Elliot Moss
Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today, I am very pleased to say, is Thea Green MBE, Founder of Nails.INC, the British beauty brand. As a fashion editor at Tatler magazine, Thea became inspired on work trips to New York by the hugely popular express nail bars. As Thea says, “Fast, affordable and convenient.” They were practically on every corner and used by women on a regular basis rather than just for special occasions. Thea saw a gap in the UK market for a brand combining fashionable polishes with similarly quick, affordable treatments. Having raised £200,000, Thea left her job at Tatler to launch her first nail bar in London in 1999. The demand was even greater than they expected as people were soon queuing for two hours for a fifteen minute manicure. Thea has since launched the sister brand to Nails.INC, INC.redible Cosmetics – I hope I said it properly – as well as My Mood, a youth lifestyle brand created with Boots and Holler & Glow, a bathing and body brand focussing vegan, cruelty free, planet-kind products.
It’s great to have you here. I’ve actually, before we have met outside of this, I had been tracking you because you were known to the family and wanted to talk to you for lots of reasons. The first one is this, that before it was hip or rather normal that a woman was running a business, you were running a business, you’d set up a business and in 1999 going into 2000, 2001, that wasn’t the norm. Of course it now is much more normal or much more obvious out there. What did it feel like back then when you did it? Was it anything to do with you and your gender and how that played or was it just, ‘I’m Thea Green and I’ve got an idea’?
Thea Green MBE
I think because I was young at the time, I was in my early twenties, it was very helpful not to have any of those sort of inhibitions, you know I think you, I definitely you know was young, confident, which I think is a great time to start a business because you don’t know all the pitfalls, it’s actually more helpful. Now, when I add additional brands and we develop new businesses in our business, you know all the things that can go wrong. Actually, the benefit of that youth is quite helpful and I came from a very female background in the fact that I worked at magazines, which was you know definitely the magazine I was at was very dominated by females, so I was used to seeing women being very successful, so I think I felt quite relaxed about it but I did then encounter a few odd moments that I, that I didn’t expect in terms of you know anyone that ever raised, we ever talked about raising money, always brought a woman into the room as if like a woman needed to explain to them what manicures or products were and I remember thinking that’s so funny because if I was selling hammer and nails, they wouldn’t have brought, you know, so everyone always brought a woman in, usually a much more junior woman, into just so that we could all talk nails together, which was funny because you know it was a business idea, we didn’t, I didn’t need that and it was quite, it was quite self-explanatory. So, yeah, it’s funny things when you’re, more when I was sort of raising money rather than actually doing the day job because when I was going to buyers and selling my products in and setting up nail bars, that was all quite straight forward.
Elliot Moss
And raising the money, just for a moment on that, obviously it’s really hard to raise money, it’s hard now and it was hard then. The problems that you encountered were to do with the fact that you had never made stuff before, that you probably didn’t have an amazing business plan, what was it to do with?
Thea Green MBE
Yeah, so true, and actually we got lucky along the way as well because not having knowledge, you just do it based on you know how you would research something. I guess that magazine background in terms of how you search something up and it was 1999, so it’s early days of the world of dotcom so, you know, it’s kind of dial-up modem time and all that so, actually searching things up was a little bit more complicated but you know we researched it and I remember you know going and finding out, contacting people at Boots and asking people at Boots who manufactured nail polish in the UK and weirdly, through a whole web of things, we found a contract manufacturer who was the biggest European manufacturer of nail polish at that time and every element of the business was done like that, it was just asking because I think the magazine background, you always, you were very used to finding the end answer and starting off on a topic with very little knowledge, that’s the kind of journalist side which you don’t know until you keep asking and we just sort of you know relentlessly asked until you end up finding that answer so, I didn’t have any business experience but actually, I never thought that, I’m sure lots of people I met thought ‘oh what on earth is she doing, she’s got no experience’ but I didn’t really think of it that way. I guess because I was young, how could I have had any business experience, you know, but I’m sure lots of people that I probably asked for money thought ‘no way, she knows nothing’. I’m sure they did.
Elliot Moss
And they probably regret it every day since they thought you knew nothing. You’re twenty years on or so now and of course you’re still radiant and young, Thea, let’s quickly add that but the, at the heart of what you talk about often at the business is innovation, is doing new stuff. Twenty years later would you say, if you were marking your school homework now that yes, Thea, you are still as innovative as you were with a blank sheet of paper twenty years ago.
Thea Green MBE
I would say more innovative because it’s not just me anymore, I’ve got a tonne of other people that are innovative around me as well so, it’s more innovative, it’s definitely what drives us, we still think of ourselves as quite a small business in lots of ways so, we’re not a big corporate, you know we’re not a Lauder or a L’Oréal, so the only way that we can compete with the big corporates in the beauty industry is by having something better, more interesting and more innovative and going sooner and taking a risk. Yeah, I’d say I’ve got a tonne of smarter people around me now that also have great innovative ideas, so I’d say it’s more innovative.
Elliot Moss
And those ideas that you refer to and I think I read when you were a kid, you know you were pulling scraps out of magazines. My young, second youngest, in fact my oldest daughter, there you go, does exactly that and it’s all over the wall and I’ve seen that first-hand. Those ideas obviously, those give you ideas, where else do those ideas come from for the vegan stuff you do or for the colour, the pop of this, the pop of that, what do you…?
Thea Green MBE
Everywhere.
Elliot Moss
Right.
Thea Green MBE
So, I think everywhere and every day, it doesn’t mean that everything that gets launched but anything from a, you know, a colour of something that see to looking at a food menu and seeing ingredients, you know we’ve got something called Kale Base Coat which we launched many years ago, it’s one of our bestselling products, that was when I was in the States and I, you know people now walk around with green juice all the time but I’d never seen anyone with a green juice and there was literally like three girls walked out of an LA café holding a green juice and I was like wow, what’s that? And then whilst I was there, I tried the green juice and everyone was talking about kale and superfoods and it hadn’t really hit here yet, so I think anything that can inspire you, packaging, I like getting things from other industries, I find it more interesting than just looking at beauty because the beauty world’s quite small and I don’t really like copying beauty product but I like, I don’t feel like I’m copying if I get a great inspiration from a food menu, an ingredient, you know something that’s trending in you know in another area of even beauty, if it’s skincare rather than colour cosmetics, I think that’s more interesting.
Elliot Moss
And being a bit of a magpie, which sounds like that’s what you do, using the convergence of that world and that world and that world. Do you ever look at it and the green kale thing is really interesting because of course you are right, there wasn’t, that wasn’t happening until not that long ago. Do you ever doubt, do you ever go okay, that’s a really cool idea and a really stupid and bad idea and I am now losing my own belief or do you still go that might just work? Do you know what I mean? Does it, is there more doubt with more experience?
Thea Green MBE
I think there’s definitely more doubt with more experience but not on product. I think you can spot a bestseller. I think you…
Elliot Moss
How do you spot a bestseller?
Thea Green MBE
I just feel like you can, that initial excitement in the room when you have an idea for whatever it is, it’s an ingredient, it’s a colour, it’s a packaging or it’s a brand-new, you know something more innovative, you know we’ve done nail polish in lots of different formats and played about with nail polish in loads of different ways over the years. I feel like you can spot the energy in the room and that initial excitement when you start talking about something and it will always be very, at that point, very crude, very draft, so it’s not a finished product. If you’ve got that level of energy early on, it will always be a top seller and I would say that most of my team, when we rank, we do it all the time, we rank you know new launches, we rank what out of this is going to go Top 10 because you have to work out where it’s going to go on the shelf or where it’s going to live on the web or if one retailer is only buying four of those things, you know which of the four that you are recommending so, every day we are working out rankings and I would say 90% of the time, certainly in the Top 10, eight or nine will be the same from all of us and then there’ll be one that people go, oh could be that or it could be that but it’s that feeling for knowing, knowing your end customer and knowing what excites them and knowing what else is going on in the environment that they’d be excited about and if it’s a potential bestseller but other people have got it, it might not be a bestseller for us. You know, so it could be a good product but if it’s already out in the market, it wouldn’t then be a bestseller for us necessarily.
Elliot Moss
Trust your gut basically and have really good people around and feel the energy, it feels like…
Thea Green MBE
Yeah, the excitement on a product, yeah.
Elliot Moss
The excitement, yeah.
Thea Green MBE
Product should always be exciting.
Elliot Moss
And I don’t think that matters what industry you are in, if you feel it in the room and it’s the something in there. Stay with me for much more from my guest, Thea Green, she’ll be coming back in a couple of minutes here on Jazz Shapers. Right now, we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series, a podcast that can be heard on all of the major podcast platforms. Natasha Knight invites business founders to share their industry insights and practical advice for those of you thinking about getting into an industry and starting your very own thing, just like Thea. In this clip, focussed on retail in the world of manufacturing, we hear from Julie Dean, Founder and CEO of The Cambridge Satchel Company.
All our former Business Shapers await you, personally, on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can of course hear this very programme again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice. My guest is Thea Green MBE, I hope you’ve heard because you’ve been listening, Founder of Nails.INC, the British beauty brand and indeed a portfolio of beauty brands INC.redible Cosmetics, is that right?
Thea Green MBE
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
Good. My Mood and Holler & Glow. I’ve listened to some of the interviews you’ve done before and often you say, ‘The best is yet to come’ and you exude a positiveness, right, which I believe. Seeing you now and the eyes are saying yes, I am a positive person, don’t question it. When you had to shut eleven nail bars at the beginning of Covid, tell me there wasn’t a little moment when you weren’t feeling positive. Tell me that you actually, I mean emotionally, what was that like?
Thea Green MBE
Yeah, I had loads of negative moments though during Covid. So, definitely on the nail bars but even before the nail bars closing, I remember literally, when we were kind of closing our office and we were definitely you know some of the last man standing the West End, we kind of kept going until you, until you couldn’t, couldn’t be there anymore because a lot of people were just, you know would already work from home. We were there for a bit and I remember sitting, just myself and the CFO in the office and seeing all of our order book cancelling because every single retailer that had an order with us, cancelled because they all knew they were closing and not just in the UK, US, everywhere and literally doing the maths to go, can we just survive on just our dotcom, we presume our dotcom will do well, could we support this and do everything that we are currently doing and the reality of Covid was, we had that for a few weeks but the actually, people got bored very quickly at home and people did end up not just wanting to only focus on obviously all the very sad things that we going on in the world but they did want to pamper themselves and look after themselves and so our business picked up quite quickly but we, you know, definitely had a scary, you know, certainly few weeks and the nail bars, I think the nail bars was how we started and we had a lot of people that had worked with us from the very beginning so, it wasn’t the business for us going forward probably, regardless of Covid because we were so focussed as being a product business and so much of our business was product only. I do feel like when you are running, like running nail bars is like running a restaurant, which is you need to live in it and be in it and I was very aware of the fact that I had been someone that was in those nail bars every day, knowing everyone and fully involved in them in every which way and you know certainly even before Covid, I wasn’t because we were, like you say, we went from one brand to four brands, we had huge amounts of you know product, lots of different retailers’ accounts, a much bigger office, much bigger team, I was consumed in the business in a different way and so they were our legacy probably rather than our future but yeah, I’m super fond of them, we’ve still got a nail bar in Selfridges, it’s overrun with lots of Nails.INC people that have worked with Nails.INC for the years because you know kept as many people as we could and we ended up, the nail bars were mainly taken by other nail bar companies, so all of the staff you know were employed pretty much but we, yeah, it was sad, it was sad to see it go but it was good to give it to people that were going to have the energy for nail bars again.
Elliot Moss
Yeah, and that…
Thea Green MBE
…because you can’t, it’s like being in a, it’s like being a chef in a restaurant and not turning up.
Elliot Moss
You’ve got to be in it.
Thea Green MBE
You’ve got to be in it all day, every day.
Elliot Moss
Was it though, it sounds like again with your business, pure business hat on, that strategically that was where you wanted to take the business, that this was a different moment because that funnily enough in the 1999/2000 dotcom moment, everyone was looking at digital businesses, you’re saying I’ve got a physical one. 2019/20 you’ve got physical assets but you are actually saying do you know what, I think I need to be over here and making products.
Thea Green MBE
Absolutely.
Elliot Moss
So it really, it sounds like it precipitated the switch.
Thea Green MBE
And also, I just remember, you know people saying to me regularly, you are just one person, so you are one person and if you are spreading yourself thin across, you know, too many different areas, how you know how good a job can you do versus my business is now very, very focussed and you know, it’s age old but the retail business is incredibly detailed and service in particular, it’s just a different environment, I don’t think you can probably do both of those successfully, you need to focus on one or the other, or certainly at our size, we need to focus on one or the other and so focussing on the product business was definitely the future of the business going forward and also, it’s just, you can expand that business internationally.
Elliot Moss
I was going to say, then you’ve got the power of scale.
Thea Green MBE
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
So, letting go of something, which we just talked about, is kind of it’s on the one level it’s totally rational and on the other level it’s quite emotional. The focus that you know you need now with your wise, twenty years in, head on, you are a creative person, you like coming up with stuff, how do you kind of ensure that creativity is channelled and focussed? Do you have to manage it or does it manage itself now because you’ve got systems and you’ve got people?
Thea Green MBE
No, I get, I think you have to manage it and you have to make sure you’ve got time, you know we’re flat out, back-to-back, in meetings, in presentations, you have to find some space where you can come up with something creative. You know, you can do a brainstorm with people and come up with you know creative ideas as part of a group but your own personal ideas, I feel like only ever come to me when I’m not in the office and I’m doing something else, which is why travelling or you know doing other lifestyle things is helpful just in terms of having, switching off from work for a minute so that the creative ideas can come in. No, I think I have to pencil out time to find creativity.
Elliot Moss
Do you actually every switch off though, Thea? I mean you’ve got, you know family, you’re busy but you’ve got this business which is, to me, like another child or maybe it’s a young adult now, just about to go off and do whatever but do you know what I mean? Is there…?
Thea Green MBE
I don’t think I switch off but I relax very quickly. I don’t know if that’s the same answer but…
Elliot Moss
And how do you do that? What does relaxing look like then from someone like you?
Thea Green MBE
So I’m relaxed you know, I mean I’m probably quite relaxed in a work environment too but I relax very quickly, you know like, you know whether you are travelling or going on holiday, I feel like I’m, I’m in that zone from the moment I’m kind of in the taxi on the way to the airport, I’m relaxed very quickly but I’m always on and I’m always looking for something new and ideas but that’s what drives me so, that switch is never turned off but that doesn’t mean that I’m not calm, relaxed and having a very nice time doing whatever I’m doing.
Elliot Moss
And is that what the team would say?
Thea Green MBE
My work team or my kids’ team or my family team?
Elliot Moss
Well you could, let’s start with…
Thea Green MBE
Either one. Okay.
Elliot Moss
The work team, let’s do the work team first.
Thea Green MBE
The work team would definitely say I’m never switched off but I think they would back me on the fact that I’m, I relax pretty quickly too.
Elliot Moss
And do you think they still defer to your ideas rather than their own or is there more democracy?
Thea Green MBE
No, no, I think it’s, no it’s very democratic, no they, you know my team have brilliant ideas all the time and not just you know the product development team, yes, but not just the product development team, you know our designer, someone that works in the sales team, all sorts of different people in the company, the people that work in finance and marketing will have product ideas as well as ideas across the rest of the business. It’s an environment where it’s very easy to get your ideas heard, it’s still quite small so you can share your ideas and if it’s a good idea, I mean it’s obviously only my opinion if it’s a good idea or not, it could well have been a good idea and I’ve pooh-poohed it but in theory, you know, it’s very easy to share your ideas and if a number of us think it’s good. You can also come back and challenge and particularly with product, an idea that seems you know not a good idea now, sometimes people are just early, you know like a big error in Nails.INC for a long was we probably did things a bit too early and you have to find that right moment, I think that’s a thing that I’ve learned and the team because they are very innovative might also come to me with an idea too early and my old age will now say that’s fab but we should go a bit later, you know, we should go with it’s, when it’s ready, when you are actually really going to maximise on that opportunity because going too early is also not so great.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for final chat with my wise guest, Thea Green, and we’ll also have some Stevie Wonder. Don’t go anywhere. That’s all coming up in just a moment here on Jazz FM.
Thea Green is my Business Shaper just for a few minutes. You received an MBE, some people may know that, some people won’t but back in I think 2011, so sort of ten years in. When you get things like that and obviously the business has won lots of awards and products win awards and you get feted, I’m assuming that’s nice, right, but does it, where does it go in your head of what means good things to Thea versus oh yeah, that’s fine? I mean, how important is it? Does it affect you?
Thea Green MBE
Yeah. Yes. Umm, I think that as an entrepreneur, I’m quite guilty of only focussing on the things that are going wrong rather than things that are going right. So, I think it’s, you know, celebrating those moments rather than focussing the few things that are going wrong in your business, is probably a lesson I’m, I’ve sort of tried to learn as I’ve gone on in my business.
Elliot Moss
Hard though if you are built like you, right? I mean, you have to sort of trick yourself into believing that you’re not going to focus on what’s wrong.
Thea Green MBE
Yeah and I think it’s, it is, for me, the system of focussing on what’s wrong works because the things that are going right, don’t need my attention so, and you know you’ve only got a certain amount of time so I find focussing on the things that are going wrong, as long as they are not small, trivial stuff that goes wrong all the time but if it’s something that you actually, you know, want to put right, quite a helpful system but I am aware of the fact that everybody needs to celebrate those successes so, it’s not just about me so, you know getting an MBE is a nice celebration for the entire Nails.INC team, not just me, so I think finding those moments and those windows to celebrate with other people but my initial reaction generally is because my husband is a complete prankster and he regularly pulls pranks on me, I actually thought, and he has a print business, I just thought he was just joking because he opened the letter and showed it to me and I, for days, was like…
Elliot Moss
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Thea Green MBE
And I said to him, it’s actually awkward because you now keep saying it in front of people and I know it’s going to come out that it’s not, that it’s you and I’d really rather you stopped embarrassing me because I’m almost at the point of believing it so like really stop.
Elliot Moss
So, how, when did you realise it was real though?
Thea Green MBE
So he said to me, he kept on saying to me, ‘I promise you I wouldn’t go this long’. No, I can’t remember if I received another letter from them or something but there was a moment when I realised it wasn’t my husband’s joke anymore.
Elliot Moss
The red bill came and said excuse me, look we have offered you this thing, are you actually going to turn up because it would be quite good to know.
Thea Green MBE
Exactly.
Elliot Moss
But the other thing that strikes me about you is that you, on the one hand you, you don’t overthink stuff, right, because you are creative and you get to it and you, and I imagine with people you are quite perceptive at how you need to manage them and yet on the other hand you have got a significant business and growing and there’s structure in there so, how’s that tension resolved for you where you are able to be instinctive but you also know you are a sort of strategic thinker?
Thea Green MBE
Oh no, I like order, I definitely like structure and order so, I love being creative but I, I feel chaotic when there isn’t structure and order, I don’t like that feeling, you know, I like things to be done in a certain way, I’m definitely quite pedantic in lots of ways so I do like structure and order and I do like things to be in systems. Over the years in Nails.INC there’s obviously been a number of different people that have worked in the organisation that have brought in all sorts of different systems, including coming from you know all sorts of shiny corporates and some of those have been really great and some of them have you know taken longer to do something that was quite simple. I think I no longer believe that everybody with a system idea, just because we don’t have one, is a good idea, like some things don’t need it and tonnes of stuff does and you know you don’t want to lose that entrepreneurial spirit where we all get into a room together and create a product so, we don’t need a system for that, we need to just have a meeting and have a chat but there are systems that follow that from the process of something being agreed to then move forward. No, I like structure, I don’t like chaos.
Elliot Moss
So the next five, ten years, you know, do you want within the structure that’s not too much structure and structure where it’s appropriate but not where it’s not appropriate thank you very much. Do you want to grow tenfold? Are you wanting to double? What for you would look like success? Is this a scale play now?
Thea Green MBE
A 100%, a 100%, absolutely, want to grow like mad. Want to grow like mad, want to create great products, want everybody bought into that in terms of the end consumer and the existing team that everyone’s on the same path and that’s what’s great about my business at the moment, is everybody is on the same path, it’s quite clear in terms of where we’re going and what we need to do and there’s one strategy and we’re all going on that road together.
Elliot Moss
And that strategy is clear to everybody and it’s clear how, just quickly before I lose you, how have you ensured that they get it and that they’re all pushing in that direction?
Thea Green MBE
I think, I think also moving back to Covid, communication became so good during that Covid time that communication in my business is just very strong right now, everyone is on that same path in knowing exactly what they need to do and they know where their part of the cog is and what they need to do to achieve it but they’re also very entrepreneurial. Normally, in entrepreneurial businesses, you get lots of other entrepreneurs apart from the main entrepreneur, so there’s lots of other entrepreneurial people around me that are excited to be doing something bigger.
Elliot Moss
Good luck doing something bigger. Have fun. It’s been lovely having you here.
Thea Green MBE
You too, thank you.
Elliot Moss
I’ve really enjoyed it. Just before I let you go, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Thea Green MBE
It’s Moon River by Andy Williams and I’ve chosen it just because I absolutely love the song.
Elliot Moss
That was Andy Williams and Moon River, the song choice of my lovely Business Shaper today, Thea Green. She talked about the importance of focus and how she channels her creativity but also loves a focussed structure around what she does and what the business is doing. She talked about the importance of looking at what’s going wrong in the business rather than what’s going right because that’s a better use of her time. Why pay attention to things that are working rather than those that aren’t? She talked about communication and how important it’s been, even more important and she’s realised this over the last few years since Covid hit, in terms of making clear to the team what her strategy is and how getting everyone behind that strategy has really been underpinned by even greater communication and really importantly, in the world of developing products, she talked about timing, it’s all down to when you can release that brand new, brilliant products that’s going to make a difference in the market, you’ve got it but you’ve got to make sure you launch it at the right time and that in itself is a creative decision. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds of more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to Mishcon.com/JazzShapers.