Trinny London is a global, digital-first beauty brand with the mission to give every individual the confidence to be the person they truly want to be.
The company was founded in 2017 by our CEO Trinny Woodall, who has since grown the business into one of Europe’s fastest-growing D2C brands, with revenue soaring to £55m at the end of 2021.
What do you think makes this company unique?
Trinny London is forging a new path for the beauty industry. We’re direct-to-consumer in an industry that has traditionally had many barriers to buying online, so a big focus has been on using technology to educate the market and improve the online shopping experience.
From the start, we invested heavily in tech innovation to create an industry-leading personalisation service, Match2Me. Our complex algorithm enables customers to find makeup and skincare products that perfectly suit their skin type and combination of skin, hair and eye tone.
Another unique strand to Trinny London’s D2C strategy is our global, online community, the Trinny Tribe. Independently launched by a handful of dedicated customers, the Trinny Tribe Facebook and Instagram groups – with over 100,000 members spanning 30 countries worldwide – are a space for women to support and empower one another, while sharing beauty advice and discussing new product launches. The groups are home to the brand’s biggest supporters (and harshest critics!) whose reviews and wishlists have been instrumental in our product development strategy.
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How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
At Trinny London, we’re always working on the next big thing. Ultimately, we want to be a one-stop-shop for women’s needs. Since 2017, Trinny London has grown from a handful of team members working around Trinny’s kitchen table to a team of over 180 people and the brand now has a global following.
Earlier this year, we entered a new vertical: skincare. I led the tech team as we were challenged with developing Match2Me for skincare. This was a more complex task; with skincare you have to take into account a much wider range of external factors than with makeup, from sun exposure and stress to lack of sleep or menopausal breakouts.
After a lot of experimentation, we got it right and we put much of the success of the range to date down to this technology – in fact, over 75% of our customers use Match2Me when purchasing, it’s been hugely successful in helping people feel more confident and empowered to shop for skincare products online.
As well as expanding our product range, our global footprint has exploded. Customers can now buy from Trinny London in 180 countries – a more than 90% increase since 2019 – and just a few months ago we opened our first permanent store in the US at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York.
What can we hope to see from Trinny London in the future?
We’re really only at the start of what we want to achieve with Trinny London – we’re moving fast and as a tech team, our challenge is to support and drive that ambition through innovation and optimisation. There’s a lot coming down the line and we’re already working hard to adapt and develop our tech stack to fit the exciting new verticals we plan to enter.
