was so much more complicated than I thought managing and running people that may want to only stay working with you for six months or 12 months when you were trying to create this vision and create a brand that was really like had lasting appeal was really challenging um working in other people's businesses so department stores were amazing but you're also working in somebody else's business with somebody else's rules and regulations and so that that came with so many positives but also lots of challenges along the way as we were learning and getting a lot of things wrong you're getting you're you're publicly getting things wrong um and yeah we i I mean, honestly, there was a thousand times when I wanted to quit.

34:07I would say the first 10 years of Nails Inc. felt like every month something was coming to you. There was a cost you hadn't thought of. There was a challenge. There was a department store that wasn't happy about something or needed to change your location from your best location where you were suddenly hitting your highest revenue. And they were so pleased with your numbers that they think that actually you can make any location work. And so they move you to the back of the store. They want you to raise that profile.

34:30Richard Farleigh: You're so great. So you can go to the back of the store. Hold on a minute, if I'm so great, can I stay at the front of the store? Yeah, yeah. You know, because actually you've still got all the same costs. And it's the same effort to run the things that are going badly as the things that go brilliantly. I think, you know, you can run something very small, you run something very big. It's a lot of the time it's the same volume of work, isn't it? What about funding? You know, so you mentioned you raised money. Yeah. You know, were you ever squeezed, you know, I was talking on the show to the, you know, the founder of Trunky.

34:57Richard Farleigh: Yes. Who was on the show, Dragon's Den, which was a big success. Yeah, great business. They had funding problems. A successful business can almost die because it's too successful because of inventory and cost building up. Did you ever have squeezes with cash because you're suddenly expanding so quickly? Yeah, we did. But I remember I always had really great finance people in the business because I wasn't from a finance background. I always had really great finance people. And I remember a wise finance person saying to me really early on, if it's a really good idea, you'll be able to fund it. So just relax about that.

35:30He went just like take that off your like list of he went in it He went and if you can't you probably not got the right me kind of person in here Because if you've got Sephora in the US that are prepared to launch 300 stores and want your nail polish You should be able to fund that there should be a way to fund that because that's a hell of an opportunity It's all the products that you already sell in boots that you know your top sellers It really would be quite complicated for that to fail something's got to go very wrong So you should be able to fund it and he I think early on he gave me that confidence So I was like, you can fund, and if you can't fund it, was it really a good idea?

36:04Richard Farleigh: So you can fund a good idea, you think? I think you can always fund a good idea. Do you not? It's probably, you know, with some companies which need to make a loss for four or five years, it's very hard in the UK, you know, compared to, say, the US. So, you know, like, you know, launching Netflix here may have been very difficult, you know, if you're trying to globally expand and have a loss for 10 years or whatever it was. Yeah. You know, whereas in the U.S. they seem to have a different... So something like that might be... But the sort of smaller scale stuff you probably can. What do you see as the big trends in the fashion...

36:39Richard Farleigh: Sorry, in the beauty industry, in the nail industry, but in the beauty industry in general? I just think wellness. I think everything now is connecting into wellness. So I think, you know, in the nail industry specifically, it would all be about nail health. And I think in beauty, it's like how you combine wellness and beauty together. I think it's self-care rituals. It's people looking after themselves and incorporating wellness and fitness into everything you're doing. So I think whether it's new technologies or how consumers are interacting with products or searching things up through AI, everything's got a wellness angle.

37:14I don't think I personally think like just color cosmetics for the sake of color cosmetics with no added in benefits, with no wellness, with no skin care benefits is a bit dull. I feel like we can do better now and it needs to have a Positive impact in terms of your wellness your longevity something else.

37:32Richard Farleigh: Well very briefly, but I tried to I tried to Launch a hair care company. Okay, and we failed And it was it was it was it was you it was technology at a leeds university I've loved taking stuff out of universities. Yeah, at universities and it was hair dye Yeah, which almost any color and it was and you know because hair dyes are notoriously potentially I went potentially carcinogenic, there's a high rate of cancer with hairdressers. But it was hair dye that can almost be any color and instead of being dangerous, it's almost like you could drink it like a vegetable juice. Brilliant. And the other thing was, if you dye your hair, and I don't dye my hair, but if you dye your hair and undy it or change the color, you know, it makes the hair brittle.

38:15Richard Farleigh: So the hair dye would sort of lock onto the hair but could have equally unlocked by using the counter chemical, you know, could unlock. And we got so much interest. it's one of these sort of companies which I've had before where you get so much interest in the industry everyone is raving about it company hair companies are giving it trials right but but it was it was it didn't succeed and you still don't know why you know it's one of those things of this frustration sounds clever very excited about it but it never got across the line so I'm still in the dark. When was that? Five years ago. I mean I would say that Beauty even most recently in the last you know five years and certainly in the last year has but is customers are looking for less toxic product that kind of no tox is like really trending I wonder if you were a a little bit early but I think it sounds like a great idea so final question really but but you sold the business yes and was it a sort of financial sale like oh yeah that's great money I'll take it or was it like oh you know my job is done my journey is you know that chapter of my life's closed.

39:22Both, both. I definitely wanted to do something else because I've been doing Nails Inc. for such a long time. So I think the ambition to do something else, to create another brand, another business at a point in time, and then financially to cash in on 20 odd years of work.

39:39Richard Farleigh: It's been fantastic chatting to you, Thea. I really am inspired by your story. Thank you. And it's very interesting just how you managed to join dot after dot and do it methodically and disciplined and with imagination. So thanks for sharing the story. Thank you so much. Thank you, Thea.