When Kirsten Carriol had a revolutionary beauty idea, she wouldn’t stop until she made it a reality. In 2009, Kirsten Carriol brought lanolin back into style with her now award-winning lip balm range, Lanolips.
Now, Lanolips is available in multiple countries and the sky is the limit for Carriol, who has recently been nominated for the InStyle and Audi Women of Style Awards, which honor Australia’s most inspiration and innovative women across eight fields including beauty, lifestyle, environment and the arts.
Rescu. caught up with Kirsten Carriol to find out how she conquered the beauty industry and her advice for aspiring career women.
RESCU: Tell us a little about your work life before Lanolips.
Kirsten Carriol: I’ve always been in Beauty and before launching Lanolips I ran a Beauty, Fashion and Lifestyle PR Agency for over 10 years. I had a team of 10, and over 30 clients when I ran the business and was responsible for launching various campaigns and products into the Australian market including the Ralph Lauren Pink Pony Campaign, Naomi Campbell’s fragrance – which was one of the first celebrity fragrances to launch in Australia as well as various philanthropic events including the Silver Party.
RESCU: Did you have an ‘aha’ moment when you realised Lanolips was really going to work?
Kirsten Carriol: I received some amazing feedback and reviews when I launched the product in the UK (in 2010). The Times rated my product ‘10 out of 10’ and this amazing Beauty Journalist Jo Fairley, whom I had always admired, completely embraced my product and was writing and blogging about Lanolips across various prestigious titles.
That response was both incredibly humbling and gratifying, I was this little lip brand from Australian who nobody knew or had any pre-conceptions about and my product was being embraced by this huge billion dollar industry.
RESCU: What were the first steps and challenges you faced when starting up?
Kirsten Carriol: Lanolips was six years in the making; it took years of hard work, research, and product testing to create the perfect formula. I was turned away by many factories who could not work with a high percentage of lanolin, it took a lot of perseverance and belief in my product, but I eventually found a way to make it.
There are so many different elements involved with creating a product and a brand, obviously the quality of the lanolin was a focus for me, but I also needed to create branding assets like logos and packaging which sounds fun, but is also a slow process from beginning to end – you want it to be perfect
RESCU: We know you have two sons — any juggling tips for mothers who are also budding entrepreneurs?
Kirsten Carriol: Being a working mum changes your working dynamic, not because you have children but because you have to be much more focused about the time you have in the office.
A problem I face with the continuing changes in our industry is that it’s much easier to be distracted by social media. Social media is a great way to connect around the world but it’s also a huge distraction so you have to be far more mentally disciplined and focused, both in work time and personal time. I’ve learnt the art of switching on and off.
RESCU: Can you share three of your most monumental career highlights to date?
Kirsten Carriol: The awards that we have won in the past are always extremely gratifying; the CEW awards in the UK were a huge highlight because it was peer voted.
I will also never forget the first email I received from a woman who owned a trucking company in Geelong who loved my product. That was a huge thrill. I always feel really proud when I receive a letter from a happy customer; it’s a really warm and satisfying feeling to know that Lanolips has helped someone. I have received letters from customers with inexplicably dry skin as a result of undergoing radiation therapy or illness, and it is quite touching to think that it helped them so much they were compelled to write a letter.
And of course it was incredibly humbling and such an honour to nominated for the InStyle Women of Style Awards, they have such a prestigious history and it was career highlight to be included along side the line-up of women nominated, past and present.
RESCU: If you could go back to the start of Lanolips and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
Kirsten Carriol: One thing I have learnt throughout this process is that sometimes it’s the advice NOT taken.
There was a piece of advice which I ignored, which was so important at the time to have ignored, I was working with an advisor on manufacturing in the early days on Lanolips and I was finding it very difficult to find a lab that would work with the high percentage of lanolin that I wanted to use and am now using. The advice was just use 3% lanolin in your products so you can make the claim you’ve got lanolin, but you don’t have to use that high percentage of lanolin.
Luckily I completely ignored that and kept on pushing on, so I guess the best advice is if you really don’t feel something is right in your gut, and you know it isn’t true to the brand, than you just cant do it. You must have really strong heart and soul to the brand and you must stick to that.
RESCU: What’s next for Lanolips? Any career goals you’re still hoping to tick off?
Kirsten Carriol: To take the product to more people in the world, and become a Global Company – we’re already part global but I want to be truly global sitting alongside all the top lip brands and skin brands around the world.
