The Secret of The Best Facial

Wow, what a day of bliss! This week, after the hectic rush and prep for the fun QVC show last Sunday (hope everyone managed to get their hands on the new hand wash kit?!), I booked myself in for an hour and a half of pampering in our Duke of York’s Square treatment rooms. Heavenly! My first beauty treatment since Baby Isabel made her entry into the world and, as expected, I found the ‘me’ time the best that I’ve experienced in months! The calmness of the beautiful rooms immediately hits you as you meander downstairs, away from the hustle and bustle of the Kings Road. The beautiful Isle of Wight imagery made me feel right at home and I almost fell onto the inviting couch, I was so full of anticipation! And I wasn’t disappointed, let me tell you……

Time literally seemed to stand still for the whole treatment. One of my big bugbears with treatments (and I have had many facials and treatments, all over the world, on my travels), is that they can seem sadly all too short. I find that one always starts to feel that you are almost anticipating the end, all too quickly! Not so with our wonderful signature facial – Emma’s calm hands worked their wonders for what felt like an eternity. (She even had to tell me to stop asking if it was nearly over, as I was so surprised each time she said, ‘Oh no, not for a long while yet!’). I found the whole experience from the thorough consultation beforehand (including the key question that one is so rarely asked – ‘what do you want to gain from your treatment today?’) to the actual facial and results, to be just what I had expected and hoped for during our long preparation period as we developed the treatments. Just like our product development, the end result has to be perfect before we can share it! There are so many personal touches too, to make it precisely what you want and not just a standard treatment adapted to you. It’s totally bespoke, such is the skill of our team.

I also love the way that our team of expert therapists use the products in new ways – for instance, Emma used Deep Cleansing Mask (UK, US, Ireland) on the tricky t-zone areas and Intensive Nourishing Treatment on my dry cheeks. Sounds logical but something that I rarely remember to do. It’s an incredibly holistic way that our special team work with your skin too – looking at the whole picture. I don’t want to give away too much, as I really invite you to try this wonderful escapism for yourselves, but we also use some clever little gadgets that work naturally alongside facial massage to help really tackle all sorts of skin issues. I found it a perfect balance between actual facial massage, treatment with our hard-working products (our Special Treatments range is perfect for zoning in on specific areas of need) and the little help from the magic gadgets.

Today, two days later, my skin is crystal clear and so matt, ‘plump’ and soft, that a stranger even commented on it today. This morning my husband also complimented me: ‘You must be sleeping deeply as you look great’ (music to my ears!) I think the girls will be seeing a lot more of me in the coming months! Do book up, as word is spreading and that waiting list is starting to grow. And then do come back and let us know what you think here, by posting your thoughts. We’d love to hear your experiences.

Well, now that my skin has had the best workout it has had in months, it’s time to work on the other bits of me that need trimming up! Running shoes, here I come!

Duke of York’s New Shop

What a treat today! My first day up in ‘the big smoke’ with Baby Isabel, and what a way to celebrate, walking into our wonderful new flagship store! I was full of anticipation as I walked through Eaton Square from Victoria station, and my excitement and expectations were more than satisfied. As well as a huge space to take in all that is our Liz Earle world, there are also many places to ‘escape’ into and play to your heart’s content – from the library area, stocked with health & beauty books, to the fun ‘real botanicals’ bar where you can see what our ingredients actually look, feel and smell like… to the exciting theatrical wrapping area! I also sneaked a visit downstairs with my colleague Paula, to see the stunning new treatment rooms. Even Isabel squeaked with excitement as we stepped out of the busy 'work-day' Kings Road atmosphere outside, and down into a totally chilled-out haven downstairs. What a dream – I leave for you to discover for yourselves, but it felt like stepping into an oasis of calm, with a feeling of our Isle of Wight home, ahhh dreamy. Can’t wait for my first facial in a few weeks! (Note to self: book Grannie to babysit Isabel so I can totally indulge myself for once!)

It was quite an emotional experience for me, stepping into our new flagship store, on many levels. So much is growing in our world, but our company heart remains true to our first, founding principles. It is very reassuring, as a new mum with new life-changing experiences and millions of hormones flying around, to find that – despite exciting developments – our Liz Earle world and core remains the same as it always was. Whilst my new life as a Mummy is always in flux and never the same, the Liz Earle people and all we stand for is constant. It’s incredibly reassuring, and I know that our customers feel the same way. In our busy, modern world with so little time to stand still, a little luxury that can make a daily difference is priceless. So thank you to our wonderful team, from me as a ‘customer’ for once…..

No one understands us like you do

Welcome to my first blog. It’s a biggy, as I have a fantastic opportunity for any budding future Liz Earle recruits.

My role is Director of Customer Relations, and each week I work closely with our Customer Centre and Retail stores teams both in the UK and internationally and I’m lucky to hear first hand the passion that you, our customers, have for the products, brand and the services that we offer.

I’d like to invite you to take that passion further...

As many of you will know we have now launched successfully in four John Lewis stores and we have an exciting roll out programme to new stores over the next few months, taking our products to more locations nationwide. Talking with many of you when I am in the stores, I know you love the fact that your favourite products are now available to touch and test, and that importantly there is a friendly Liz Earle Customer Advisor on hand to assist you.

Our Customer Advisors are invaluable in helping us to provide you with everything from botanical ingredients knowledge, product information, details about our philosophy, to where to find information about the next QVC shows, Liz’s talks and finding your way around the John Lewis store where they are based. They really understand what makes our company and products different, and receive full induction and ongoing training from our expert support team.

The only problem we have with our Customer Advisors is we simply don’t have enough!

So, I’m looking to recruit passionate people to become Customer Advisors in the John Lewis stores around the country, and would love to hear from you, your family or friends, or anyone who shares your enthusiasm for Liz Earle Naturally Active Skincare.

We know that no one understands us like you do and that so many of you enjoy talking to others about our “best kept beauty secret”.

If you are interested then please send your CV and details to:

People and Development
Liz Earle Beauty Co. Limited   
The Green House 
Ryde
Isle of Wight
PO33 1BD

Or visit our job pages (on our UK website)

We can’t promise that the John Lewis store nearest to you is next on the list, but we will certainly keep you up to date as we grow.

Sloane in Bloom

The whole of Chelsea is filled with flowers! This is definitely the best week of the year to take a stroll down Sloane Street. So many of the biggest names in the fashion and beauty world have put an enormous amount of time and effort to make beautiful botanical displays to theme with Chelsea Flower Show. I loved British shoe designer Emma Hope’s beach garden shop front (a home from home for us!), which apparently she just “threw together” at the last minute, uprooting plants from her garden, including two impressive 2m high Buddleia set against subtle blue-grey Cornish slate slabs. Perfumer Jo Malone filled her boutique with fabulously scented white and palest pink scented blooms, including an impressive iron bedstead overflowing with exotic varieties, from Casablanca to Tuberose and my May-time English garden favourite Lily of the Valley. Tiffany the jewellers swapped their glass front door for a giant white walk-in birdcage, complete with metal birds. Cartier outlined their world-famous watch shapes with darkly green foliage and French fashion giant Hermes took an Indian theme with arches bedecked with exotic flowers. Even the classic British menswear designers, Hackett, got in on the act with a quintessentially British male gardening theme of the potting shed, principally made with cut box stalks. So very stylish and fun – I have made a diary note to bring the family to London this time next year to marvel at this free display of talent and imagination.

Kim and I were lucky enough to get tickets this year to visit the Chelsea Flower Show today and so we headed off for the first time since my days covering the event as part of the GMTV team. Like so many, we made for the central pavilion as we wanted to catch up with gold medallist Jekka McVicar, who grows her organic herbs to an astonishingly high standard. She was watering her precious plants when we arrived, standing next to her gold medal certificate. This was her 60th gold medal no less and she proudly told us that she was the only certified organic winner too. We spent a while discussing the many botanicals we have in common, including some featured in her display such as comfrey, rosemary and melissa. One of Jekka’s favourite uses of rosemary is to make a fresh herb tea – a simple infusion of a freshly picked rosemary sprig in a jugful of just-boiled water. It sounds delicious and we promised to try it. Outside the pavilion the central avenue was lined with the big display gardens, and I spent longest admiring the ‘best in show’ gold medal winner, the Laurent-Perrier all-green grove designed by Tom Stuart-Smith. His unusual and spectacular display of 30 year-old English hornbeams were especially pruned so that the leaves and branches floated like puffed clouds, seemingly floating in mid-air. Beneath, banks of velvety moss and grasses provided a textured botanical blanket, using texture and form instead of colour for variety. Pale blue-grey zinc tanks filled with overflowing water added to the calm air of tranquillity – a welcome haven for the eyes amongst all the hustle and bustle around us. 

I also enjoyed strolling along the much smaller Eastern walkway, filled with smaller gardens each with their own quirky themes, many of which were built from antique mossy stones that looked as if they’d been there for years. We were just finishing our stroll of these when a call came through on Kim’s mobile – the judging of the Sloane in Bloom competition had just taken place and we’d won second prize!! We were speechless and so very thrilled. The deserving winner was Jo Malone for her magnificent scented arrangements, but we were more than ecstatic to be judged ahead of so many top international designer stores – especially as this was our first attempt. The talented florist Jane Packer did incredibly well with her traditional garden bench surrounded by our skincare botanicals, so we’re delighted for her that we were awarded a prize. We’re already starting to think ahead now for next year, although those perfectly sculpted, cloud-filled hornbeams will definitely be a long way off.

Green Beauty

Phew! No sooner had we arrived back from our exhilarating West Coast launch in LA then it was straight off to do three special beauty evening shows on QVC. Just in time for this I received a review copy of the new, much anticipated Green Beauty Bible  (available on our UK website), out today. Written by top beauty duo Sarah Stacey and Jo Fairley, this eco-edition of the best-selling Beauty Bible series records the feedback of over 1000 individual testers to uncover which of the ‘more natural’ and ‘eco’ brands score the highest. Not only covering ranges that include natural ingredients in their formulations (like us), but also those that try to reduce their carbon footprint, minimise packaging, print with ‘green’ inks, have a genuine commitment to cruelty-free and all the rest. You know, when Kim and I started putting our range together 13 years ago, we didn’t set out to be a ‘natural’ brand – we set out to be the ‘best’ brand. This included a heavy dose of potent plant ingredients, a strong commitment to cruelty-free, minimum fuss-free packaging etc. long before it was seen as fashionable and certainly before the words ‘green,’ ‘eco’ or ‘carbon-neutral’ had entered the beauty dictionary. Being a ‘greener’ beauty brand is only one part of what makes us tick, which also includes a genuine commitment to outstanding customer service, research into product safety and efficacy and always aiming to be an affordable luxury.

As a brand, we fared so well in the original Beauty Bible that I did wonder quite how we would compete now with many of the newer ranges to hit the shelves in recent years. After all, 13 years on and we still stick to our founding principles and our formulations are pretty much the same as they were when launched. So you can imagine the delight/relief to discover our multi-tasking Cleanse & Polish is still top of the Cleansers section (more than 80 were trialled). With 9.5 out of a possible 10, C&P as we affectionately call it, remains the number 1 highest scoring product of all time! WOW!  It was also rated one of the book’s ‘Star Buys’ because of its price and the fact that it lasts for ages.

Alongside the tester’s favourites of Cleanse & Polish and Skin Repair (which came tops again in Neck Creams) the book includes many of our as-yet unsung ‘heroines’; those Cinderella products that sometimes get overlooked yet give amazing, reliable results as well. Little gems such as Eyebright Soothing Eye Lotion (UK , US), Intensive Nourishing Treatment Mask, Energising Body Scrub and Energising Hip and Thigh Gel have all received their first ever awards. Eyebright is also a ‘star buy’ in the Treats for Tired and Puffy Eyes category as well as gaining 2nd place in the Eye Make-up Removers section, and really is fantastic for me at this time of year as I battle the annual onslaught of pollen-polluted eyes. One tester raved that it’s “a fab pick-me-up for mornings when your eyes are really sore and tired, also helped with moisturising dry under-eyes”. We receive good feedback from other hayfever sufferers who swear by it for reducing itchiness too. At this time of year, I always keep one in the fridge and a mini in my make-up bag for itchy-eye emergencies. 

Our moisture mask, Intensive Nourishing Treatment, is another of my seasonal essentials as it works wonders for rehydrating and restoring skin that’s feeling dry and tight after too much travelling, sun or simply over doing it…  With GLA-rich borage oil – one of my favourite natural oils which works both topically and internally to help keep the complexion supple and strong – plus moisturising shea butter and soothing St John’s wort. A thick layer of this replenishing cream is deeply nourishing and calming – a comfort blanket for poorly skins. If you’re looking for visibly velvety skin, one tester said her “skin felt like a soft, ripe peach”… and that’s good enough for me too.

With summer holidays and the promise of more warm weather approaching, I’m definitely beginning to become more conscious of my legs and arms once hemlines (and sleeves) start reducing. That’s why it’s such great news that two of our body energisers made the headlines too. Ideal for sloughing away dull, dingy and dry skin cells our invigorating Energising Body Scrub leaves skin smooth -and perfectly prepped for a spritz of golden self-tan. Massaged in afterwards, its partner Energising Hip and Thigh Gel – loaded with circulation-boosting botanicals such as ginkgo biloba, ivy, horse chestnut and butcher’s broom – really can help improve the tone and appearance of your skin. I’m also a big fan of dry skin body brushing, having first written about it in a book I wrote on cellulite nearly twenty years ago. I find the most effective way to incorporate this into my beauty routine is to use a natural bristle brush before I jump into the shower, always working upwards towards my heart with long, sweeping movements. Then I revitalise, slough and smooth with my Energising body trio. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find there’s nothing like it for helping to get mind and body going on those far-too-early mornings.

The whole area of ‘green’ beauty has grown and developed significantly over the last decade, with a panoply of new products and ranges to choose from, ranging in eco-shade from eau-de-nil to bottle green. It’s a complex and frequently confusing area. I wouldn’t say I agree with every aspect of the greenest eco-warrior’s footpath, but I travel pretty much in the same direction. To this end, the Green Beauty Bible book is a very useful addition to my bookshelves and well worth a read.

With all things botanical as the theme, I was able to spend a rare few minutes of tranquillity amongst the hustle and bustle of London’s King’s Road when I stopped inside our Duke of York Square store earlier today. As part of the ‘Sloane In Bloom’ competition, run in homage to the nearby Chelsea Flower Show, shops in the Sloane Square area (of which we are one) are invited to transform themselves with a floral theme. Our inspiration came from a traditional English garden and so I caught a few moments outside on a weathered wooden bench and breathed in the sweet scent of early lavender and headily-scented climbing roses. Put together for us by the wonderfully talented Jane Packer, who Kim and I worked with twenty or so years ago – even before she had her first shop - it’s well worth a visit if you’re in town, as the whole area is bedecked in stunning spring flora. I finished the evening by giving a talk on some of our botanical ingredients to complement the surrounding theme, soon to be available as an audio download on our website. I hope you enjoy.

L.A. Story

What a great week we’ve had in Los Angeles, launching our range into the top fashion store Fred Segal on Ocean Drive, Santa Monica. We were invited to join the fab beauty area, STUDIO, by its Co-Founder and Creative Director Robin Coe-Hutshing – a stylish woman with huge flair who brings wonderful top beauty ‘finds’ to the West Coast of America. Our week started with a reviving body massage and ‘mani-pedi’ at Hollywood day-spa, Kinara, where many ‘leading ladies’ head for their famous red carpet beauty treatments. Somewhat revived from our inevitable jetlag we returned to the store to have a good look around and I was especially interested to see anything unusual and new. I love Robin’s own creation, a personalised perfume set-up called Memoire Liquide Bespoke Perfumery. Here, with the help of a fragrance guide, you can literally create your own scent by blending together two or three single fragrance notes or unusual pre-blends. I chose a mix of my fragrant favourites, vetiver and patchouli, together with a musky blend called ‘soft leather’. The resulting aroma is a soft, warm and sensual scent which I like because it doesn’t dominate but gives a hint of subtle aromatics. Not only is the idea and service good, it’s reasonably priced too – just $30 (around £15) for a totally individual custom-blend, which has to be one of the best beauty bargains around. If you’re holidaying or passing through LA in the future I highly recommend you drop in and try this out for yourself. It would also make a memorable and special present for a friend, mother or daughter.

Having revived ourselves from our lengthy journey, we spent the following day helping the team at Fred Segal set up our display areas and prop our promotional site, which was where I was to meet many of the local and national beauty journalists this week. These included a meeting with Allure, possibly the most influential of all the American beauty magazines, and the Los Angeles Times. Here we discussed hot topics such as preservatives, as some American brands are now touting themselves as ‘parabens-free’ - as if this is a good thing (see my previous Blogs on this and other ingredient research stories).Later, we hosted a VIP customer event, which Robin Coe-Hutshing introduced. She declared herself to be a huge fan of Naturally Active Skincare – notably Cleanse & Polish and Superskin Moisturiser, and I then gave a short talk to introduce our philosophy and skincare secrets. We obviously hit the spot, as before we left the ladies were literally sweeping the shelves bare and loading up with armfuls of products. The only problem is going to be keeping the shelves fully stocked as word spreads – how exciting!

Easter Egg Hunt

I’ve been in London recently for our QVC shows and spending time going to see our area in the beauty hall of John Lewis, Oxford Street as well as our own flagship store at the top of the King’s Road, Chelsea. I used to live just off the King’s Road and have spent more than 20 years walking up and down its pavements, seeing the shops come and go. One shop which not only remains, but has deservedly expanded, is Rococo, a fabulous chocolate ‘boutique’ run by the dynamic chocolatier Chantal Coady. She has brought fresh new ways with high quality chocolate to the high street, with her fabulous range of unusual shapes and flavours, including my own favourite rose-scented mini chocolate bars. So with Easter in mind, I headed into one of the newer branches of Rococo in Belgravia’s Motcomb Street. Here they have the most beautiful hand-decorated chocolate eggs, stunningly painted and glazed with butterflies, hearts and flowers. We were all so impressed that we chose these beautiful eggs to feature in our fabulous Easter Egg Hunt featured on our Home page.

On the subject of chocolate, I’m also a big fan of Green & Black’s, the organic chocolate company founded by multi-tasker extrordinaire, Josephine Fairley, also one of the co-authors of The Beauty Bible. Her husband, Craig Sams (founder of Whole Earth foods and credited with bringing brown rice to Britain back in the ‘60’s) was sent some organic chocolate to try. Spying this on his desk, she nibbled it and declared it to be the finest she’d ever tasted – and Green & Black’s was born. Jo is often asked whether she and Sam are, in fact, Mr Green and Mrs Black, but in choosing their brand name they looked back to the old fashioned, traditional confectionary brands of their childhood, choosing ‘Green’ for organic and ‘Black’ for the deeply dark brown, almost black chocolate. Recently voted ‘favourite comfort food’ by Good Housekeeping magazine (amongst many other awards) there’s no doubt that a square or two of this divine indulgence really does act as a potent pick-me-up and it certainly has a permanent place in my pantry.

Chocolate is made from cocoa pods grown on the Theobroma cacao tree, a small evergreen native to the tropical regions of South America. It was so highly prized it was called ‘God’s food’ from the Latin word Theo for God. The secret to the best quality chocolate is in its amount of cocoa solids (a mixture of cocoa mass and cocoa butter). Green & Black’s darkest chocolate prides itself on a minimum of 70% cocoa solids and even their milk chocolate contains 34% (more than mass-market plain dark chocolate). More cocoa solids means less room for unhealthy fillers, such as hydrogenated (hardened) vegetable oils and sugar, so the higher the percentage of cocoa solids the better the chocolate is for us. Mass-market chocolate tends to contain around 20% cocoa solids and some may have as little as 7% cocoa solids and high levels of vegetable oils instead. This has led to the EU suggesting that some British brands be re-named ‘vegolate’ as their low cocoa content means they shouldn’t really be called chocolate at all!

Instead of the mass market brands, I always suggest eating smaller quantities of better quality chocolate, which we can eat with a clear conscience as quality chocolate is actually good for us. Mass-produced brands are made with high levels of those dietary villains sugar and saturated fats, but those with a high cocoa content not only have less sugar, they also contain higher levels of interesting antioxidants. These include catechins and phenols, more frequently highlighted in black tea. Dark chocolate contains four times as many catechins as black tea and its phenols help prevent free radical cell damage. Interestingly, each square of Green & Black’s milk chocolate contains 17 calories and each square of their dark chocolate 18 calories – an easy way to ration it as a treat.

When making chocolate, the cocoa solids are separated from the cocoa butter, which can then be added back to the recipe depending on the type of chocolate being made. Pure, natural cocoa butter is a key naturally active ingredient in several of our formulations, including our classic Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser and our newer Gentle Face Exfoliator. It’s also a key ingredient in our soon-to-launch Men’s Cleanse & Polish (hoorah! At last our menfolk can stop stealing ours!!). We use cocoa butter for its superb, creamy emollient properties and also its ability to literally melt onto the skin (in much the same way as chocolate melts in the mouth). As a natural plant ‘butter’ it is also highly skin compatible and also eco-friendly, being a 100% renewable and sustainable natural ingredient (unlike petrochemical alternatives such as mineral oils and waxes). So if you don’t fancy giving chocolate Easter eggs this year, you can always give the ‘gift of good skin’ by choosing cocoa butter in a different form and sharing Cleanse & Polish or Gentle Face Exfoliator with those you love.

Brownes & Co Apothecary Event

Crossing the Continent from Los Angeles to Miami, I’ve flown down from the City of Angels to the city with more palm trees, neon lights and sequins than you can shake a stick at. I’m here to host a customer in-store event at our retail outlet here, Brownes & Co Apothecary, to celebrate our first anniversary with them. I love Brownes  – one of the very few, truly independent apothecary-style stores in the world. It’s full of interesting beauty brands (of course) as well as accessories that you don’t find anywhere else. It’s well worth hunting out if you’re on holiday in Florida and it’s in the heart of the best Lincoln Road shopping area. To celebrate our anniversary, Brownes had filled their windows with huge blow-up pictures of Cleanse & Polish and Superskin Moisturiser, as well as posters declaring ‘Britain’s Best Beauty Secret.’ Just before I arrived at the store, an English lady had come in having just passed by the store. She is one of our customers from the Isle of Wight and was in Miami for a few days for her son’s wedding. Imagine her surprise to walk past gigantic blow-ups of her favourite beauty treats! Apparently she was so overwhelmed and surprised that she took lots of photos of the displays to take in to show our Union shop team on the Island back home.

The early evening soiree was really good with lots of regular and new customers to meet, including several simply stunning top models who had been recommended the range by their agency. I also met a lovely lady called Sandra, who has been using the range almost since we launched here a year ago. In her early sixties, Sandra has had terrible problems (including acne rosacea) with her skin for more than 20 years. She recently had an operation for skin cancer and on her most recent visit to the dermatologist he told her that he’d never, ever seen her skin looking so good. She did look great actually – you would never have thought she’d had such problems – and she was so thrilled she told the entire audience her story and garnered an impromptu round of applause! I gave a short talk about my background and how Kim and I came to set up the company, going on to discuss some of the unusual botanicals we use, including echinacea, argan oil, rosehip oil and pomegranate. Afterwards, we served pomegranate martinis to celebrate – simple mix pure pomegranate juice with vodka over ice in a cocktail shaker, shake, strain and serve in a chilled cocktail glass – very Miami Beach and very delicious.

Autumn Skincare

Today, I’m off to John Lewis in Edinburgh to help train the team up there before we launch on Thursday. We received a wonderful piece of coverage in The Scotsman, so I’m sure many of our Scottish fans will be coming in to see us! Hope to meet some of you there, later this week…I’m wondering what to pack, as the weather’s always colder in Scotland – I just called Anna (our ethno-botanist) to ask her advice, but apparently it’s mild up there. At fireworks on Saturday night, we all thought how strange it was not to feel too cold and not to experience the usual hard, frosty ground underfoot. Hope this means we might be in for a mild winter – though you never know! I’ve packed all my minis for the next few nights’ stay away from home – it makes life so much easier when everything comes in travel size. More room for any shopping purchases too, Anna says!

Spreading the word

Today, I spent the morning at John Lewis and met some delightful customers, who were browsing around our shelves. Steph had walked all the way from Barbican just to see us! She has been using the range for over 10 years and remembers the very first packaging, which we affectionately call ‘the pink packaging’ at Liz Earle. Though she said she was near 50, she looked very much younger – she puts it down to her regular use of Daily Essentials.

Steph was soon seconded by Helen, who is also a big fan and finds that Skin Repair Light (UK), (US) is one of the only moisturisers that she’s found that’s hydrating yet light enough for her slightly t-zone skin – she has black skin and tends to find most moisturisers just don’t suit her as well. This is good to hear – we are often told that customers of all ages, skin types and skin colours experience positive results – but seeing it in person is also very rewarding. Thank you to Steph and Helen for sharing their fab success stories with me – it really made my day.

I also met a delightful, enthusiastic lady called Penny, who has been a fan for many years and who actually also works for John Lewis, at their head office – she has been raving about us for ages to the buying team, apparently, so it was wonderful to meet such a good friend and hear her own personal story. Penny was stocking up on products for her holiday – she loves our mini sizes too, which are ideally sized for travel.