Maria Hatzistefanis – Beauty & the Media Beast
She’s taken her luxury skincare company from start up to one of the UK’s biggest beauty brands – and subsequently found herself surrounded by controversy. Here, Rodial’s Maria Hatzistefanis reveals how, even at the top, the harsh business lessons keep coming.
Maria Hatzistefanis always knew it would be hard. Having built her luxury skincare business from kitchen start up to multi-million pound market leader, her 11-year journey has been peppered with highs and lows.
“There are always issues affecting the business daily,” says the 40-year-old mother of two. “It could be production that’s gone bad, a person in your staff that has resigned in your shop or a story that you cannot control in the press.”
The latter, she discovered earlier this year, would almost test her to the limit. As founder of Rodial, the luxury skincare company that has cornered two per cent of the £800m UK market, and created the world-renowned ‘Snake Serum’ anti-wrinkle product, Hatzistefanis had gotten used to making beauty headlines. But it was headlines of another sort that came this year.
It all began in April. A beauty journalist was writing about Boob Job, one of Rodial’s signature skin firming products, and asked a plastic surgeon about their opinion on its effectiveness. Hatzistefanis takes up the story: “The surgeon told them ‘I don’t know if this product works, and I actually think it may be dangerous, causing cancer’.
“There are people who may say this product doesn’t work for them and that’s their opinion. But to go to the extent, without having done any clinical tests, and say that it may be dangerous, that is very damaging for a company’s reputation.”
Rodial responded by writing a letter to the plastic surgeon, asking whether they had in fact said such a thing ‘because sometimes journalists put words in people’s mouths’. They didn’t receive a response.
“It was one of the most challenging times psychologically. Having journalists calling every day and your name dragged through the papers, it’s something I’m not used to”
“The next thing we knew, the plastic surgeon had contacted a professional body about scientists expressing their opinion. Then the press took it and made it into something very different.” Lawsuits were suddenly flying around, question marks were being raised over Rodial’s products and effectiveness, and claims even surfaced about the company’s founder.
“It was one of the most challenging times, mostly psychologically,” Hatzistefanis admits. “Having journalists calling every day and your name dragged through the papers, it’s something I’m not used to. We also never started a lawsuit with anyone. There was a lot of difference between what was said in the papers and what was actually true.”
With the controversy finally dying down more recently, she puts the experience down to another harsh business lesson. “Occasionally you get picked on, and you just have to deal with it. Every day, this happens to someone. But we stand behind our products and have nothing to hide. Whatever we do is decent, clean and legal, and we have the clinical results to prove it.”
More interesting, however, was the knock-on effect on Rodial. Or, rather, lack of. Because, not only has the brand continued to grow and expand during this time, with products available in 1,000 luxury stores across 35 countries, but Hatzistefanis also just launched her second beauty brand this year.
Retailing at 1,500 stores worldwide, including Boots in the UK, Nip + Fab is her offering to the mass beauty market. “I was very much inspired by a lot of designer collaborations over the last few years like Lanvin for H&M and Stella McCartney for Gap. I saw that there was a gap in the mass market for something similar with Rodial.”
It’s an ingenious move, and reveals the razor-sharp brains behind Hatzistefanis groomed and glamorous exterior. But it’s equally a move she couldn’t have made had she not put in the legwork with Rodial first.
Hailing from Greece, Hatzistefanis was a beauty writer in her early 20s before moving to the US to gain her MBA at Columbia Business School in the mid-90s, later working in corporate finance. In 1999, after three years at Salomon Brothers in New York, she quit to launch her own business.
This would prove a challenging period. Always motivated to work hard and achieve, Hatzistefanis was paralysed by not having a clear idea of what she came next. “There was a six month period where I was not 100 per cent fully on Rodial yet and I hated those six months.”
When she did commit to it, armed with £20,000 of savings and help from her investment banker husband, things started slow. Launching in the beauty market was a crash course in everything from production, manufacturing, and shipping to dealing with retailers, selling to customers and working with designers and manufacturers.
Relocating to London, Fenwicks was the first store to stock Rodial here. It took almost six months to sell their 200 units, money she then reinvested in PR and production. Her big breakthrough came soon after – thanks to two things.
Firstly, Harrods and Harvey Nichols agreed to stock Rodial. “Sales jumped overnight and it gave me the money to bring out different products.” Secondly, Hatzistefanis’s approach to advertising. Rather than taking the traditional route of making an advert, she raised Rodial’s brand awareness by gifting products to A-listers at red carpet events. It not only placed the brand firmly in the ‘aspirational’ category, but gained her a cult following amongst celebrities including Victoria Beckham and Claudia Schiffer.
“It took me almost six years to reach £1m turnover with Rodial. With Nip + Fab, we did it in three months. It was about knowing the industry and learning from my mistakes”
All this knowledge proved vital when it came to launching her second brand. “It took almost six years for Rodial to reach £1m turnover. With Nip + Fab, we did it in three months. It was about knowing the industry and learning from my mistakes first time around.”
On track to meet her £15m combined target for both brands by April, this has effectively doubled Hatzistefanis' workload. And while she insists on never bringing business home, working 12-hour days inevitably has a knock-on effect. “By Friday, I’m burnt out,” she admits. “So I look forward to Saturday with the children. But by Sunday at 5pm, I am starting to think about the next day.”
This isn’t about to change anytime soon, what with new products launching constantly, including Life & Style, the new home and bath range under the Rodial umbrella released for Christmas. More beauty brand launches are also on her agenda for the future.
An extraordinary entrepreneur, with big ambitions and a track record in achieving them, it will be interesting to see what harsh lessons in life or business will come next for Maria Hatzistefanis.
By Barbara Walshe
