573: Building a $74M a Year Beauty & Community Empire | Trinny Woodall

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hey, Founder fam, welcome back to another episode of the Founder podcast. Today, we have our second interview with the one and only Trini Woodall. She's the TV icon turned beauty founder in what was her second interview with her. So after two decades on screen with What Not To Wear, she sold her designer wardrobe and launched Trini London. She had no money left. And at 53, she launched this incredible brand. Today, it's a$74 million US a year brand with stores across the UK, US, Europe, and Australia, shipping to 170 countries.

1:26This brand and what she's doing is incredible. So in this episode, we're going to unpack how she built it all, bootstrapping, scaling, and showing up online and how to build product and community with zero fluff. Let's dive in. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:53Trini, thanks so much for taking the time. Round two. Good to be back here. So the first question that I ask everyone that comes on, for those who are not familiar with who you are in Trini London, how did you get your job, aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today? I got my job because I started a business and I employed myself. But I knew that I wanted to get back into DC. I'd done it before when it was not even DC. I just call it online in 99. I think we spoke about that, about challenges, starting a business, what you learn from a failure. and I think I had gone round the world making over women and I realised the one thing that challenged women was knowing what makeup to wear.

2:33So I wanted to make it easy for them, portable for them. I want them to be able to buy it online whatever their age and I wanted to actually focus on a target of a 35-plus woman because I felt she was underrepresented in the market and so that's what we launched. I'm curious to hear from your perspective besides this incredible range of products and the brand that you've built. What do you think has really caused this really strong growth? I think it's a mixture of honing in on an audience that feels it hasn't been spoken to and speaking with a message that resonates because there's a lot of noise out there.

3:10There are squillion beauty brands. There's a ton of online beauty brands and there's a ton of legacy beauty brands. So it's about how do you cut through and it's got to be mission-led. and we are a mission-led business. So for me, it's about how can we leave every woman feeling better and more joyful and happier. And we do that with products. We do that with community. We do that with content. You know, we're kind of more than just selling you a lipstick. So I feel to break through in any industry, your point of difference has to be something that's very emotionally driven. It cannot be product driven.

3:47It has to kind of have that whole emotional halo because that's how we most respond to things in life. You know, we need to have that draw. It needs to pull on something inside of us that makes us think, this could shift me or this will make me feel better or this is going to bring something else into my life. So we do that with everything when we talk about Drinidad. Yeah. And how has it evolved over time? Like what was the sweet, what did you start with? We started with kind of SKUs. We started with 100 SKUs and we launched, in fact, no, we had 49 skews when we started and then we quickly added in two things that had quite long ranges started with makeup because that's what women would see when I did makeovers on them and I used to travel around the world doing makeovers and they have a complicated relationship we all do with body hair face but if you do someone's face and they love it they then can see everything else you know that they're sort of think okay that's good and then they'll look at the hair and look at the body and so I felt this is the element that if we can get that right and make it really easy you know there are so many women who just don't want to really do makeup because they think where do I start and there's other women who have done it the same way for a long time and they think I'm kind of embarrassed to go up to the department store counter and say help me to rethink how I do it you know so we needed to give messages that would let women know that we were there for this kind of woman um and i think that's what we do yeah and so so over the last i mean if compared to when we start i remember when we started the day we started and we did like six thousand pounds or something it was just so exciting you know we were on shopify and it was like you know the bing bing bing and you're watching it any entrepreneur knows this feeling of that just that kind of the ping and i remember we all sat around this little we had a table like this and there were not so many of us and it was so exciting because you've you know worked on something for a long time but that day that you actually launch it people actually putting their faith in and buying it is a huge step for anybody who is you know doing a business which has a commercial product in it and it isn't a service so then it just grew and it grew really nicely each year you know we've grown over six years you know if you're apportionate we've grown 120 % a year and I think when you grow when we when we grew I knew that we wanted to have a very good retention and at the time I think we spoke about this before but at the time it was all about new customer only and not retention I mean what we speak about anyone raising money today it's about what's your retention you know that is the key thing retention EBITDA you know that triangle It's got to be those three things of, you know, a number of customers, etc.

6:39So we had got this very good retention and we had really good cohort data. And I think each year those early cohorts have stayed with us. So in a way, you're really building a business on a foundation block, not so much on quicksand. And you feel that strength. And it goes back to this old adage of word of mouth and getting somebody who, you know, somebody who is a Trini London star customer, which is about, I think, 65 % of our customers or 65 % of revenue, but actually 20 % of our customer is this person who actually comes in and she buys really deeply into the brand. And that is our perfect kind of customer because they're like, I don't have to look any further.

7:24I've come here and I feel that's helped us a lot in our growth because then as we develop a new vertical and last year I think I just launched skincare when I saw you last time and now we've been it's been over a year but it's now about 35 percent of our revenue oh wow already and they're more um you know they're more replenishable skews you know you might add to the collection of makeup but skincare is a different proposition in terms of retention and looking at retention of customer and retention of products. So it's an interesting when you swivel because a lot of people who start as makeup in one area and going to another, it's about how far can you stretch?

8:04You know, how many verticals do we bring out as we grow? So for us, growth has been around bringing out a second vertical when we know we want to do more after that and proving that vertical. So we proved in 18 months that revenue growth. Then it's about location. So last year, we had just started to localize and we did distribution in Australia instead of shipping from the UK. So actually implementing all those warehouses, all of that, that's a big deal. And you've got to be of a certain size to be able to handle localization, two warehouses, double backend system, integrated ERP system. That's all been a fucking nightmare, but you know, they always is.

8:45And just warehouse integration for anyone who has stock, it's a challenge. But doing that then enabled us to grow more in Australia. We used to be about 15 % or 12 % in Australia, and it took us to about 20 % Australia because suddenly there was that low-hanging fruit of the customer, the person who followed us for a long time, but shipping of$13,$26 was a lot. And now she could buy two products, discover the brand, and then buy into the brand, and at the same time, retail. So the play of retail and e-com, which I think we'll get onto, is really interesting. And I think a lot of businesses now who are in, who have been totally D2C, and they're looking at what they need to do in retail.

9:26They've got maybe investors who are saying to them, hey, you've got to go straight to wholesale. Or there's some people who are finding it challenging to raise money. It's a very interesting area. Where is e-com going? So for us to date, we've expanded our geographicals. We've expanded our channels. And we've expanded our range. And I think that really is how you grow. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned retail versus D2C. It's really interesting. One thing I've noticed, I've shared this before, all of my successful e-com friends, the ones that were purely D2C when, you know, challenges happen with paid advertising past couple of years versus the ones that had a good mixture of D2C and retail, they would not hit nowhere near as hard.

10:12Yeah. And I'm seeing more than ever now businesses are moving into retail. Yeah, 100%. I think it's a mixture of, I think it's a kind of, not a perfect storm, it's the opposite of that, all right. But we had the iOS release. We had Facebook changing everything. So that has affected people. You know, our LTV over CAC is still healthy. We have a decent ROAS of like 200%. but you know it's about what's the maximum you can push on meta each day and you know we look at you know i'm sure lots of people who are in the business it's like shall we do everything the facebook way or shall we do it our way and i speak to lots of other companies like there's some interesting people out of israel there's some great tech in israel of um really having that layer on of their own data scientists layering on top of facebook and we are now We implemented Snowplow last year, which gives you first party data.

11:08So it enables us to really look at what is that customer? Where are they coming from? What ads are they coming from? What's resonating? Because there's one thing Facebook telling you what's working and they definitely take. Attribution is such a fucker. They just, you know, they really like to own it all. You know, otherwise it would be my 120 % would be meta. So it's looking at that. But I think the funnel has changed. and you know speaking to people at facebook and um i've got a few decent people there it's all about how you change in the proportion of spend in the funnel because it used to be you'd be doing 100 on on click and now it's actually brand awareness and i'm talking about dc brands i'm not talking about legacy brands like coca-cola and stuff who are doing the brand awareness anyway but for us it's about taking some ad sets and thinking all right what if we do 30 percent brand awareness and 70 percent click yeah yeah direct response yeah so i'm curious so when you launched uh how much did you raise can you share how much you raised yeah we raised well i initially i did in england you can do an seis scheme which is an enterprise initiative scheme but you can do a junior one so i raised 150 000 and that lasted me about a year and then i ran out and i sold clothes.

12:27I ended up, I sold my house because I couldn't afford the mortgage. So, you know, you got to bootstrap and we talked before about Gary Vaynerchuk and like, what can you sell? So I had that journey of what would I have to let go of in order to start the business? And I did that. And then we raised 2.5, the first raise when we're about a year before we launched. And then a year after we launched, we raised 3.1. So we've raised 7.6 in total. And I think to get to our revenue on that amongst our competitors, it's comparatively. So maybe Glossier and Tilbury at this stage, which is the only other, maybe would have raised 20 million.

13:07So it's good and it's bad. It's good in so much that, you know, we have a positive EBITDA. But the momentum of having a lot of cash behind you is not available to us. but it makes you also careful with money. And so, you know, we look at Tilbury, which has been phenomenally successful, but really probably launched more as a retail brand and COVID, they pivoted and they became more D to C and maybe they're 50, 50, I don't know. Glossier, the other hand, they had to go to retail post COVID because they had such an issue with, you know, I mean, there are times in any brand's life when you're going to use a lot of people to build and then you're going to get off some of the fat, you're going to get lean and you're going to do that.

13:49And it's going to happen in every single company. So I think what I love about this story is a lot of people would look at you and go, oh, well, you're a celebrity. You know, you're on TV. It's easy to build a brand, right? Well, I wasn't on TV when I built this brand. I think raising money, did it get me a meeting? You know, I emailed 250 people and I got 49 meetings. So one in five and of that one person invested. And then consequently, other people did. But, you know, that initial thing. So maybe it gets you in the door. But equally, people have preconceptions, which aren't always good, because they might think, oh, you work in TV, what do you know about running a business?

14:32Or they might think, you know, I mean, I had a lot of interesting comments when I was sitting in front of investors around, are you too old to start a business? You know, do you have a big enough social media following? You know, who's actually going to run the business? You know, do you know how to read a balance sheet? Lots of that kind of stuff. So you will perhaps, you know, I think from fundraising, I would say oddly it's not an advantage, although because I think everyone has to have the hustle. You know, and if you have the right hustle, you can get a bloody meeting. It's being tenacious.

15:09It's getting to know the EA of somebody you want to get to. It's showering them with loveliness. You know, I had a husband who was so utterly brilliant at that. And he would always just get to know the assistant of somebody he wanted to get to. And just he was utterly charming to them. And he always got a meeting because they wanted to put him in for a meeting, you know, because he was tenacious. And so instead of sending the email always to the person you want to get to, find out their EA. and maybe, you know, if you've got two or three refusals or nothing, no acknowledgement, go via the EA and charm her or him.

15:47Let's not be discriminatory here. Sorry. Yeah, it's all right. No, look, you've got to find the gatekeeper. You've got to find the gatekeeper. Yeah, that's how I started with Founder. And the first four months I got interviewed with Richard Branson, find the gatekeeper, off you go, right? Yeah, exactly. So, okay. So, yeah, I love this part of your story that, you know, because most people would go, oh, well, you had a massive social following. a ton of money and then you've just kind of attached this brand this is a real business that you've built i had 62 000 followers it wasn't a massive social following i have to say even though this is like 2013 or 14 but i didn't particularly and when i did the first you know p &l and looking at the projections of the business i literally had to do it all as a conversion of a percentage of people who followed me on social would buy so i said three percent because i thought 3 % conversion online feels right.

16:36So I just said that. And then I thought, what, how much will they grow per year? You know, and so we did the projections on that. And when I did a, I had one of our investors who came in the second round and she then left that investment house and she sent me a frame thing when she left and it showed our five-year projection. And, you know, it showed that nice sort of hockey stick we all want to see. But she just put in it You are the only company that came to me with a five year projection And exactly the figure you said Is what you did Which is kind of like That's impressive I think it was luck I'm going to say it's luck We can think of a year, maybe two But tell me, anyone listening Really?

17:21No, it was luck But it was nice luck Yeah, I think You've done an exceptional job then If you've gone from 62 ,000 followers because these numbers of vanity metrics really building a strong community and connecting with that community. And the depth of that community because, you know, we have followers. So, you know, across all channels we might have 4 million followers, all right, but we have a community which is about 150 ,000 people. And not all of that community are customers, but the Trini tribe where we have, you know, in Victoria we have 6 ,500. In New South Wales we have nearly 7 ,000.

17:58And so they're just vested and they feel a part of something and they feel a connection to other women. And maybe they're also being allowed to be the person they want to be in this environment. And they're people who are not naturally people who would be on social all the time. You know, you kind of think my daughter's on TikTok the whole time, you know, but when you get to like 40s and 50s, people, everyone is on, you know, we have. you know I'm also doing a book here you know in the queue there were two 75 year olds who were like so and then I do this and I love what you said on stories yesterday and you know it's like you think this is fantastic I love that So tell me how did you come up with the idea of the Trini tribe?

18:44Wasn't us and I think the success of the Trini tribe is that we didn't start it it was started by a woman in northwest England called Kelly and she followed me and I think we hadn't even launched. I don't know if we'd launched Trini London yet. Paris, is she? Yeah, no, she's not. We hadn't launched Trini London, I don't think. I don't think we had. I was thinking of Chloe and Dydie, but I don't think we had, but she just followed what I did. But it was very close to, it was like three months before. And then after about, after going for about six months, we noticed all these sort of Facebook groups that had taken a tiny bit of our logo or a picture of me and they just were dotting up all over the shop.

19:28And so we reached out to them and we said, look, you know, do you want to kind of come together as a group? Because you're all doing the same thing and some people don't know which tribe to join and they're all like, so we said, should we regionalize you? You know, because it would be natural to do it or geographic. And so we did that. We have a community team now who we get about 13 ,000 comments a week through different social channels. But for us, it's always been really important to allow that community to feel we're always there at the end of a piece of social. And so there's now 34 tribes in 17 countries.

20:07And some of them are tiny. Some are 500 people, like Dubai probably has 500 people. And then Victoria, Australia has six and a half thousand. So they are, you know, engaged. We have each of them who are admins of the pages. We said, do you want to call yourself ambassadors? dresses. And then after like another year, we said, look, the few days before something launches, we'll send it to you so that you can, because they're kind of, you know, their local tribe looks at them and say, what do you think of this? So we then give them the chance to try it. But we never, I think we give the ambassadors maybe a little discount, but it's actually more an emotional give and take.

20:48And I think that's why I think when these things are monetized too much, or they're started by the business, there's a certain commercialization, which doesn't allow for better organic growth. And I think something like this, you want to let that organic growth flourish. Also, they're your biggest champions, and they're your harshest critic. So if we do something and they're like, we kind of they're real sense check for stuff and you need as a business. You don't want to get, you know, you don't want to get over here when you need to hear what's going on. And they are really good at that. So in saying that, is it just Facebook groups that you guys are using?

21:29They're Facebook groups. There's a few and there's lots of use Instagram. But what's good about Facebook is it's a two way communication tool. Instagram isn't. Instagram is a platform and you leave your comments. It's a two-way tool on DMs, but it's not a two-way tool in community. And Meta is still, you know, Facebook is a community. It's the only platform on social media, which is a true ability to have a community. And I don't think that would change as much as people might dis-Meta or whatever. There is a very strong community there. Yeah. So what advice would you give to early stage founders that want to develop like an an incredibly strong community like you guys have.

22:10It's interesting. I think, does it depend on the age of the customer you're getting to? Does it depend on the attitude of the kind of customer you're going to acquire? Because you can look at customers attitudinally, and they could be any age, or you could look at them like it's a millennial, it's a Gen Z, whatever it might be. And then it's about where are they chatting? Where are they chatting with each other? And how do you just get involved in that chat? How do you, in a way, do something which makes them talk about you? And it's about so understanding what maybe is lacking in their life and being able to be that voice that talks about it.

22:51And I think in anything, whether it's Gen Z or Millennial or Baby Boomer, if you're talking about something that people are thinking about, they look to hear more. And in the early days, how often were you in the groups? In the group's lot. I mean, last night I was, you know, we did some events. We arrived here two weeks ago and we did Sydney and, you know, we did a lot of press in Sydney and we had a tribe event. And then we went to Brisbane. So then I look and I see what they're all posting and I like comments and, you know, always late at night, I'll just go through and I'll like comments. and Instagram I do it all myself on my channel but on Trini London we do it but I just feel it's really important to you know I might get I don't know two to four hundred comments a day but you get a sense of things it's I remember this guy who started a competitor to British Gas in England and I sat next to him at dinner he was a very cool founder and in fact I think did Rich benson also invest a bit in him i can't remember but you know he's cool and he said um his office was in customer service that's where he actually put it because he wanted to hear what people are thinking and talking about and when people don't get the response they want they dm me you know so i hear what could be a problem what is a problem you know what they love so early stage startup founders if they want to start a beauty brand very very very competitive now more than ever you look at ai it's so easy to create a business now you look at shopify and the tools available much much easier so much easier i came out of shopify before they launched shopify plus we went into commerce tools and i'm like yeah just challenging yeah multiple back then you couldn't even have multiple stores you had They have multiple separate stores.

24:49Yeah, and now that's all changed. So a lot has changed. So technically much easier. Correct. Getting the customer more challenging. Yeah. So what advice would you give to early stage startup founders that want to start a beauty brand? How do they stand out? I'm going to say one thing first is I think some of the reasons people fail and don't get it off the ground is they spend too long on the product development of what it is and too little on how are they going to sell it, you know. And Barbara, who we both love, Shark Tank, we so love Barbara. You interviewed her, didn't you? She's so fab. She was like, do you remember the thing?

25:3487 % is good enough. So challenging for an entrepreneur where 100 % has got to be the norm. But I never forget her saying that. She said that to one of the pitchers. and I was like that's so true and I was lying in bed next to my partner and I was just thinking when I was being trying to be too perfectionist and I just thought it's got to be I mean at the very beginning you want to be 100 100 but so that's the first thing I'd say is whatever you you know you've got to feel yeah you've got to feel it might be a great product and you might feel you have got a point of difference in the market but go out and see where are people buying whatever it is you're selling and how are they selling it?

26:13So is your physical product different? Have you invented some incredible new raw ingredient or is the packaging and branding phenomenal? Because in the world we live in today, packaging and branding can definitely get a product off the ground, but they will not ever make it a legacy brand. And it's like, you don't want to build to have something in five years, just die. You know, I think we all want to build to have something which is there and becomes establishment it's always maybe a bit rock and roll but it you know you don't want to do those turns so it has to have substance so for me as a beauty brand entrepreneur you know we went to for skincare we have our own lab so for me being in control of what my product is and developing it so that it feels incredibly unique so that we can talk about it with authenticity to show its point of difference in the market and it gives you the passion in which to talk about your products.

27:07I think that's really important in terms of that making it. And cutting through the noise is about understanding what's out there now, or if you're filling the hole, then where is it going to resonate the most with those people? You know, and how, like, there's a very, I mentor a few people in the UK, and there's a girl who has a jewellery brand. She started when she was 18. She's now 21. Maybe she's 22. And she did this thing where she started off on a minute level with girls who went to schools where there was like a sixth former who was influential and she sent them product so she didn't go to influencers she went on a real i mean we talk about micro influencers talking about them for 10 years all right but i found this whole strategy where she was getting literally into a school of 500 kids she knew that that 13 to 16 year old looked up at the 17 and 18 year old and that she would get them to do stuff and she created these micro influencers in incredibly targeted that those are the places so she has started with like 25 schools and she's building up a really good business and she's turning over a couple of million you know i'm not going to say the details but you know that's how focus she became is like i'm making this jury who's going to love it and who's going to want it even more you know because who's going to love it is the people who would tell the people who's going to want it even more by how they tell them and talk to them and communicate in their language yeah it's much easier to compete if you if you get your target market so dotted like that niche so dialed in and really like putting them on the wall You know, get your, whoever your target is.

28:54I like to take things sometimes out of online and put on the wall, who is that person? You know, this is really old fashioned marketing, but like, where do, what do they look at on social? You know, where are they buying from right now? Who are they hanging out with? Who are their influences? All these things are, just know that customer. Do you think you need to raise money to start? I don't know. It's really tough because raising money, you can get your throat slit right now. It's a ruthless market and fundraising is really challenging. And there's a lot of people sitting on money right now, not investing, because they're thinking that sounds like something I invested in a few years ago.

29:37So it is challenging to raise money. And I would say bootstrapping, if you can, for proof of concept, will mean that when you go to that fundraise, you will not be shredded in terms of the cap table because otherwise you will. If you raise too early and people are saying, I'm taking a big punt on you, they're going to be really greedy in the cap table. And then you're going to find you're a couple of years in and you might even already be close to being minority. and you need at least if you're a I feel if you're a founder you have a sense of what your product is and your market is if it's you know a dc brand and you need to protect your sense of it because you come up with the idea and there might be people along the way there's definitely going to be people on the way as you grow who will know more than you in different areas but if you get people in too early, they might direct you to a way that is where they feel the market's going.

30:38And maybe you have a real intuition where you feel you have the vision to see something else. And it's very difficult sometimes to find what do we trust in our vision versus where are they telling me something I need to hear. And that's, you know, going out to see investors. even if you're not fundraising it takes a lot of time out of growing your business but it's interesting to understand the market it's interesting to see what's launching it does give you information but it takes a lot of time out and if there's other ways that you can do it just for the first sort of six months or a year i think people are looking you know people when I raise people did pre-revenue but doing pre-revenue now is very challenging in this market so do you believe it's possible to build a successful beauty brand not raising any money starting really small you said you started with like 40 skews maybe just starting with one skew like a very simple like for sure you have got brands um who have I'm just like trying to think Like there's a brand called Gizu, which is like a hair brand.

31:50And she was an influencer and she started, but I don't know if investors went to her and then they financed it. You have some people who might literally start with one product. It is challenging. And it depends how much time you feel you have to have the patience to grow it. years ago I went to see not years ago two years ago I went to see um Leonard Lauder whose um uh mother's Estee Lauder big purchaser of beauty brands but in our conversation he said to me Trini biggest thing I can tell you patience which is interesting because sometimes you know we think and I'm going to say this like but I think myself we're the young ones we know what we're doing.

32:39I'm saying this like I'm nearly 60 and he's like 80. But it's important sometimes to look at those people who have founded billion dollar businesses, very different times, but fundamentally you're selling a product to a consumer. So even if the method by which you're selling it has changed for the era you live in, some of those fundamentals are actually identical and they never changed. And so when he said that to me, I always noticed that when I strategically make impulsive rather than intuitive decisions is when I don't have my patience. It's just an interesting one. So going back to your question, Nathan, of should you fundraise or should you be, you know, it requires patience.

33:20It's very challenging financially because you've then got to be in a position where you think, you know, do I rent or do I live with my parents? I mean, if we're talking to people who are in that situation, then, you know, can I do it out of my parents garage for a bit can I make that my office how can I fund my product because when you're funding product if you're going to self-fund the cost per skew is going to be more expensive than if you can order more and grow the business so there is that point before you get to that inflection point where you're actually going to have a better gross margin where it's more expensive for you to do it but it means that you can get to a stage where you could have you know a positive impact where you're not having to wait for your next revenue to buy your next stock.