The Elevator Pitch for Female VC Funding

Published Dec 12, 2024, 12:26 PM

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Trinny Woodall, CEO of Trinny London, discusses the global beauty brand and her efforts to close the gender gap in VC funding.
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. Producer: Paul Brennan.

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This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.

All right, everybody, Full disclosure, I'm a fan of our next guest, Triny Widdle from her day's co hosting What Not to Wear on BBC. Also a fan our YouTube producer Elizabeth Cedron. She's much younger than me, which just goes to show the appeal of the work that Trinty Widdle has done and continues to do. She's a businesswoman, entrepreneur, supports other women in figuring out their ventures. Really supportive. Great to have with us in studio. The CEO and founder of the Digital First beauty brand, Triny London here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. Welcome, Welcome, How are you.

So great to be here?

Well, thank it's great. It's great to have you here. You know, I want to go back. We have a nice took of time I think about What Not to Wear and makeover shows. I feel like there's a lot of it's commonplace. But you and Susannah like, really we're onto some thing. In its early days you had a column together and then you did the show take us back there, because you embraced women in a very warm and inclusive way, and it's not always the case.

I think it's interesting because I think there's an element that women want to feel empowered, but they also want some basic rules in which they can make their own decisions. And sometimes when we don't know which way to go, it's much more challenging to take a stance. So I think we came along at a time in the nineties when we just gave some rules. We did a show which was you know titles that TV mate, but it was based on a colun call What Not to Wear, and it was just about the first time perhaps saying everyone is different. Everyone has different body shape, It doesn't matter your size, everyone has different skin, hair, and eye and so it resonated because that language perhaps hadn't been spoken before. And interestingly, we've done a book before which sold thirteen thousand copies. We did a TV show that.

I think I have the book. I'm going to be very crowned with you.

That first book nobody has maybe the second. I want to do a book deal. But then after we did that show, we sold a million copies of the first because there was, and it was very basic rules. It was if you have small boobs, do this, if you have big vier and you know, don't wear a Poland neck if you have it. Just people come up and say, I never do that again because of you, and so that was very interesting then, all right, But the way the story was told on TV was shock TV. You know, it was just before times of a show like The Swan, which was that extreme makeover. It was the beginning of very different TV. And when we then had done that for ten years and we stopped doing it in the UK because other people came up what I loved most. It was challenging at the time because we were suddenly not wanted. But we went to Mipcom, which is a TV conference in can and about twelve countries brought the format, from Israel to Poland, to India, to Australia to Scandinavia. So I went from just understanding British women and America to then understanding it doesn't matter your religion, your age, the color of your skin. These emotional stages that we go through as women have a relevance on our confidence levels, on how we want to project ourselves. And that was fantastic research. Everything I've done, probably since I was six and a half, is research for where I am now.

I want to talk a little bit about both great journey, right, like you think about it right the process. Yeah, I just want to.

Talk a little bit about the changing media landscape over that time, because a lot has happened in the last twenty five thirty years since that show. And I'm wondering when you look around the landscape today, whether you see something on streaming, whether you see what's going on on TikTok, on Instagram reels where you kind of see the influence of what you were doing on the BBC.

I think the point of reference where we get our influence has changed. And love I love evolution. I love the fact that there was a very small, controlled set of people who gave you your influence and now it's all up for grabs because I think that's an egalitarian state, and you choose. You don't have to get a subscription to Vogue magazine. You know, you can choose who you follow and what you like, so you have far more individual It's like you're choosing your meal from an Ala catte menu. It's not a set menu, right, so the benefit of that evolution has been that you can go and be influenced by somebody who is far more like you individually as a person, or somebody who aspire to be as opposed to a brand setting the tone like a magazine or a newspaper title that we've all followed for years.

Do you feel like, well, let's get to what you're doing now, Triny London, Right, you know it's funny. I brought up your name in our makeup room this morning, and I have a beloved makeup artist, Pam. She's worked with Charlotte Tillbury, She's worked with I think Prescriptives, maybe Bobby Brown, like a lot of brands. She's like, oh my god, she's doing you know, she talked about your brand. It's a crowded space though you launch in twenty seventeen. When you thought about it and your journey, you talk about it, what you've learned, How did you think about entering the space, what you wanted to do? Do differently because it is so competitive.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do. The challenge was convincing investors it was the right choice. So I knew the biggest white space was a thirty five plus woman. I knew that she'd been talked to with companies that were represented by a twenty year old model. I knew she felt excluded from the conversation, but she was being sold something that might be relevant for her, but wasn't in a language for her. Because every advertiser is going after a younger audience, even though the older audience maybe has the money. So there was this sort of dichotomy. And I felt that I had already organically understood this woman, and I knew what products she wanted. I knew her frustrations. I knew when she went up to the beauty counter, the challenges she had about thinking, is the person serving me here going to be, you know, plastering me a makeup or going to be thinking I'm younger or older? Is she going to understand me? And so I really felt that you could develop online with personalization, which I'd loved since ninety nine when I started my first tech company called Ready Too, before even e comm But I loved personalization and I love data. So I thought, if I can build an algorithm where I can figure this woman out and I can say tell me this about you, and we will tell you what suits you. And I pitched that this woman thirty five forty forty five would do that, and every investor for the first six months I saw two hundred fifty people, got one investor.

Two hundred and fifty investors.

I pitched two hundred and fifty investors and I got one investment at that beginning, and then people followed. But was very much loved the idea, but those old ladies will never buy it. So do it for a gen X and a Jena Jena. It wasn't even around eight years ago. Gen X okay, and I was like, but you don't get it. This woman will come online if she feels she's got something she can trust, right, and it will deliver.

Have any of those investors come knocking sense?

Yes?

How did those conversations go? I mean they passed. In an earlier round, they would have gotten a better deal.

I think that. I think a nice You know, there's moments in your life you celebrate, and one moment was going to a tech conference where I used to get to this tech conference every year, which will remain nameless, but I would always feel, you know, an outsider. I'd feel I haven't got investment yet you know when you're really in that pitch mode and you're trying to get people interested and you bump into somebody who said no to you, and you sort of like put on the brave face and you'll still committed and you still know it's gonna work. You just got to find that right person, right And three years later, we just had an article in Forbes and it was a very good article. It gave a value to business which we haven't given them. But and then I went to this conference again and there were like four people there who had to turn me down and they were like, we must talk, and I'm one of them. I just couldn't. And I went, oh, we're not looking for an investment right now because we're a bit dell positive. But it was just that. And I think there's moments. There's that time in a moment, what you think.

But truly, we talk about this a lot about women entrepreneurs, even from women venture capitalists have even a hard time getting funding and it's not and you are a known entity, and I just why do you think that still is?

I think it's a mix. I have to learn really how to pitch. I had to learn to speak a language I wasn't used to because I am the type of woman who wants to go in and bring you into the world of what I see train New London will do and get you to know that woman and I And it's so I'm not going to say it's overwhelming for a classic investor, but sometimes somebody wants to say this is A, and then from A, I'll get to B. And then once I got B, I'll get to C. And so I then realized I had to tell the journey differently. I had to I knew what they needed to know first, and you know, I was asked a lot how will you protect your downside? Not how we optimize your upside? And I did feel if I was a man in the room, would that have been the fast question or would it be man to man how you're going not find?

Do you think it would not have been?

I don't know. I'm not going to judge. I think it's the tightest person, but I would you know, I did have to learn that because I'm not a you know, I've learned to be a CEO. There's two hundred fifty people in Trina in London now, but that's been a journey and I even got a CEO coach because I wanted to be the best CEO I could be and understand the importance of how I delegate where I'm in the weeds, you know, meeting people who say do what only you can do. You know, otherwise you will never grow because you'll always be doing too much in the weed. So that journey is a challenging journey for a founder to be a CEO and a business that's doing over fifty or one hundred million or you know, as you grow, you need to have that team that is going to execute really well and you are looking at the strategic vision of where the business is going and doing less of the every day. So for me, the switch from that to this is a big challenge because some days I'm you know, this morning, I'm looking at a tube and an ab we're going to do on the tube, and I want to get in the detail, you know, and that's like, is this my best time spent? But this is brand building, so sort of.

Yeah, tell us about Triny London. You know how big you've gotten. Touches about growth. We're Bloomberg. We do love numbers. Tell us what you can do.

Or can I tell you. I think I'll tell you what. When I started, it was the time of real growth. It was a time of you know, it didn't matter about retention. It was only about new customer numbers. And I remember we had a sort of fifty to fifty and they were saying, you need to be thirty percent existing, seventy percent you And I was like, I don't agree. I want retention. I want a long term cohort. I want the customer who will buy four times a year and be with me in ten years. That's the customer I want. And that was challenging. So even on my second round, the valuation I was looking for I didn't get because they were like, you should be seventy thirty and I was like, I'm happy with fifty to fifty.

Yeah.

And then during into COVID, we had a ton of people who were waiting for us to come to a store, and because they thought I'm at home for a while, they then went and bought, and then they became customers. And those are long term cohorts. So the you know reference now in the world we live in in d t C is it is about retention. It's really about retention.

But it's also about retail, like you haven't shunned away. Yes you are direct consumer, but you also embraced retail.

And I think retail has a part to play. Retail for a real DC brand, like earlier DC brands would literally be just brand building, but retail needs to be profitable and brand building. It can't just be brand building because I think then you don't get to have a good ebitdart. So how do you know we did? It's expensive, and we did a flagship in the UK, and we spent money on that flagship, but in three and a half months it paid for itself, so that's great. And it's you know in the other store in London, which is a big story on number one in beauty, but here in Prince Street, I saw it in I thought, we have to put an inroad where insects. We have to an inroad of our proposition of what we represent, this personalization in a space so you can walk in the world of us because that visual and this is where online and offline is really interesting. If somebody's going to buy online, they need these five points of reference. Their friend and Instagram they follow, maybe still a magazine, maybe listening to Bloomberg Radio, but also seeing the brand physically in their country in some form in the real world is really important. So the conversion we have online since we've got Prince Street, which I fitted out in Ikea with mirror on the top because I thought the investment here has got to be in the buzz. It's not going to be dump paying three hundred thousand dollars in a six month pop up. It's going to be four thousand dollars at Ikea with very nice mirrors off the top because our products are great.

So, you know, did that work? Did the IQ And it's so.

Busy this weekend. It was it's so exciting because we did a morning show this week and we had and also this is interesting because you don't know how well TV works. And the next day there were people who'd watched the show coming in to the store. I thought, that's it's interesting how media works now.

So when you talk about strategy, you talked we've talked retail, we've talked digital. What about social media and actually using the platforms to sell increasingly, and we're seeing TikTok, Instagram becoming sort of centers of e commerce.

TikTok Shop has been interesting because in different territories it's had different premiumness. We are a premium brand, so TikTok Us has a slightly different inventory of things and TikTok uk so I think they're finding their feet. I would say the US has probably more maturity, so there's more bigger brands going on there. So maybe a child at till we might be on TikTok shop now Instagram in you know they did TikTok They did a version of their shopping before, do you remember, But they're bringing back now this sort of live stream shopping which Facebook had worked with a few years ago, and it is something that I find fascinating. Amazon tried this years ago and tried it years ago.

But there is huge. It's huge.

It's huge in China and the whole concept of the success of QVC and what is the modern version of QBC. It is what social media should be.

I mean, it's wild to see the stats of the people in China. How much money back.

I mean that woman was fifteen million in a day or something. You say, but that was a ten second in a box. That's just a it's an anomaly. I don't get it. It's something that's so of that culture.

So have you cracked? Have you cracked the TikTok in the Instagram part?

Yet we do it in a way that a few people do. What we do is we don't say bye bye bye. We tell you a story, and lots of people tell the story. I tell the story. Our friends of Trinny London tell the story, and they tell a story. They're not saying by this, it's this much, this is what's in it?

Lizards so much a part of your story, you know. I think it was so telling about how many people you had to pitch before somebody was interested in helping to find you. Now are helping others and tell us a little bit about we've got about a minute and a half left here Elevator Pitcher series on Instagram. Because you're helping others thirty seconds they make a pitch to you.

Yeah, So I just felt that challenge when you're younger to get or not younger, but when you're in this much smaller stage. So they all apply and they have to be doing over one hundred and fifty thousand a year in revenue, because that's somebody who then is committed to serious business. Yeah, used to be less than you have to and because you're giving precious out of time. And then they have that pitch and then we highlight their business and they convert. And then I also was in there's something in the UK of fifty women doing over fifty million pounds revenue a year, So we were thinking, how can we get fifty women to get over ten million pounds a year rev because that's another pick. So we're looking at that now as another concept. But it is so important to lift up other women, and I think in the nineties it was challenging for women to lift up other women. It was very different. It was a really ruthless sense in business. And I think there is a responsibility as a woman, especially when you've been on that journey of entrepreneurship and you know how challenging it is. I went to Bhutan recently and I now mentor this Bhutanese designer because I just thought she really needs help and she's fantastic, and so it's exciting to take these different women and think how can you help them to look at the challenges they have.

Just get a few seconds left here, So what's next? Or what do you like? I don't know what your.

Growth in the US for sure. I mean this year it's about growth in the US.

This is an important market.

This is such an important market. This market ultimately for me, should be double the size of the UK. So I am a UK brand coming to the US. That is in itself a big challenge. If we look at the successful UK brands sort of come here, there are not that Tilbury phenomenal success, Charles Turret shirt company really good successfully. Yeah, So it's looking at you know how as a brand you make a US customer field. This is a brand that speaks to me. It doesn't matter the origination of where that brand started. This is a brand emotionally for me. And that's our challenge to show American women we understand you and this is for you, and our products are for you, and how we think about you as an individual will help you. Well.

Come back and let us know how it's going as you as you settle in even more here. Trinny, thank you so much, Trinny Weddle. She is CEO and founder Trinny London, joining us right here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio