Stay-at-home mother Maxine Laceby and her two daughters set up a £10 million beauty business from their Wolverhampton home.
Maxine left her job when she was 25 to be a full-time stay-at-home mother. After her two daughters moved to live in their own houses, the mother started a beauty company at 50.
Her daughters – 22-year-old Darcy and 19-year-old Margot – started working for her from their home and now within three years, their turnover is £10 million.
Maxine who is now 53, said: “My second project at uni was all about being the person I am and so I stripped back, let my hair go grey, wore no make-up and dowdy clothes,” said Maxine, now 53 and from Wolverhampton.point 405 |
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“It made me realise how desperately insecure I felt about how I looked and it made me rethink everything about myself. I went through an emotional and spiritual period of putting myself together and that included looking at what I was putting into my body.”
Maxine started making broth, simmering chicken feet and pigs trotters in pans at home that made her skin look glowing and her hair shiny.
“People said you look sparkling, what are you doing?” said Maxine, “my skin was glowing, my hair was shiny. The only thing I could attribute it to was the broth. looked into it and realised it was the collagen in the bone broth that was having an effect so I began making massive vats of it at home, like some kind of white witch, and I’d have friends banging on my door for my booty!” she added.
In May 2017, Maxine launched her website Absolute Collagen and started selling her product from there.
The product is 100 percent natural and sold in recyclable sachets. Maxine’s Absolute Collagen costs £26.99 where you get a box of 14 daily sachets if you buy it as a subscription. Or if you are a non-subscriber, it will cost you £32.99.
Within a year, her turnover was half a million pounds. She said: “It just grew and grew. I used an app whereby every time a sale came though, you’d hear a ping and, when it got to the stage where it was pinging all the time, my daughter said I reckon you’re onto something here. She went onto do her university dissertation on our product.”
They now ship around 26,000 products a year from their home in Wolverhampton.
She added: “So many people feel they have nowhere to go once their children have flown the nest but 50 is young nowadays. Going to uni and starting a business at 50 excited me so much. And now my kids work with me too. I’m trying to work with the government and the Prince’s Trust to offer funding to re-train women after having children.”
“I feel everything I take into the boardroom comes from being a mum. As a mum, you scan the room and pick up things intuitively, you can make sure people are happy without them having to say anything. I think mums can bring so much to the UK economy.”
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