Kelly Colman - Style full stop

Looks can be deceiving.  Meet Kelly Colman and you might pass her off as just a pretty face.  A leggy, blonde, former model and dancer – but a pretty face nonetheless. 

So, to discover she’s the head of a burgeoning empire that spans photography, cosmetics and styling is, to put it mildly, a bit of a surprise.  That she employs 300 people across the UK, runs 12 studios, has 18 cosmetics counters in stores like House of Fraser, Debenhams and Fenwick, and a client base of tens of thousands, is even more so.

At 33, successful model and dancer would be enough for most people.  But then Colman is not most people.  From applying and winning a scholarship to the Doreen Bird dance school at age 15 without her mother’s knowledge, to giving up the profession at 22 because didn’t want to be an ‘old dancer’, to making her fortune turning simple concepts into super-successful businesses - Kelly Colman does things her way.

“Customers were walking into big department stores, being hit by walls of colour and not knowing where to start. So we knew we needed to make our products simple.”

Take her first big venture at age 24.  Having met her future husband, the high profile hairdresser behind Burlingtons, Clive Colman, on a Virgin Atlantic plane to Chicago nine years ago, it was, she laughs, ‘love at first flight’.  Back then, she was already running her own modeling agency, Kelly’s Kind.  But with his expertise in hair and styling, and hers in modelling and photoshoots, they knew they could collaborate on something unique.

New ID Studio was born a year later.  It was a concept that gave everyone – women, friends, and families - the opportunity to be photographed looking their best.  Customers simply booked an appointment in one of their studios, had their hair styled by Burlingtons when they arrived, their make-up applied by a make-up artist and a professional photographer take their pictures.

Eight years on and the business is thriving with 50,000 people photographed last year and expansion into Mothercare more recently.  It was this business that led Colman’s next big venture, which is set to outgrow the studio one this year.  “We were making up so many women and then sending them to department stores to buy the make-up.  So I said to my husband, I think we should start a cosmetics line,” says Colman, in her Leicestershire accent.  

She was just 28 at the time.  By 30, New CID cosmetics had launched its first five products.  Three years on, there are hundreds more, with the brand expanding into Denmark last summer, and Russia, Thailand and Hong Kong in 2010. 

What’s unique about it is that Colman knows exactly who her target market is, given they’re sitting in front of her make-up artists every day.  “We’re all about real women,” she says, “making them look beautiful and giving them what they want.  Early on, for example, we found out that our customers were walking into big department stores, being hit by walls of colour and not knowing where to start.  So we knew we needed to make our products simple and create pallets that would suit everyone.”

“Big brands sometimes don’t know what’s going on out there. We’re a small brand, we’re on the floor listening and we can react quickly to a trend.”

Since then, New CID’s customer base has grown well beyond its studio clientele thanks to headline-grabbing products, celebrity fans and quirky, affordable concepts that keep stomping all over the competition.  Like their i-gloss, the lip-gloss they’ve created with in-built lights that makes night-time application easier.  Or i-flick, the double ended liquid and coal eyeliner that gives that quintessential 60s look.
 
This ‘total look’ concept led to her launching Style Stop last year, the one-stop-style-shop for women looking to glam up before going out for the evening.  Women simply go in-store to the Style Stop counters at House of Fraser in London (Oxford Street), Glasgow, Belfast and Lakeside Shopping Centre, and have their hair and make-up done by experts at an affordable price.

It’s so simple, she says, she’s been wondering why no one’s done it sooner.  But then not everyone has had the luxury of getting creative in a recession.  While New CID has flourished, many more brands have struggled, like Bare Essentials being pulled off the counters in January and Stila now selling only online.

“Big brands sometimes don’t know what’s going on out there,” Colman muses.  “We’re a small brand, we’re on the floor listening and we can react quickly to a trend.”

Of course, there are always risks to launching new businesses and concepts.  But if Colman is concerned, it doesn’t show.  What is clear is that she thrives on the all the action and is on top of everything – from her people to the processes, to the problems that arise.  And there have been problems when the odd client emerges unhappy with their studio sessions.  All normal, she insists, given the number of people they’re seeing each day.  “You just have to know how to take care of them properly and move forward with the business.”

Keeping everything going has meant a 24/7 existence from the start - no mean feat when there’s a three-year old daughter to look after and a second baby due in April.  But then, squeezing things is in is a Kelly Colman special.  Having achieved so much in her 33 years, she’s not about to let this bother her pretty little face.

Find out more about Kelly Colman’s businesses at 
www.newidstudios.com , www.newidcosmetics.com and www.style-stop.com

By Barbara Walshe