Brains Behind The Beauty

As reality television has shown us, the beauty world can be an ugly business - Camille Howard talks to an entrepreneur who kept her focus on enhancing beauty and turned a pet project into a global phenomenon.

Shelley Barrett has been in business since she was 21. Running her own modelling agencies for 10 years gave her the chance to get up close and personal with the sometimes ugly world of beauty. And when she recognised a niche for quick-fix beauty products, she took her career to a whole new level.

As an agent, she was working with women at the forefront of fashion and realised there was a gap in the market for innovative beauty products. "I was always listening to the girls talking about what they wished they had in their beauty regime that the luxury brands weren’t providing. Hence the reason for my first inspiration, Lash Wand heated eyelash curler."

That first innovation in 2002 took just six months to go from concept to production, sold out in no time, and launched the ModelCo brand. But what kicked the brand into the stratosphere—in this case into some of the world’s most renowned fashion stores—came with the monster-hit, Tan Airbrush in a Can. "I had no idea that ModelCo would become the global cosmetics brand it is today—it was more of a pet project."

Making the switch from agent to beauty entrepreneur wasn’t a big stretch. Instead of selling people, she decided to turn her hand to selling products. She was already in touch with models and makeup artists, and once the popularity of these two products grew, it wasn’t long before she had some very famous faces backing her brand. (Kylie Minogue, Elle McPherson, Victoria Beckham have been linked to the brand).

It was sheer tenacity, Barrett says, that helped her establish the contacts needed to not only make it in the competitive industry, but to stand out. "I attended cosmetic and beauty fairs, I thought about the way in which women would like to—and need to—apply cosmetics, and went about creating devices and moulds and tools that enabled them to get what they needed."

Today, she says, the inspiration for her products still comes from models, celebrities, and "what’s different in fashion". Her point of difference from other cosmetics brands, is that she isn’t a makeup artist like Napoleon Perdis of Napoleon Cosmetics, instead she goes about creating "nifty" products.

Another selling point is the speed to market. In the beauty industry, where Barrett says it’s not uncommon for new products to take up to two years to hit the shelves, her first innovation took six months. "Why we’re so successful is our speed to market."