Talk about being made feel welcome in Pippa and Brian’s sumptuous family home in Straffan, Co. Kildare. As we walk through the electric gates, past the shiny black cars and approach the front door which is adorned with an immaculate and enormous Christmas wreath, we see a tray of ready-made sandwiches being scuttled in.
The door is ajar, we push it open and holler in. In the kitchen we find Pippa with her glam team of artists/ pals/business partners, laughing and slagging as they pimp this glowing beauty up. Pippa in her green silk jammies, Brian in his bare feet padding around the huge kitchen island making us coffee to go with the sambos — the vibe is easy and fun.
Billy their youngest (he’s just 2) arrives back from Montessori and Pippa scoops her little smudge up and buries her head in his shock of blonde hair. Brian takes him and puts him down for his lunchtime nap, reversing the grow-bag (a new parenting hack he’s heard about) to prevent this toddler acrobat from scaling out of his cot. He then heads off to pick up the older two lads, Ollie (10) and Louis (7) from school. Two perfectly polite young men return and brush up for their close-ups, with the promise of hydration drink Prime and V-Bucks (in-game currency) for online video game Fortnite – if they crack a smile. Billy being two is not in the mood — who would blame him!
We laugh as we watch Pippa hold the most perfect pose while beside her Brian wrangles with Billy as he wriggles and climbs out of his dad’s arms in every shot — hence the lollipop!
The old adage: behind every successful man is a great woman, is flipped on its head with these two. This sentiment Pippa referenced last week, as she collected her Entrepreneur of the Year Award at our Power of Women Awards. “Marry a good partner who supports you,” were her parting words as she stepped down off the stage.
Mad to think that it’s been just seven years since she set up POCO by Pippa, aged 32. But now with a new business chapter with POCO Beauty just beginning, things are set to go even more stellar for this crack squad business couple. Their standalone beauty brand is only getting going and it really is going to go places. Just to give you an idea: on launch day (November 13th) 4,000 orders were placed, picked and processed in five short hours for their first three products (Universal Glow Treatment, €30, Face Gaze Highlighter Stick, €21 and Suede Sculpt Contour Stick, €21). That is a lot of orders for day one.
Despite this exhilarating start for POCO Beauty, Pippa is still cool, calm and collected. This is not new; Pippa has always possessed an inner contentment. What is neither new is her niceness – Pippa is always nice.
So, cool, calm, collected, good craic and, with brilliant business acumen, it’s no wonder life looks so peachy…
Pippa, you have never looked better. We know this is partly down to the glow your new beauty products are giving (we’ve tried them and they are glow-givers) but it’s got to be something else? And we’re not necessarily suggesting tweakments, more like an internal glow?
I think it’s age, I think it’s growing up, I think it’s knowing what suits you and that is a 360-degree approach. It’s everything from a haircut, to your colour, to getting your brows done right, to getting drainage facials, to taking your omegas supplements. I do everything, there’s no point in saying I don’t! You have to! You can’t at this age just lash on your bit of moisturiser and think that’s enough as you grow older. You need to mind yourself; you need to eat well. Yeah, I do enjoy myself with food and a few drinks but I’m more conscious the older I get — in everything. When I was younger I could go out half the night and have five hours sleep and probably still look decent but I can’t do that anymore. If I have a heavy night I have to mind myself then for a week.
Please tell us you still do have the odd heavy night?!
Oh, I do! Hello! [winks]
You mentioned drainage facials, tell all…
Lymphatic drainage has been my life-changing discovery in 2023!
Really?
Yes! But now that I’ve said it I’m not going to be able to get an appointment with Vanessa Gomes from Essence Day Spa! Vanessa is amazing, she’s in charge of the stomach! For the face I go to Agnes Gajewska who makes you look sculpted and chiselled. She said to me when I went in to her first that I looked puffy around the face, that puff added weight to my face, that my face needed to be drained. We all need drainage the older we get. We forget that we need to work out the neck and the jawline.
Yes, the neck is a dead giveaway always, it needs lots of love.
Eyes, jaw and neck, they need to be worked on.
So, you look good and life also, from what we see, looks good too — healthy kids, happy house. But, life is prefect for no one. Life is snatches of happiness amidst reams of chaos — would you agree?
Totally! Life is chaotic with three kids and trying to keep up with their schedules. And there’s an eight-year age grab between Ollie and Billy so they are at completely different stages; you need to keep your eye on the ball with everyone’s needs, big and small. Also having a baby is tiring! I had to make a conscious decision this year with starting a new business and having a busy family, to step back, especially from social because I could lose hours online answering DM’s. Nothing is easy, everything is hard. And you don’t just come out overnight and go, ‘Oh, here’s my new brand’. I have literally slogged for a solid year and that’s the bit people don’t see. It’s all a big juggle. And, I certainly don’t get it right everyday — no one does. All you can do is your best and all you can do is hope for the best.
Disclaimer: You’re going to walk away from this interview feeling very full of yourself because all we see are your positives, of which — we think — there are many. But we don’t see your negatives — what are they?
I don’t have much patience in work settings. I expect things to be perfect. I’m quite easygoing when things are going my way but if something is not right, I’ll be like, ‘oh no, no, no’. Now, I don’t get cross, I’m not at all a bitch. I wouldn’t say anyone that’s ever worked with me would say I’m a bitch but, I am a perfectionist. However, there’s a way to say things and to deliver your message without losing your cool, that’s what I work at doing.
We were watching you on your launch day as you stood in a room of journalists talking about your new product and you were so cool, so calm, so collected. How can a boss be this serene? How are you so chill?
I’m seven years in business now and there’s been so much learning in those years. When you start a business, you haven’t a clue, you just get in and you do it and you learn as you go. But I feel like with this that I’ve much more experience. I am also very confident because I know the product is amazing. So, yes, I do feel very calm at the moment because I have no doubts in these products. And that’s not cockiness, at all. I mean if someone says, ‘I don’t like a glowy product, or a highlighter,’ that’s fine, but I’m confident no one can say, ‘this is shit’. Because it’s not.
So, there’s been a lot of learning these last seven business years but, it’s been a fast learning curve. And, learning comes from failing so what’s not worked?
There have been so many days where I’ve thought, ‘Are we going to come back from this?’
Really?
Yeah, so many. That’s life, that’s business. To me, an entrepreneur is someone who keeps going. You know, I don’t even like
to call these learnings ‘failures’ because I think if you don’t have things you come up against how are you meant to progress and be better.
Challenges then…?
Yeah, if you don’t come up against challenges, how do you learn, how do you become better?
Another reason, perhaps, for your calmness might be your husband and business partner, Brian. You guys are the perfect Good Cop, Bad Cop team. He does the tough talking business negotiations while you do the vision making, brand building, the sell. Right?
That’s it in a nutshell. Brian will do all the negotiating on prices and timelines and that’s what you need in business; you need a team of people that are bringing different skills to the table. I don’t necessarily want the person in the factory that I’m dealing with to think of me as ‘that’ person. I want them to be on my side, wanting to please me. I don’t want to be talking money with them. That’s how and why our partnership works.
We watched Brian in action today managing and co-ordinating everything. The boys are mad about him, Billy nearly lost his life when he thought his daddy was leaving when he walked Team VIP out the gate.
Yeah, that’s Brian in a nutshell, doing everything. He is very hands on in every aspect, at home and in business, that’s just his personality. And when it comes to being a dad, Brian gets stuck in and nothing is off limits, which I am very appreciative of and thankful for. I think
it would be impossible for all that I have going on if I didn’t have someone like him as a husband. And as I mentioned at the awards, my best piece of advice is to get yourself a supportive partner because life and everything is hard enough so when you have real support it makes things a lot easier.
Indeed. You have great business acumen. You have an ability to make quick judgements on when something needs to end and
start. Like your modelling career, like stopping Fashion Factories, like building POCO by Pippa, like stepping away from your previous beauty line UP, like starting POCO Beauty.
Yeah, I consciously went, ‘no, modelling done, no, Fashion Factories, done’. I just think, why would I wait for something to leave me? Or I see something and I feel brave enough to make a call and move on it.
Let’s talk about that, about bravery. Because POCO Beauty has big dreams, doesn’t it? But the makeup market is fierce competitive and there’s a lot of product out there already. Are you not nervous?
I think it’s also about being not so naive; about knowing that. The makeup market is more competitive than ever, even in the last two years I’m up against more. There is such good product out there but there’s still room for more!
We know that you are an optimist so is it this optimism that guides you with big decisions?
I am an optimist but also a realist. I don’t think I’m blind to what’s going on. I’m not airy fairy about things, I’m very black and white. And, I won’t do something if I don’t think it makes financial business sense because that’s just silly.
POCO Beauty is playing the long game, Pippa, isn’t it? This is going to go global…
I don’t like to predict! I would like it to be evident when it’s done! But yeah, that is the plan. We are a small team but the aspirations are huge and we have a very clear vision of where we want to go whereas before, I’ll be honest, when I launched something, I wasn’t sure what the plan was. This is very different, we have a very strategic approach already.
And that strategy starts with Universal Glow…tell us about it.
This is going to be our hero product because it’s for everyone, whether you’re 16 or 106. It primes your skin, hydrates, illuminates, it protects, it colour corrects, it’s for sensitive skin, there’s no one that this won’t suit. And you can apply it in all of ten-seconds in the morning before you go out the door. It really is amazing, it ticks so many boxes.
What about the Face Glaze Highlighter Stick?
I love a highlighter and I love to look glowing but there are so many glowing products that are not for me in terms of glitter or being heavy and cakey. I wanted the opposite of that, a light balmy texture that just sits on the skin and doesn’t interrupt anything you have already put on. It’s subtle but effective. We also have Suede Sculpt contour sticks that are suede-like, they are buildable, they move like a dream, they are more like a foundation stick than a contour stick. I think the colours are really good and they work on the eye too so they are a really multipurpose product. You can sculpt your face in ten-seconds. I didn’t want anything to be time consuming, it has to be quick and easy.
How quick can you do your face in the morning?
Five minutes if I’m doing Universal Glow, concealer, contour stick, bit of highlighter.
What about breakouts, dry skin?
I get all those.
Do you? We never see you not perfect. Do you cover it well or do we just not see you on those days?
You don’t see me on those days! I used to always have spots when I was younger, I generally don’t as much anymore to be honest — very rarely. I think I just grew out of it.
You love a serum, love a face mask, what ones in particular?
I love it all. I do a light ceramide serum in the morning or plumping water, lots of light layers. Night time I’ll use my heavy hitters: a retinol and my night cream.
