YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Constantine

lines on the record: 115
first: 2020-10-05
most recent: 2020-10-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yes, I think so. I think that it's for all businesses. I think that vibrancy that you require, that flexibility, the ability to listen carefully and to make the appropriate changes and not be too... Well, spoilt is the word, isn't it? I mean, in business, we can get spoilt. We can get used to too much luxury. And I mean, for me personally, at the end of my career here, to have to deal with this, I felt was really, really, really interesting and far more interesting than running at a steady pace, especially when there was so much change we would like to see about climate change and other things like that. So I find this far more exciting and far more real than I found when I last spoke to you.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, what's actually happened is that the bulk of the agony we took in the last financial year, which ended in June this year, just gone. So those figures are going to look pretty dreadful. And then as we've quickly adapted, so this year, this financial year will look a lot more positive and a lot stronger. So we had a loss last year, but we won't have a loss this year. We'll have a reasonable profit. At first, we used to talk about the new normal, but I've stopped doing that because I think that many of the things that are happening is what we wanted anyway. We wanted less air travel. We wanted less pollution. We wanted people to be more discerning in their buying. We wanted better supply chains and better thought about the product. All those things are happening.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, for anyone in business listening, one of the things we've tried to do is to break things up into six-week periods because you can't really anticipate what the virus is going to do beyond a six-week period. And so, and then trying to work out within that six week period what do we think is going to happen? It's very convenient for us because we obviously go from season to season. So we'll have from now until what we call bonfire night, which is a British tradition, which is November the 5th. And then we'll go to Christmas, another six-week period, and then we'll go to Valentine's, another six-week period, and then it's Easter. And I think that's a good way to approach it rather than trying to imagine what it's going to be like in a year, two years' time. We can do that, but you're not flexible enough if you do that. You need to be very dynamic.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're correct to assume that, but we're much more that area of our business is more profitable than the retail. So, people moving on to the mail order business is quite a help because we then generate more profits.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most tobacco open and most are trading not at the full level that they were trading before. Some are literally just kiosks where we open the door, we've put some sort of barrier in, people come to the staff there who are wearing masks, and then others wear there's enough space where they can come in and socially distance while they're shopping. And we had between 200 and 300% increase in our digital business in our male business. And so that was one hell of a sort of swing round.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, obviously, selling soap in the time of COVID is quite sensible. So while those selling groceries seem to be doing exceptionally well, selling soap isn't so bad. My point really is that while you may not go on a cruise and you may not be able to take the holiday you've always dreamt of, you can always take a buff.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that, whoever originally said it before he stole it, anyone out there who's in a business, they know that's how it feels. Do you know what I mean? It just depends. Sometimes I have really big challenges and other times they're just challengers. But there's never a moment when you can really sort of say, wow, I'm great.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've worked out that I'm not necessarily very smart, haven't we? I see myself as a technical entrepreneur. I see I have the technical skills and I've made the most of those. I mean, you know, I think it's always ascribed to church, I didn't, when he said what we were supposed to say, that success is just stumbling from one mistake to another.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I read an article in the Daily Telegraph, the British Daily Telegraph, and this particular journalist had spent her life interviewing business people. And this was her last business interview. And she talked of something that she called the entrepreneur's wound. And she said all of the really successful people that she had interviewed in business had these similarities where they had a death or a severe divorce or a sibling die, something like that in their childhood. They had an event. Now, whether that teaches you about mortality and you know you've only got a certain period of time and so you get driven through that, or whether you're trying to impress someone that perhaps is no longer here or maybe just, you know, I don't know, did I want to impress my dad? He was oblivious. So I don't know. But if you look at Steve Jobs or you look at any of those guys, they got a similar profile. I mean, the issues create the character. I really believe that.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I now have a blazing fire. So a lot of the anxiety has gone, a lot of that stuff's gone with that. He died shortly afterwards. He died within weeks of me seeing him. I could not have been more welcomed. I could not have been treated with more sincerity or compassion. That was a great one.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I wasn't nervous. I had a friend who told me here was the result of a one-night stand between his mother and an Italian on a beach, right? And he still found his father and he said to me, if you're ever fortunate enough to find your father, go straight away. Do not mess about. Don't even think about it. So I didn't think about it. I just went. And I was met by my two sisters I can't explain how similar they were to me. And then when I got to see my dad, he was apologetic and I didn't need any of that. I just said to him, Dad, all's well that ends well. You know, just really pleased to be here with you. And we just had a couple of days together. Oh, they were just magical. It's very hard to describe such an emotional thing. But the best way I can find to describe it is if I had an empty hearth where my heart was before.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is the lesson from Anita Roddick where she took just a small sum of money and she turned it into that massive business which L'Oreal bought for all that money. That shows you that not all money has the same value. Small sums of money in the hands of dynamic people who really care goes a long way. So when we give money, when we give $1,000 or $2,000 or $5,000 to a group that wants to achieve something, maybe they want to stop fracking or maybe they want to deal with some environmental issue. They will make that money go much further than if that money was in someone else's hands. So that's very much how we focus on it.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's what we've decided. We've got plenty here. We can share some. So that's quite often what's gone on, that we've changed the business model by introducing another element into it. I mean, we give huge sums in charity. I mean, we've given over £50 million”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let's take from that height when we got that height, that's when we introduced the living wage in parts of our markets.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When he talks about his staff, he says, well, I employed them for a couple of days and now they turn up every day of the week. You know, we employ and attract enthusiasts. People are really passionate about nature or animal testing or animal rights. And then the brand tends to become that, you know? I mean, we control the products. You know, my children are involved. We've got a whole new set of inventors now. Young people are coming on through the business. So we do that, that side, that controls what you've got at home. But then the people that sell it to you just get attracted to the brand, you know?”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the brand is our brand is very much based on the people that work in the shops. The people we attract, but I get asked a lot how do you choose your staff, right? I don't know if you've ever watched high fidelity.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And suddenly I could see then, I could see her as Gordon her husband saw her on how much she protected her and looked after her, and how much they were a couple. You never, because when you're in awe of someone, you don't see them as human beings. You see them as this great thing. And of course, the truth was she was. She was very human.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In other words, a young deer. Now that if she'd have said an eagle, I would have that's what I would have expected her to say. A fawn here?”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. I had no idea. And, you know, I miss her. Difficult to know what to say. I mean, the weird thing was she always felt she had a very short length of time and she was right. You know, she did have a short length of time. But I think the truth was with the body shop that even if she hadn't been ill, I think they'd had it with it. I think they'd had their ride and they didn't want to carry on. You know, I've painted an eaterotic as this dynamic, charismatic, fierce woman. But when I once asked her, just, we were just messing about in a train or something, doing one of those psychological sort of quizzes, you know. And I said, Anita, if you were an animal, what animal would you imagine yourself as? And she said a”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trade, not aid. L'Oreal had always been the arch enemy because of testing on animals. They represented those who wished to test, body shop represented those that didn't wish to test. Right. and that was quite sort of fundamental.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was very straightforward. The management could raise about $360 million themselves to buy the body shop off of the strength of the body shop's figures. I could add my business to that and get up to about 450, something like that.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So she just banned me. She just said, you can't come to the shop openings unless you improve your attitude. We don't need that kind of miserable person pacing up and down outside when we're just greeting new customers, you know?”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I'm not a control freak I'm quite intuitive. I know when I see something that's wrong and I don't know how to describe that beforehand. So, for a long time, Rowena just banned me from the shop openings. Because all I could ever see was something that was wrong.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, because we didn't do all the work. Now, in Britain we have something called the living wage, where a group of clerics peed off with the fact that there was so much poverty in their diocese, got together and they dreamt up a living wage. So this was a wage that was a fair pay. So we paid the living wage as decided by them. So we're lifting our skirts up at the bottom to get people out of poverty. Sharing some of the business with them, but still capitalists and it's still capitalism. We can still increase the size of that business, the scale of that business, the profitability of that business, and get considerable benefit for ourselves, but not so much benefit that it's vulgar.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I believe in capitalism, but I don't believe in the forms of capitalism that I would call locust capitalism, where people are feeding off someone else without doing any work. So we came up with this scheme where we valued our shares at five times the average of the last three years profit. So that we captured a little bit, but we only capped the greed and we still, that still enabled us to, if we want to build a business, we can build the business, we can build the profitability, we can make more when we sell our shares. And then we gave part of the business to the staff, which we would like to see increased. So that the staff can buy those shares off the founders. And we put in an employee benefit trust to facilitate the sale of the shares as and when they're necessary”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We watched what happened with the body shot. You know, they'd gone public and Gordon Roddick says still today that that was the biggest mistake he made. Because he was no longer in control of it, and things that he thought were important wasn't what the...”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the problem actually isn't ownership. Well, it is to an extent, but the problem is succession. Because obviously, if we let's pretend we're not a cosmetic company and we're not British, but we're an American tech company, all those tech companies, the founders all had to, they either died and they had to be paid off, their families had to be paid off, or they had to have their remuneration, don't they, for these successful companies?”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can have a much better standard of payment for suppliers and so on. And you can have a bit more profit and you can get a competitive price for the customer.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Putting paper and you would walk out. Yeah, so that, yeah, because first of all, we didn't have the money for the packaging, and secondly, we didn't want to do it anyway. If you've got a bottle of shower gel, when it went out from the factory, back two-thirds of the money went into the packaging and the labeling And only a third into the contents. So if you can get a business model where you can get rid of that unwanted packaging, the customer doesn't want it, you don't want it. If you can get rid of that, you've got far more money to put into the ingredients.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just let my imagination and everyone else's imagination run right. We'd got this stainless steel basin full of ice with face masks in it that would only last a couple of weeks. We just let everything go crazy. And then we had some bottle product on little three little pyramids in the center of the shop. And when I was looking at it before I opened, I thought, oh God, you've had this money and this investment. You've just blown it. Yeah. You've done all this crazy stuff instead of just doing a much more understandable shop. The public won't get it. And then open the doors and the public came in and they just ignored all the bottle product and bought everything else. They were wonderful. They got everything. They just loved it.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A famous t-shirt. It was various bits. I mean, Niels Yardairy is lovely, a lovely cheese shop. Yeah, we had big truckles of shampoo and big truckles of soap like cheese truckles, which we would slice and sell the product from. And that, yes, it was partly that, partly grocery shops, like, you know, with apples, the bath bombs looked like apples. To be honest, when I first did the King's Road, I thought I made an awful mistake.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had a competition and we said come up with a name for us and a lady called Mrs. Bennett in Edinburgh called us Lush Garden and we shortened it to Lush.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To have been that bad and to have everything that wrong and then suddenly to have everything that right was very tricky. I can remember having to go out the back of the shop and have a moment, you know. You can't be that bad and that good all in a short period of time, you know?”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Terrence Conrad, a designer in his own right. Terrence Conran, great retailer throughout the whole of Britain, but it wasn't just their status, but so many people were commending us. And to be honest,”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, pretty soon we opened up the Kings Road shop, and within the first week we had Jean-Paul Gautier and Jasper Cownran come in and commend us And to be honest,”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what I did with Peter, I asked him what was the best investment you ever made, Peter? And he told me what it was. He was a property guy. And so he bought some properties off the army in Scotland and he managed to sell them for 12 times the price. So I promised him, I said, would this will be a better bet than that?”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what we did was the first store was really the little store downstairs in Paul at 29 High Street. And that's what we did first. So we did a sort of mock-y-up thing. And then basically, we knew we'd done all of our money. And we knew we had to get a backup. But quite a lot of people were approaching us, offering to back us. One of the guys, Andrew Geary and Peter Blacker, they were really nice. Peter Blacker just said, well, I'll do a punt for a couple of hundred grand. And he put some money in for some shares and we started the retail business. And with his money, we opened a small store in Covent Garden and a larger one on the King's Road.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So then we were all earning no money. Rowina ran all our credit cards up because she was the only one that hadn't already done that. And she started to fit the shop out downstairs and run that. And we started making the product upstairs. So me and Helena Mo, we would make product, you know, just with, we go up the green grocers and buy the avocados and the fruit and make the products, then take it downstairs and she'd sell it.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so all of the main team that I'd worked with, they couldn't find work either that they wanted. So bit by bit, they all came back.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did I have anxiety? I mean, I've had anxiety most of my life. I had plenty of anxiety, probably enough to fill a boat. Basically, I didn't want to do anything. I wanted to stay home, lick my wounds. I felt very ashamed. Ashamed was the prevalent thing. I certainly didn't think I'm going to get up and do something else. But my colleagues, especially Helen Ambrosen at that time, Helen Ambrosen phoned me up and said, the receivers had all gone, right? Everyone had gone. I had an empty shop and an empty lab. And Helen Ambrosen phoned up and said, I'm going to start going in nine to five. How about you? I'm like, doing what? With what? And she said, well, I just think it would be good. We can go in. We can see what there is there. We can make a few products, maybe sell a few here and there. Let's get going again.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, well, I think I've got a skill set that's such that if I can market it, I can make a load of money again. And he sort of nodded sagely at seven and let me do it.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'd not been ever so clever. I basically still had a mortgage on my home, so I still had a loan on my home. I still had a loan for a small factory unit I owned, and I still had a loan on this property in the high street where I have my lab. So I still had these loans to pay off. So I then was having to borrow money from money lenders at usurus rates. And then I managed to sell this house for half of what I bought it for. I bought it for $200,000. I sold it for £100,000. I paid off all the loan sharks. I was left with £43,000. And I had three kids and no business.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But just like the dot-com businesses, we never made it to that scale. There's a joke there. If you want to make a small fortune, you start with a large one. So, cosmetics to go was a hell of a party. It was so intense. I have never been so stressed. We were producing these catalogues, the whole, every range had a different I mean, it was just for people obsessed with cosmetics, which we all were and are, it was a great party, but we just blew all the money and went bust.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know how the dot-com business was. You know, you figured if you got to a certain size, you'd be okay. So you were constantly trying to get to that scale.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bath Bombs came along about two years into Cosmedics to go, but things like shampoo bars, they were there right at the beginning. We had a patent for shampoo bars.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She'd heard us talking about it. She just went out and did it. She's very practical, my wife. She just came in there. There it is. So then for a while, we sold these aqua sizzlers and a little tube. But then we found that the kids weren't using them, the grown-ups were using them. So then we thought, oh, well, if a grown-up's using it, we'll put a bit more, we'll make it a bit bigger and we'll have a round. You know, we did a bomb. We actually did a bomb. We covered it in black cellophane, had a red wick out of the top, wrote bomb on it. That was the Blackberry Bath bomb and so on. So that's how they developed. But it started off with my wife going in the shed, making one coming back.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the problem was that kids love bubble paths so much. So what happens is it breaks down the capillary action and it enables microorganisms to get in the urinary tract and cause problems. That's how a bubble bath does that. We wanted to come up with something that was better for the kids and wouldn't cause that problem. And Jeff Brown had worked making Alca seltzer with bicarbonate a soda and citric acid. So bicarbonate of soda is extremely soothing in the bath, very, very good for you. It's a seltzer bath. It's really well known all worldwide. And if you had chicken pox or something, you'd put a bit of bacon soda in the bathroom. Very soothing. Right. Yeah. So then my wife went out into the shed. And came back with a first bath bomb. But it was just a small disc, and we called them aqua sizzlers.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It didn't come to me. So basically, what happened was I was in the kitchen with my wife Mo, a perfumer called Jeff Brown, a herbalist called Dr. Malcolm Stewart, another trichologist called Stephen Smalls and a couple of other people. And we were talking about the problem of bubble baths creating urinary tract infections in young children under seven. Yeah? Okay. So we were just chatting about that.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I had loads. I had so many new products ideas. We had shampoo bars, bath bombs, things that Anita didn't want to take. So I already had a catalog full of products.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because I didn't really want to be going into competition with Anita and Gordon. And anyway, to get the money, I'd like to sign a thing saying I wouldn't open any shops for three years. Got it.”
2020-10-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Lush Cosmetics: Mark Constantine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT