Arati Nar started her retail career as part of the core team at Ocado during their startup years and grew to lead the marketing team through the online retailer’s colossal growth, exiting in 2015. Arati learnt first-hand the power of business with authenticity and the consumer at its heart. The knowledge and experience she gained during these years at Ocado were paramount when she finally embarked on launching her own skincare brand; her dream since she was a teenager.
Following 14 years at Ocado, Arati sought new challenges and co-founded a mobile beauty service, MILK Wellbeing. MILK provided high quality beauty and well-being treatments to affluent and celebrity customers in their homes, as well as a corporate offering to some of the UK’s most prestigious brands. Her 4 years of running this business gave her an amazing and varied insight into people’s Beauty needs and helped her understand that this self-care moment is something a huge number of people rely on in everyday life.In 2019, following the sale of MILK Wellbeing and after a long career in retail, marketing and beauty services, Arati felt that it was the right time to pursue her lifelong dream of creating her own skincare range.
“People often ask me why I have a passion for skincare and my answer is simple. It has been a consistent feel good part of my life. A ritual that is my 5 minutes of calm at the start and end of each day. It’s my personal time to reflect and reset. When my skin is nourished, healthy and looking radiant I feel set to take on the day.” – Arati Nar, Founder.It was a slow and considered journey to build Anara Skincare because she wanted to embark on it with honesty, integrity, and a whole load of love. Arati wanted to create something unique and special, a skincare range that was multi-use for your eye area, face and neck, a range that made you feel and look great from the inside out. And here the Anara Experience was born.
Arati wanted to fully understand firsthand the process of formulation using natural origin skincare ingredients and therefore completed an educational course in this area before embarking on the journey. As well as this, she also started a Beauty Blog (@saffra.coco on Instagram), sharing her passion for skincare, makeup and wellbeing with others in the online Beauty community.
From her research, previous connections, and her extensive network she found the most talented scientists, specialists and doctors in the UK to help build the Anara Skincare range. A team that understood her vision and her values and were happy to work tirelessly, and most importantly without compromise, over a long 4-year period to bring her dream to fruition.
She wanted the range to be a luxurious experience, using the power of the most effective, plant-based, active ingredients which are powerful alone, but when combined, give truly wonderful results for the senses, body, and mind, whilst supporting the well-ageing process. Anara Skincare was created to be inclusive in the true sense of the word; for all skin type, all life stages and lifestyle choices. Â Following Arati’s desire to build an authentic brand with the consumer at its heart, the full Anara Skincare range; Essence, Serum, Moisturiser, Oil and Night Balm, are certified by the Vegan Society, and approved as cruelty free under the Leaping Bunny Programme.
“At Anara Skincare our desire from the conception of the brand was for our entire range to be Vegan and Cruelty Free. We knew from the start that we wanted more than to just state these credentials, we wanted certifications from trusted and internationally reputable organisations and The Vegan Society was our first choice. As a small startup brand, we are immensely proud that our entire range has been certified by the Vegan Trademark. Their dedication, guidance, and support has been truly wonderful.” – Arati Nar, Founder of Anara Skincare.
What do you consider to be the most crucial leadership skill?
I believe that the most important leadership skill is to be a people person and to be approachable and compassionate to the needs of everyone you work with. To treat them with respect and to value their unique skill sets. If you can excite your team to share your passion and make them truly feel a part of the process I believe you will gain their unwavering loyalty and respect. I have been fortunate to lead large teams both at Ocado and at MILK and in both roles I had and still have a great relationship with my team members.
The world of startups and own businesses comes with daily challenges. I have faced so many in my career that truly its hard to just pinpoint one, but I can honestly say that it’s the challenges that make me thrive as I love to find solutions. I would say in general when you are running a service-based company that is reliant on large numbers of specialist skilled staff it comes with a host of challenges because as a business owner who isn’t trained to carry out the beauty treatments we couldn’t just step in and cover absences. We worked with some of the most prestigious companies in the UK and our target was always 100% attendance and reliability. We therefore designed a very detailed rota to account for all eventualities whilst still ensuring we were able to run profitably.Â
How do you navigate the dynamic trends and evolving customer needs in the beauty industry, particularly in skincare?
The world of beauty has ever changing trends as do the needs of the customer, however I believe that with regards to skincare there are fundamental aspects that form a solid foundation upon which you can grow and adapt to meet the needs of the market. I am activity involved in the beauty space on social media where trends often emerge first as well as keeping a close eye on industry experts, discussion groups and forecast reports.Â
What is your approach to building and leading high-performing teams, and how do you motivate your team members to achieve their best potential?
Having built teams for startups and small businesses I feel there is a very different requirement than when building a team for a large corporate. Finding people who share your values and passion is of the utmost importance and also finding those that thrive on change and are happy to be flexible is crucial, as no two days are ever the same in a small business.Â
From a management perspective, I feel a good manager should have great communication skills, they should be able to set measurable targets, whilst giving their team members some autonomy to use their own judgement and to utilise the skill sets that you have employed them for. Â
Keeping your team passionate, involved in the journey, whilst celebrating and rewarding their efforts is a great way to keep them motivated.
How do you approach managing the financial challenges of starting a new business, particularly in a product-based industry where unit costs are high for small volumes?
I think the key to this is to always keep your eye on the bigger picture. When you start a new business the financial side can be very challenging and especially when you are in a product based business as unit costs are high for the small volumes you need and you can’t benefit from economies of scale. I therefore constantly look at ways to improve this in the future whilst maintaining the highest standards and quality. I think building good relationships with your suppliers is key too. I also love looking for innovative ways to do things differently and more efficiently to assist my financial goals. Â
Can you share an example of a major decision you had to make that had a significant impact on your organisation? What was the outcome, and what did you learn from the experience?
Whilst I was creating Anara Skincare there were a number of major decisions I made that impacted timings for launch and costs involved, however in order to build the business I had dreamt off these were non-negotiable elements for me. Specifically these decisions were related to getting official certifications from The Vegan Society and Cruelty Free International/Leaping Bunny. Gaining these reputable and internationally recognised certifications was of great importance to me and to the customer proposition of my brand. I had made the decision not to launch until I got these in hand. The processes and paperwork involved is quite significant for a small business however it’s something I am immensely proud of and it was completely worth the wait.Â
What role does innovation play in your business strategy, and how do you foster a culture of innovation within your organisation?
Innovation is at the heart of Anara Skincare. Our entire range is ingredient centric and each and every ingredient chosen to be part of our product range has a wonderful story and reason for inclusion. The exploration and research of the ingredients and how they work in harmony with one another was a very long and detailed process and I believe this is what makes our products special and unique. Every new product will follow this same process of innovation and exploration and speed to market will never be the important factor. The skincare market is such a crowded market and to have a chance of getting any visibility I believe this part is crucial.Â
How do you handle ethical dilemmas and make difficult decisions when they arise in your role as a business leader?
I think if you stay true to your values and never lose sight of your end goal the dilemmas and decisions become somewhat easier to overcome. I am a firm believer of following my gut instinct when making decisions and to date that has always been the right path for me and is one that I will always follow.Â
Looking to the future, what are your top priorities and goals for your business, and what strategies do you plan to implement to achieve them?
As my business is less than 6 months old, my short to medium goals are to establish the brand on a strong footing and to build loyalty with my target customer. I would like as many people as possible to have the Anara Experience and to truly feel the love and passion with which the business has been built. My desire for my brand is a build a lifestyle business that delivers radiance and happiness to your life (that’s the meaning of the word Anara).
I will therefore carefully select the partners to work with and the marketing/advertising channels to pursue. There are also a number of other products that I would like to add to the range in the future and development for some of these has already started.Â
