Beauty, Business and Babies
“The thing is there are so
many of us now, and they all have kids - it’s the same story. What I am doing
is building a really successful business on my own, as a personal Beauty
Shopper and Independent stylist, and I am actually at the top of the league –
it’s good, it’s really good”.
Natasha Leger went from PR for brands such as Ted
Baker and Kickers for almost a decade, to one of MyShowcase’s leading
Independent Beauty Stylists, Personal Beauty Shoppers and Entrepreneur in just
over a year and is "Loving It!".
I went along to meet Natasha and her gorgeous
growing bump (soon to be baby number two), at Hampstead's hidden hotspot LLS Cafe,
to discuss all things beauty, business and babies. Having first met Natasha
at one of her charity showcases hosted by Nurturing Mums in aid of North East
London Sands (Stillbirth & neonatal death charity), I was curious to know
how and why she made the switch from corporate life to becoming her own beauty boss
with a toddler in tow.
In a word, "redundancy". According
to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) redundancy levels were at 117,000
in the UK (November 2016 - January), 42,000 of those were women. This
coupled with childcare costs reported to be nearly £16,000 a year in London,
and the Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) claiming
in 2016 that, ‘the average couple in the UK spends a third of their income on
childcare costs’ – is it any wonder we are seeing the continued rise of the mum
entrepreneur or #Mumpreneur, who have created businesses around the needs of
their families and childcare.
So what is MyShowcase? The brand’s tagline is, “your
personal beauty shopping service” and was founded by serial entrepreneur Nancy
Cruickshank (remember handbag.com), award winning beauty journalist, columnist
and Beauty Editor of The Telegraph for 15 years, Kate Shapland, and internet
entrepreneurs behind the creation of Ocado, Rodrigo Dauster and Oliver Beau de
Lomenie.
Shortly after it launched in 2012, The Telegraph
reported that, ‘Nancy Cruickshank’s goal is to create thousands of female
entrepreneurs’, and ‘created MyShowcase to provide an opportunity for women to
work flexibly, selling the brands that Kate would curate at privately hosted
events’.
This has certainly been among the benefits for Natasha,
“There are no minimum targets, it is completely flexible, everything is how you
direct it - you’re the boss of your business. So, for me that was great. I
thought I will give myself 6 months. So I had January until June / July to see
if I could reach a similar level to when I went back to work 3 days a week for
my old company. I had a certain target. I reduced Christina’s [Natasha’s 3 year
old daughter] nursery days to two days instead of 3 days, and I reached that level
in 3 months with Myshowcase and the rest is history. I have been doing that now
for over a year and I love it!
Four years on, MyShowcase is reported by crowdcube.com
to, ‘…have achieved over £2m in revenue from 37,000 customers so far, with a
forecast to double this to £4m in the next year’, and was named among The
Sunday Times Top 15 fastest growing start-ups in 2015.
With a network of over ‘1,600 Stylists’ and partnerships
with the likes of YouTube beauty phenomenon, blogger / vlogger Caroline Hirons,
whose frank, no nonsense and hilarious beauty advice has given her a global
following of 148,000 on instragam alone, with likes in the region of
3,000-5,000 per post. During Caroline’s recent live brand training she had some
choice advice as Natasha recalls, “She was talking to us about face wipes, and
she was like, ‘basically face wipes are for fanny, flights and festivals’.
“She came and gave a talk, chose her
favourite products and said why. Then we had four new brands that had just
joined us who came and presented their brands, and then they would give us a
goodie bag with products that you can go away and learn about - so you get lots
of different ways to be trained. It is a gradual thing for sure. No one is
expected to know everything at once, and there is always someone to ask. The
bit that I know about the least is make up, and my mum is a Make Up Artist”.
Make up may not be her strong
point, although | think she might be somewhat modest, as she certainly knows
enough to currently be at the top of the league in her region. Even whilst
recently holidaying in Cyprus with her family, it was still business as usual. Her
social media feed is a buzz with product knowledge, showcases and events she
has hosted all over the country. Natasha excitedly tells me that, “Literally
this morning, Bagsy which is this a new make up brand that we have got, used my
picture and tweeted, ‘we are overwhelmed by the support that the stylists on
MyShowcase are giving us’ - it is so nice to make a difference to their
business.
“I love that | am making a
difference. I am helping clients with products that actually work, I am also
helping these people to promote their brand, their products and their babies.
Some of them are bigger than others, but they all have this mentality of a big
independent brand that matters. A lot of these businesses, not all, are born
from mum’s needs to create something.
“There is this one brand which I
love, called Orba, which is really a non sexy brand, her strap line is ‘No
Nonsense Skincare’, it’s little metal tins, it’s £12.00 a pot, it’s not
expensive. One of her creams has goats milk in it, and is the only cream that
fixed my daughters really dry eczema and really dry skin on her cheeks. The brand
was born out of a personal desire for her. She is Black and she had really bad
eczema, so she created something by finding out what her great grandma used
which was plant based as a healer, and it has this whole story.
MyShowcase is said to, ‘represent over 45 of the best
independent beauty brands, bringing you innovative makeup, skincare, bath &
bodycare, fragrances and wellbeing edits’. Brands such as Percy & Reed,
Bagsy and Aromatherapy Associates who won Best New Bath and Body Product, Best
New Wellbeing Product, Classic FM’s Beauty Hall of Fame and Best British Brand
at The CEW Beauty Awards 2017 (Cosmetic Executive Women), dubbed the “Beauty
Oscars”.
It would appear that Nancy Cruickshank has indeed accomplished
her initial mission of creating ‘thousands of female entrepreneurs’ and giving
women the means and platform to work flexibly. Especially where mumpreneurs are
concerned. Whether they are creators of brands or independent stylists like Natasha.
“I had been in footwear for 10 years, and it was only
when I first started doing showcases that I remembered all my job applications
were in beauty. I applied for Chanel, L’Oreal, all these big companies when I
left uni - which is really funny, I have come full circle”. She may have come full circle, but I would
argue she is now a budding beauty boss on her own terms.
To find out more about Natasha and MyShowcase, checkout
her profile at: http://www.myshowcase.com/stylist/natasha_leger.
Written by Thuto Mali @msfabshoes
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