Fierce, tenacious, and endlessly creative, Liz Warom has had a long and fruitful career. From her humble beginnings as a dental nurse, she worked her way up through the ranks of the skincare and cosmetics industry, until, in her 40s, she founded the beauty company, TEMPLESPA, alongside her business and life partner Mark.
Now, at 63, Liz is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down and is just as ambitious as ever. We sat down with Liz to reflect on her impressive career, and get more insight into what drives her.
“[Being a dental nurse] helped foster my competitive spirit, to do better and better, and serve a cause”
Liz says, “I had quite an unconventional start to my career. I left school pretty early and I hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do.”
But when Liz married Mark at the age of 17, she found herself thrust into adulthood. She envisioned a life for herself that the young couple’s budget couldn’t provide for. With that, she took to building the life that she wanted, one job at a time. First, she took on a role as a dental nurse; an opportunity that she not only enjoyed but believes bestowed her with some useful values that she still holds to this day.
“It taught me to really serve someone well,” Liz explains. “A dentist is very reliant on their dental nurse to help them get through the day. I loved seeing how I could anticipate someone’s needs, be super-efficient, and even create some extra time for my dentist so he could fit in more patients. It helped foster my competitive spirit, to do better and better, and serve a cause.”
While she was a dental nurse, Liz took on a number of side hustles, like babysitting and working in a boutique on Saturdays, to save for all the things that she and Mark wanted. And when she was 18 years old, she broke into the world of skincare.
“One of the most valuable takeaways [of working at The Body Shop] was that it opened up my eyes to what it’s like to manage an international company”
Liz’s first role in the skincare industry was working as an entry-level skincare consultant for Jafra Cosmetics; a subsidiary of Gillette that specialises in skincare, makeup, fragrances, and bath and body products. From here, she worked her way up to national sales director in three years.
By the mid-80s, Liz was working for one of Europe’s largest cosmetics manufacturers as an account manager. She looked after clients like Marks & Spencer’s, Selfridges, and most importantly, The Body Shop.
“As part of my role was developing products for The Body Shop, I worked very closely with Anita Roddick, the owner. One day, she said to me, ‘Why don’t you come and work for me?’”
This began an eight-year career for Liz, initially as a brand manager, then as general manager of The Body Shop’s makeup division, called ‘Colourings’. But she didn’t do it alone. In fact, after Liz had only been working at The Body Shop for a short while, Anita met Mark at a party and, as Liz describes, “kind of fell in love with him”. Afterwards, Anita asked the pair if they’d run the division together – an opportunity that they accepted with open arms.
Although, after a successful five-year term as co-general managers, which included taking the brand’s sales from £10m to £124m in four years and overseeing a complete re-launch of the brand in 42 countries, Mark and Liz decided to set out on a new adventure…
“There might not be a gap for another restaurant in the marketplace. But there might be a gap for your restaurant”
“We loved The Body Shop,” Liz tells us. “It was a great company to work for, but it wasn’t ours. It was very much aimed at people in their teens and early 20s, and we felt there was an opportunity to create a lifestyle brand for a slightly older consumer, so we came up with a concept called ‘Vie’.”
“I think most things start because of a gap. It doesn’t matter what you’re starting. If it’s a restaurant, for example, there might not be a gap for another restaurant in the marketplace. But there might be a gap for your restaurant, if you can do it better.
“We didn’t start Vie because there was a gap for another cosmetics brand, because there wasn’t. But clearly what was happening in the 90s was that power brands were leading the marketplace. The mood was that if you didn’t wear Nike trainers, you weren’t cool. If you didn’t drink Coca-Cola, you weren’t cool. So we thought, who’s out there that has a big name that doesn’t have a cosmetics brand?”
At the time, Virgin was a giant in the marketplace, and it was rapidly growing its brand diversity. Liz says, “They had Virgin Media, Virgin Brides, Virgin Clothing – they even tried Virgin Cola, if you remember that. So we thought that if we can get our concept in front of Richard Branson, it might be a good fit.”
“To tell me that something can’t be done is the best thing that you can ever say to me”
As you can imagine, getting a meeting with Sir Richard Branson is no small feat. At the time, he was one of the world’s most successful business people, not to mention one of the richest. But Liz saw this as a challenge, rather than a hurdle…
“I’ve got three older brothers and I grew up in a male-dominated household, so I was used to being told: ‘You can’t do that because you’re a girl’ and ‘You can’t do that because you’re the youngest’. And, at the time, people were saying to me: ‘You won’t get a meeting with Richard Branson – you won’t even get close to him.’
“To tell me that something can’t be done is the best thing that you can ever say to me. Because I’ll always set out to prove someone wrong.”
So after getting in touch with one of his six PAs and, as she describes, “buttering her up a bit”, Liz managed to secure a 20-minute meeting (which turned into a two-hour conversation) with Branson at his home in Holland Park.
Liz says, “At the end of the meeting, his little boy came in and Richard said, ‘Come and meet these lovely people, we’re going to do a cosmetics brand together.’ We left the building wanting to punch the air, but Mark cautioned us that cameras were everywhere so we walked to Holland Park and screamed, “Did that just happen?’”
“Mark and I are very different but we’re also one heartbeat”
Virgin Vie proved to be what Liz would later describe as the second of the “long-term training grounds” of her career. She and Mark had to create six hundred products in only 18 months, ready for the brand’s launch. “That was the design, content, shop experience, website, all the system infrastructure. It was massive.”
Plus, they had to raise all of the money themselves. Liz explains, “ As someone who didn’t even get a maths O-Level, I thought, how am I going to sit in front of the suits at institutions and convince them that they should part with their money?”
Luckily, while Liz’s strengths lie in the creative side of things – generating product ideas and devising marketing strategies – it’s situations like this where Mark feels the most comfortable.
Liz says, “Mark and I are very different but we’re also one heartbeat. Having got married so early, we’ve lived life for such a long time together. So now we complement each other. I’m gregarious, creative, and have got loads of ideas, but Mark gets things done and makes things happen. He’s much more comfortable with the business, legal, financial, and operations side of things.
“We’re like two sides of the same coin. So people would constantly say to us, ‘Why on Earth do you not have your own brand?’” And despite the success of their time at The Body Shop, and then at Virgin Vie, it was the idea of having something that was completely their own that Liz and Mark really yearned for.
“We were good nannies at The Body Shop. We loved it like it was our own. But it wasn’t. And it was a similar story with Virgin Vie. But there comes a point where you want something of your own.”
“We felt that the Mediterranean was restorative. It was like medicine to our minds, bodies, and souls”
After four years of nurturing Virgin Vie into a successful global brand, Liz and Mark decided to take a year out and travel Europe – a trip which proved to be instrumental in the future of their careers. Liz says, “We needed some time to regroup, replenish, refocus on our future, and press restart.
“We felt that the Mediterranean was restorative. It was like medicine to our minds, bodies, and souls. So we thought that if we just took some time to really absorb the culture, our new idea might just come to us.”
While in Cyprus, Liz and Mark decided to renew their wedding vowels in a Byzantine chapel. “The morning of the ceremony, Mark was swimming and he looked out and could see the Mediterranean sky, sea, and the water from the pool”, Liz says. “So he took a photo and came back to show me. He said, ‘What do you think of that?’ And I replied, ‘What do you think of the name TEMPLESPA?’”
It was this epiphany moment that spurred Liz and Mark on to create a brand around the Mediterranean lifestyle; a lifestyle, as Liz describes it, of “peace and chatter; beautiful diet, landscapes, architecture, and culture”.
Now with the kernel of an idea, the first thing that the couple did was make a photo album of the day, which Liz explains, became a vision board for what TEMPLESPA would become. “As well as me in my white dress and lavender bouquet, he took photos of all the things we don’t have in the UK; a pomegranate tree, an avocado tree. We just built from that, really.”
“As a business owner, you’ve got to be unrelenting because you’re never not working and there are ideas everywhere”
And build they did. Over the past 22 years, Liz and Mark have turned TEMPLESPA into one of the UK’s favourite skincare brands. Trading in 10 countries, you can find their products in high-end retail spaces like Harrods, spas, boutiques, on cruises, and, of course, online. In 2020, they even won Best Luxury Skincare Brand at the Global Makeup Awards, and this year, the prestigious CEW recognised them as the Best British Brand.
One of the keys to her success, she tells us, is her ability to constantly be generating ideas. “I always have my notepad next to me because you never know what will set off an idea. As a business owner [or a potential business owner], you’ve got to be unrelenting because you’re never not working and there are ideas everywhere.”
And, unsurprisingly, one of Liz’s biggest tips for starting a business is to find a partner or mentor…
“You’ve got to have someone that’ll contrast and compliment you. First, you’ve got to find where your gifts and gaps lay, and then find someone who can plug those gaps. Someone who’s going to feed you ideas, but who’s also going to challenge your judgement, reveal your blind spots, and rattle your cage a little.”
Some final thoughts from Liz…
Liz and Mark started TEMPLESPA when they were 40 and 48 respectively. “By that point,” Liz explains. “We’d held some pretty senior jobs in the industry. We’d been there, got the T-shirt, and we knew what we needed to do. So we wanted to give it a go; to take our entrepreneurialism and pour it into our own brand.
“The thing you do have as you get older is wisdom. You’ve listened more, experienced more, and maybe even travelled more. Having lived life and stood the test of time gives you something that’s very relevant and needs to be used within the community.
“Being your own boss is massive. I love it and I’m very proud to say that I own my own business. I’m in my 60s, I work full time, and I’ve got no intention of giving up any time soon. Retirement isn’t even on the horizon for me.”