Trinny London has all the trappings of a successful startup. After four years in business, the global makeup brand, helmed by fashion expert Trinny Woodall, has 750,000 customers, $60 million in revenue, 175 employees, and 4 million followers across the company’s and Woodall’s social media accounts.
In short, it is nothing like Woodall’s first startup, Ready2Shop, which launched in 1999 at the dawn of the internet commerce age, quickly raised and ran out of money, and effectively shut down within a year.
Woodall’s life changed dramatically in the intervening decades. She became the host of the UK reality show What Not to Wear, which made her a television star and propelled her career as an author along with business partner and co-host Susannah Constantine. She also had a child, got divorced, and had to rebuild her finances. When she returned to the digital realm with a new concept she launched in 2017, it was with a different approach to business and a newfound self-assuredness in her skill at running a startup.
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Originally published on Quartz : Original article