How did you get into the beauty business?
By accident!! In fact, I am the least likely person to have ended up in the beauty industry - I’m a total tomboy and nerd and barely know one end of a mascara wand from the other! This passion started as an art project with my business partner (photographer Russell James) and an Australian aboriginal artist, Richard Walley. Richard asked me if I’d help him make a fragrance from the oil of a local tree and that appealed to my inner nerd and I said yes. The first time I smelled that oil I was hooked and a whole new world opened up to me! Five years later we now have two fragrance brands Raw Spirit and Wild Spirit and I am obsessed with scent!!
Can you please tell us a bit about Wild Spirit Fragrances and your vision for the brand?
Sure! I was looking for fragrances that were affordable and couldn’t find anything that smelled good and didn’t give me a headache. So, I decided that we should create our own! Our vision for Wild Spirit is to create fragrances that are free of all chemical nasties (no parabens, sulphates or dyes) and that have lots of good quality, natural ingredients in them. Then, as an animal lover, they also had to be vegan and cruelty free. We pay close attention to what is going into the bottle - these fragrances are made with a lot of love!
What is the scent development process like? How do you choose which scents to include in your line?
I’m very lucky in that I get to travel to a lot of interesting and remote locations around the world. This is where I get most of my inspiration - it could be from a plant that I’ve found, or it could just be trying to recreate the aroma or the feeling of a place. Once I know what I am trying to create then we do a visual brief that includes images, words, video, (even music) to help describe to our perfumers what we are trying to create. There is nothing more exciting than when you get to smell the first samples from the perfumer and to see if their interpretation was close to what you imagined. Sometimes we’ve nailed it first time around, but often it takes many tweaks to get it to exactly what I had in my mind. It really is quite magical to have your words and ideas transformed into a scent!
Anything exciting coming up that you'd like to talk about?
So much!! For 2019 we have lots of opportunities for our customers to get involved in the brand. If you’ve ever wanted to get more of an insight into what it takes to make a perfume then please sign up to our newsletter on www.wildspiritfragrances as we’ll be asking for your opinions and input as we craft our next batch of fragrances!
Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
We are great at putting limitations on ourselves, so I think the best advice I can give is - trust your gut and find a way to take the first step towards your goal. No one is really an overnight success - it is the sum of a million tiny steps, just go out there and take the first one!