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Forbes Talks

How Trinny Woodall Built Trinny London Into A $74 Million-A-Year Company

Forbes Talks

Forbes Media LLC

Business News, Forbes, Business, News, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Politics, Policy, Breaking News

54 Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Trinny Woodall spent two decades as a British television star and fashion advisor in “What Not To Wear,” but she’d always harbored a love for skincare and beauty. In 2017, at 53, she launched Trinny London, a makeup and skincare company that she partially funded by selling the designer wardrobe she’d worn as a television host. The direct-to-consumer brand took off during the pandemic, thanks in part to Woodall’s candid social media presence and makeup tutorials. It is now shipping to customers in 170 countries, has retail stores in Europe, the U.K., Australia and the U.S.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi everyone, I'm Maggie McGrath, editor of Forbes Women, reporting here at NASDAQ market site.

0:08.0

Trinny Woodall launched Trinney London in 2017 using savings that she built, selling her clothes from a lucrative career in television.

0:19.0

Trinney London is now in New York for a brief period with a pop-up, and she joins us now to talk about how the business is going.

0:26.6

Trini, thank you so much for being here.

0:27.6

Wonderful to be here, not to be here briefly, to be here permanently.

0:31.6

To be here permanently.

0:32.6

Well, it is a pop-up, so I didn't want to mis-imply that it was a launch of a store.

0:36.6

But tell us about this pop-up. When did it start and how long is it going to go?

0:39.3

Well, we've started selling in the years because we're mainly D to C,

0:43.3

we're still 75% D to C, but there's that sense of when you establish a brand in a new territory,

0:49.3

you want to show some physicality to the brand because people otherwise feel you just live in an online environment.

0:55.5

So in beauty there still is probably buying first time is about 40% of consumers, whereas replenishment online could be up 60% for beauty.

1:04.0

So you want to just show that environment and what you are as a brand.

1:08.5

So we've chosen somewhere on Prince Street. It's incredibly busy.

1:11.6

We had queues outside the store this weekend.

1:13.6

And we had all these different women, so you get to understand your customer,

1:18.6

because everything is about understanding your customer.

1:20.6

So existing customers from online, as well as people discovering it saying,

1:24.6

what is this?

1:26.6

And it gets that buzz, which then gives you an online replenishing customer and grows your business.

1:32.3

What have you most learned from the customers you've been interacting with on Prince Street?

1:36.3

I think the variety of the customer, because we were really set up to deal with this customer we felt had been marginalized,

...

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