Six years ago, I started Olive & Joyce with some pots, oils, a lot of enthusiasm, a dream and absolutely no idea where it would take me. I named the business after my grandparents, Olive and Joyce, and imagined that if I made lovely skincare, worked hard, treated people well and didn't do anything too ridiculous, the rest would somehow fall into place.
Hahahaha.
Six years later, we've survived Brexit, rising costs, postal strikes, social media algorithms, a pandemic, AI and various economic crises. I've grown Olive & Joyce, employed people and scaled it back down again, cried over it, celebrated it, threatened to give it all up, changed my mind, made approximately a gazillion jars of face cream and learnt an awful lot along the way.
Some of it has even been about skincare.
Everyone Had an Opinion on How I Should Grow
When Olive & Joyce started doing well, I spoke to business coaches who knew far more about “scaling” than I did, and suddenly there were lots of things I apparently needed to change to become a ‘proper’ business.
I should use a factory, find investment, go on Dragons' Den, get into high street shops, make my products smaller, charge more, use fewer organic ingredients and add water to bulk them out.
I turned down a huge retailer because their world of fast, throwaway beauty and anti-ageing didn't align with mine. I also declined an expensive opportunity with Marie Claire, then happily paid to be featured in The Big Issue because I knew my money was supporting something I believed in. Eventually my business coach and I realised we had rather different ideas about success, and we parted ways.
That's not a judgement on businesses that choose those routes. They can work brilliantly, they just weren't right for Olive & Joyce. If I ever dream ridiculously big, I'm probably more influenced by places like Bournville, where business and community grew together. I'm not planning an Olive & Joyce village just yet, but I'd love to grow without becoming faceless.
Perhaps my least commercially sensible decision was creating just two products that can last around three months. It means I need to keep finding new customers, but I wanted skincare to be accessible. As a single parent, I know that if it's a choice between face cream and your child's new shoes, the shoes are obviously going to win.
I'd rather someone comes back because they've finished their pot than because I deliberately designed it to run out.
Perhaps I should have paid more attention during the How To Make Lots of Money part of business school. Although, to be fair, I never went to business school. I went to art college.
Apparently Customers Haven't Read My Stock Plan
Another thing six years has taught me is that orders are completely unpredictable. I can make an entire shelf of The Eternal Face Cream, feeling incredibly organised and slightly smug, only for everyone to suddenly decide that Olive Rose Body Cream is what they want that week.
Just when I think I've cracked it, my customers remind me that I absolutely haven't. Take Sleepy Joyce Foot Cream. Summer arrives, feet come out, sandals are everywhere and I think, right, better make plenty of that. Then the rain arrives, the socks go back on and obviously that's when I sell out of Sleepy Joyce in a day.
Six years in and apparently my customers still haven't received a copy of my stock plan.
Apparently I'm a Micro Business
Somewhere along the way I discovered Olive & Joyce is technically a micro business, which initially felt slightly insulting because, excuse me, have you seen how much work I do?
I've grown rather fond of the word now. It's cute, and let's face it, there isn't a mysterious warehouse with hundreds of employees and conveyor belts whizzing jars around. There is me, ingredients arriving from other small businesses, boxes, jars, labels and days when every available surface has something waiting to be filled, packed or posted.
I still make the skincare myself too, which is something I don't want to lose. I was taught in a very old-fashioned, hands-on way, and although there are formulations and measurements for everything, after making thousands of jars you get to know your products in a different way. I know how a cream should feel against the spoon, when it needs a little more stirring and when it's just right. There's something rather lovely about still being that close to the thing I actually started the business to make.
The same goes for the other side of Olive & Joyce. When you message, you're talking to me. I read your reviews, wrap your orders, write your little notes, research and write the blogs, and notice when you reorder or recommend me to a friend. As the business grows again, I know I won't always be able to do every single one of those things myself, but I never want Olive & Joyce to lose that feeling.
That's probably my favourite thing about being micro. My customers still have names, not order numbers.
Growing Isn't Always the Same as Succeeding
There was a point when Olive & Joyce was growing quickly. I had employees, more help and more orders, and I thought the only direction a successful business was supposed to travel was forwards and upwards.
Except the business was growing faster than I was, and personally I found that hard.
At the time, slowing things down felt frightening because everything we hear about business tells us that growth is the goal. More customers, more money, more staff, more everything. What I hadn't really considered was whether I was ready for all of that, or whether the version of success I was chasing was actually one I wanted.
Eventually I realised scaling back wasn't failing. Sometimes a business can simply grow faster than the person running it is ready for. Six years down the line, we've almost come full circle, but the lovely thing is that I'm not quite the same person who started it.
Brexit Taught Me That Shea Butter Doesn't Care About Politics
Brexit was an interesting little adventure, and by interesting I mostly mean expensive.
Ingredients, packaging and postage became more expensive, while people's disposable income certainly didn't. I also lost lovely regular customers in Ireland, Spain and France, where ordering from a tiny British skincare company suddenly wasn't as straightforward or affordable.
It has meant constantly balancing affordability with not compromising on the ingredients and principles I started with, because if somebody is choosing between paying the electricity bill, filling the fridge or buying face cream, I know which one I want them to choose.
Social Media Isn't Very Social When You're Tiny
When I started Olive & Joyce, social media felt like a wonderful way for small businesses to find their people. Now, some days, it feels as though I'm standing in the corner of Instagram waving both arms shouting HELLO, I AM STILL HERE, while the algorithm shows you another advert from a company with a marketing budget roughly equivalent to a small country.
We're told to make Reels, show our faces, follow trends and, above all, BE AUTHENTIC, although preferably in precisely the format the algorithm would like our authenticity delivered.
It's exhausting, but it's also reminded me how powerful actual word of mouth still is. A share, review or somebody simply telling a friend, I use this and I love it, can mean an enormous amount to a micro business.
Six Years of Skin Has Taught Me to Leave It Alone a Bit
Six years of talking to people about their skin, alongside watching my own wander merrily into perimenopause, has taught me that skin doesn't behave according to neat marketing categories. Hormones, age, weather, stress and medication can all change it.
I've spoken to people dealing with acne in their forties, rosacea that appeared from nowhere and skin that suddenly became sensitive after tolerating everything for years. Meanwhile, the beauty industry has become increasingly good at finding new names for perfectly ordinary features of human faces and then selling us something to correct them.
If anything, making skincare has made me more determined that Olive & Joyce shouldn't be part of making people frightened of their own faces. I don't want to promise to erase every line, shrink every pore or make a 50-year-old look 25. I want skin to feel comfortable, nourished and cared for.
Healthy skin doesn't need to look like glass. You're a human, not a window.
More isn't automatically better, expensive doesn't automatically mean effective, and ageing isn't evidence that your skincare has stopped working.
Your skin is an organ, not a hobby.
The Bit I Didn't Expect
There have been times when I've wondered whether I should close Olive & Joyce, but whenever I've seriously imagined doing it, I've realised the business carries something I never planned for.
It carries my grandparents.
Olive & Joyce carries their names, photographs, stories and my memories of them, and somehow this funny little skincare company has kept them travelling through life with me. That's partly why closing it has never felt as simple as shutting a website.
There are also customers who have travelled through these six years with me, some finding me at a Brighton market or through my Etsy shop right at the beginning, and still reordering, recommending me to friends and watching this little business change shape. Over the years I've come to recognise names on orders and know what certain customers will probably be ordering before I've even opened them. Knowing something I make has quietly become part of somebody else's everyday routine is something I'll never take for granted.
Smaller Isn't Where I'm Staying
Six years down the line, it's just me again, but something has changed. My confidence is growing, and the imposter syndrome that spent years whispering that I wasn't business-minded enough, clever enough or polished enough seems to have become a little bored of brainwashing me. It's still around somewhere, obviously, probably having a cup of tea and waiting for a vulnerable moment, but it doesn't get the microphone quite as often anymore.
There’s been some other personal growth along the way too. I’m mentally stronger, my hair is considerably blonder, I’ve collected a few more laughter lines and probably twice as many worry lines, the hot sweats have really stepped up their game, and I’m now on first-name terms with the people at the Post Office. I’m not entirely sure this is the sort of personal development the business books were talking about, but here we are.
For the first time in a long time, I want and feel ready for Olive & Joyce to grow again, and this time I'm excited rather than terrified.
I don't know exactly what that will look like. Perhaps there will be employees again, more orders, new stockists and opportunities I haven't thought of yet, but this time I want the business and me to grow together, hand in hand.
I don't want to create the Olive & Joyce somebody else told me I should build. I want to grow this one, the slightly wonky, personal little micro business that still believes ingredients matter, buys from other small businesses wherever possible, makes skincare by hand and has me and my family somewhere in the middle of it all.
Perhaps that's what the last six years were really teaching me. Success isn't necessarily staying small or becoming enormous. Maybe it's creating something that can grow without losing the reason you started it.
Olive & Joyce has changed shape over the years, and so have I, which feels strangely appropriate for a business that spends so much time talking about ageing and why I've always believed in being pro-ageing rather than anti-ageing.
Things change, they age and they adapt. They don't have to remain exactly as they were to still be beautiful, and changing doesn't mean their best years are behind them either.
So here's to the next six years. I'm not entirely sure what they'll look like yet, but for the first time in a while, I'm really excited to find out.
Although if Brexit, Instagram, the economy and whatever fresh madness the beauty industry invents next could make them slightly less eventful, I would be enormously grateful.