A mOm has shared how she set up a £10($13) million beauty business with her daughters from their home.
Maxine Laceby was working in sales until she was 25 and after becoming a mother of two daughters, she became a full-time mom.
Darcy, 22, and Margot, 19 left home to go to university, and then Maxine decided to do a university fine art degree.
During taking her degree, she thought about her lifestyle and she started brewing broth to improve her hair and skin, Birmingham Live reports.
She started making broth, Maxine boiled chicken feet and pigs trotters in pans at home. She cooks them for hours to make a gelatinous stock which she drank.
Her hair and skin started to glow after drinking broth. Her friends noticed soon and asked her about the secret remedy.
Maxine then realized that her product is effective so she bottled it and launched her company Absolute Collagen.
Now, her daughters Darcy, 22, and Margot, 19 help her too. Her company Absolute Collagen is set to turnover £10 million in just three years.
“My second project at uni was all about being the person I am and so I stripped back, let my hair go grey, wore no make-up and dowdy clothes,” said Maxine, now 53 and from Wolverhampton, West Midlands.
“It made me realize how desperately insecure I felt about how I looked and it made me rethink everything about myself. I went through an emotional and spiritual period of putting myself together and that included looking at what I was putting into my body.”
Maxine’s broth changed her hair and skin completely – and her friends soon requested her to make for them.
“People said you look sparkling, what are you doing?” said Maxine, “my skin was glowing, my hair was shiny. The only thing I could attribute it to was the broth.
“I looked into it and realized it was the collagen in the bone broth that was affecting so I began making massive vats of it at home, like some kind of white witch, and I’d have friends banging on my door for my booty!” she laughed.
Maxine researched the collagen supplement market and she saw many products available there which contained small amounts of collagen. She knew that her product contains the maximum amount of marine collagen that could be absorbed into the bloodstream – for the minimum price.
“When I was a child, we were always on the breadline,” she said, “my mom earned a minimum wage her whole life. As a six-year-old, I remember walking around department stores wondering why my mom couldn’t afford the same products as other moms.”
Maxine called the Food Standards Agency and told that she has a great product but didn’t know how to start.
The person was very helpful and excited about her product and suggested to her on the governing bodies she needed to talk to.
Maxine found a ‘blender’ which helped her to make sachets in distributing, it was palatable and not too gloopy to drink.
“He told me I could add less collagen and make more money but it was never about money, I wanted results. It was about finding a product that I knew worked and to bring it to as many people as possible.
“People told me I was selling it too cheap but I don’t think beauty should be pocket deep. So I knew I couldn’t afford a retail store or a distributor and that I’d have to do it myself from home. I spoke to competitors and they told me I was a little fish in a big lake and that I’d get eaten alive.
“But I could see there were faults in all of the products out there. I think moms are very solution-focused, we will always find a way.”
In May 2017, Maxine launched her website Absolute Collagen to interact with people directly, and she started selling products via social media.
At the end of her first financial year, she earned an amazing half a million pounds. In the second year, two and a half million and now she’s on track to turnover £10 million by the end of her third financial year.
“It’s all from one product that’s 100 percent natural and sold in recyclable sachets,” she said.
“It just grew and grew. I used an app whereby every time a sale came through, you’d hear a ping and, when it got to the stage where it was pinging all the time, my daughter said I reckon you’re onto something here. She went onto do her university dissertation on our product.”
Darcy and Margot work with their mum, and both help her in marketing and shipping some 26,000 products a year from their home in Wolverhampton. They have now bought premises in Telford to keep a huge stock and planning to move into there in March.
“We don’t outsource the distribution because that would put a barrier between us and the customer,” she said. Doing it this way means we can add in handwritten notes and little gifts like home fragrance. We also make sure we reply to every single message we receive, I think that’s important.”
“I adored every moment of being a stay at home mum but I always knew I would do something, even if I didn’t know what that would be.”
She added: “So many people feel they have nowhere to go once their children have flown the nest but 50 is young nowadays. Going to uni and starting a business at 50 excited me so much. And now my kids work with me too.
“I’m trying to work with the government and the Prince’s Trust to offer funding to re-train women after having children. I feel everything I take into the boardroom comes from being a mom.
“As a mom, you scan the room and pick up things intuitively, you can make sure people are happy without them having to say anything. I think moms can bring so much to the UK economy.”
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