February 01, 2022

Holly Schleich | Founder of Eye of Horus Cosmetics

57 minutes

In episode eighty two of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the founder of Eye of Horus Cosmetics, Holly Schleich.

Holly has always had a realistic understanding of what it takes to build a beauty business. Holly’s parents owned small businesses themselves, and Holly’s mum actually created her own simple skincare products so that she could set her daughter up with a skincare routine as a pre-teen.

They passed their learnings onto Holly, who entered the beauty industry after completing her studies and launched a skincare brand with her mother and her aunty. This brand took the trio all over the world however it simply wasn’t commercially viable, so Holly went back to the drawing board and channeled her passions for business, beauty and nature into developing her own colour cosmetics line- Eye of Horus.

The brand began in 2011 as a single mascara that Holly would sell at local markets, unsure if she would ever extend the line. It was when she received a two page, hand written letter from a customer who had been through chemotherapy and hadn’t been able to find a mascara that worked for her, until finding Eye of Horus, that Holly knew she was in the right place.

Holly then expanded the line to include an eye pencil and a liquid eyeliner (with the popularity of both products soaring following a genius spot of guerrilla marketing at a trade show, the story of which Holly shared in our chat), with a full colour cosmetics line and, more recently, a facial oil, launching across the ensuing years.

Today, other than continuing to grow the brand, Holly is focused on working towards a circular economy, elevating her brand’s sustainability initiatives, and maintaining the kinds of relationships she founded her brand on at the local markets over 10 years ago.

In this conversation, Holly shares why it’s important to recognise your own weaknesses as a business owner and hire accordingly, how starting with a solid foundation can allow your brand to be fluid without straying from its values, and how a shirtless man at a beauty expo helped Holly prove that a little budget can go a long, long way.