The following is an excerpt from the Glow Journal Podcast. You can listen to the full interview with Lanolips founder and CEO Kirsten Carriol now on iTunes and Spotify.
GLOW JOURNAL: Your childhood wasn’t spent in the beauty industry per se- your grandparents had a sheep farm and your dad was a molecular scientist. That in mind, what did you think you would be when you grew up?
KIRSTEN CARRIOL: I had no idea. Not a farmer!
My brother and sister were exceptionally bright, really academic, so I was the “dumb one.” I knew that, but that’s okay. My parents did not know how to guide me because they were both academics. The most we could come up with when I finished year 12 was going into, in inverted commas, “business”. That was as specific as it got. I always enjoyed communicating with people- I’m really good with connecting with people. So for me, I thought “Well, I’m a people person. What’s the people thing?”
I heard the word human resources, so I thought “I’ll try that”. So that’s what I ended up studying when I left high school- Resource Management, Industrial Relations and Marketing. The marketing I loved, the HR I hated.
So that was the beginning. So in answer to your first question, I had no idea!
Do you have any early memories of beauty?
My earliest memory of my own beauty was fragrance. Christian Dior Poison. Being in Adelaide I was very disconnected. I felt very disconnected from the world, so I started to buy international magazines when I was really young. I kind of went from Dolly to English Elle. I felt connected to the world that way. I had some really cool friends at high school and they were reading Follow Me [magazine] and I was like “There’s a whole world out there.” It was the beginning of the Kate Moss thing. The end of the original supermodel era and the beginning of grunge. I started to read those magazines and that’s where I started to notice beauty.
I noticed Poppy Lipsticks straight away. I remember being on the phone like “I need these lipsticks.” You could only get them in Melbourne, so I went to Melbourne to buy them. I just found it fun- and I could afford it. I could never even look at the fashion, but I could afford a lipstick.
Beauty defines the era just as much as fashion does. When you look at the beauty looks, whether it’s eyebrows, the skin finish or the way you match your lips to your cheek- whatever it is, beauty is as definitive of an era as fashion.
Given that your grandparents were sheep farmers, you’d spent a lot of time in that environment so you had an understanding of what lanolin is. Do you remember the moment or the age when you first realised what it could actually do for the skin?
I don’t remember not knowing. I always knew. From the littlest stage, when you have a cold and you get dry lips, we always went to bed with lanolin on our lips. For me, it was always a hydrator. The only one we ever used. I never remember a time without it to be honest!
I read that, even though you grew up with that as the one thing that you used, eventually you started to distance yourself from it. You’ve called yourself a beauty junkie and you just want to try every other product. Why do you think that was?
I just figured that, because I had grown up with it and it was from the farm, that there was a whole world out there of things that were much better. I wanted to discover all those things, and through beauty I could afford to do that.
Having said that, I ended up becoming a total beauty junkie- but never in skincare. I was always a massive cynic with skincare, and that was from the upbringing, the scientific background that I had. I was never drawn into the pseudo-science part, so my skin care was always pretty basic. I actually could not tell you what I used on my face between the age of 18 and 31. It was just whatever was cheap and there. I just thought “I just don’t believe anything.” But colour was a different story. Highlighters, lipsticks, I just loved all that.
That time that you were a beauty junkie, did that coincide with your PR career? Because I understand that, after you studied Business, you got a job in PR and then went on to launch your own beauty PR company.
I was a beauty junkie before I got into PR. Parallel to that, I got into a job which was in a branding agency, in marketing, and they just happened to have a few beauty brands on the books. I just was naturally really good at it, and I just knew how the journalists wanted the story to be presented. I remember there was a lip collection we launched and it was a berry collection, so I just knew how to do the sendout and how to present it. I just loved it, was passionate, and knew what to do. It came easily to me.
As you know, I ended up starting my own agency, and then I met my husband who was in beauty at the time as well. So I’ve tried everything, and I’ve really seen it all.
You also spent about two years living and working in London. Did you notice any differences between the way the UK were approaching business and beauty compared to Australia?
It’s interesting you say that, because I hadn’t started my world of beauty, in depth, in London.
Having said that, when I was in London, it was the time that Space NK first launched. I was actually just working in restaurants and in London, having nothing to do with beauty, but I loved Space NK. It was the early, exciting days of indie brands being in Space NK, so that was my happy space.
My time in London and beauty is really tied to those early Space NK years. And then when I came back to Sydney, nothing was here! So I ended up buying Harper’s Bazaar US and Elle UK, and I would just get on the phone and literally call the department stores and order over the phone.
So at what point did you come back to lanolin? You’d used it your whole life, then started working in PR and tried all of the beauty products- you gave everything a go. When did you start to turn that corner and think “Oh, I actually had the answer in front of me the whole time”?
I can remember the moment. I’d never considered starting my own brand. I hadn’t thought it about it- it had not crossed my mind. At all.
I was in a cab going to the airport. We’d just been married, and on the way to the airport I was like “My lips are going to get so dry.” And then I was like “Huh… hang on… I’ve tried everything and my lips are still dry, so maybe lanolin is actually better than all these things I have been using for the last 15 years.” Dad was right the whole time! So that was the moment, in the taxi. So whenever I drive past that spot, I remember exactly. “This is the spot I had the idea.”
The name came to me immediately, and I just knew that was it. It was literally like being struck with a bolt of lightning.
Well, I was going to ask you to talk me through coming up with the concept, but I guess it just hit you all at once?!
Absolutely. Everything hit me. It was just a done deal from that moment.
So that was 2003. I assume everyone has tried your products but, for those who haven’t, not all lanolin products are made equally. Your lanolin is the best quality. Knowing that lanolin was going to be a big part of the story from day one, it obviously needed to be the best. When you were starting to really think about the products themselves, what parameters did you have in place? What were your non negotiables?
My non negotiable was that it had be as high a percentage of lanolin as possible. If something else had to be in it, there had to be a really good reason for it to be there. That’s how my 101 Ointment ended up just being lanolin- because there was no other good reason for anything else to be in it, because it was about just being a super hydrator. I said to my dad at the time, “What else do you think I should put with it? As a multipurpose balm.” And he said “Why do you need to put anything with it? Lanolin does all of that.”
The other thing was that it had to be an enjoyable experience to use. You can get some kind of lanolin for nipple cream, but it’s just in this ugly tube, it’s sticky and it’s impractical. There’s so many reasons why it wasn’t beautiful and your handbag, and not an enjoyable experience to use. Having used so many beautiful products, I think that having beauty products is a real luxury and the experience is really part of the enjoyment of being a woman. If you choose to use beauty, then part of the whole process is the beautiful tube and the way it comes onto your lips. For me, how it was delivered was really important.
It also had to be natural. That was very important. I was always taught that nature, has the best ingredients for everything already. If you want something synthetic in there, it’s generally to make it cheaper or to create confusion with the consumer. There’s obviously some times when you need synthetics, like for some kind of skin problems, but in terms of hydration, there was nothing else needed.
I’m glad you brought that up because I did want to ask you about this. We all know that a natural product is a great thing, and an Australian product is a wonderful thing- but we also know how many products exist that don’t fall inside those lines, whether that’s because it’s too hard or because it’s too expensive. You’ve obviously chosen to go the right way. My question for you is, was it difficult finding a manufacturer that understood the way it needed to be? Because I imagine there’d be a bit of pushback.
It was impossible in 2003. It was actually the reason why it took me so long. I started off by opening the Yellow Pages to find a manufacturer. I had been in PR, so I knew how to do a bit of talking at this point, so I did manage to get some appointments. I called a few manufacturers and said “Hey, I’m making this thing, it’s lanolin based, can I meet with you?” And they all pretty much took a first meeting. I sat down and showed them my concept and I was like “This is going to be all lanolin and it’s going to be natural.” And they’re like “Yeah yeah, great, but no, we’re not making it for you because you’re just too small.” The level of lanolin I wanted to work with just didn’t exist. They just couldn’t be bothered doing the work. Even one of the biggest manufacturers said to me “You know, when I was in this business in the 1970s, the first lip glosses I ever made were all lanolin. But we just don’t do that now.”
So then my journey took me to a cosmetic chemist, because I was really losing my way, and he found this fancy manufacturer in Italy. I was so lucky they even looked at it. He pulled all these strings- how lucky I was! They came back and their response was “Here’s our formula. What we suggest is putting 3% lanolin in it, because then you can say it’s got lanolin in it, but you don’t need to use that much. My head was exploding. It was a really frustrating process. But, you know, there were many other turns I took until I eventually got to the one I wanted.
Well, that process took something like six years. Six years to bring it to life. Am I right in saying you were doing pretty much everything yourself?
Yes. I had my PR company, and we were heaving at that point. It was pumping. I had two children at the time. But you know what? People ask for the secret to success, and I think the number one thing is that you have to be so passionate about your idea that when things get hard, and they will, you keep going because it’s only that that keeps you going. When things get really hard, it’s really only your absolute love of it and belief in it that keeps you going.
This is probably a difficult question to answer, because there’s really no way of knowing what would have come from the alternative. Obviously, the pros of you doing it yourself is that you’ve got complete control and the final say was always yours. However, if you had your time over, do you think you would have done anything differently? Perhaps just to bring it to life sooner?
I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I’ve made heaps. And I’m not ashamed of any of them. I’ve learned from, hopefully, every single one. But honestly, when I look at the mistakes I’ve made, I sometimes I won’t rewind. I put myself in the back in that exact position. Again, I give myself the facts I knew at that time, and I think “Would I have made that same decision?” And mostly I would have. I think that that, yes, they’re mistakes in retrospect, but at that time it was still probably the correct decision given the information I had.
One thing I would always regret though is not bringing it to life sooner. That’s probably my biggest regret. Everything else are learnings, to be honest.
When you had the finished product, you started approaching retailers. Every single person said yes to you- Myer, David Jones, Priceline, the big guns. Did that change the plan at all? Because I imagine having that many major retailers wanting to bring your brand on might change the manufacturing process.
It actually didn’t! The minimum quantities you have to make are huge anyway, so that was just one of the risks small businesses owners have to take when they’re manufacturing. The minimums were really high, so I just went through it faster- like, pretty much straight away. So it didn’t change that, but it certainly wasn’t a slow build. It was an immediate launch.
So, lanolin as an ingredient… prior to your launch, it was seen as a bit of an older, more traditional, natural ingredient, and one that you had sort of distanced yourself from. How did you go about changing public perception of lanolin and making it a cool ingredient?
It really took a lot of elbow grease. Having been in PR, I knew how to… I wouldn’t say “spin” a message, because for the first time in my life I felt like I wasn’t spinning a message, which was so amazing. I was so passionate and didn’t have to spin anything. But I knew how the messages got to the public. At that time there was no social media. When I launched, there was nothing. It was the infancy of blogs. That was a big part of me entering the UK market. That was amazing actually, because for me, blogs allowed my brand to blossom through social media- we were probably one of the earliest brands that ever blossomed through social media. Prior to that, it was 100% just press would could say if your brand was good or not. You’re really just hoping they like it. You have no control. Whereas, suddenly, when blogs started in 2008 and 2009, public opinion started to have a voice independently of beauty writers. My product really worked like nothing that had been seen before, so I really targeted a few blogs that I had seen popup, and I just got [the product] to them, and they went nuts for it. There were only a few blogs, so they were really powerful. Before you know it, Boots had seen it.
I basically had to sit down and talk through lanolin with every single person. It was an education. So I had my vintage lanolin book, which had a few paragraphs that I loved. I had a whole bunch of research papers my dad had pulled for me from the academic journals. I had the facts about it that they used in hospitals around the world. All I needed to do was present all of the information and my job was done.
But that was a very much a one-on-one. I could never put this in the press release and send it out to everyone and hope they would read it. It was impossible- to too dense and too thick. I had to sit down and speak to every single journalist around the world for five years.
Just in case the six years of development wasn’t enough…
Now you’ve got five years of education ahead of you!
But I remember about a year after we launched in the UK, one of the big journalists wrote that we were responsible for relaunching lanolin around the world. I was so happy to see that, and I really feel so passionate about the ingredient. I wanted the ingredient to be successful as well, not just for me, but because every other success using lanolin kind of helps us succeed too.
On education, I keep saying to people that lanolin is what they have to be putting on everything, particularly their lips. A broad question, but why lanolin?
It can really be boiled down to one basic fact if we really want to keep it quick and simple.
Lanolin is from the wool of the sheep. You sheer the sheep every year, you have to, sheep are reliant on humans to sheer them every year because their hair grows continuously, like human hair, and if you don’t sheer them they can’t see properly or they get all dirty and they can’t move. It’s part of caring for the animals- the husbandry side of farming.
So the sheep are shorn every year, and as part of the cleaning of the wool process, lanolin is an oil that coats the wool so when they boil the wool, the lanolin rises to the top. So my point is that it’s actually from an animal. An oil from the animal, molecularly, is going to be far more compatible with human skin cause it’s mammalian. It’s a completely different molecular structure.
I recently had some research done with my dad’s uni, and we looked at the molecular structure of a whole bunch of oils. We looked at rosehip oil. We looked at coconut oil. We looked at petroleum jelly, mineral oil, and lanolin. Lanolin is a much more complex, much more diverse molecular structure. The other structures are so simple. Lanolin is almost identical to your own oils. That’s why it’s so great.
So once you’ve established that base, then you can talk about the quality. Lanolin from the sheep’s back is the stinky revolting mess. We don’t want that, it would be revolting and full of pesticides from farming and irrigation. There are many reasons why you would never use organic lanolin ever, ever, ever. Unless you want to smell like a dirty old sheep.
What lanolin does is actually hold its own weight in moisture, so it will hold weight inside your skin’s surface. It’s also medically proven to penetrate- it properly penetrates down to the deepest layers, whereas something like a mineral oil or petroleum jelly will coat, and it will just sit there. It’s not compatible. It’s too big of a molecular structure, so it cannot absorb.
It’s also a barrier, so it will stop your skin from losing moisture. So it’s really, really, really, really, really magical. Like it’s properly magical.
You launched in 2009 with the 101 Ointment (my holy grail) and the original tinted balm. A couple of questions about those products. You’ve sort of touched on this as far as retailers, but from the consumer side, what was the initial response to those two products?
Amazing. The first email I ever got was from a woman who ran a trucking business in Bendigo. She said “Thank you so much for bringing lanolin back, this is the best stuff!” And I just felt really happy because ultimately at the very, very core of my brand is to be useful. It’s to really properly be a useful product. I like to think of 101 as the Swiss army knife- is not just about looking pretty, that’s an added bonus, but it’s actually meant to be used to cure your skin.
I also got overwhelming reaction- “You need to make the tinted balms with a slight nib,” which I was like “Yes, I know, but the holes… slight nibs are so small and it gets really thick and hard and it won’t come out.” There were all these reasons which eventually I solved, but it was like I was banging my head against a wall for about three years until I fixed that.
But it was overwhelmingly incredible. Consumers were just happy to see lanolin back, and most of them didn’t know why it had gone away. The beauty world had given it a bad name, but the rest of the world were like “Huh, where’s lanolin been for the last 20 years?”
On the 101 Ointment, correct me if I’m wrong, but that to me feels like the cult product. That’s where people get sucked right in and then as soon as you’ve tried that, you are a customer for life. For those who are yet to be initiated into that cult, can you explain the appeal of the 101 Ointment and what it is to be used for? Where does the 101 come from?
101 uses! We actually do have a document of 101 uses, but it was meant to be more figuratively. And also, when you say “I’m studying Math 101”- it’s about the basics. So it was kind of a play on words between multipurpose, but also the best, the basics and what you need.
The 101 Ointment works because it works. It’s as simple as that. People ask “What’s the trick?” Just make a product that works. Make a product that does what it says. Brands can, surprisingly, get that so very wrong. I think brands forget that a woman buys something and they have to live with it forever. They have thoughts about that product over that period, and they are not always good thoughts. You will never get that customer back. On the flip side, if that product actually works, they will reach for it every day of their life and they will trust it forever. They will be so grateful that a product actually does what it says, because that’s kind of rare now.
We won’t go through 101 uses, but do you have any favourite ways of using it- perhaps some unconventional ones?
Yes! My hack, one of my favourite hacks is when you’re flying. I use it inside my nose. You know how you seem to get so sick after you’re flying? It’s because the air conditioning dries out your nasal passages and the mucus in your nose is designed to protect you from absorbing bacteria. It’s actually your protection. So when you’re flying, your protection is gone. If you line your nasal passages with the 101 then it gives you your protection back.
I also use it on my cuticles when I fake tan, before I had Face Base I would mix it with whatever creams I had to supercharge then, I would mix it with my body creams before I had body cream. You can supercharge anything, really.
Onto the Tinted Balm. I spoke to Nicole from Glasshouse Fragrances recently and something that stuck out from that conversation was when she was talking about the difference between creating a fragrance for the skin as opposed to the home. And that got me thinking about every other type of cosmetic. So with the balms- you’ve got your 101 Ointment which is pure lanolin. How difficult was it to start playing with tints? Did you have to change anything or was it pretty straightforward?
The tints were pretty straightforward because you’re still working with what the industry calls an anhydrous formula, which is without water. So it’s just pure oils. When it gets more complicated is when you’re starting to work with water in the formula- so when you’re formulating creams, because that’s when you get into stability issues and when things separate, so you need to gel all the ingredients together. You’re literally mixing water and oil together, and keeping them together is a bit of a balance. That’s where really good cosmetic chemists’ knowledge comes to the fore.
So that was a bit more of a challenge, getting a stable formula. And then once you’ve got water in it, you have to have some form of preservative, whether it’s natural or synthetic, because anything with water can go off. It gets much more complex when you’re working with water in oil formulations, as opposed to anhydrous.
We’ve since seen countless iterations of those original products, the most recent one being the Minty 101 Ointment. You’re developing new things all the time. Are you constantly thinking about what’s next, or are you working off consumer demand?
It is a bit of both. I like to think it’s 50/50. The whole consumer driven approach, “We listen to our consumers and we just do that,” is a bit of a furphy. I think a lot of brands say they’re doing that, but I know they’re really not. They’re saying they are involving the consumer, but they’re just making the consumer feel like they’re involved.
I’m always trying to figure out what I need in my cupboard that I don’t have. It’s not about creating a new product for the sake of it. Having said that, we do sell in retailers that need new products to generate sales, and that is part of business. We are all suckers for new things. These retailers are based on excitement, category newness, the new shiny thing. So you do have to play that game, to be honest. To be in those retailers, you have to be mindful of that environment. We do products that I like to think create excitement, but also remain true to our useful, no-nonsense aesthetic.
For example, Lip Water for us was a beautiful product. It was a bit more shimmery, pretty, and felt a bit more frivolous, but that formula is super high quality. You’ve got your hydro hyaluronic acid, liquid lanolin and mineral mica. It’s a really simple, elegant formula that’s really like a drink of water for the lips. I had a lot of fun patching together the useful part while being fun at the same time.
I think you’ve nailed that balance. I could be wrong, but I feel like you guys have new things coming out so often. Given the volume at which you’re developing new products, do you ever suffer from creative block at all?
I can go for six months without a thought about a new product, easily. I could probably go for a year without a thought of a new product. But the minute I go “Okay, let’s just think. If I were to do something new, what might it be?” And then it just flows really easily.
I had a moment the other day. I remember thinking “I can’t think of anything I want to do right now- is this going to be a problem?” I’ve always got a few formulas in my cupboard that I have been developing for years- little things I’ve brought up myself or worked with my lab on. And suddenly I’m like “Oh, okay, I know exactly what to do with this! Now this is perfect.” I got really excited, and it’s something that I’m going to bring to life in the next of six to 12 months.
So, in answer to your question, if you have to force it, you shouldn’t do it. I’m playing the long game in my company and I always have, but there are some businesses that are playing that short game where they just want slam it out harder and faster. What’s that new trend? Let’s get that out. That’s completely different business model to me.
On those many riffs on the original products, have any fallen flat?
Yeah! We had a hand cream which would, ironically, do really well today. It was a hand cream with antibacterials and SPF and it was awesome, but it totally bombed. It was just too many things in one product. It was too much for consumer. It was too complicated, and people didn’t come to us for antibacterial- they’ve got Dettol for that, and I get that now. I thought it was really problem solving and clever, and it was, but it wasn’t what people wanted from us. That’s something that’s really helped guide me. I don’t do things that I don’t think people want from us, that people will go to someone else for.
Although so many of us are still calling it Lanolips, it’s really Lano now because there are so many other products for the face and the body and the hands. How did you make that shift into products for the face and body, and how does the process differ from the original products?
It’s interesting because we had an “everywhere cream” in the range in 2015. I wanted to create a cream, but I didn’t want to play in face. I didn’t believe face creams were really that different than creams for the rest of your body- and I still don’t believe that, to be honest. There’s small differences, but they’re not as complicated as they’re made up to be. So I created Everywhere Cream to be a face cream, body cream, everything cream. I love that cream. It’s a staff favourite. It’s a PR favourite. It’s a beautiful cream. However, no one used it on their face. Nobody. No one. My general manager said to me “KC. Unless it says Face, no one is going to use it on their face.” So I had to accept that, and I do.
In answer to your question, to make something for face, it wasn’t about taking that cream and putting it in a tube and putting Face on it. I had to figure out what made a cream a face cream. I spoke to my dad, who is my Oracle of Bullshit. “Tell me the truth. What makes the difference between a normal cream and a face cream? Tell me how it is.” He said, the main thing is if you’re not doing acne treatments, if you’re not trying to do anti-ageing stuff which is a totally different thing, and if you want a really, really, really great face cream that hydrates and does all the right antioxidant things- what you really need is a really heavy dose of vitamin E.
What vitamin E does is, or any antioxidant, but but vitamin E is the gold standard of antioxidants, is two things. It protects your skin from the free radicals in the environment, and it stops oil oxidising, and oil oxidising in your pores goes black, and turns into blackheads. So it’s really as simple as that.
And I made it a little bit lighter, because the cream was a bit rich for people so I wanted it to be a bit more universal in strength, and that was it! I think we did a beautiful job. Our day cream is our number one seller in the face space. People really love it, like really love it. It’s just a really, really good, solid, elegant, good-quality face cream.
Naturally it’s going to be different for every product, but can you give me a general idea of how the product development process works, and how long it takes from conceptualisation through to it being available for consumers?
A quick NPD [new product development] will be 12 to 18 months. That’s if nothing goes wrong.
And how does it happen? You come up with the idea…
In some cases, I’ll put together some basic formulas myself if I’ve got the right things, and then I will send it down to the lab and talk them through what I want in it, what I don’t want in it, what I want it to look like, feel like, smell like, and then they’ll come back with some samples, and then you can kind of do that back and forth until it gets to an approved sample. Then it has to go into stability, and then really everything’s out of your hands. You just sit and wait and cross your fingers and hope that it doesn’t fail- it often fails! If it passes, then you’re ready to start. You start to make your tubes, and you start to make your boxes. From the moment of a passing stability to really pressing the button, you’ve still got another 46 months to have it in your hand and ready to put on the shelf.
Lanolips is a global business. You mentioned Boots earlier, but you’ve got a number of international stockists. How has being stocked globally changed the way you operate the business?
That’s a really good question because it wasn’t a change from one day to the next because it happened gradually. When we first launched in the UK, I still ran out of Australia. The UK was just a shipment, like we would do to Priceline or Mecca, but we just shipped overseas instead.
Having said that, there were a lot of late night phone calls. Late night phone calls were part and parcel of my first five years of business. We have a team in the US now as well on the ground who run my US business. We speak to them once a week. We have really detailed phone calls with them. We have to have a global view on the world. We have to know what’s going on everywhere. We have to know where stock is on the water around the world. Logistically, it’s very complex. There’s very little glamor and fun of a global business. There’s a lot of logistics. You have to have spreadsheets. You have to know all that stuff.
You’ve sat at the helm of Lano for 11 years now, although the concept came to you far earlier than that. Over that time, what have been the biggest changes that you have seen within the beauty industry?
The way we communicate. Brands that really work have a chance now. If you had a product that worked, it didn’t matter if you didn’t have the budget to get on TV or get in a magazine 11 years ago, you could just pack up and go home. There were very few indie brands. Now, there’s an opportunity. If the consumer likes your brand and they like what you stand for and if your product works, it’s fair game. That’s a great leveller for any industry. It’s a level playing field, and I love that. I love the fact that bloggers who are really talented writers can they at the top of their game now, because they’re really talented. That’s a level playing field. You’re not waiting for someone at the top to select you. I love the democracy of it.
So those are the changes we have seen- what changes do you think we can expect to see over the next few years?
I think Gen Z is a really interesting generation. I might be wrong, but I think it’s the TikTok generation. I’ve got a 17 year old niece and I was on holiday with them last year and I learned a lot. My kids are kind of that generation as well, so I’m starting to understand them really well, because I never really understood millennials that well. I’m learning Gen Z much more organically, and what I’m learning is they are really, really funny and they have a very, very sophisticated bullshit detector. That’s interesting in terms of how it’s going to affect brands and the level of bullshit they’re able to spin. There’s a whole thing towards transparency and authenticity and that’s just going to get greater and greater.
My final question- what is next for Lano?
I’ve got about four new products that we’re working on at the moment. Two coming up soon. They’re kind of a spin on some current products, and then there are some products that are what I think is a fairly new category for us as well. We’ve always got new products coming out because that’s fun.
But also, global domination. We’ve had a huge two years in Europe, in North America, in Canada. We expect that to continue. From the very, very beginning when I launched the brand, I had the cute sheep on it and I made it kind of kitschy and for me, it was always designed to be a global brand. It wasn’t designed for Australia. It was almost cultural cringe for Australia, and I knew that at the time.
So for me, I always wanted to be a global brand. And that’s what we are still heading towards.
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Photography and styling: Gemma Watts
