In episode ninety six of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the founder of Holme Beauty, Hilary Holmes. 

Hilary discovered her love of makeup in her final year of high school, and although she tells me that initial affinity for beauty may not have come from the right place, to this day she connects to the transformative energy she felt upon that discovery. 

Despite her love of makeup, Hilary studied and worked in agriculture. In 2009 the recession hit, and after being made redundant, Hilary relocated to London where her sister was living. She soon found a job on a cosmetics counter, and so her career in beauty was born. 

After returning to Australia and building up her freelance business, Hilary opened the first Hilary Holmes Makeup location in 2016 and a second only four years later. It was from within these spaces that Hilary’s now-iconic Masterclasses were born- classes designed to empower women to back their own beauty, rather than following a formula they’d grown up with in women’s magazines. 

In 2021, following years of product development and a truly serendipitous encounter with her now-manufacturer, Hilary launched Holme Beauty. The brand launched with a single SKU, and over the last 12 months Hilary has carefully and consciously expanded that range to an edit of four, with a fifth product set to launch only a fortnight from now. 

In this conversation, Hilary shares the importance of finding the right people to help you grow your business, the links she’s discovered between beauty and her own mental health, and the story behind the man she calls her “$30,000 husband.”

Read more at glowjournal.com

Follow Hilary and Holme Beauty on Instagram @hilaryholmesmakeup and @holmebeauty.

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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In episode ninety five of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the co-founder of Korres, Lena Korres. 

When Dr Clara Hurst opened Perth skin clinic, Blanc, having relocated to Australia from the UK, she sought the help of a pharmacist to compound prescription skincare to her clients. That pharmacist told her that, just down the road, there was a GP prescribing the very same ingredients and having them compounded into solutions for her patients. That GP was Dr Deb Cohen-Jones. Upon realising that they shared the very same philosophies around the science of skin, their pair decided to go into business together.

The Secret, the country’s first prescription-only skincare brand, began in early 2019 as a singular cream, only available to those who had an appointment with one of the doctors. Within six months, over 300 jars of The Secret had been sold and the pair began working on new formulas. What started as one “magic cream” has since grown to a line of 13 different products. 

In 2020, Dr Clara and Dr Deb launched The Secret’s digital platform, allowing patients anywhere to complete a consultation online and have their prescription skincare compounded and sent directly to them. This year has seen The Secret introduce new sustainability practices including refillable packaging, while the coming months will see the launch of The Secret’s retail range. 

In this conversation, Dr Clara and Dr Deb share the real differences between prescription and retail skincare, how they turned a mid-pandemic launch into an ecommerce boom, and their advice to business owners trying to avoid fast trends.

Read more at glowjournal.com

Follow The Secret on Instagram @the_secret_skincare.

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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In episode ninety four of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the co-founder of Korres, Lena Korres. 

Korres began as the oldest herbal apothecary in Athens, Greece. Whilst working there, George Korres began formulating topical cosmetics for his friends and loyal customers of the pharmacy, and word quickly began to spread. Lena Philippou, now Lena Philippou-Korres, a chemical engineer, commenced work at the pharmacy in 1996 and, following consumer demand, the KORRES brand was officially launched. 

By the turn of the century, George and Lena’s tech-driven, naturally formulated skincare products had been picked up by Henri Bendel in New York and Harvey Nichols in London. Today, despite being a truly global brand, KORRES remains true to its origins and its patented Full Circle sustainable manufacturing processes. 

In this conversation, Lena shares why she feels there should be more women working in STEM globally, why she has youthful naivety to thank for the brand’s initial launch, and why it’s not enough to rely on consumer demand when it comes to new product ideas. 

Read more at glowjournal.com

Follow Korres on Instagram @korres and @korres.athens. 

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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In episode ninety three of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the founder of Joanna Vargas, Joanna Vargas. 

Joanna Vargas tells me that caregiving is her love language. 

Following a number of years working as an esthetician, Joanna had grown tired of seeing clients given the same facials and being sold the same products. Driven by a wish to create her own treatments and be guided by each individual’s needs, Joanna opened her first namesake spa in New York City in 2006. 

By 2011, having grown her business with little more than word-of-mouth marketing, Joanna had become something of an industry go-to and had accumulated an impressive list of celebrity clientele. Passionate about delivering good nutrition to the skin, and wanting her clients to be able to achieve and maintain spa results from home, she developed her own product line. 

Despite running a now international skincare brand with 28 SKUs, Joanna still works as a facialist 5 days a week, taking the opportunity to continue learning, to see what modern skin needs, what concerns her clients are looking to treat and, in her words, “formulating from the chair.”

In this conversation, Joanna shares the ins and outs of finding the right manufacturer, why her early memories of her grandmother have served as the inspiration for her career, and how grateful she is to be her “tattooed Latina self” in the landscape of the beauty industry.

Read more at glowjournal.com

Follow Joanna Vargas on Instagram @joannavargas and @joannavargasnyc. 

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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In episode ninety two of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the founder of Conserving Beauty, Natassia Nicolao.

Natassia, 28 years old and a qualified biochemist, spent the first years of her career immersed in the beauty industry, working across brands like Swisse and Elle Macpherson’s WelleCo, counting the latter as a valued mentor. Following her time at Swisse, Natassia was one of only five offered a position at private equity fund The Foundry, a fund that exists to support the next wave of beauty brand founders. Moving to what was, in essence, a startup, was a risk, but Natassia took it upon herself to learn every facet of the business and, in her words, soak up everything she could. 

By 2021, Natassia had been working in the beauty industry for around 6 years and had began to wonder if there was anything she could contribute to the space that would make both it and the planet as a whole better. She mapped out the lifecycle of a beauty product and realised that there was a water footprint involved in, literally, every step of the supply chain. Knowing that water is a finite resource, and that most beauty products contain between 70 and 90 percent water, she asked herself “If you take water out, what are you left with?”

As Natassia explains, what you’re left with is “the good stuff.”

Natassia launched Conserving Beauty, Australia’s first waterless beauty brand, in 2021. Conserving Beauty is the first beauty brand globally to be part of the Water Footprint Network, and the first Australian beauty brand to be backed by both government and impact investment funds. April of this year saw yet another Conserving Beauty innovation reach the public in the form of the brand’s InstaMelt™ technology- a patented fabric technology that has allowed the brand to develop the world’s first dissolving facial wipes and sheet masks, with even more innovation set to hit shelves very soon.

In this conversation, Natassia shares why she believes taking on every job from the ground up is essential for future brand founders, what it truly means to take on external investment, and precisely how her brand ensures water conservation is considered at every single step of the supply chain. 

Read more at glowjournal.com

Follow Conserving Beauty on Instagram @conservingbeauty. 

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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July 14 is Bastille Day, the national day of France, so to celebrate we’re heroing all things French beauty- and who better to help us than the co-founder of French Beauty Co, Emilie Roberson. 

French skincare sales, as a category, are reportedly up 25% in the last quarter, and the appetite for hard-to-find French brands and products has never been higher. In this bonus episode of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts discover the secrets to mastering French girl beauty. 

This episode is sponsored by French Beauty Co, Australia’s only digital destination for lovers of French beauty. To celebrate Bastille Day, French Beauty Co have curated a celebratory French beauty box, filled with best selling products from Bioderma, Nuxe, Embryolisse, Mavala, Klorane and Bachca Paris, available via frenchbeautyco.com.au until July 14. 

In this conversation, Emilie shares what it is about the French approach to beauty that sets it apart from the rest of the world, why she believes pharmacy skincare is finally having its moment globally, and exactly what French women do (and don’t!) include in their beauty routines. 

You can shop the French Beauty Co range, including the limited edition French Beauty Box, at frenchbeautyco.com.au.

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In episode ninety one of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the founder of Susanne Kaufmann, Susanne Kaufmann.

Beauty has been something of a constant thread woven throughout Susanne Kaufmann’s life. Growing up in the westernmost part of Austria, Susanne’s earliest memories are of the beauty rituals she shared with her grandmother of a weekend as a child. Her family owned a hotel, with Susanne growing to become the fifth generation hotelier to run the retreat, and in the mid 90s she saw an opportunity to bring more guests to the hotel.

That opportunity lay within the hotel’s spa. 

Susanne elected to completely redevelop the spa, transforming it into a destination in and of itself. She had loved the ritual of beauty since her early childhood, so she set to work ensuring the hotel’s spa was one of the very best in the world. It was in 2003 that Susanne sought to add yet another point of difference to the spa’s offering by launching a signature line of 24 products, formulated only to be used in-house during spa treatments. Soon thereafter the products garnered international press coverage, with Susanne fielding interest from some of the the world’s biggest beauty retailers. 

Today, almost 20 years after its launch, the Susanne Kaufmann brand consists of over 80 different products, each crafted from natural ingredients found within the hotel’s surrounds, and is sold everywhere from Harrods and Selfridges in London to Galeries Lafayette in Paris and Mecca here in Australia. 

In this conversation, Susanne shares why sustainability means so much more to her than just packaging, the importance of listening to one’s body, and what she refers to as “the new luxury.” 

Read more at glowjournal.com

Follow Susanne Kaufmann on Instagram @susannekaufmann_. 

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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In episode ninety of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the co-founder and Creative Director of Resoré, Evah Jackson. 

With a background in fashion, Evah Jackson has always had a fascination with aesthetics. In 2014, she co-founded Harpers Project, one of the country’s largest online homewares stores and one of the very first to really capitalise on the power of social media. 

A few years post-launch, Evah and the Harper’s Project team decided to extend their furniture offering into home textiles and began exploring fibre options. It was at this point that they became aware of the amount of bacteria that could be found on our regular face and body towels, and so they started to look into new, antibacterial options. 

Resoré was launched in 2020 after over two years of development, bridging the gap between beauty and homewares and featuring a blend of fibres that had never been blended before. 

Before the brand had even launched, they had secured Rosie Huntington-Whiteley to front their very first campaign, and contracted both Rosie and internationally renowned skin specialist Melanie Grant as brand ambassadors. Now, roughly two years in, Resoré can be found in the world’s very biggest beauty retailers- Mecca, locally, as well as Harrods, Bloomingdales, Poosh and Saks Fifth Avenue internationally. 

In this conversation, Evah shares her tips on how to decide on the right ambassadors for your brand and how to lock them in, the pros and cons of launching tactile businesses online rather than in a bricks and mortar store, and what exactly is living on our regular bath towels. 

Read more at glowjournal.com

Follow Resoré on Instagram @resorebody. 

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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In episode eighty nine of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the CEO and co-founder of Nécessaire, Randi Christiansen. 

Randi Christiansen has always been interested in the intersection of business and beauty. 

Having studied business at university and taking a particular interest in entrepreneurship and small business growth, Randi found herself in a role at Estée Lauder Companies, where she would remain for next 15 years.

Despite being a major multinational, Randi was able to bring her passion for small business to the company, working primarily across the La Mer and Tom Ford brands. While these are both household names today, when Randi commenced work on them they were very much in their infancy, so she was able to combine her startup mindset with the resources of a multinational business. 

It was during her time at Estée that Randi met and began working with beauty journalist Nick Axelrod, and over cheap beers at an airport the two began to brainstorm a business idea on a paper napkin. They wanted to bring a facial skincare ethos to the body care market, the latter market being around one fifth a size of the former, but they didn’t just want to create a brand for the sake of it- they only wanted to create what felt crucial, essential, and necessary. 

And so, Nécessaire was born. Having launched at the very end of 2018 and being certified climate neutral since January of 2019, Nécessaire is now a true global brand and, as of May 24, is finally available in Australia at Mecca.

In this conversation, Randi shares the unexpected benefits of bringing on investors when developing a brand, why she thinks having a journalist on board is essential in launching a successful business, and the importance of having a truly clear brand DNA. 

Read more at glowjournal.com

Follow Nécessaire on Instagram @necessaire. 

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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In episode eighty eight of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the founder of Kissed Earth, Rachael Finch.

Rachael Finch grew up in Townsville as an athlete, with little to no interest in beauty until she was about 15. It was at this age that she was encouraged to enter a modelling competition, which she won, and subsequently spent the next four years travelling for her new career- first to Brisbane, and then internationally, an experience she describes as changing her perception of the world.

Modelling, she tells me, changed her relationship with her body and what she was putting in it, a relationship she has spent the ensuing years working on. Rachael won Miss Universe Australia in 2009, aged 20, at a time she tells me she was still just going with the flow with very little idea of where her new found profile might take her- nor who it would introduce her to. It was in the following year that she competed on Dancing With The Stars and met her now-husband and business partner. The pair eventually ran a dance studio together and learnt the importance of playing every role within a business, including that of cleaner, during a time Rachael tells me they were struggling to make ends meet. 

By around 2017, with Rachael having found a love for dance and harnessing her longstanding love of movement and her evolving understanding of wellness, she and her husband launched two businesses- Body by Finch and B.O.D. by Finch, a digital wellness platform and activewear brand respectively. It was from here that the groundwork for Kissed Earth was laid. 

Prompted by feedback from the Body by Finch community, Kissed Earth was launched in 2019 following two years of fully self-funded product development. What began as a tight edit of health supplements has since grown into a brand encompassing products for both inner and outer beauty. 

In this conversation, Rachael shares her advice on turning personal partnerships into successful professional ones, what collagen can realistically do for the skin, and the realities of product development timelines and why it’s worth waiting to get things right. 

Read more at glowjournal.com

Follow Rachael Finch on Instagram @rachael_finch.

Discover Kissed Earth at kissedearth.com.au

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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