Trinny Woodall was well-known and beloved in her native U.K. as style writer and "What Not to Wear" host, well before she started her DTC makeup brand Trinny London in 2017. But, Woodall, who acts as founder and CEO of her brand, doesn't think of herself as an "influencer" who is dabbling in beauty.
"I'm not really an influencer who's launched a brand. I think I always knew I would launch a brand," she said on this week's episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.
Woodall said her business was on her mind for at least five years prior to its debut, but actually started taking shape when she was a child. "From six years of age, I did makeovers on girls in my boarding school, and I think I got the bug then of how you could transform how a person feels by these different aspects: by doing their makeup, their hair, their clothing. I spent 20 years refining that."
The pandemic helped solidify Woodall's point of differentiation. Her brand remains digital-only -- a saving grace during Covid-19 -- and banks on its Match2Me technology that personalizes the makeup assortment a customer sees based on their hair, eye and skin color. Last year, Trinny London hit about $62 million in revenue, and growth is on Woodall's mind -- but not necessarily in the same way that others increase their market share.
"I don't want to be a [founder] that goes in and says, 'OK, here's brow. Let's see if the 28 different variations of brow we can do [work],'" she said. "I feel that, because we have so much choice, it makes it harder and harder to decide what woman you are and what you want to buy."