Yahoo Finance ‘If it didn’t exist, I would do it’: How I created the best makeup case on the market
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It was on a sleepless, overnight flight when Dr Tara Lalvani concocted the cure for her makeup travails. With no internet access, she decided that she would buy the best make-up case product on the market the moment she landed.
“If it didn’t exist, I would create it,” she recalls. The upshot was that Lalvani, a former dental surgeon, couldn’t find anything online and instead started to create a line of beauty cases, mirrors and tools which would transform makeup application, one with better lighting and easy access for brush tools.
“As soon as I had that realisation, I didn’t question it or how I would create the concept,” she says. “It was almost like a calling.”
With its hero product Beautifect Box, the UK-based company has made rapid strides since launching in 2020. Harrod’s stocked it just six weeks later and the brand has grown 300% year-on-year, with turnover of over £13 million.
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“I wasn’t looking to start a business, I was simply looking for a solution to a problem I was facing every single day when it came time to get ready,” says Lalvani.
“That problem was fed up of being tied down to one place, having poor lighting and my makeup being messy and disorganised in lots of bags. Surely every single person was going through the same.”
By this she meant that future consumers were propping up mirrors against windows to try and catch natural light and get the best result. Yet this is not so easy to do, says Lalvani. Not when there's not much daylight coming through bathrooms or specific makeup areas.
The lighting is the main point here, with Beautifect aiming to simulate real daylight for true colours, while “what you see in the mirror is your true reflection”.
“We didn’t want to stop there,” she adds. “We wanted to simulate different environments. It’s all very well to see how you look in the daytime. What about in the evening? We were guessing what the final result is.”
The company's Glow Mirror simulates three different environments — bright sun, daylight and evening light — with Lalvani at pains to make sure any future consumer wasn’t going to be tied down to one place.
The beauty tech entrepreneur believes she is “setting a new standard in lighting”. With three lighting colour environments, the Glow Mirror relies on a Colour Rendering Index (CRI) of 95+, which replicates evening, daylight and bright sun.
Her dentistry background of over a decade has also helped in creating a '21st century dressing table' with storage. “When it came to operating on someone’s mouth, I wouldn't have all my tools laid out in a messy tool bag and rummaging through to find the right one,” Lalvani says.
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“We wanted to streamline that and it was designed to hold your everyday makeup in one place, rather like a dentist’s tray would be. The product gets you ready in half the time.”
At the time Lalvani came up with the idea, she had two young children and wanted a solution so she could not only get ready, but oversee her kids and fit around her busy daily schedule.
From landing in Dubai, it took 18 months to create the first prototype, enlisting ex-Dyson engineers to help her design “best in class”. While the mirror angles to any position, a single charge also lasts up to one month’s use.
“I am a perfectionist by nature and so it took extra time and I was kind of building it for myself,” she admits. “My focus was innovation, design and performance and it has to do all three.”
With a core team in the UK, Beautifect is building a Middle East hub in Dubai, there is manufacturing in Hong Kong and a warehouse in Canada to service the US.
They have also scored notable celebrity wins, without sending product, with Camila Cabello and Beyoncé both using Beautifect products while reality TV shows have shown glimpses of Lalvani’s creation.
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She has also leaned on her husband, Tej, one of the dragons on Dragons’ Den and CEO of the UK's largest vitamin company Vitabiotics. "Not having a background in business and the fact that he always believed in me to make it into something big, really gave me that confidence.
“He has no day-to-day involvement while he would always ask me for my opinion in his work. That’s when I realised I do quite enjoy business.”
Behind the brand: CEO Tara Lalvani on…
How to run a start-up
I bootstrapped the business using savings from my dentistry. You have to be resourceful which is a key skill for any entrepreneur. Sometimes if you have funding too early, it’s a big mistake. If you give away too much of your company in the beginning when you need it most, you will have nothing left to give.
How to survive
Someone said to me ‘every day has its ups and downs like a heartbeat’. Everyday it's flat, you’re dead and you don’t even realise it. You can’t get disheartened and you have to have that clarity to know what you’re doing. It’s much better to have a plan, rather than wasting resources and effort.
Disrupting beauty market
Finding a white space in the beauty industry isn’t easy as it’s a saturated space. When it came to finding good quality makeup tools, no one was making them. They were an afterthought. Going direct to the consumer was also so much more valuable. We learned much faster than going into retail. There was a buzz in the market and we realised it was what people wanted but also needed.
Standing out as a product
The key is seeing how you look before you leave the front door. Every single product is designed to outperform the market. The brush technique allows you to have more control and you get a result like a professional makeup artist would.
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