42 Degrees - Business from a different angle

Arguably, early 2000 was not the best of times to launch a new Internet business. The Internet had exploded in the preceding years, attracting huge numbers of opportunist investors selling books, fashion, fruit, nuclear power stations, you name it.

But then, almost on the stroke of midnight on 31 December 1999, or so it seemed, the boom turned to bust. Billions of pounds were lost and the Internet for a while stood alongside the South Sea Bubble and pyramid selling schemes as a discredited way of doing business.

Hilary Andrews, however, realised that although the Internet wave had broken the tide was coming in. While everyone else zigged, she bravely zagged and chose that moment to launch Mankind.co.uk, the first Internet male grooming site in the country.

Looking back it was probably inevitable that she would become a successful businesswoman. Her father ran his own property company. Her sister ran her own PR firm and by the age of 23 Hilary had already opened her first spa business in Woking.

But, in Spring 2000, the future was anything but assured for Andrews and her business partner Paul Jameson. They had sunk £60,000 of their own money into an operation using a discredited medium, the Internet, to exploit an unproved market – male cosmetics.

"On reflection I suppose you could say it was foolhardy. But I believed in what we were doing so much that it really didn't feel that much of a gamble," says Andrews. "In fact I can honestly say I had total faith."

That faith, she says, was based on 17 years' experience in the cosmetics industry. After spending seven successful years running her spa business, she left to go into full-time education. "I wanted to move into a related area that would allow me to use my professional knowledge and experience in a different setting and this seemed the ideal opportunity," she explains.

Andrews did a degree in education at Farnborough College, then taught beauty therapy to students and within a couple of years had moved on to training new lecturers. But, after seven years in education, the lure of the business world proved too much. "Although I loved training, there was little career progression, but most of all I missed the buzz and excitement of business," says Andrews.

So she took a job in a beauty products distribution company. "We did everything from training in selling and use of spa products to supplying product and beauty technology, such as anti-cellulite machines," she says.

The company also supplied the shopping channel QVC with skincare products and they had their own small mail order business. "This was the first time I really understood the power of direct selling," she says.

The two vital insights that were to transform her life were yet to come, however. The first was when she experienced the Internet for the first time. "I was amazed," she says. "You could tell immediately that it was the future. It just seemed to be a brilliant direct way of shopping and selling, and could be even more powerful than TV shopping."

"I have always found selling very exciting and direct selling through this medium had so much more potential."

Then a couple of weeks later, a male customer wrote in asking about beauty products. "He was a rare creature then. But it was clear that men had a very different attitude to shopping and grooming products. Either out of embarrassment or laziness, they don't like wandering round shops trying a bit of this and a bit of that.

"They wanted the products and they wanted to make informed buying decisions without all the fuss that women go through. It struck me almost immediately that this was a perfect product to sell over the Internet."

Within a week she had started making plans for a new business selling cosmetic products to men. The risks were twofold. Firstly, the Internet was unproven – no one had actually made money operating an Internet business at that point. Secondly, of course, the male grooming market hardly existed. "I did some research and it seemed clear that although it was still small, male grooming was going to be a growth area," Andrews explains. "In fact, it was about to explode."

She and Jameson took out loans on their homes, borrowed money from family and friends. They found premises, developed the website and printed a catalogue. Mankind.co.uk was in business.

The first year was difficult. They existed on savings and thin air. "Perhaps it was an advantage to have launched in the aftermath of the dotcom crash," she says. "First it meant that we didn't have a lot of rivals fighting for our newly discovered market."

But it also meant that finance was hard to come by. "A year previously you only had to say the word 'Internet' and people would cram fortunes into your hands. Now lenders were far more wary."

This had the unexpected benefit of forcing Mankind to control its costs and cash flow extremely carefully. "It was tough, but it did force a discipline on us that we might not otherwise have had," says Andrews.

The discipline paid off. In year two the company broke even(ish) and in year three it went into profit. Sales were £3.5m last year, and are projected to be £5m this year. Andrews is aiming for £12m turnover within another five years.

"We are lucky in that we are now riding the crests of two waves," she says. "Our second site, BeautyExpert.co.uk, is doing really well and we are planning European expansion."

But it was more than luck. Andrews had the wit to recognise their significance. She had the timing to judge the best moment to go with the flow. And she had the courage to follow her convictions.