Emma Lewisham: "I didn’t use skincare or makeup until 18, 19... until I was at university." Photo / Rob Tennent
Emma Lewisham: "I didn’t use skincare or makeup until 18, 19... until I was at university." Photo / Rob Tennent
A self-confessed “tomboy” growing up, and with a business career which started at the hard-nosed Business Roundtable, Emma Lewisham wasn’t necessarily a name destined to become a leading beauty product brand.
Speaking on the Money Talks podcast, Lewisham – co-founder and CEO of her eponymous skincare company Emma Lewisham – talks about growing up on the farm in the Waikato, her tough introduction to the business world and the reasons why she dropped out of a high-flying corporate career to follow her dream.
Emma Lewisham, the brand, has been described as a cult favourite since launching in 2019 and is often described as the world’s first climate-positive beauty range.
The brand has gone global and is now stocked by leading international retailers such as MECCA, Harrods, Liberty, SpaceNK and Goop.
Lewisham credits her strong work ethic to her father, who was a sharemilker as well as having a fulltime job as a livestock agent.
She recalls earning her first pocket money getting up in the morning to milk cows before they headed to work and school.
“I was a bit of a tomboy,” she says. “I loved playing sport and being out in nature, riding horses with my friends. I didn’t use skincare or makeup until 18, 19... until I was at university.”
At that stage in life, Lewisham would never have imagined launching a beauty product brand, she says.
But there were traits, even then, which have guided her.
“I’ve always loved solving problems,” she says.
“[I was ] a little bit of a misfit and a rebellious child at times, challenging the status quo. So it was more that the evolution came from who I am as a person, rather than my interest in wanting to have a skincare brand.”
At university, Lewisham initially studied biology and chemistry, something which proved useful later when she was developing her unique skincare range.
But she also took a few business papers and found she was doing well in them. She ended up making business the focus of her degree at Otago University.
In her final year, she took part in an exchange to a business school in Barcelona which gave her the chance to study with lecturers who had worked in places like Google.
After working with some local businesses in Dunedin, her first big break was a job in Wellington with The Business Roundtable.
Led by the late Roger Kerr, it was a famously tough organisation, unafraid of political battles as it lobbied on big economic issues.
“I learned a lot from Roger Kerr and Catherine Judd [Isaac] who were just phenomenal business people and good people,” Lewisham says.
“To rub shoulders with some of the top CEOs in New Zealand, I think what they instilled in me is that it wasn’t out of reach, having that exposure, being part of those conversations was hugely valuable for my confidence in such an early stage of my career.”
But Lewisham’s career really took off when she joined the global printing and imaging company Brother in its Wellington office.
She quickly worked her way up to a senior executive role, gaining experience in brand marketing and strategy in an eight-year career that took her to Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and America.
She could have stayed. But the death of her mother and a personal health scare caused her to pause and reflect on her career.
“It was such a tricky decision to make,” she says.
“Do I take this punt and launch a company from scratch? There were no guarantees. I had this opportunity with Brother to go on to become a director, potentially one of the first female CEOs of the company.
“I had to make a call, which was tough, but I believed that if there’s a backup plan, you’re not going to go all in. There was no plan B, I had to fire the cannonball and go for it.”
During that moment of pause and reflection as she approached her 30s, Lewisham was also trying to get pregnant.
“I did a lot of research into sleep and exercise and food,” she says.
Part of the research involved discussions with her doctor about issues with some of the chemicals in her skincare products.
“I then thought, for me, what I feel more comfortable with using is natural skincare. That seems the most luxurious to me, the best for my health.
“When I went to the market looking for natural skincare that really worked and had science and evidence and that luxury aspect to it, it didn’t exist,” she says.
“There was a huge gap internationally for that and I knew if I wanted it, other people would want it too.”
“I genuinely didn’t set out to launch a skincare brand or a beauty brand. I came across this problem.
“It was me, since I was a child, loving solving problems, challenging things,” she says.
“It was knowing how to pull this together, a business and a plan and a strategy and products and going: I think I can do this. There was something that really lit up inside of me.”
It was a very steep learning curve, Lewisham admits.
“But anything is possible if you put your mind to it. I brought on a co-founder - Kimberly Morrison. We worked together at the time and I said to her one lunchtime, I have this idea. I really think there is something here and that we can do something better and that that exists on the market.”
“We had to keep our day jobs because we needed the money to fund this business and so we’d work in the day - we both had really full-on jobs - and then every evening would be online together, every weekend and then we’d take our leave to work on the business,” she says.
“So it wasn’t the case that we had a whole lot of money or investment from the start, which was challenging.”
The goal from the start was to be a robust, global company with non-negotiable standards about ingredients, testing and packing, she says.
“That for us was the testing and the scientific research behind the products to prove that they worked and outperformed traditional skincare,” Lewisham says.
She even went back to university - doing course in physiology and biochemistry at Harvard to ensure she would have meaningful oversight of the production process.
“It’s an area that I continue to personally invest in,” she says. “I still sign off every batch that’s produced to make sure that it hits the quality I expect.”
Kea World Class NZ alumni Rob Fyfe. Photo / Doug Sherring
The company has now attracted outside investors - including Air NZ chief turned angel investor Rob Fyfe.
That was actually through his wife Sara, Lewisham says.
“She had used the product and sent him a lotion. Zara’s also been successful in business and just to get some advice from her and have her lending an ear it really developed from there. We had good conversations, we then met Rob and it was just a natural next step.”
As for future capital investment, Lewisham says she has big plans to keep growing the brand but is comfortable doing it organically for now.
“Australia is now our largest market,” she says. Last year, we launched into the UK with the retail space in K Co, which is equivalent to Mecca and we’re now in all of their stores as well as Harrods and Liberty,” she says.
There are also plans for further expansion in the US this year.
“It’s been an incredible reception globally. I think for us, we’re still very young, four and a half years old, and we see that Australasia is still [the] key market that we want to get right. So although we are growing internationally, we’re doing it in a really measured and thoughtful way and not at the compromise to what we’re delivering here.”
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics - it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
