As a part of our series of guest blogs for International Women’s Day, Tricia Cusden, the founder of Look Fabulous Forever tells us about her inspiration, ups, downs and highlights from creating a rapidly expanding business as a female entrepreneur.
I launched my business, Look Fabulous Forever, in 2013 at the age of 65. It’s an online makeup beauty brand with products specifically formulated to suit older faces, eyes and lips. We recently opened a flagship store in Wimbledon which has been a huge success. I was inspired to start the business out of two frustrations: my dislike of the anti-ageing rhetoric of the beauty industry and the fact that I couldn’t find makeup which made my older face look good.
Our biggest challenge has been to manage rapid growth successfully. After I appeared on BBC Breakfast our website nearly crashed, and I feared we would run out of stock! Fortunately, we were able to scale the business very quickly and get the right team in place. My most memorable moment to date was going to the 2018 Oscars in LA because we had three of our best-selling products in the Oscar goodie bags!
Off to See My Lawyer has been a great resource whenever we have needed help with various contracts and other relevant legal advice. It’s so nice to have a friendly local team whenever the business is in need of support as we continue to grow. Our aim is to become the premier makeup brand for older women both in the UK and also the USA where we already do around 20% of our sales.
My best tip for any budding female entrepreneur would be to have the courage of your convictions. Many women are reluctant to take risks until they have every T crossed and I dotted, which is fine up to a point. However, there comes a time when you just have to take the plunge and see what happens. When I started Look Fabulous Forever I decided to back my hunch that there’d be many older women who shared my anger and frustrations with the beauty industry and, very happily, I was right!
