An Interview With Penny Bauder
Do not feel obliged to take onboard everyone’s advice. No one knows your business idea, your personality or your life like you do, so trust your instinct. There’s no harm in listening, but you don’t have to take everyone’s advice and run with it!
As part of my series about young people who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Anna Brightman.
Anna Brightman is the co-founder of UpCircle Beauty, the brand known for pioneering the “by-product beauty” trend. When Anna discovered that more than 500,000 tons of coffee grounds that are consumed each year in the UK alone are sent to landfill, she decided to start collecting coffee from cafes across London and transforming them into skincare products. Since launching, UpCircle has saved over 350 tons of coffee. The brand also rescues and reuses ingredients from the argan, tea, juice, date, olive and wood industries. UpCircle has seen staggering growth in the last five years, selling hundreds of thousands of products per year worldwide.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?
I had a pretty great childhood. I have particularly fond memories of our summer holidays. My parents were both teachers so we were able to venture away as a family for 6–7 weeks each summer — I miss that!! Looking back, I think it’s clear my mum has influenced me a lot with regards to the person I’ve become. She just never stops and I think some of her work ethic has rubbed off on me — and William (my brother and co-founder)! It’s what’s enabled us to grow so quickly since starting UpCircle.
Throughout my teenage years I wanted to be a makeup artist, so I’ve always had a keen interest in cosmetics, skincare and the beauty industry as a whole. My high school originally persuaded me to go down a more traditional career route, but I feel very lucky to have ended up in a job that is so well-aligned with what I truly wanted to be when I was younger. Co-owning a business with your big brother can be tumultuous (as you might expect!), but I don’t think either of us would have managed without the other. What William is good at, I am terrible at and vice versa. We make a great team!
Is there a particular organization that made a significant impact on you growing up? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I loved volunteering for different charitable organizations as a teenager, it was something that always made me feel good about human nature. Every Christmas for example I would wrap gifts for a London charity who provide support for deprived inner-city children. I think I’m a naturally pessimistic person, so I get great fulfillment from filling my life with people and plans that make me feel good about the world and the people within it!
How do you define “Making A Difference”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
In my opinion to make a difference is to positively impact the things and people around you. That could be your generosity and thoughtfulness towards friends and family, your compassion towards strangers, or indeed your efforts in a wider sense towards creating a better world. The point I’m trying to make is that to me, making a difference happens on different scales. Brightening up the day of someone who is feeling down is making a difference in the same way as creating a brand like UpCircle that’s saved hundreds of tons of ingredients from landfill is making a difference.
Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. You are currently leading an organization that aims to make a social impact. Can you tell us a bit about what you and UpCircle Beauty are trying to change in our world today?
UpCircle is known as the brand pioneering “by-product beauty.” We’re all about preventing skin-loving ingredients from going to waste — we do this by transforming by-products from other industries into our products. We started out making face and body scrubs from repurposed coffee grounds collected from artisan coffee shops before moving on from coffee to rescuing chai spices which had first been used to brew chai. We then began powdering fruit stones, which are by-products of the production of fruit oils, like olive and argan oil. We are the only skincare / beauty brand that we know of that has centered its entire concept around the idea of upcycling ingredients.
Beyond just the products that we make, we also try to be a force for good in all areas of our business. As a brand we’ve always endorsed blind recruitment. We’ve pledged to work with a minimum of 50% LGBTQ+ creators in all our paid partnerships. We’ve donated children’s book bundles with ethic minority protagonists to over 135 schools. In response to the recent conversation around women’s safety we launched our “email your MP” campaign. For every screenshot of an email calling for public sexual harassment to be a crime, we offered a free chai soap in return.
We use our authentic voice to speak up on things that we feel passionately about — way beyond the parameters of the skincare industry. The fact that we choose to use our platform to speak up about broader social issues is one of the things we are most widely praised for as a brand.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
The main thing I was conscious of when I launched UpCircle was building a “beauty” brand that doesn’t actually make people feel worse about themselves. The beauty industry I DON’T want to be a part of can make people feel inferior. When I launched UpCircle and I was frankly fed up of seeing flawlessness and uniformity across most visual industries, but primarily fashion and beauty. No pores, no lumps or bumps, no body diversity — you know the drill! I want my brand to inspire confidence. We’re body positive, gender neutral, represent all ages and encourage diversity. Our products are modeled by real customers, family and friends and I’m passionate about using authentic visuals that are never photoshopped. We stand for authentic, real beauty in its many forms.
Something else that’s very important to me is making products that I would’ve bought myself at the age that I launched the brand (22 years old). Price point shouldn’t be a barrier to planet-friendly purchasing and sustainability should not be an elite privilege. Ethical, sustainable, fair trade ingredients cost more, but we’re committed to remaining a brand accessible for all. That’s why we’ve secured listings with so many big retailers like Ulta and Whole Foods.
I also keep a personal target to speak purely on female-focused issues once a week. I’ve given careers lectures in girls’ schools, offered mentorship to teenage girls looking to start their own business, and been featured on countless podcast episodes as a guest speaker, often on the subject of female empowerment or women in business. I’ve also give frequent talks on podcasts and webinars to knowledge-share and inspire the next generation of “green” entrepreneurs.
Many of us have ideas, dreams, and passions, but never manifest it. They don’t get up and just do it. But you did. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were actually going to step up and do it? What was that final trigger?
If you think about things too much you’ll find a reason not to just go ahead and take the leap. I try to be spontaneous and brave. Lots of people spend months and months planning, we just dived straight in and never looked back. Sure, you have to be willing to constantly refine and improve on what you’re doing. But, don’t think too much, just go for it and learn along the way!
Many young people don’t know the steps to take to start a company. But you did. What are some of the things or steps you took to get your project started?
Starting a business is expensive, so I would always advise that you stay in your existing job as long as you can while you first start out. We were initially funded through a Virgin Start Up Loan, in 2018 we went on to raise over $275K from 377 investors. We closed the round over funded within 3 days. The main reason that our public funding was so successful was because we secured 30% of it privately before going public on a platform. I think this is key when crowdfunding. It’s all about psychology! If a brand goes public with 0% of their target met on day one then it’s hard to be that investor who takes the first step, but if they launch with a decent proportion already secured then it gives a greater sense of trust and security for others thinking of investing in you. Since then, we’ve reinvested any profits generated back into growing the company, primarily through innovative New Product Development and marketing.
In the very early days, whilst still working our previous jobs, we booked ourselves in to as many trade and consumer shows as we possibly could. Most were related to the beauty industry but we also visited and exhibited at wellness shows, fitness shows, vegan shows — anywhere we thought the audience would be interested in us. It was a great way to test the market and gauge people’s responses to our products and concept. We often take different versions of potential product formulations to shows and events, we ask customers to try or smell them and vote for their favorite — it’s a great way to get instant feedback and honest reactions!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading UpCircle?
We went on the UK version of Shark Tank. It was an absolutely mad, terrifying but exhilarating experience. Thankfully it went really well and we received multiple offers of investment. My friends couldn’t believe it when they saw me on TV.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson or take away you learned from that?
I would probably say our original brand name. We were first called “Optiat.” It was an acronym for “One person’s trash is another’s treasure.” Was it relevant? Yes. Original? Yes. Hard to let go of for sentimental reasons? Yes. Easy to pronounce? No. Easy to spell? Apparently not. Some of our most common mispronunciations include Opitat, Opiat, Optate, Opiate, Optitat — who’d have thought! It was also not so easy to communicate its hidden meaning. The name only became interesting once you’d learnt what it meant. It needs explaining, which makes it too forgettable to anyone who doesn’t understand it.
We took our learnings from our original brand name and used them to come up with UpCircle. We felt UpCircle succinctly summed up our circular skincare mission — it requires no explanation AND it’s a lot easier to read. A play on upcycle, “up” as in uplifting, and upcircle as a circular economy. A significant improvement for sure!
None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?
Yes I absolutely did. The big benefit of founding UpCircle with my brother is that it really is a family business — and although they’re not formally employees of the business, the rest of my immediate family are a significant part of our daily operations. My brother’s wife is one of the models on our website and writes a lot of our blog content. My dad does a lot of our coffee collecting and machinery installation / fixing at our London warehouse. My sister is our events superstar, she has come to endless events in multiple countries and represented our brand.
Without saying specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
I received an email from a customer last week which was very moving. She suffered from eczema and had spent more than $2000 on tests, with only high dose steroids seeming to make any difference at all. The problem was that the side effects of the steroids created whole new issues for her. Whenever she had an eczema flare up she would go off the radar, she would not see friends and would take time off work. She began suffering mentally because it was difficult to go about her day with confidence. She made the switch to UpCircle and told us that she felt like she had got her life, confidence and happiness back.
We receive letters, emails and comments every day saying that our products have made an impact on people’s overall happiness and confidence. What better reason to go to work every day?! When customers take the time to email or even send letters, showing before and afters of their skin and letting us know how much they love UpCircle — those sorts of things are what I value more than anything. I love the fact that the products that we make help people to feel good about themselves.
Here is the main question of the interview. What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started UpCircle” and why? (Please share a story or example for each).
1: Don’t be put off by not being an “expert” in your respective field. No one is good at everything or knows everything there is to know. What’s important is your unique idea / product and your passion and determination. You’ll build a team around you and each of those people will be experts in their own niche. For example, I do not have a background in skincare and yet I’ve built a skincare brand from scratch. I work with professional formulators in order to make my ideas a reality. It’s impossible for one person to be an expert in everything that goes on behind the scenes of a brand — so don’t let people intimidate you into thinking that you don’t know enough.
2: Be prepared to try, fail, and try again until you manage It. Don’t take things personally and try to develop a thick skin! Take 2020 for example, it was a year of constant obstacles… to survive a year like that you have to be willing to pivot your offering and come up with new ideas. Our circular economy ethos relies on the functioning of other industries for the creation of the by-products that we use in our products. Our signature coffee scrub range for example is made up of coffee grounds that we collect from cafes all over London. With almost all of those coffee shops closed for the majority of the year, paired with the increase in demand for our products, we faced a huge challenge keeping our products in stock. We donned our entrepreneurial caps, continued to think outside the box, and just about managed it… through varied and imaginative means.
3: Figure out what your non negotiables are at the start and be willing to compromise on what isn’t on that list. Making some sacrifices is okay because your product or service can be constantly refined and improved upon as you grow. Don’t expect everything to be perfect from day 1, your resources and expertise will be limited, so be realistic.
4: Public speaking gets easier, keep at it. I used to have a crippling fear of public speaking. Now I get flown to different countries so that people can hear what I have to say — who could’ve imagined?! It feels very surreal. I wish I could tell my younger self that the way to overcome the fear is to find what you’re passionate about. Once you’ve done that it becomes second nature, and a whole lot less terrifying.
5: Do not feel obliged to take onboard everyone’s advice. No one knows your business idea, your personality or your life like you do, so trust your instinct. There’s no harm in listening, but you don’t have to take everyone’s advice and run with it!
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
I would tell them that in my opinion it’s important to build your ethics into your brand DNA. Having a positive impact or being environmentally responsible should not be an afterthought, or a marketing activity — it should be integral to what you do. Businesses that have a purpose beyond profit are the ones that will thrive in the coming years.
At present there is a lot of consumer interest in brands who are not impatient to make money, but impatient to enact change. Consumers want to support authentic brands that are committed to the environment, whether that’s through sustainable ingredient sourcing, innovative packaging solutions, or natural and organic products. Consumers are increasingly looking for transparency — are they authentic or simply paying lip service (‘greenwashing’)? The idea of voting with your money is important, people want to buy from brands whose values are their own. As a brand it keeps us on the top of our game if our customers hold us accountable!
For example, in the beauty industry not so long ago the gold standard for brands was to deliver great products from natural ingredients. Now brands are expected to go much further, to stand for something beyond the ingredients they use. Beauty brands must prove that there is a reason for their existence, one that contributes in some way positively to the environment, to society, or to supporting individual expression. Just having natural or vegan ingredients has become an entry-level requirement. Brands need to take the next step!
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Louis Theroux! My current role within my business is to tell the story of our brand and products. I do this through events, marketing, press, social media — whatever channels I can. I know no one better at story-telling than Louis Theroux. From the decision about which stories he chooses to tell, to how he goes about questioning his subjects, to his empathetic, slightly awkward but ultimately charismatic stance, to his thoughtful and fair conclusions, I find him to be one of the very best. I can’t think of a better person to have breakfast with.
How can our readers follow you online?
All of our socials are @upcirclebeauty and our website is us.upcirclebeauty.com
Thank you for your time, and your excellent insights! We wish you continued success.
Young Change Makers: Why and How Anna Brightman of UpCircle Beauty Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.