In our ‘Inspiring small businesses’ series, we share and celebrate great stories from small business owners who started and run their own business. By bringing you closer to these inspiring businesses we hope that you find motivation, tips, and ideas for building yours. For this weeks interview we spoke to Karen MacDonald, Founder of Blomma Beauty, an outlet for indie beauty brands.

Blomma Beauty is beauty store for people looking for natural, organic, ethical and sustainable beauty and wellbeing products from independent UK bands. We sell online but the biggest part of our concept is our experiences; pop ups, concessions, workshops, meet the makers, talks, tutorials and product testing. Everything we do is to bring the brands and products to life for our customers so that they can make conscious beauty choices and find the right products for their skin, their lifestyle and their ethics. 

What's the story behind your business?

I started Blomma Beauty in the summer of 2018. I had personally made the switch to an organic beauty regime and found it quite difficult to access the same variety of brands compared to those you find in a conventional beauty hall. The process also lacked a lot of the fun discovery experience you get with mainstream beauty because organic and natural beauty was pretty under represented in beauty stores, health food shops lacked the beauty expertise and advice and buying blind online led to a lot of wasted products that weren’t right for my skin.

I’d been a retail buyer for several years, starting my career in the aftermath of the recession and so had seen first hand how brands and retailers needed to adapt to the demise of the high street and the increase in online shopping so rather than starting my own beauty brand I tried to connect with the founders of some of my favourite brands and pitched the concept to them which was hosting pop up events focussed purely on natural beauty. We held 2 events in 2018 and then scaled that up to 11 in 2019 with us rounding off the year with a month long pop up that featured a schedule of different events and experiences.

Our goal is to have a permanent studio space that’s constantly changing, it’s not just products sitting on a shelf waiting to be bought but the products are the centre of the interactive experiences we’ll have, from organic facials to DIY skincare workshops and everything in between. We offer our customers a curated collection of thoroughly vetted natural and organic brands and the chance to delve deeper into the products, the brands and the founders behind them by bringing some of that beauty hall experience to the organic beauty industry! 

What inspired you to start your own business?

It sounds cheesy but I’ve always wanted my own business. My parents and my father in law all had their own companies so I kind of got the bug from them. I kept coming up with crazy business ideas throughout my working life until I came up with Blomma and I thought it was something that really had legs and could grow to something quite meaningful. Whatever the business idea was it had to be something I was passionate about because I saw first hand just how much hard work is involved in running your own business so I definitely was going into it with my eyes open but I thought if I can make something i love into my job then it doesn’t feel like work even if you work way beyond the 9-5. 

What is the most difficult aspect of running your own business?

I think it’s probably like I said that you work beyond the 9-5 so it’s irregular hours and you never stop thinking about it even when you’re not working. For example I always seem to get these light bulb moments when I’m on holiday so end up working, plus my office is at home so it’s very tempting to keep working especially whilst you’re trying to get the business off the ground. For someone that works in the wellbeing industry I don’t always take my own advice about making time for self care which is pretty ironic. 

What is the best thing about running your own business?

There are so many great things about running your own business but for Blomma I absolutely love it when we help people find beauty products that they love and when they come back time and and time again it’s such a great feeling. I obviously couldn’t achieve this without the brands and the founders that make the products and I the relationships I have with them all is incredibly important because I work very collaboratively with all of the brands and I’m really lucky that a lot have been with me from the start so have really supported the vision which gives you that bit of confidence that your idea is going somewhere. More generally though, I think by working for someone else you don’t always get to see your vision come to life so it’s very special knowing that everything you do is having an impact on moving the company forward.

How has your business been affected by coronavirus and how have you adapted?

So a month before the lockdown started we had just set up a concession in a beauty studio. It was for 3 months and was going to help us road test having a longer term store but this was sadly put on pause. A lot of our business was developed in person prior to Covid 19 either through selling at the pop ups or through events so we had to really quickly adapt to provide our experiences online. We now host all of our events virtually which has actually enabled us to offer more frequent talks and tutorials than we normally would. It’s also forced me to show my face more on social.

I’m used to chatting to our customers at the store or at events so didn’t really think about how our product expertise could have a wider reach until now. And finally, a big part of everything we do is so that people can try products before they buy them so we now provide online consultations and send out product testers to potential customers which has worked wonders for our mailing list and getting some really great product reviews on our website. When putting all of these initiatives in place though, it was essential that how we were reacting was in line with our ethos and would be able to continue long after lockdown so everything we did we made sure would compliment the aspects of the business that were on pause and hopefully we’ll bounce back from this with a much stronger offering. 

What advice would you give to someone looking to start their own business?

I think in the past you were encouraged to make sure you had a really well thought out, researched business plan before you even started thinking about operating. Whilst doing some initial validation of your idea is advisable, I would say if you’ve got an idea you think has got legs, just give it a go. Don’t get too wrapped up in the planning stages because you’ll learn so much more whilst you’re testing your concept in real life than you will by theorising about it. Plus, if it doesn’t work out I’ll bet you’ll have learnt far more in a shorter space of time than you would working for someone else. Of course, I’d take the leap in a measured way. Don’t quit the day job until you’re seeing traction and try to have some savings so you can live off those to enable you to keep reinvesting any profits back into the growth of your business. 

To find out more about Blomma Beauty visit their website or follow them on Twitter and Instagram.