Chapter 1: What inspired Aimee Connolly to start Sculpted by Aimee?
Hello my friend and welcome to Catch Up with Louise McSharry. This is the podcast where I do my best to keep you caught up with what's going on in the world. On Monday we do news, on Wednesday we catch up on entertainment and on Fridays we chat to someone interesting with something interesting going on. Now this person is someone I have wanted to chat to on the podcast for quite some time.
She is hard to pin down because she is a machine. This woman works so incredibly hard and I am just never not impressed by her dedication to the business that she has created. I'm talking about Amy Connolly of Sculpted by Amy. I have so much admiration for Amy for loads of different reasons. One of them is I think her brand is excellent. I think the products are great.
I really love the brand ethos, which is simplifying beauty, making it accessible to everyone. She has always been inclusive and using women of different ages, different races. And I just think her general overall approach to the business has been really impressive. I'm also really impressed by the fact that she is entirely self-made.
Chapter 2: How did Aimee Connolly build her brand's identity?
And that is quite uncommon for a business as successful as Amy's. Often there is money coming from elsewhere. Someone gives you a leg up, maybe you have wealthy parents, maybe you have a rich investor. None of that has happened with Amy. She literally has created Sculpted by Amy out of nothing, out of an idea, out of her own hard work. And that to me is incredibly impressive.
So I was delighted that I got a chance to visit her office in Dublin this week and have a chat with her about how she did it, how she managed to create something like Sculpted by Amy and what the plans are for it, how she survives as a busy founder. And it was just a delight. She's just, I mean, genuinely, she's such a lovely person, lovely to chat to anytime I see her.
And I'm so thrilled we got to sit down with microphones this week. Amy Connolly, we have been trying to get this interview going for, I want to say like a year and a half. But here we are. But here we are. And I'm so happy to be here because I'm here in your office.
Chapter 3: What challenges did Aimee face as a self-made entrepreneur?
And I was coming in and like, I remember, I actually don't think you probably remember the first time that we met, but we met very briefly with Mark Rogers at an event where, at a NARS event in Brown Thomas where actual Mr. NARS was there.
Oh, Francois.
Yeah. Yeah. and you yeah that was like it was so long ago and I remember at the time I'm pretty sure you had your like makeup school and that was kind of your main thing at the time maybe you had one product out I don't even think I did at that stage I think it was just heavy in the academy and doing freelance like shoots editorial and stuff
with like so that wasn't that long ago like how long ago was that maybe 10 maybe 10 years 10 yeah I would say a decade and we're looking at you now you look 10 years younger stop I was gonna say look at you now like we're sitting here in your office I know like you've as I was coming in there was being explained to me various things that are going on and like how the space works and stuff.
Like, do you ever stop and think like, how is this real?
Um, yes and no. I think you never want to say that. No, you don't. Cause you don't want to seem ungrateful for it. Cause ultimately like it's amazing. But I think when you're so in something, you're just like, oh, I think about the next thing or always on to whatever else thought is coming into your head. So I probably don't reflect enough.
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Chapter 4: How does Aimee manage her time as a busy founder?
I kind of OK with that, though, because it keeps you hungry to be like, yeah, that's great. But we need to be this, this, this, this.
Yeah. Well, I mean, I suppose even as I'm asking that question, I'm feeling guilty for asking the question because there's almost an implication there that you haven't like made this happen and that you haven't worked for it, because obviously everything that's happened has been intentional and choice by you. But it is, I mean, it is such an incredible success. It's mind blowing.
Yeah, definitely.
It's, you know, whenever you do reflect and for me, it's small things like, so we are obviously in the Dublin HQ now, we've got an office in London as well. The way the team is split, it's sometimes just walking up the stairs and seeing the volume of bodies and being like,
oh my god they're all here because of this like idea that I had coming out of college and it was like this would be great to do and obviously it has been but it's funny the ironically the bigger it gets it doesn't get easier and the risk and the pressure gets more. Like I feel way more on my shoulders now than I would have three or four years ago.
And does that kind of partially come down to the fact that there are people here that, yeah.
Yeah. I think like, you know, we've got 135 people on the team now.
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Chapter 5: What strategies did Aimee use to launch her first product?
So, you know, number one, you're responsible for them being able to make their dinner every day. And that's so exciting as well because they all choose to be here and they are so passionate about it. Like they really care and,
um but I think yeah when you've got more people around you um the risk of say new markets you know everything is just bigger and you do it because it's so exciting and that's the next step but sometimes if I was to think too deeply on it that's where the overwhelm comes in so I try and stay a little bit surface level yeah I'm kind of like don't don't go there this be fine just break it down yeah it sounds a bit like when you're like I don't know like you're lying in bed trying to go to sleep and you start thinking about how big the universe is
every possible thing that could go wrong and how you can never control anything yeah yeah probably best to maybe just stay away from that line of thinking um let's go back to the beginning because there will be people listening who don't know the story of how you started this business and I am always like I've I've asked you about this multiple times but I still love hearing about it because as you said this was an idea you had coming out of college so tell us a little bit more about that
So the kind of whistle-stop tour is, I started in beauty completely coincidentally as a 15-year-old. So I was doing two weeks work experience in fourth year, part of the Irish school system, and I had nothing organised. And my mum worked in House of Fraser on the third floor at the time, and was like, go down to Benefit and ask them, will they take you?
And I'm so annoyed that you have nothing organised, but I was like, Hi, can I come in for two weeks? And I loved it. And I think I quickly realized I fell in love with actually dealing with people. I loved selling something that I loved. So I found it really easy. And they offered me a part-time job with Urban Decay across the way.
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Chapter 6: How does Aimee approach hiring for her growing business?
This is when House of Asia was still there. Worked there every Saturday and Sunday through school. So fourth, fifth, sixth year. Finished my leaving cert. Made the decision to go to Mac for a year. Again, still part-time because I started my degree in business and French there. Left Mac after a year because I'd started doing freelance and I only had weekends to work.
So funny, I can't picture you as a Mac girl. I loved being a Mac girl.
Did you?
Mac girl at this time. So we're talking... maybe 12 years ago. Yeah. No, that's a lie.
Chapter 7: What are Aimee's plans for expanding Sculpted by Aimee internationally?
14 years ago, maybe it was like the Mecca. Yeah. Like if you were a Mac girl, you had made it. So yes, I wasn't like edgy as some of them. I was kind of more like classic, you know, walking in the most eager beaver 19 year old known to man. Cause it was like the coolest part on job. And, but I loved it.
But again, I made the decision to leave because my free time was weekends and that was quickly being taken up by freelance bookings. I was saying yes to everything. I remember Expose at the time was like, oh, can we do a showreel? I was like, absolutely. Didn't even know showreel was. Had to Google it after being like, how do I do this? But I was very much like, say yes and think about it later.
And I was very lucky to get a lot of experience then within the beauty industry.
Chapter 8: How does Aimee balance work and personal life as a founder?
So
between riding beauty shooting beauty and then actually making the decision to go and teach in beauty so I actually wanted to be a teacher when I was a young teen and although I wasn't teaching kids it was a nice kind of roundabout way to bring in my love of kind of education and making it a bit simple for people and that was really the light bulb where it was like everyone is asking the same questions everyone's overwhelmed no one has a clue how to do it
And there's just so much choice that it's making them feel really like they can't embrace it. So that was my kind of, yeah, little pinnacle moment of actually I want to merge business and beauty. So I love business after my four year degree.
was absolutely obsessed with beauty I knew the customer connection was what gave me energy I loved solving problems and actually that feeling where they look in the mirror and be like oh my god that's amazing I'm like yes um and it sounds really cliche but it was genuinely the truth and that was kind of yeah the moment where I thought let's merge the two together and I think the academy really gave me confidence to go into a brand because you know some people will have an idea about a product that maybe doesn't exist on the market yeah
mine wasn't necessarily like at the very beginning that came after a formula that I was like oh this is nowhere to be found it was more the the ethos and how you approach it to people so building in a kit doing a double-ended brush that makes it simple having your how-to leaflet at the time because digital wasn't as advanced um and that was really yeah the the kind of propeller to starting the brand
It's kind of remarkable because there are lots of brands now that are built around this idea of kind of simplifying beauty and trying to make it more accessible to ordinary people. But you were kind of at the forefront of that. Yeah.
And it's not to like toot our own horns. Toot your own horn, Amy.
Toot, toot.
This is the space for it. I feel like we were at the forefront of actually a lot of things that have now become very industry norms. So when you think about it, like nearly 10 years ago, I was fighting for a more simplified, fuss-free five-minute face in an era where it was Instagram heavy makeup. It was like more is more. Yeah, 2016 makeup.
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