TFOL At: The Beauty Symposium

This week TFOL attended The Beauty Symposium at One Alfred Place organised by beauty industry veteran Stirling Murray and his consultancy, The Red Tree.

Stirling opened the session by explaining the objective of the event was to “bring fresh thinking to business, not just the beauty industry”.

The first speaker was an engaging executive coach, Kate Tojeiro, who runs X-Fusion and has worked with Google and Rio Tinto. Her subject was Inspired Leadership. She explained that inspired leadership was about asking the right questions, listening and taking action. The key to motivation was getting people to understand WHY their roles were important. Google famously allows staff to use 20% of their time to devote to their own initiatives, and this time accounts for 50% of its new products.

Kate also explained how she had interviewed many inspiring leaders from the world of sport and business and the common traits were 1) Purpose 2) Gratitude 3) Awareness
4) Energy and 5) Belief.

The next speaker gave a fascinating presentation on the power of brand design and identity. Dave Richmond who runs design and branding agency R Design has worked with numerous established premium brands including Crabtree & Evelyn, Selfridges and Micheline Arcier, as well as new luxury brands like BLEND Collective and Super Facialist.

Dave outlined the different key elements of brand identity such as name, typography, colour, tone of voice and his special magic ingredient – a well crafted, great idea.

Dave concluded by saying that in his opinion “the key to successful branding is simple. Saying the least you can to communicate the most”.

The final speaker was Malcolm Bell, the founder of Zaggora. As well as being an amazing entrepreneur Malcolm is also a client of our sister company, The Barn. And he was more than generous in mentioning The Barn and the small part we played in the brand’s incredible success.

And what success the brand has had in its short life!  The launch product, Hot Pants, has sold 500,000 pairs in just 18 months.  Its e-commerce conversion rate is 12% compared to the industry average of 3-4%.  This is because the product delivers on its promise and has grown through social recommendation. Malcolm and partner Desi, have grown the brand and product range at an incredible rate through constant innovation and developing a strong relationship with consumers through blogs, Twitter and Facebook.  Both natural entrepreneurs, they’re not afraid of trying new things, sometimes failing but always learning and moving on to the next thing.  We have no doubt that their plans for world dominance will continue to be successful.

Overall The Beauty Symposium was a very worthwhile event and TFOL looks forward to attending next year.