A Day In the Life: Claire Vero, Founder of Aurelia Probiotic Skincare.

When Caroline Neville, the President of CEW (Cosmetic Executive Women) asked me to sit on the jury for the inaugural CEW Digital Excellence Award, sponsored by Google, at this year’s CEW Achiever Awards, I accepted immediately: CEW is the highly respected body that exists to support women in the beauty industry at all levels, providing support, mentoring and recognition.

This year’s Achiever Awards were held last night in London, recognising key players, including Charlotte Tilbury, Suzy Menkes and Celine Gilg, General Manager at Tom Ford Beauty, Estee Lauder Companies UK. Our jury chose Claire Vero, founder of Aurelia Probiotic Skincare as the first recipient of the Digital Achiever Award, and I am thrilled that she is the author of today’s A Day in the Life.

Over to you Claire:

I started Aurelia Probiotic Skincare in January 2013 after a seven-year career at global pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. I was on the team that launched the first vaccine against cervical cancer, which was hugely empowering but then I fell in love with dermatology and all things skincare, which is why I decided to take all my knowledge and formulate my own range that fused science, nature and luxury to deliver results for women worldwide. We have won 23 awards in 23 months, of which we are all hugely proud.

If I’d been writing this back when I launched the brand it would have been a very different story. I was up at 5.00am working on Aurelia Probiotic Skincare for three hours before going to work as a marketing consultant to fund setting up the brand.

When I got home at 6.00pm I’d work into the early hours. Back then I worked largely on my own apart from some help from Anna Lewin who manages the PR for the brand. After an exhausting six months of doing this I was hugely grateful to have a team of what is now six people sharing the load – and so is my husband!

At the moment I come into the office three days a week. On the other days I’m accessible but looking after my little boy Henry who is seven months old.

Here he is on the way to a press day at Liberty London when he was six weeks old and then at five months, with me on my first ‘official’ day back at work.

For me to work remotely we have to be very organised and luckily I have the most fantastic team which enables me to do this. This is everybody and was taken at our summer picnic!

My day starts at 7.00am with Henry waking me up and coming into bed with us. We have a roll top bath in our bedroom so my husband and I take it in turns to have a quick soak watching the breakfast news while the other is playing with Henry – we sing a lot, we’re all terrible so I feel sorry for our neighbours.

At 7.30 we’re downstairs where Rebecca, Henry’s nanny, takes over amusing him with his new push along tortoise and music set. Breakfast is fruit and sheep’s milk yogurt for pretty much all of us.

At 8.15 I leave for work with my husband as his office is halfway to mine. He runs a production company, which has been amazing for us as film has become an important tool to help us tell the Aurelia story. We have our own Aurelia TV page on the website which houses tutorials, how to use films and my absolute favourite, my research film in Malawi which shows the harvesting of some of our magical botanicals via our ethical sourcing channels.

Watch our Bedazzled skin tutorial here:

At the office at around 8.30am, I’ll meet with Hannah, Aurelia Probiotic Skincare’s Marketing & Digital Director and we’ll talk about new initiatives we are undertaking, analyse sales, how we are supporting our retailers and discuss what more we can do.

We have had a very exciting time since launch; we were one of 15 skincare brands in Net-A-Porter.com’s launch into beauty and we now retail with them across all their regions. Excitingly we have also just become the first brand to move from a small table to a counter in Liberty London so we’ve spent so much time training our team out in-store as well as ensuring our counter (pictured below) reflects the brand in everything you see.

Most recently we launched in 25 Space.NK.apocathery stores so training, in-store events, stock allocation and management of this new account has been a major focus for us over the last few months – a day never goes by without a Space.NK. catch up.

However since Hannah has started, I’ve been a lot more able to drive the wider vision for the business as I have ambitious growth plans. Henry’s arrival was perfect timing for this transition, as it has allowed me to take a step back from the day-to-day for a few months – I believe we’ll be able to grow more efficiently because of this. I’m still a bit of a control freak and like to sign off most things but I am getting better, Aurelia Probiotic Skincare was really my first baby after all.

Next I look at our pipeline for product development. Aurelia Probiotic Skincare is a British brand, manufactured here in the UK and I’ll put a call into our development team for a catch up.

We launched with five core products and have since launched five more. I’m working on a further three, but they will be another 14 months in the making. We use our signature Probiotic, Repair and Peptide technologies across the range, which help reduce inflammation at the cell layer and also boost natural levels of collagen by 140% and hyaluronic acid production ten fold.

Science is at the heart of my brand – it had to be after spending seven years in pharmaceuticals. However this means continuous research and development to unearth new technologies and ideas. I wanted to create an evidence based brand, but it had to be formulated very naturally, excluding a long list of ingredients that don’t treat the skin, including silicones, petrochemicals and SLS (a chemical that makes face washes foam). It’s almost unbelievable how many brands contain these ingredients.

We have such a lovely team in the office and we catch up once or twice a week mid-morning – usually with cake and biscuits, which we try but struggle to avoid daily. We’ll discuss beauty industry news, new launches and press among other things. We’ll catch up on our social media strategy too; as a company we have recognised the huge power of social media and are really trying to embrace it, engaging with our customers on all platforms.

At the moment we’re planning a ‘12 days of Christmas’ campaign looking back over the year with fun games and some chances to win in the run up to Christmas. We are also all avidly following the Liberty London TV series and hoping to be in the edit. (The follower who pictures and posts the ‘first Glimpse of Aurelia’, will win a very nice prize so get watching!)

Our Brand & Training Manager, Antonia (pictured above) updates us on customer feedback – I think consumer communication is key, so she’s been talking to more potential customers and becoming more accessible to our loyal followers; she’s now booking skincare consultations on the phone, which have been very popular.

At midday I might pop out for a quick lunch at Hive, which does amazing meze salads, or Naked Nosh on Fulham Road. On a Tuesday I grab a sandwich from Waitrose and nip into the hall next door to watch Henry at Monkey Music.

This afternoon I am looking at our facial proposition with our new lead facialist Rhian. The products are amazing when used in a facial and allow women to try the blends and textures of Aurelia Probiotic Skincare on their skin. We are developing a mini facial for the Space.NK. shop floor, a discovery facial for the beautiful beauty rooms at Liberty London and a super indulgent signature facial focusing on rebalancing the mind and body. We are in talks with a beautiful five star hotel to partner with in delivering this so watch this space.

Here’s Rhian hard at work:

As a working Mum I always have to be one step ahead so each afternoon I’ll make time to prepare for forthcoming external meetings and events. We’re in negotiation with an exciting new retailer and we have a meeting this week – I’ll spend some time pulling together a pitch for that.

One evening this week I am at a customer event in-store giving mini facials and skincare consultations at Space.NK.’s flagship store, Duke of York Square, which I love. Having been included in Management Today’s ’35 Women under 35’ in Business, I am attending Management Today’s Inspiring Women Conference so I want to make sure I know exactly who is who – there will be a lot of interesting women there to talk to.

I am also planning a trip to Rome for a customer event, which will be exciting. It is in a small boutique store so I’ll get a good chance to have one-to-one chats with customers and press.

At teatime I often have press appointments with our PR Director, Anna Lewin – I love getting out and about to meet people to tell the brand’s story and catch up on industry news and gossip. Anna’s incredible press contacts have helped to get us where we are today, so it’s important to keep up with them. Particular supporters are founders of The Beauty Bible Sarah Stacey and Jo Fairley who gave us ‘Best New Brand’ in The Ultimate Natural Beauty Bible earlier this year.

I often attend events in the evening as I still have lots of people to meet within the industry. This week it’s the unveiling of the Natural Beauty Yearbook’s Top 25 Personalities, of which I am delighted to be one. I’m also attending the Cosmetic Executive Women’s (CEW) Awards. I am extremely privileged to be a finalist in the new CEW Digital Achiever Award, sponsored by Google and I shall be sitting alongside the incredibly talented Susannah Taylor from Get The Gloss which gives me a real sense of personal achievement, as I have huge admiration for her.

If I’m not out and about, I’m home at 6.30pm just in time for Henry’s bath time and so I can put him to bed. Then I am often in need of a glass of wine. The whole household takes it in turns to cook – I am not very good but I still seem to have to do my share. We’ll eat together and swap news about the day’s events and activities before settling down to a film or a box set.

At 10.00pm it’s lights out but not before I have applied Aurelia Probiotic Skincare Cell Repair Night Oil, which is a super indulgent skin treat after a busy day – the lavender definitely helps me relax into a good deep sleep.