Trinny Woodall, founder and CEO of multitasking makeup and skincare brand Trinny London, announced in August that she would be bringing two retail pop-ups to Australia for the first time ever.

What she didn’t mention was that she’d also be travelling Down Under herself to meet and greet her ‘Trinny Tribe’ – a community of more than 71,000 “like-minded beauty lovers who inspire, support and celebrate one another”.

Retail Beauty caught up for an exclusive interview with the former co-host of the television series What Not to Wear to talk all things beauty while she was in Sydney.

How and when did your passion for beauty start?

It started when I was about 15 in New York, at a department store called Lord & Taylor. I went in and I had bad acne at the time – my mother had just bought me Ponds Cream or Nivea because she’d always had good skin and had no idea what to do about me.

My godmother took me to the beauty floor at Lord & Taylor and it was like a cathedral compared to anything in England, with incredible brands. Right at the end was Clinique, and it had only been going a few years – I bought the three-step routine and I spent all my pocket money on it. It was the biggest revelation to me that there were such sophisticated things that could help my skin.

What lessons can Trinny the business owner share?

You never know what’s behind the closed door and by this, I mean that when you are starting a business and you’ve been pushing people to help you with things or trying to raise money or trying to find people who will help you create your products that you’ve got to put in the graft. And if you put in the graft, you never know what’s going to come back, so on days you might feel a little deflated because you think nobody’s responding to you, it’s to have faith that things can come out of left field. When I’m starting Trinny London, maybe I sent 20 emails a day asking for help on different things from people or information. Perhaps in a week in which I’d sent a hundred emails, I got five responses. I moved forward with five people on something – it’s a numbers game as well.

When you’re growing a business, hiring the right people is key. It’s really appreciating what you know you are good at and need to focus on that only you can uniquely do, and as you grow, it’s appreciating what other people can do better than you, or bring their experience to you. When I started my first online business, I over-hired people who I thought were better at something than me, but in fact, it was a mistake because we didn’t need that experience and I had enough in that area and I paid too high a salary.

So when we started Trinny London,  I really bootstrapped it – and I only hired in that expertise when I was ready and knew the business could take it financially. I had a lot of people who it was their first job, but when I interviewed them, I thought, ‘Do they have a natural inquisitiveness, passion and intelligence and a hard work ethic?’ And that, to me, counts way more than whether they got a first at Oxford.

Do you have plans to partner with an Australian retailer?

As yet, no. As much as it would be wonderful to have wider distribution for Trinny London, we are primarily a direct-to-consumer brand. These two long-term popups that we are doing in Sydney (Westfield Bondi Junction) and Melbourne (Westfield Doncaster) will gauge to me how many more we should do. I really like to make sure the customer experience is fully a Trinny London one as much as possible,  because we have a lot to offer which is more than just the product. The fact that we do this personalisation in store means we have a different relationship with our customer and right now I think it’s important that a Trinny London team tell that story.

What challenges have you overcome entering the Australian market? 

There are two main issues you face when you’re a UK brand. One is about setting up all the regulatory elements of an Australian company and hiring staff for the pop up and going through third party entities. We’ve also set up our own entity in Australia, and that was a little bit more complicated than we initially thought it would be.

Also, hiring a team to run our two Trinny London stands because we look for a certain kind of person who is more than just a make up artist or a skincare expert, that they have an ability to connect easily with our customer and create a really good relationship.

Australia has different regulations on products, so we have to check all of our ingredients to make sure they comply with Australian ingredient lists.

What makeup trends are you seeing in the UK for 2022/2023?

I’ve never loved trends, but it’s interesting that trends come from TikTok nowadays more than from Vogue. There is a trend to play down your makeup, which fits really well with Trinny London, because we are about seeing your face before you see your makeup, and it should just enhance how you look as a person, without the makeup wearing you. So we happen to have slot into the trend for this year, but that is what we are fundamentally as a brand, and we have been since we launched over four years ago.

What’s the best-selling Trinny product?

Miracle Blur is a top selling Trinny London product, because there’s nothing else like it in the market, and it will actually diffuse your lines temporarily.

BFF SPF is our second top-selling product and there is also nothing else like it on the market that turns to the colour of your skin, gives you a glow, gives you SPF and just makes your skin look its best, but not like you’ve got any makeup on it.

Images of the Bondi Retail Pop-Up below:

About the retail pop-up:

Cyplex and Creative Activation were engaged by Trinny London to design and build the Retail Pop Up that would be the Australian customer’s first physical touch point with brand. The space would have to embody all of the attributes of the brand; the aesthetic, testing stations, retail and most importantly, consultations and makeovers with the Trinny team.

The final design and material plans were signed off by the Trinny team, and working with retail giants Scentre Group, location, recruitment, training and logistics were planned by Creative Activations as customers began signing up for make overs two months out from launch day.

The installation was done overnight by the Cyplex team, prior to the grand opening of the Westfield Bondi Junction site, and saw an incredible number of customers, young and old, queuing to get their first taste of the cult UK brand. Members of the Trinny team flew in from the UK to offer expert advice for eager Sydney customers and help with the rush of fans. A second site was created in Doncaster, which saw even greater numbers of consultations in the first week.

Alex Doidge, Head of Sales and Marketing at Cyplex said: “This has been an amazing project to work on. The Trinny brand is well known in the UK, but we had to create a site that instantly spoke to the Australian customer and conveyed the premium quality and high design of the products. The store had to allow shoppers to be drawn to, then immersed in the whole Trinny experience. We love the end result.”

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