My second beauty product was a flop. You have to keep innovating

Lord Sugar’s summary of Tom Pellereau’s life in business is devoid of the gushing superlatives that normally accompany such endorsements. The pair celebrated 13 years of working together last Thursday, a journey that began when Pellereau won The Apprentice, Sugar’s business talent show. The prize? A £250,000 cheque for a 50 per cent stake in Pellereau’s fledgling beauty products business.
Asked last year about his apprentice’s entrepreneurial track record, Sugar said, with characteristic bluntness: “He did do nail clippers, but basically he made all his money out of make-up brush cleaning. He’s a millionaire now. He’s a very nice boy. He’s learnt a lot from me.”
The business that Pellereau, 45, set up, Stylideas, brought in revenue of £5 million last year, and he expects it to reach nearly £7 million this year. Employing 14 people, it distributes its devices, gels and cleaning lotions through retailers such as Boots, Argos and Lookfantastic.
Pellereau’s bestselling invention, as Sugar said, is the StylPro make-up brush cleaner and drier, which does the job quickly, efficiently and at a price, £29.99, designed to be accessible to most people. In the five years since its launch, Pellereau has sold 2.5 million units, including almost a million through Costco, the wholesaler, in the United States.
“Ten years ago,” according to Pellereau, “make-up brushes were just any old sort of brush. Nowadays they are £10, £15, £20 and even £50, across 20 different types. If you don’t clean them, bacteria grows inside them and you are putting bacteria back on to your face.” With his device, you can “clean and dry a make-up brush in 30 seconds. That product changed my life almost as much as The Apprentice did.”
After the brush cleaner, his next bestseller was a bit left-field: a beauty products mini-fridge, which he designed after being asked to look at the idea by one of his retailers. The £59.99 gadget took off during the pandemic.
There are also the original curved nail files, which took the business to revenue of about £1 million in 2019 (but probably no further,because “you have got to sell a lot of nail files to have a business”), as well as various nail polish removers and brush cleaners, which are made in Britain. Most of the other devices, including its new range of red-light electrical beauty products due to be launched in September, are produced overseas, helping to keep costs down.
Beauty is a crowded market with lots of small players vying for shoppers’ attention. Only a few really gain traction, with one example being the Tangle Teezer brush, designed by Shaun Pulfrey, the hairdresser and launched in 2007. He built it into a business boasting turnover of £39 million before selling a majority stake in 2021 to a private equity buyer for a reputed £70 million.
For Pellereau, finding product ideas that resonate is an art rather than a science. For his bestseller, the reaction from early focus groups was not promising. “People were like, ‘Yeah, well, it’s not that big a problem is it? Maybe I’d pay £15.’ I thought, ‘I’m not sure I agree with that.’ So you make some more prototypes and show people and start small.
“There is a brilliant book called Little Bets [by Peter Sims] that has this philosophy of it’s not all about firing cannon balls at the beginning, it is about firing little bullets and trying different things. And that’s how you build great products.” His company did just that, with small-scale early sales and several product iterations, based on feedback. “We took a bit of a risk and then it worked.”
Innovators, such as writers and musicians, can stumble after their first big success. Pellereau admits to a difficult second album. “There is another product called a beauty blender, which is like a sponge that is used a lot along with a brush. The market was telling us we should do a sponge cleaner. So we spent ages making prototypes. The retailers were quite excited about it and they wanted to launch it at Christmas. We bought a lot [of stock], we didn’t follow the rule of start small and build up, we convinced ourselves into it.”
You can sense what comes next. “We launched it and it just sold very slowly. The bottom line was that people talk about wanting to clean things and reuse them, but actually they were just throwing these sponges away. Even though we were saying these are the number going to landfill every year and we all want to be more sustainable, they looked at it and said it was not a problem we have.
“So, yes, the second album, so to speak, we got wrong. It took a year to two years to recover from. It also changed my outlook to one where I think we can’t take these big bets and convince ourselves we are right. That is not the right approach. Our role as innovators is to listen, to understand and try to provide the best quality at the best price.”
He describes his customers as those “who have tight budgets and are looking to buy things in the £50 to £100 range, as opposed to £300 to £400”. Other companies’ fast-growing beauty devices, such as CurrentBody’s LED anti-ageing light mask, worn by the main character of the Netflix rom-com Emily in Paris , retail at £299. Pellereau’s newly launched StylPro Wavelength LED Face Mask, which he claims has twice the power level, has just gone on sale on the Lookfantastic website at £99.99. Its first review, written by a user called Ellie, gave it five stars with the headline “Obsessed!” She added: “It’s the perfect addition to my morning skin routine — an essential!” As far as Pellereau is concerned, “light technology is going to become a very big part of skincare”.
The facemask is one of six new products he has designed that will be launched formally in early September. They have been developed over the past two years and he’s now working on what he hopes will be selling well for Christmas next year. In some senses, the idea generation is becoming easier. “We are able to scrape things like TikTok, Instagram, Amazon and Google to see what people are talking about, what it is they are buying. We are able to make innovation a much more analysis-type approach, whereas previously it was, ‘Oh, I think a curved nail file would be a good idea.’ ”
The partnership with Sugar still pays dividends. The men meet monthly for board meetings and Sugar’s finance team provides support to Stylideas. Our interview takes place on the day that A-level results are released and when asked about his relationship with Sugar, Pellereau said “I feel a bit like he is that headmaster who people say actually quite likes you and you say, ‘Sorry, what?’ ”
Despite the absence of public displays of affection, much has passed between mentor and mentee. “I am an engineer, that is how I think and I always go too technical. Lord Sugar is fantastic at keeping things simple. Then there is [his advice on] how to deal with retailers, because they are very challenging to work with. He has been pretty insightful in that respect. And thirdly, there is working with suppliers. He was one of the pioneers on going to Asia.”
And his preferred alternative to the headmaster’s “very nice boy” summary of his efforts? “That I love technology, finding new things and helping to democratise them.”