Moo & Yoo’s journey stems from a frustration around a lack of sustainable hair care in the industry. Since then, they’ve led the charge towards green beauty, having been featured in salons across the UK, online marketplaces, and only a few weeks ago an exciting, high profile department store…
Their founders, Suzie & Olivia Gillespie, are a mother-daughter duo who have found the perfect balance between their complementary skill sets. They join us on this week’s It Runs In The Family, where we discuss the almost-cataclysmic challenges they faced so early in their journey, the tricky art of keeping work talk away from home life, and their ambitions to head up a more sustainable approach to body care.
This episode covers:
- Overcoming monumental hurdles in the first months of the business
- Managing the difficulty of separating home and work life
- Pairing complementary skills & sharing decision-making
- How the beauty industry is heading towards more sustainable practices
- Setting up branding ready for future product ranges
Episode Highlights
“Olivia and I have skills that complement each other. I do drive her a little bit crazy, because I am full of ideas and enthusiasm. I’ve got loads of passion for things, but sometimes the follow through isn’t quite so solid. I have great people skills with a lot of passion, but not always the organisational skills to go beside it, and I think Olivia definitely has that side of it.” – 3:45 – Suzie Gillespie
“Once we were on Plastic Freedom – all the other ethical marketplaces and ethical websites obviously watch what they’re doing – suddenly, we were being inundated with requests. Combine that with people wanting to keep shopping locally, and it turned a disaster into an amazing opportunity.” – 7:05 – Suzie Gillespie
“We got an email from someone on the Harrods team saying they love the look of our brands & products, would we be able to send them some samples. They were really interested in stocking us in the store. We did a bit of a double take to make sure it was real, and then once we realised it was genuinely from the Harrods team, we obviously sent our products off and they loved them!” – 9:20 – Olivia Gillespie
“We do try very hard as a family, especially when we’re with my son as well, not to talk shop because he’s not got as much interest. When we’re with him and we’re all together, we don’t, but for Olivia and I together, it is a bit of a struggle not veering into that..” – 21:00 – Suzie Gillespie
“It’s important to surround yourself with people that you can go to and will give you honest advice, and not try and fluff it up for you. You need to surround yourself with someone who’s a bit more realistic.” – 30:50 – Olivia Gillespie
“It’s a bit naive to think there’s nobody out there who can bring this farther than me, there’s nobody that can have more speciality. So you’ve got to surround yourself with people with different skill sets that complement each other. That’s how we’ve managed to grow it so far. ” – 36:45 – Olivia Gillespie
“I know it sounds really corny, but when the lab we used went into liquidation in our first few months, it was a really big learning curve for us and a really important lesson for us to learn. Actually it also cemented the relationship that we have with our chemist, which we hopefully will continue.” – 40:30 – Suzie Gillespie
“It’s important to have separation and not bring work home. If we’ve had a disagreement with work, we’re not seeing eye to eye or something’s not going as planned, you do need that separation where you can come back and spend time with your family, and not think that it’s going to get brought up again, or that it’s going to revert back to a disagreement.” – 53:35 – Olivia Gillespie