The following is an excerpt from the Glow Journal Podcast. You can listen to the full interview with Zoë Foster Blake now on iTunes and Spotify.
GLOW JOURNAL: We know you as a skincare doyenne, an author and a beauty editor- but before all of that, you started life growing up in the New South Wales’ Southern Highlands. Can you remember your very first memory of beauty?
ZOË FOSTER BLAKE: [My first memory] of beauty, on the whole, would probably be my mum. She was really low key. She had one Helena Rubinstein palette and a Revlon lippie. I remember the smell of the Revlon lippie because she’d kiss me goodnight, I would always smell that. She was an Amaris wearer, or Anais Anais, so those perfume associations were the strongest.
For me, personally, it was Chapsticks. The collection built, and built, and built- that was my first little piece of beauty, identity, and having something special that was just mine.
Your father, David Foster, is a celebrated novelist. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I imagine creativity was something that was celebrated in your house.
Yes! By force and boredom, mostly, because we didn’t have a TV and there were a lot of us- it was a blended family. There was a lot of “Put on a play!” which was clever from mum because then we’d spend the whole day getting it together.
Mum was also an aerobics instructor back then. It wasn’t her actual job- she works in the prison system and has for a long time, in maximum security men’s prisons. She’s still there in her seventies! But she used to teach some aerobics, and then she would come home and make us do it.
So we had a very free range, funny on reflection, rural upbringing.
“Free range” is a really nice way of putting it.
Yeah! Free range. No fences. Animals, cows, chooks, bees, all of that.
What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
I thought it might have something to do with writing. I wanted to be a cheerleader for a long time. I didn’t really understand what they were, but I had seen them in movies and it seemed appealing. [I wanted to be] a dancer of some ilk. Janet Jackson’s backup dancer, preferably. There were loose ideas ideas, but I knew I liked writing and that it might head that way.
And it did! You finished high school, you went to the University of New South Wales and did a Bachelor of Media and Communication. I understand that, at around that time, you started applying for magazine internships.
Yes, but not until the end. I think now, probably, people are a lot more “pro,” and they get into that a lot earlier. I didn’t write for the uni paper or anything like that. I just did my work- I was trying to earn money at the same time to live, so I would do my touch time and then get out of there.
We finished our degree and we were honestly told in our farewell at graduation “You won’t find a job out there. It’s really tough.” But actually, in a funny way, that was really good advice because when I hear “You can’t, you won’t”, I immediately go aggressively in the other direction. So I would go through the paper (this was the olden days), and look for any job in any magazine. There was a sub-editor job at Ralph magazine, there was a fishing magazine, a wine magazine. I was 21 and I didn’t know who I was. I just knew I wanted to get there. And that’s how I got my first mag role at Mania, which is a little boys magazine for five to seven years old.
Why magazines specifically? Why not another area of the media?
What else was there though? There was only really mags and newspapers. This is in the early 2000s and, apart from copywriting (which is another avenue I considered), I thought “Well, this seems like a way that I can write and be paid for it.” I couldn’t think of another way. There was no internet. None of that was really happening back then.
You mentioned mania, which about gaming for little boys, and then you moved on to Smash Hits…
Rest in peace. That was a real moment. We did the Australian Idol cover with Shannon Noll and Guy Sebastian. I directed that cover shoot.
That’s two iconic moments in hair as well- the fro and the flavour saver.
I treated every magazine… I would take it for what I could. I am a five year old boy underneath this- my favourite food group is birthday cake and I loved games and playing, so Mania was fun for that. I got a lot of toys and lollies. At Smash Hits I got to interview LL Cool J, The Black Eyed Peas, all of these musical people that I adored. I think every job I was just like “Well, I’m here to have fun with it.” Take what you can.
Did you have a vested interest in beauty at that point, or were you just happy to be writing?
Can you tell I didn’t?! I had one Covergirl palette that was shimmery green and blue, and a Muster. I had a Muster hair straightener that I really spent a lot of money on. I didn’t wear much makeup though, no. I had very thin brows- it was a terrible time for brows. So no, I, I didn’t read the beauty pages. I didn’t know it was a job. It was ludicrous to think that it could be a profession.
And then it did become a profession! You were around 23 when you were offered a role at Cosmo [Cosmopolitan Magazine] as Beauty Editor. I read that Mia Freedman, who was the editor at the time, had assumed that, like most beauty editors, you would eventually want to move into a magazine editor role- but you told her you had little to no interest in managing a team. Why was that?
It’s a natural progression for beauty editors, because you do learn the business side of the title. For anyone who’s running their own business, you’ve got to know how to do business as well as do content now. Back then, it was only the beauty editor who would be put in front of advertisers, so it was a very normal line of career path, but it just didn’t appeal to me at all because I saw editors and they didn’t get to write anymore. They got to do the editor’s letter, and there was a lot of creativity involved in putting a magazine together every month, but it just seemed more like a staff management role. I told her that under no circumstances would I be doing that! Which was confusing, I think, for her. But she was the one who ushered me into writing a book, because she thought “This is a person who needs more writing, so just write a book then.” I had already started a blog by that time as well, so I was already ludicrously very, very excited about writing. Constantly. Before work, after work, weekends.
That’s so nice! That’s how you know you’re doing the right thing.
Yeah! It didn’t feel like work. It was joyful.
It was during your time in that Beauty Editor role, that soon became Beauty Director, before moving on to Harper’s [Bazaar] that you became the beauty authority that we now know you us. You mentioned that you just wanted to write and weren’t a “beauty girl,” so to speak, before that- so how did your relationship with beauty change during that time?
I think, in a way, that it probably informed the connections I have with women to this day. I came in not knowing anything and I was like, “Oh, this is a highlighter! I don’t really know what it is, so let’s learn together!” As a beauty editor, you learn on the job. I think people, mistakenly, sometimes believe that when you write beauty, you have to know everything about beauty. But the truth is you’re a journalist who is learning about something to then convey to your reader or your listener. So you learn on the job.
In my first week, I got my hair cut by Jennifer Aniston’s hairstylist who was visiting from the US. I got a whole kit of Stila’s new makeup, and I was just like “This is not real! This job is outrageous!” So I learned on the job, but I never learnt much too in-depth about anything. You just learnt little tidbits to be able to pass on.
I became very passionate about beauty in as much as I saw the connection it gave me to people. I loved being, you know, at the dinner party and always having something to offer people, like “Save you money, just buy this. This is the useful one, this is the best one that I love.” I live for recommendations. I just love them so much. So the recommending and the connecting was probably the thing that gave me the passion, more so than actually writing about mascara.
You took the recommending even further when you launched your blog, Fruity Beauty, in 2006. In 2006 blogs obviously existed, and social media existed to an extent in the form of things like MySpace, but very few people were running businesses online- but you went out and started writing a blog.
It wasn’t a business in the true sense. I was finding that I had such limited space in the mag and that I just wanted to go in depth. I think that’s the beauty of YouTube tutorials and Instagram and podcasts, is that beauty needs visual aid. It needs kinetic learning- you, doing it with them. Writing about lipstick on a page didn’t always work. I wanted to do little videos, and photos write reams and reams and reams about a subject- and I was allowed to, because it was my own blog.
When I started it had to be anonymous because it wasn’t a Cosmo approved blog, but I wasn’t writing anything scathing- it was just fun about blackheads and fake tan. It gave me a good sense of discipline because I was writing every morning, and to no one for a long time, and I just enjoyed it.
I’m glad you said that, because I was going to ask what you felt that a blog could give you that the magazine couldn’t, but I guess that was space and freedom.
Yes, and multimedia. And the ability to edit and update, because once it’s in print I would always panic- “Did I get the name wrong, or the price?” That’s something that scares the shit out of me as a control freak. I now had the ability to go back in and say “I got that wrong,” and change it.
You’ve mentioned that you were just writing to no one for the first little while, but did you start to get a “feeling” about digital? Did you have any idea that it was going to explode it in the way that it has?
I must have heard a whisper of what blogs were from somewhere. Maybe it was from the US Cosmo team who had one, but something inspired me to say “We need one [a blog] as a magazine. It’s not enough to just be print. Guys! What about the internet?!” At that time, ACP was owned by Ninemsn so there was a lot of red tape and it was all just a bit too hard, which is why I ended up going independently.
But it started to take off, and that’s when blogging started to get big- around 2007 and 2008. Fruity [Beauty] was there, just plodding along. I could see the engagement. When I started to get comments and people talking to me, the idea that I could talk back to people in real time and have a dialogue informed Amazing Face, which then informed Go-To, because I had the feedback and I knew what women wanted or didn’t understand- because they told me themselves.
You worked in magazines up until December 2014, which is when you and your last column for Sunday Style. Print media had, obviously, changed out of sight since that first job at Mania. Was there a feeling amongst industry people that print was perhaps….
Not at all. I left Harper’s to start Primped [primped.com.au, as Founding Editor], because this was someone basically offering me creative control, infrastructure and money. It was a big company that was very experienced, saying “We want Fruity Beauty, but as a business.” It felt crazy to say no to that. And it was the risky move. That was the first time in my life I’d made a risky move- to leave a really impressive title, Beauty Director at Harper’s Bazaar. I loved the guys there and I loved the people, and it was still the golden days of mags. But I very quickly saw that at advertiser events, I’d been at the table at the front with Harper’s, and that was not the case anymore.
But there was that transition period where everyone was still one hundred percent putting everything into print and masthead, and digital was just seen as the poor sister.
Let’s talk about the lead up to the Go-To launch in 2014. You had spent quite some time trialling and reviewing beauty products, recommending things, working out what works and what doesn’t. At what point, though, did you recognise a gap and think, “Oh, I could fill this with my own product”?
It wasn’t me who recognised it. It’s a bit of a long story, but essentially a friend of mine, Megan Larsen from Sodashi, she and I are good friends, I love her products and I loved just having a wine with her and spitballing about products, what she’s doing and what I thought she should do. She sort of laughingly said, “Why don’t you do it?” I said “Don’t be ridiculous.” She said “Well, you’ve got the platform, you’ve for the following, you’ve got the trust, and I believe you know what you want and what you like.”
Until that point, it had never had crossed my mind. I’m always so grateful for her for planting the seed. She’s wonderful and incredibly knowledgeable. She then gave me a formulator, which I think was key, because without that, what have you got? They’re like gypsies and wizards- they hide and they’re hard to fine. They’re very talented and in-demand. We’ve had a couple now, but Pete, who’s the original, he’s still with us and he’s phenomenal.
Other than that, what was next? You’ve been recommended a manufacturer, so how do you get the brand up?
I thought “Okay, well, what would it look like? What would it look like if I were to do a brand?” This was in 2012, so the products I was using then sort of informed the five launch products- the basics. I knew, because Amazing Face had come out and some of the feedback was from hair and makeup, but I feel like these are two areas that women were relatively confident in. Skin is just… oh god. It was made hard because of going to department stores and feeling intimidated, or going to a facialist and being told to buy 10 products. It’s closely tied to your confidence, and if you’re having a bad skin day, that sort of informs everything else.
I just thought that it could be a lot easier. I knew what was marketing hype and bullshit because I’d say through a million presentations myself, and I knew what really worked. I was in a very lucky spot there, to be able to combine the two- what customers wanted or needed, and what actually worked.
And- fun! I’d always done “fun”. I think beauty should be fun, and I reject the notion of it being serious and scary, intimidating and complicated, and 12 steps long. You do you, but I think there’s a lot of us, particularly in Australia, who just need the basics. It goes back to my core love of recommending. They just don’t want to know 10, they want to just know the one. What’s the one?! I want to buy the one that works. And so I like saving women time and money, and doing the groundwork for them.
What were your non negotiables, other than “It has to be fun,” and “It has to work”?
Well, the other little seed that was planted before Megan was a retailer asking me to do a capsule collection of makeup. That was after Amazing Face, and we were going down that path. They said “So we’re going to send you the designs, and they’ll have your name on them.” I was like, “Where are they being made? What are they? What’s in them?” And they said “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that.” I said “I would argue that I do, if I’m going to put my name on it and push it on people and put it on their face.” So that was a hard no, but that really made me say that if I was ever going to make something, particularly because I knew it was going to be digital and it was going to be arriving in the mail and girls didn’t have a chance to go down to DJs or wherever and test it on their hand, that it had to be safe.
“Safe” is probably what spawned our clean push. We called it safe, because it had to be bulletproof. It cannot piss off the skin. Mostly, back in 2013, it was because I didn’t want to get returns and rashes and angry skin and people being upset with me, because I’d made a product that made their skin unhappy. I would never allow that to happen.
My formulator, Pete, was very well versed in clean, natural and organic skincare. So why we did t was, really, a self protection mechanism. If you can make people put things on their skin, make it really, really clean and safe. Don’t put anything there that could risk irritation. Now that is known as clean beauty. “Clean” has got marketing around it now and it’s a lot more popular, but we did it as a gift to our consumer to make sure that she felt confident using it.
You launched with five products, and you’ve just said that the five products you launched with were kind of informed by what you were already using. Why those specific five products though? Why a cleanser, body oil, face cream, lip balm and exfoliating wipes?
The body oil, I would definitely not launch now. That was just because I was obsessed with them back then. It was funny to launch that, because I was like “It’s a multipurpose everything balm.” That was from me who travelled a lot and always needed something on to go.
If I talk about “essential” and what I think our brand does the best, which is simple and uncomplicated, then my whole MO is to get a full kit of Go-To. I’m getting really close! When I travel, it’s just Go-To. I do bring in my high strength serums and masks and shit like that, but in terms of daily essentials, that’s where I wanted to get it before I started doing things like body oils or perfumes, or whatever else seemed less essential. But the other four products, they’re the daily needs.
I think the fact that I launched a body oil in 2014, compared to launching one now… maybe in that five now it would have been Face Hero, an oil cleanser or a mask. I always make products that I personally want, because I’m a selfish founder, but we also recognise that there are a lot of customers out there that have oily or acne prone skin, and so I have to get out of my own selfish head sometimes.
So that was April 2014. Your next launch was Face Hero in Feb 2015…
…and we had no idea how well that would go. To the point where we didn’t replenish. We were an embryonic company that hadn’t made sure that we had stock of every other product. What we now know is that when people buy a new product, they also grab a cleanser, and the moisturiser, and a lip balm as well. We got to the brink of selling out on so many levels.
But Face Hero was a dream to formulate. It was just one of those effortless products. I’m a rosehip fan, but just rosehip… I’ve I’ve been down this path before. It’s often rancid by the time it gets to the consumer, and it needs supporting antioxidants, and we could just do better. Every go to product is like, “I like using this. What could we do to make it a bit more useful?” And so that [Face Hero] is still our gateway product and a huge bestseller. We sell one a minute. We also sell one Transformazing every 10 seconds. But Face Hero really taught us a few lessons about business- like “Be more prepared.”
That launch was followed by Super Handy, Pinky Nudey Lips!, Transformazing, Face Case, Zincredible and, most recently, Fancy Face. What did I do before Fancy Face?
It’s been wonderful, this launch, because it has really cemented the trust that our customer has in us. I don’t think a lot of our customers were using an oil cleanser, didn’t know what it was and was scared if they had oily skin, but they trust us to guide them. I love that so much. I take it very seriously, and I believe in the products and we work so hard on them so I know that they’ll love them. So I think we’ve elevated a lot of people’s cleansing routine, and we’ve given them much more nourished and clean skin.
You know what I love? Like yourself- the SPF message. It’s so hardcore these days. Everyone is talking about it.
I’m a bully. I could probably rein it in…
No! No one wants to holiday with me. My girlfriends, back in 2007 we were in Vegas, and they were like “Can you shut up?! We’re here to have fun and all you talk about is SPF!”
But anyway, to my point. If you’re wearing a lot of SPF, you’ve gotta get it off somehow. That’s the second message of the SPF message- just take it off properly with an oil cleanser.
So there’s a lot of products now. Are you constantly thinking of what’s next?
Sooooo many more. Our NPD is very slow. Let’s not even talk about the high strength sunscreen- six, seven years and counting. Because we’re working with clean ingredients and we don’t have those stabilisers and synthetics that make everything uniform and perfect, and because I’m super fussy… and I don’t care, I want to be fussy We’ve held back launches because I’ve changed tact at the last minute, much to the chagrin of the whole company, because I’m a person who is run by her gut. Transformazing [a sheet mask] was going to be a cream mask to begin with. I just had a 3am thought, “No, it has to be a sheet mask because this is the mask I want girls to wear before makeup,” and I think cream masks usually infer, not always, but before bed.
Anyway, those moments are really important. The gut leads our NPD. We have probably about seven or eight products slated, but when they want to launch is when they want to launch. So we might put it in for one November, but then for whatever reason, whether it’s manufacturing or formulaic, it’s held back.
That’s the joy of not announcing the deadline to everyone.
You can’t do it. It’s such a pest though, for the whole marketing team. They’re like, “Can we please have a date?” The lab are saying “We promise we’ll be ready soon.” Or I’ll say “I just don’t like the fragrance anymore.”
Fragrance is actually a huge part of our brand. We have a small minority that are like, “Can you do fragrance free?” But I won’t because, to me, an olfactory response to a product is so important- for bonding, for ritual, for self care and for having that moment. I think we’re really good at fragrance.
I think you are too. How cool that you were saying one of your first memories of beauty is the scent of the products your mom was using- how wild that in however many years I could be asking someone else “What’s your first memory of beauty?” And they could say Go-To.
One of my girlfriends does this! She says “I know that when I smell Fancy Face, it’s time for bed.” She’s like a little baby that needs a routine.
You have mentioned that what Go-To does well is simplicity. What I love about Go-To, as a consumer, is that you can just integrate it piece by piece into an existing routine. Having been a beauty editor for such a long time, was that a decision you made consciously?
One of our core pillars is “Plays well with others.” We believe that you can do whatever you want with your skin. Go hard on your retinol and your vitamin As and your AHAs- but you’re going to need barrier protection. You’re going to need nourishment. We’re the sort of sweet, calming hug in your bathroom. When you’ve had sunburn, or you’ve got an itchy rash, or whatever it is, when your skin is being bitchy and upset, come to us. Use Face Hero and VUFC [Very Useful Face Cream] and we’ll nourish you. So whatever happens, whether you go getting your fillers and your peels and your microdermabrasion, you’re still going to come home and want to put something lovely and like a big blanket on your skin. And that’s us.
That’s not to say that we won’t get into high-strength later on down the track. But for now, we’re very much building a little army of tools that you can use for the whole day. We’ve got pretty much a full kit, then you can bring in whatever else you need.
But then I also think trust comes into it. You’re educating consumers on what an oil cleanser is. They trust you on that, but you can’t be like, “Hey, here is retinol!” to someone who’s never heard of it before and be like, “Just use it.”
Shit no, god. They always want an eye cream. I don’t use eye cream and I don’t really believe in them. They’re just little, expensive pots of moisturiser. But I do believe in high strength retinol eye serum. But your best chance is using SPF! So I can’t make a product that I don’t use and believe in, which is why we won’t do an eye cream.
I just think, how could I go out to market and do three weeks of press talking about a product that I don’t really use? I can’t.
For the five years that followed Go-To’s launch, you remained digitally native in Australia. For a lot of consumers, particularly those that are using Go-To as their introduction to proper skincare, beauty is really tactile- they want to feel it, pick it up and play with it before committing to the purchase. Why the decision to launch online?
I knew that’s where my people were- the people who had been following me through blogging, Instagram or PRIMPED. I’d been a beauty digital person for about five years by the time we launched, and honestly, I think the idea of retail, distributors or a shop would have pushed me into overwhelm and I would have given up. But to have a warehouse and a team just shipping it out seemed completely achievable, which is why so many young women can now start a business because there’s no barrier to entry. You just need some basics. There’s a whole industry that supports that now, which is awesome.
So it felt achievable, really. But then as we grew and grew, what I realised was that having that interaction with the customer from the first email, the order confirmation to how it arrived with them meant I got to play with them and I got to teach them about our brand.
I say to the team that the shipper, the box you get, is our flagship store. It has to give you the feeling of the brand as soon as you open it- the colours, the language, the delight, the surprise, all of it. The gift has to be useful and on brand. I think that was a really important connection, and engagement with our customer meant giving her that experience. I take great joy in it and still do. Everything you read when you get that box is from me. It’s the one thing I won’t let go of in terms of writing. That sense of fun was important. I like to have fun with their consumer.
You’re not just online now because you launched into Mecca last year…
And US Sephora! That was a great learning curve. That probably made us keen to go into Mecca a bit quicker. When I say Mecca, I really should say retail. Retail wasn’t at the front of my mind. I knew it was inevitable, but we were also having such a great time going direct to consumer so there was no real push. We had been approached over the years, but it just felt like more hassle than it was worth and that we wouldn’t really get anything out of it, except for a touch point for the customer. But that’s why we do pop ups or the peach truck or things like that- to go out and see the guys.
But US Sephora, that got us used to the idea of having a wholesale model, so when we made the decision of who to go with for retail in Australia, it’s gotta be best in field.
Yes- Jo Horgan [Mecca founder], our Queen and saviour.
It’s been incredible. Our customer loves being able to go into Mecca to see the products and play with them and touch them and smell them. I think Mecca is wonderful and very in key with us- educational, fun, taking delight in beauty and treating it as a beautiful little moment, rather than, say, a department store and getting lost amongst a million other things and legacy brands. We would not be looked after in there. It’s kind of going full circle from what I was trying to avoid when I launched a brand, which was being stuck in a department store and not knowing what to do.
I’m going to save the US for a little bit because I have a number of questions on that. When launching into retail with Mecca, you were saying it wasn’t part of the plan from day one. On plans, you said to the sweet, beautiful angels at The Daily Talk Show that you aren’t really a five year plan person- you’re a believer that as long as you’re doing good work in this moment, that’s what’s important. Is that difficult when you’ve got a team?
Yes. It’s got to be the most infuriating thing to have a founder and CCO who’s like “Guys, I’m just going to go with my gut!”
But it’s true, it is about the work you do today. It is about every email and every hour and every decision and every opportunity and every engagement you choose to make with your team or your customer. I think that sets you up for the next bit. So whilst we definitely need plans, in terms of product rollout for the sake of manufacturing and packaging and so on, how that comes to be is led from what I believe to be the right choice for the brand. That is a lot of pressure, but I try to see it not as scary, but as a privilege to steer that ship.
Now that we have retail partners there’s an element, which is that they are looking for “newness” and they are looking for particular products. They might say “Oh, this category is really growing in store. Would you guys ever do one?” And I might say “You know, we weren’t thinking about that as the next launch. but if you really think that that…” Because I appreciate their experience and that they’re in there every day. They know what’s selling and what the customers are asking for. That makes me a bit more fluid.
But in terms of five year plans? Impossible.
Well things that we have now didn’t even exist five years ago!
There was even a time when we thought “Oh maybe we’ll head into China!” Well, no. Just no. That’s just such a big, big, big market that we’ve got no idea about. So then you go “Well, what would be our next natural market?” And I’m like “No, we have so much work to do in the US!” One of the things I believe in is “fewer things better.” Do two markets and do them really well.
We’re not growing for the sake of growing. We’re growing at the right pace for us because we’ve just jumped a massive chasm from a small to a medium sized business. That was fragile- getting in all these new stuff and going into retail. It was tricky to navigate. I think we’ve come through it now and I’m really proud of our team. We’re big, but we’re close. We know our purpose, and that’s way more important than scaling for the sake of it.
You are bigger now, but still a niche brand in the grand scheme of things. I would imagine that maintaining that day-by-day approach would be a lot easier in that environment compared to if you were part of a big multinational. What would you say are some of the other advantages of being niche?
We’re nimble. We’re agile. We can respond quickly to things. When we have these big gaps between products, we can launch blitzes or limited editions, little travel sets and things like that. That’s a litmus test for us, to test whether or not the customer wants it before we go into full scale production. Things like that are always going to pop up, and to be able to be nimble is really important. You know, duck and weave. Launch a kid’s brand, if you feel like it!
So back in 2003 when Mia Freedman assumed that you had dreams of being the editor of a magazine and you were like, “I don’t want to manage a team”… you are now. You’ve got a business.
I know, and I didn’t mean for that to happen! But what I have got is really excellent people working with me. I have my marketing director, Leonie. I have my managing director, Brad. I have a really experienced marketing team who are just guns. They get the tone and they’ve made it their own. I have a whole formulations team now. We’ve got art, we’ve got design, we’ve got warehouse, we’ve got logistics- we’ve got grownups now. That was a part of the leap.
I so believe that everyone’s got a superpower. And guess what? Mine’s not managing people or logistics. I’m the the CCO! So my job is literally to direct the creative and marketing. There’s NPD, of course, but also the launches and big ideas. That’s my fun and my joy and my delight in my role, but it’s about hiring the right people to look after the people.
Your job is, of course, to lead the creative- but do you think that you have strengthened that business management muscle at all?
Yes. You can’t be in business for seven years and then that happening. A lot of it just happened last year when we went through this growth, and up at a board level where it’s about shareholdings, governance, admin and budgets, and big boring shit like that. Can you imagine me in there?! It’s an ongoing joke that they’ve got 40 minutes of my attention before I just start doodling.
I get some of my best work done in there though. I believe that with creatives sometimes, when you’re given a boring task… I come up with some of my best ideas. So when I’m told to talk about numbers, I secretly write emails to myself about it marketing executions and names of products, which are my hardest thing to come up with. But they always come when I’m in a boring meeting or when I’m going for a walk with my child in the pram- whenever I’m not thinking about the task.
Part of the appeal, product efficacy aside, is that voice. Something that is of interest to me, and it’s quite meta, but the thought of you training up a team of people and saying “This is my voice and now you are going to write in it.”
Again, the first people first step is hiring people who can write. It doesn’t matter what style of writer they are. When we hire, we get formidable CVs. People with reams of experience. But there’s a little bit of magic in there that I can see. I might have to hone them a little bit and make tiny little tweaks, but those are just tone lessons. That was me, going from kids to music to glossies- I had to constantly [change tone]. It was a real lesson in tone, and I think a good writer should be able to do lots of different tones.
I like it now because I want the brand to be able to stand alone from me. I don’t want people to have to know who I am to know about the brand. It should stand on its own two feet. But also, my tone as a writer evolves. I probably don’t write as much like the Go-To voice anymore. That’s what was interesting when we were doing Go-To, and redoing Bro-To- saying, “Who is this person?” Getting to that deep dive space of going “Who is this person? How do I write for them?” Because it’s not the Go-To voice, it’s a whole new brand.
That voice to me feels inherently “Aussie.” The whole sentiment of “Holy shit, you look amazing,” is universal, but the vernacular feels Australia. Launching into Sephora in the US in 2018… do they “get” it? How are you going about educating them?
I had to turn the dial down on the swearing, that’s for sure. They like it because it stands out. We do still use “Holy shit, you look amazing” on tote bags and paraphernalia and so on, and with the editors- they love it and think it’s outrageous.
We haven’t had to change too much because it is actually gives us a point of difference in a really, really, really noisy market. We’re not the earnest, clean gang, we’re not the legacy brand, we’re not the supermarket or drugstore brand. We’re in this nice little gap in the middle where we have the quality of product that could be a lot more expensive and could sit in the fancy stores, but we are very accessible.
For us, it’s about education. I think our biggest challenge in the US is to get those thousand true fans and to get that loyalty, because I don’t have the platform there that I have here. I have to work harder for it, which I like. I like a challenge. I love doing media over there because the media is about the products, not my personal life. Nothing else. It’s just “Let’s talk about the skincare”. I relish that challenge and it’s a good one.
What we’re now doing is building that loyalty and working with influences, which we don’t do here. That’s been so useful.
I imagine influences will be a part of your answer to this, but what have you found to be the big differences between the way the US approaches beauty and business as opposed to Australia?
I’ve got a lot of privilege, but the main privilege I had when I came into Go-To is having had a following and masthead experience. I went in with a beauty book that lots of people had read. I had the trust and a profile, too, to get a pretty good kick from the outset. Of course, if the product stinks, it’s not gonna last.
We haven’t had to rely on influencers here. What we do instead is gift for the sake of gifting. We want everyone to try it and we believe in the quality of the product. If they want to talk about it, they will.
In America, it’s very different. I don’t have that platform. Through using those influencers, we found that the girls and guys between 10,000 and 50,000 [followers] are the sweet spot. They’re really good at content. They’re really in depth. They really engage with their followers, and they do incredibly in depth explanations of the products, which is what we want to do.
Well it’s not enough, anymore, to just say “Love this cleanser!”
Yes, it’s not a picture product. It needs a video- which is why I did one! A lot of mates online have done the whole thing [using the cleanser] and filmed it. The mask is another one that people like to show themselves doing. That education- that was always my thing with beauty editing. Just talk them through it and make them really understand. With competence comes confidence, and that’s key.
How have you found the experience of letting go, both with the US and also the fact that you are based in Melbourne while HQ is in Sydney?
I’m up there about twice a month at the moment, or my team is down here. It’s sometimes good and sometimes bad. I am a micro-managing control freak- just ask my marketing director. But letting go is critical because it means I’m being used for my best superpowers, which is the top line stuff, the big picture stuff- not the granular, which is what I was getting down to before we moved into getting more staff. I was in touch with every single aspect of the company, from the warehouse guys to the production guys, to the formulaic guys and to the marketing guys. It was starting to make me fall out of love with the work.
I’m surprised I’m still here because I get bored of things really quickly. That’s why I write books, because it’s a new thing all the time! But Go-To constantly challenges me. That’s why I’m still very, very passionate about it and haven’t lost any passion. In fact, it grows.
Fancy face was very validating- to have these beautiful women write these comments saying “Look, you could tell me anything and I would trust you.” Not to be gross about it, but that’s me going “Okay, well we’ve earned that. We’ve built that up over the years because we’re doing the good work.” So letting go is tricky, but it’s important.
I’m about to head over to the US and do almost two weeks there, because we have to build those relationships and rethink retail, how are we going to do it and what’s happening over there. It’s a funny situation over there at the moment and it really needs some investigation. Retail is a bit tricky at the moment there, but direct to consumer will always be strong.
You’ve touched on how you have a profile here and not necessarily one in the US. With having a profile here, does that add any pressure when you’re releasing a product, or are you pretty immune to it now?
What I do feel is the huge privilege of having a massive billboard on which to talk about my products. How did we talk about products before that?! You had to rely on the media to do that and act as the middleman- it was completely in their power. Now, we get to talk directly to the consumer. That was why I got so excited about blogging, because we had that direct line. It can’t be around forever- it’s too good to be true!
I love it, and I love building up the excitement and then talking them [the audience and consumer] through it. I get so excited, and whenever I’m building a new product, I think about the Instagram posts. When I’m thinking about a new market or a new retailer, I always think about how it would look when I tell my people about it. What the excitement be like and what would the questions be? Does it seem like it fits or does it seem out of character? How would I explain it and justify it?
I feel beholden in a way, but I’m also confident enough now that I know what I’m doing. I’m a fallible human. I’m going to fuck up- it’s gonna happen. But in terms of the brand, it’s a huge, huge luxury to be able to just stand there and yell about it.
You’re an author as well- you signed a two book deal in 2007 and your first work of fiction, Air Kisses, was published in 2008. Are there any lessons you’ve learned from writing fiction that you find you apply to other areas of your work?
Oh no, it’d be the opposite! Fiction is this sacred, hallowed thing that I never get time to do. I haven’t done it since before Sonny was born five years ago. I’m just about to embark on it again. To sustain a narrative for 100,000 words is really hard. I feel rusty. I’m doing it for the joy of it. I’m not doing it for any other reason, which is a good because there’s no pressure. It’s something that lives in its own little world, whereas business, Go-To, family and everything else sort of mixes in together. What I do start doing though is listening extra close to friends’ conversations at dinner and stealing stories, names, and important stuff that I need to put in the book.
One of the greatest lessons my dad taught me was to change one key characteristic that they’re really proud of. If you’ve got a friend you would never wear jeans, put that character in jeans. If they’re a devout blonde, just make them a brunette with a fringe. So fiction is great fun, but it’s very different to everything else.
How do you find the process of writing fiction differs from writing nonfiction?
Nonfiction feels like writing columns for a magazine, or essays. It’s bitsy, short, fast-paced little blobs of content that I find easy to write. But narrative fiction is tricky.
You did mention that you haven’t really written fiction since before Sonny was born, but you have written nonfiction. How do you compartmentalise between having to write a book and managing a brand?
I classically wrote books on Saturday mornings because there was no email. It was quiet time. I will probably get back to that- I’ll just ask my darling husband to take the kids out for a few hours. I can get a lot done in a few hours because writing a book through the week has never really worked for me with fiction unless I’m on deadline. With this one, I’m not on a contract. I’m just writing for the joy of it, so to furiously bang out 3000 words on a Tuesday morning doesn’t quite feel right. It needs to feel luxurious, in a way. I’ll find the time and I’ll get into flow soon enough.
Go-To, Bro-To, Gro-To. A television show. Two children. Ten books. My final question- what is next Zoë Foster Blake?
More of this, I reckon! We’ve got a lot of backlog product that is excitedly coming out, and that will really push us, Go-To, into a very full offering for skincare. I’m also going to get stuck into [writing] a new book, and I’m excited about that.
SO that, and my son just started school, so more of just being a mum, and travel, and just all the things that I’m lucky enough to do. How lucky am I?! I get to write books and make peachy skincare products and hang out with my kids.
It feels ludicrous, but I feel, I feel very lucky.
