A young start-up to an amazing bussiness

However, in those days, e-commerce was in its embryonic stage and many beauty brands were unwilling to allow a young start-up to sell their products on an undeveloped website.

Additionally, banks were reluctant to lend money to a 21-year-old woman, with no collateral, who wanted to start an online beauty business.

Despite these challenges, Kate’s tenacity won out: after much begging and borrowing, she managed to scrape together $12,000 which she spent on launching Adorebeauty.com.au in 2000, with a grand total of two relatively unknown brands.

After adorebeauty.com.au was launched, it made only one sale a week. But today, the site rakes in millions of visitors and offers over 8,000 products. Some of Kate’s clients include beauty powerhouse brands such as Clarins, Benefit, Kérastase, SK-II and Lancôme. Adore Beauty was recently announced as the first and only online beauty boutique in Australia to be approved as an agent for Estée Lauder Companies.

“I started adorebeauty.com.au in a garage, with next to no money and no business experience. When I look back on those early days it amazes me that I managed to get where I am today.”

Kate’s business story is empowering because it’s an example of how passion and persistence can result in success.

From her experience starting up Adore Beauty, Kate advises business owners to:

“Accept that failure is an essential part of the learning process, and particularly important if you are trying to innovate – if you’re not failing, you’re not trying anything new. Failure is only a bad thing if you beat yourself up about it, rather than taking the lessons from it.”