She first made her name more than two decades ago on the hugely famous British TV show What Not To Wear, which specialised in revamping the looks of individuals who had been nominated by their friends for makeovers.
But these days, the founder of the $108-million-a-year beauty brand Trinny London Trinny Woodall actively avoids seeking out trends.
“At Trinny London, we are not trend driven at all,” Trinny exclusively told Best Picks from the Park Hyatt Hotel in Sydney on Monday.
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“Being trend driven is fantastic initially as you can have phenomenal sales. But as soon as that trend is over, people move on. It’s not sustainable.”
How Trinny has built her “Trinny tribe” and massive customer base instead is to look at trends in the beauty world — whether that is an ingredient or a concept — and study them, thinking: Will this suit my customer? Is this something worth investing my time and research into?
And her method is clearly working.
Best-selling buy: The Elevator
Last year, Fortune Magazine reported that the British beauty brand created by Trinny in her 50s is turning over $108million AUD a year — with one of her products in particular selling every 30 seconds globally.
“My Neck Elevator has been a gamechanger for us,” Trinny admitted.
“Nobody was saying at the time: ‘Have you got something for your customers’ necks?’ Necks were not trendy.
“No one realised that you could have modern technology for the neck. Everyone was just extending their moisturiser down to their decolletage.
“But in fact, the neck is quite different to the face. There are no sebaceous glands. It needs to be treated differently, with different ingredients.
“Put simply: our customers didn’t know they needed The Elevator. And it’s now our highest-selling product.”
For those who need an introduction to the $128 Elevator product that sells every 30 seconds globally, you need only look at the raft of before and after pictures that Trinny has shared on the Trinny London website, as well as read about the numerous clinical trials.
“I think if I’m honest, the reason why The Elevator has been such a success story is it has helped introduce Trinny London to a whole host of new customers,” Trinny said.
She explained that the sort of woman who has now discovered Trinny London is someone who mightn’t have thought that much about skincare — until now.
“She might use Cerave cleanser, but she thinks ‘I really see my neck and it worries me so I will over-invest in that’,” Trinny said.
“They find their way to The Elevator on our website, and it’s been amazing to introduce that customer to the concept of Trinny London as a whole.”
Trinny explained that this particular woman — one who has perhaps “never played in the field of ingredients” — will buy a bottle of The Elevator, love it, and find herself coming back for more.
Next, she might invest in Trinny’s best-selling Plump Up Peptide & Hyaluronic Acid Serum ($140).
Before she knows it, she has come back for an Exfoliant, having done a “tiptoe in journey” to the world of skincare and Trinny London.
“It’s been phenomenal,” Trinny added.
Why you’re doing eye care wrong
Another product selling particularly well at Trinny London is the beauty entrepreneur’s eye cream, the Take Back Time Eye Treatment ($122), which is a product that took a staggering 57 iterations to get right.
“I always hated eye creams,” Trinny said.
“I thought they made you look puffy. I worked with a derm once who had patients and he said they had lifted up their eyes in surgery and seen these deposit of extra swollen fat.
“All of these were from eye creams with very heavy molecule size. I vowed I’d never use an eye cream again.”
But then, as with most women, Trinny noticed she started to get light wrinkles around her eyes — a gentle “criss cross” in the corner and a bit of sagging on the eyelid.
“I thought to myself: How can I work to make the skin here above the eyes tighter because that contributes so much to the ageing of women’s eyes?”
The resulting Take Back Time Eye Treatment is an eye cream with very small molecule size (no puffiness) and all of the ingredients you need for a more youthful-looking eye.
Again, the clinical trials back it up, with the product visibly reducing crow’s feet and under-eye lines in four weeks, and reducing under-eye bags in just 12 weeks.
How to apply eye cream
When it comes to how to apply your eye cream, Trinny said we should never forget the eyelids — which sag without diligent treatment.
“I put my eye cream all around the area of the eye and the last thing I do is put some onto the eyelid and massage upwards.”
Trinny also recommends some upper eyelid exercises in the form of closing your eyes and lifting your eyebrows at the same time.
“It’s like an exercise for the stomach but the eyes,” she said.
“I’m a big fan of combining beauty fascia with beauty products because I know it helps. It’s half about the product, and it’s half about getting the product in deeper. It needn’t take more than 10 minutes, but it really works.”
Trinny’s five-minute face
One of the best things about Trinny’s extensive product line-up is the fact that so many of her products are multi-taskers.
Famously, the beauty queen says she can do her makeup in just “three minutes without a mirror”.
“The key to this is multi-tasking products,” Trinny said.
“I did it on the plane into Sydney two days ago. I started with the Skin Perfector BFF ($78) to give me a light base, and then I applied my dual-use Trinity on my eyes, lips and cheeks, adding an eyeliner at the end.”
Trinity ($68) is another popular Trinny London buy.
With two sides, it has one glowy, one creamy matte. Both are blendable, buildable, silky soft formulas for lips, cheeks and eyes.
“You can go light or heavy, use it for bronzer and contour,” Trinny said.
“It gives a glow without a glisten. It’s a do it all. Why fumble around for three products when you can just have one?”
Shoppers swear by it, describing the $68 buy as a “godsend”.
How she creates her products
Finally, Trinny gave an insight into her process — and how she comes up with some of her product ideas.
“It might start with an ingredient that I’m researching, or a problem I’m solving,” she said.
“I’m not a cook, but I love being in the beauty lab.”
At any given point, she said she is testing and researching up to seven products at any time.
“If they don’t work, we have to go all the way back to square one.”
But, the entrepreneur concluded that “you never know what is behind a closed door” is the best advice she’s ever been given.
“Take the leap and don’t look back,” she said.
To shop from Trinny London, please head to the website here.
