House of Amor: Beauty brand founder shares journey from a small home-based business to being featured in British Vogue

BristolWorld

Bristol-born beauty brand House of Amor celebrated a remarkable end to 2024 with its Press-on Nails featured in British Vogue's "Best Beauty Products of 2024."  The product aims to empower customers to achieve salon-quality results from the comfort of their homes and is described as "rivalling the best professional polish jobs."  The achievement follows after House of Amor opened its first-ever flagship store in Winford last November.  BristolWorld visited the facilities in an exclusive tour to learn more about the brand from founder Lucy Pearce.

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00:00How do you feel after one of your products got featured on British Vogue?

00:04Like, it's actually indescribable because, you know, things like that, we weren't aware

00:09it was happening until we got sent the article. And yeah, I think just from being just me

00:16in a small business, you know, I felt like I was failing in business for years and never

00:21ever would have pictured, you know, this was a dream. To, like, see that all the hard work

00:28and effort and everything we all do and the whole team do behind the scenes has paid off

00:33is just incredible.

00:34And how did House of Amour start?

00:36Kind of started, I had a little eyelash brand. It wasn't going well, wasn't making any money,

00:42but I did it because I just loved, like I said, the creative side of it. I would make all my own,

00:46like, stickers. I'd make my own, I'd use vellum paper, make my own tissue paper. And then I was

00:54a mum. I've got three kids. I worked part time. I didn't have much time to feel like me. You know,

01:02this just, life gets crazy, doesn't it? And I miss that feeling of feeling myself. And I

01:08really feel like that's what, like, lashes brought to me. So I kind of went out trying

01:14to solve a personal problem, which in hand solved it for so many people all around the world

01:19at the time without realising that that's what I was doing, essentially. And yeah,

01:25I launched DIY Lashes and advertised it online. At the start, I didn't put my face to my business

01:32at all. I was really nervous, really scared about showing up on social media. But like,

01:37social media now has just done wonders for business. And yeah, I got my cousin in. She

01:43was young and fun and she'd sort of do some videos using the lashes. And at that time, TikTok

01:50was just sort of starting off and the videos were going viral. We were hitting like 10 million views

01:55on videos, which was just insane. And yeah, it just kind of went like that. We just got a really

02:01good following. We launched the products and overnight we went from nothing, you know, sort

02:07of having a business for years that I'd felt like giving up on because I'd tried so many different

02:12things and just didn't ever feel like I was finding my thing. To, I think the first night

02:20that we did a launch of the stuff, we hit £20,000 in six minutes and I just sat there and cried.

02:27I didn't know what to say or do or, and yeah, it was crazy. And then from then it was a big

02:34whirlwind. It was kind of like not knowing, is this a trend or do I need to run with this? So

02:40I thought I'll ride the wave and reinvested every single penny I made it back into the

02:46business and just kept doing that. So at the start, I've never had funding or anything like

02:51that. So it would be do a restock, sell out, put all the money back in, go to my manufacturers,

02:58be out of stock for three weeks, go back to them, order X amount, whatever money we'd made from the

03:04seller. And yeah, and it went round and round like that. And it's just been like that ever

03:10since in the business. I think we've been going for three or four years now and it's just growing

03:15and growing and growing. Now I've got a big team that helped me. I think there's eight of us now

03:21and yeah, that's how it started.

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