My Story

by Jo Malone

  The next thing we did was wow the media, but not with a press conference or a lunch with me. A fancy restaurant and quotes wouldn’t have impact; the clincher would be the product. Our shop assistant Vicky Martin flew over for this mission and I struck a deal with the New York Palace to book a two-bedroom suite in exchange for some positive PR and product. From that hotel on Madison, and over a five-day period, I greeted and spritzed around sixty journalists. As I familiarised them with the collection, I shared the story behind each fragrance: how it was made, what memories inspired it, and what each ingredient is meant to express. For a select few, I went further and conducted a full facial. Among those ‘clients’ was Pamela Fiori, the editor-in-chief at Town & Country. Pamela, a woman of effortless style, was someone I would come to know well, and she was a great support, then and in the future, raving about my fragrances . . . and my facials. ‘I was given a treatment by Jo and felt as if I were in a trance for several hours afterward. And my skin looked years younger. In fact, I felt years younger,’ she wrote.

  Our good press, and our concerted push, would continue for a good year, through to the following Christmas, and I think that was when Gary came to understand the exhausting nature of this groundwork.

  We had booked into The Carlyle, which I chose deliberately because this kind of discreet, sophisticated hotel was exactly the kind of place where a Bergdorf customer would stay, and I agreed a deal with management that everyone in residence would receive a product-filled Christmas stocking.

  ‘How many are we doing?’ Gary asked as I collected our room keys.

  ‘Only four hundred and fifty.’

  ‘FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY?!’

  ‘Not as many as Santa has to do!’

  We became busy elves that December of 1997 – one fragrance, one bath oil, one candle per stocking. But the morning after checking in, I heard from Queen Noor, a long-standing client who often visited London, that her husband, King Hussein, was sick. This wonderfully big-hearted man had become a dear friend along with his wife. She explained to me how he had been admitted to a clinic in Minnesota, and she invited me to go see him, so I dropped everything, caught a plane, and left Gary with the Christmas stockings.

  I returned late that night and walked into our room to find him supine across the bed, barely able to open his eyes. He didn’t even lift his head when he heard the door go, but he did say, ‘I did them all . . . never again.’ Everywhere I looked, on the bed, on the chairs, on the floor, were filled stockings. I don’t think Gary had ever been so pleased to return to London. Sowing such seeds can be a slog; it requires graft and patience, and there’s no real way of knowing how effective it will be, but we could do no more. We could only hope that all these different efforts would come together and translate into demand for our March 1998 launch.

  We were raring to go by the time the big day arrived. Gary, Vicky and I returned to New York two days ahead of time to single-handedly stock the shelves within our little rotunda. We didn’t stock our entire line in New York – we started with six of the fourteen fragrances, together with bath oils, scented candles and a skincare range. And this time, we waited for the paint to dry!

  I answered any last-minute questions from the four American staff we had trained up during previous visits and we went on to enjoy a brisk day’s trading, leaving us feeling hopeful but realistic about the way ahead. We were under no illusions that we had entered a fiercely competitive market, because the industry itself was experiencing a challenging time. As a write-up in Women’s Wear Daily made clear at the time, ‘When it comes to the fragrance business these days, the sweet smell of success isn’t wafting over all department and speciality stores.’

  On the night of the launch, I don’t think anyone was looking too far ahead. But Dawn Mello pulled out the stops to celebrate our in-store arrival, hosting an amazing black-tie dinner for two hundred guests, including some of our British friends who had flown in. The venue was The Galleria building, a fifty-five-storey high-rise between Lexington and Park Avenue, and the moment we stepped foot inside its glassed entrance, into the vast atrium, we sensed the setting was going to be impressive. We took the lift to the Sky Room on the 54th floor and walked out into a restaurant with an all-glass exterior that offered 360 degrees of a twinkling Manhattan. All around the room, skirting the floor and on the tables, there were dozens of candles. Dawn hadn’t overlooked a single detail, even down to the bespoke menu of my favourite foods, including the yummiest of them all: soufflé.

  And when the sheepish-looking maitre d’ explained that there had been a power failure in the kitchen – putting that very dessert course at risk – Dawn was not to be thwarted. ‘Here, take my keys. Go downstairs and use my kitchen,’ she said. ‘We shall deliver Jo’s soufflés!’

  She allowed the chefs to use her private apartment in the same building, meaning a troop of servers ran up and down the back stairs carrying plates. I liked Dawn – a woman who always had a solution to a problem. She delivered the soufflés, and our presence in her store would put us on the map in America, adding rocket fuel to our seeding.

  Every three months, I’d return to New York, sustaining a promotional push with in-store appearances. One Christmas, more than one hundred women lined up, which definitely felt like a breakthrough moment. And so I grew used to the transatlantic back and forth, and my body clock learned to adjust to the endless ‘red-eye’ flights.

  The switching between time zones also taught me to be flexible within our new topsy-turvy lifestyle: days in London may have ended at 5 p.m., but New York still had five hours to go, so we would often find ourselves on the phone until 10 p.m. In reverse, when in Manhattan, we’d be up at dawn dealing with matters back home. That’s when I taught myself three things about constant air travel: set your watch to the time zone you are travelling to; eat to that timetable on the plane; and always have a pre-flight face mask to keep the skin hydrated.

  One thing we soon discovered about our American consumers was that bath oils weren’t popular. As one New Yorker told me, ‘You Brits bathe; we Americans shower.’ But, bath oils aside, early indications at the end of our first quarter were encouraging as Bergdorf reported a double-digit increase in the fragrance market ‘and part of that boost can be attributed to interest in London perfumer Jo Malone’, said a report in Women’s Wear Daily.

  Gary, quite rightly, wanted us to keep our foot on ‘the gas’. One evening in New York after closing, we were about to head back to our hotel when he took out three of our gift bags and handed them to me . . . without slotting them into a Bergdorf bag.

  ‘What are you doing? They’re empty!’

  ‘Nobody else knows that,’ he said, with a wink.

  My husband never does miss a trick. He had fought damn hard for those to be seen all over town, and, in those early days, we had to be flag-bearers, too. So every time we set foot on a Manhattan street, carrying those bags became as necessary as an umbrella in London. Only Gary didn’t call this ‘seeding’, he called it ‘walking the dogs’.

  New York is a go-getting city full of make-it-happen people, and the fashion and beauty industry is not necessarily for the fainthearted. It is a fast-moving environment where the pursuit of excellence has never involved easy roads, and the standards and expectations can be fierce. But, at a time when we were finding our feet, Gary and I were lucky to be given time with some of the leading players in retail. Dawn Mello and her team were as helpful and down-to-earth as they come, but another gem was Rose Marie Bravo, then the president of Saks Fifth Avenue, who helped steer us through the unknown quantities of the vast American marketplace.

  Gary and I might as well have been Lewis and Clark, the explorers Thomas Jefferson sent out to discover how far west America stretched beyond Mississippi. The size of the continent represented a daunting challenge for us – we didn’t understand the diverse characteristics of each state. New York was a world away from Florida. Texas was a different planet to California. And we had no idea how to
build on our success and reach the Pacific Ocean. Rose Marie was the one who literally got out the map and showed us the way.

  We had received an invitation out of the blue to meet up at her offices at Saks. We didn’t know the purpose of the meeting but you don’t ask why when you get a call from such a respected figure in the industry; you just go. When we walked into her office, we realised that she was a fan of our brand – hundreds of our gift bags, filled with product, were huddled in one corner, waiting to be given as presents to friends and staff.

  ‘You’ve got more inventory in here than I’ve got back in London!’ I said.

  Rose Marie, a natural, olive-skinned beauty thanks to her Italian blood, laughed at my observation, flashing a set of pearly white teeth that matched her signature pearl-drop earrings. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s why I want to talk to you. I want to see how we can do more with your product throughout the United States.’

  Over the next hour, we would receive the benefit of her golden insight, explaining where all the ‘critical locations’ were around America, and what made them so different. She knew the market from east to west, having previously been chairman at both Macy’s in New York and I. Magnin in San Francisco. She had started out in 1974 as a sales manager in cosmetics and fragrances at Macy’s; more recently, she had built Saks’ fashion and fragrance lines, so the advice she imparted was invaluable.

  I had to leave for another meeting, but I left Gary to continue the geographical plotting, and he later shared with me how Rose Marie rolled out a map of the US on the floor, got down on her hands and knees and stabbed her finger at the cities where we would need a presence in order to grow: Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Dallas.

  Gary was blown away because, until then, he hadn’t been able to picture the way forward and his surveyor-trained mind needed to see some kind of architectural drawing. Afterwards, as he and I enjoyed a hot chocolate back at the hotel, he kept shaking his head. ‘I cannot believe how lucky we are . . . these people . . . I mean . . .’

  There we were, two green kids from Kent, fresh from a meeting with a genius of a woman who had decided to guide us, despite being one of the busiest people in Manhattan. Of course, she did so in the hope that we would link up with Saks one day, but she certainly didn’t have to help us plot the way ahead like she did. This was one of many wonderful moments we’d share with Rose Marie, and she would soon take over the helm at Burberry, mastermind its rebirth, and discover the talent of designer Christopher Bailey, the Yorkshireman who would go on to be the brand’s CEO.

  We found a friend for life that day in New York. And when she moved to London to join Burberry, we were able to show her the way in our home city. Or, as she once put it, ‘You were my first call and first friends in London!’

  Dawn Mello and Rose Marie Bravo played pivotal roles in our growth across America, but there was also another major player waiting in the wings, someone we had been talking to for quite some time, as he monitored our growth and bided his time. But that relationship was still developing in the background, and it would be a little while longer before that interest led anywhere.

  As an employer, it is important to me that work doesn’t feel like one constant grind of graft, graft, graft. Whenever small victories happen for any entrepreneur – hitting a weekly sales target, or setting a new quarterly sales high, or reaching a milestone that once seemed out of reach – we should step off the treadmill and take time to acknowledge the partners or personnel who have played a part in that accomplishment. The team that surrounds us is the team that will determine what levels of success are reached. I expect a lot from my staff because you do not succeed in the luxury goods industry if there is an ounce of complacency. By ‘complacency’, I mean not accepting one brilliant day in sales as anything other than ordinary, because every day needs to be brilliant. And once you hit consistently brilliant days, the question then has to be, ‘How can we make it better?’ That’s why I need people whose work ethic and standards mirror mine because, where there is synergy, there is often success.

  Since recording that encouraging first quarter in America, we had not had a chance to celebrate properly as a team, so I threw a party at the Nicole Farhi store in Bond Street, where we had the downstairs restaurant to ourselves, free to let our hair down with some good food, a good DJ, and have a good old knees-up.

  It seemed fitting then that this turned out to be the Friday night when I received a phone call on my mobile from across the pond. It was some time around 11 p.m. when I nipped out to speak with Vicki Haupt.

  When I returned to the room ten minutes later, my assistant Cherie said she knew it was good news judging by the smile on my face. I walked over to the DJ and asked him to turn down the music, because I had an announcement to make. I took the mic, gathered everyone together and said, ‘I’m glad we’re all here to share this moment because I’ve had some news from New York – we’ve just hit our first million dollars in America!’

  I swear that our screams and cheers would’ve been heard across London. What a high that was, and how wonderful to mark that milestone as a team. We ordered champagne and I asked the DJ to play New York, New York! And in that moment, as we gathered in a circle, linked arms and sang our hearts out, I think everyone in that room believed that if we could make it there, we could make it anywhere.

  As time zipped through 1998 and into 1999, we had to turn our attention to new premises in London. Our five-year lease in Walton Street was almost up, and the landlord had other plans for the unit – it was the nudge that we needed. I was sad in a sentimental sense – we were leaving a shop full of memories and a street full of good people – but the business was crying out for more space. If our time in America had taught us anything, it was that we had to step up and think bigger.

  Whenever Gary scouted for a new location from this point on, he wouldn’t go anywhere without a clicker-counter. He’d tuck this golf ball-sized gadget into the palm of his hand, stand outside a shop, and each time someone walked by, he’d press the button with his thumb, standing in one spot for hours, monitoring foot traffic to ensure the street was consistently busy. By the time he presented me with a property brochure, I knew that he would have done the necessary homework and research. But still, I wasn’t expecting him to turn up with an address in Sloane Street.

  The two-storey unit at No.150, then Sketchley’s cleaners, was nearer Sloane Square than ‘the cool part’ of the street – the Harvey Nichols end – but that hardly mattered. Why shouldn’t we be the first luxury name on the block? Lure the chic crowd from one end to the other? The likes of Tiffany’s, Cartier, and Chloé had not yet arrived, but the Peter Jones store at the end of the King’s Road was within spitting distance, and Gary’s clicker-count was impressive. The foot traffic alone offered potential, not to mention the loyal customers who would follow.

  But the feature that sealed it for me wasn’t the 2,500 square feet over two floors, or the fact that we had a basement to convert into a small boardroom, staff dining room, and kitchen. No, the clincher was the back stockroom and office, because, in my mind, I was already knocking down walls and turning it into a luxurious treatment room.

  For the refit, we hired a Canadian called Steven Horn, who is like the brother I never had. We had got to know him when he booked our holidays while working as a travel agent. In him, we saw a hard worker who was super-organised and, as became clear in our conversations, had a passion for design. So we appointed him to be our operations manager, and Sloane Street would be his first project.

  The great thing about Steven is that he moves hell and high water to get the job done, and I’ll never forget the morning I dropped in to check on progress, only to find his twelve builders asleep on racks and shelves with bubble wrap used as pillows because they had worked until four in the morning. He drove them almost as hard as I drove Sophie and Emma, the two girls I trained up to be our full-time facialists.

  I’m sure those poor girls went to bed most nights
with my voice ringing in their ears: ‘No, not like that, like this!’ And when they couldn’t get it right, I fell back on my own training. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘we’re doing this with our eyes shut. Close your eyes! It needs to be instinctual, not visual. Okay, let’s start again . . .’

  In the end, it proved time well spent, because my girls would, in my opinion, go on to provide the best service in London. And Steven created a luxurious treatment room: low lights, log fire, and candles, where clients would be cosseted and wrapped in white blankets and white cashmere, spritzed with fragrance, and massaged from head to toe.

  The rest of the premises were coming along nicely, too, but there was only one snag: as much as Steven’s team worked around the clock, he informed us that there would be a ten-day gap between Walton Street closing and Sloane Street opening.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Gary. ‘We can’t trade – nothing we can do.’

  ‘We can’t go ten days without selling anything, Gary!’ I said.

  ‘What choice do we have? The shop isn’t going to be ready!’

  ‘What choice do we have?’ He was talking to a girl who once worked on the markets. ‘I know exactly what we’re going to do,’ I said. ‘Steven, come with me. I need help with a table from the flat . . .’

  I don’t care if you’re standing at Crayford market or in Sloane Street, a merchant is a merchant who cannot allow the chance of a sale to slip by. I had watched my dad set up a stall even when he didn’t really want to. I had watched him think on his feet, which is what every entrepreneur must do, and that had stayed with me. Each day of business, then and now, I wake up feeling the chase within me. What can I do to make it happen today? And that was the voice that made me set up a wooden trestle table – my stall – on the pavement, manned by shop assistants-turned-market traders, Vicky and Lorna. Gary was dead against it, saying we’d get into trouble and that ‘this was not how a luxury brand should operate’. I gently pointed out that luxury brands operate by making money. ‘And that is what we are going to do – you’ll see!’