I borrowed £530 from my nan to start my beauty business

YOU may think you need a huge sum of cash to start your own successful business, but one savvy entrepreneur has proved otherwise. Chloe Walsh - founder of Clomana - began her beauty and loungewear business with just £530 borrowed from her nan. Now she has grown her business so that it is now stocked in Sephora, Asos, Boots and Asos - and it is now worth £1.5million.

Image Credit: The Sun [Woman with long blonde hair in a black top.]

Her generous nan had agreed, and Chloe was delighted when the first few orders started rolling in. Her orders kept increasing as her social media accounts boomed. When she started out her beauty side hustle, she called it Coco Cosmetics by Chloe, but has since rebranded.

Image Credit: The Sun [Clomana Beauty Marshmallow Sponge, Shade 2.]

In the early days of the business, Chloe was working as a hot tub cleaner. Not enjoying the job, she found herself sneaking away during work hours to focus on her business, so was not surprised when she was “let go”. Two years after her beauty business’ launched, the infamous Marshmallow Sponge was released, which quickly became a hit with beauty fanatics and influencers around the globe, including James Charles, Nikki Tutorials and Holly Boon.

Image Credit: The Sun [Woman sitting on boxes in a warehouse.]

Chloe shared: “Did you know we used to pack the marshmallow sponges box by box because it was too expensive for the factory to do it for us?”. Speaking exclusively to Fabulous for Bossing It!, Chloe revealed: “I never thought it would be a massive business. I didn’t have a business background, so I thought ‘that won’t happen to me.’ It all seemed very confusing to me at the start.

Image Credit: The Sun [Sephora display of cosmetics and makeup.]

“I’m more of a night owl so I would wake up at 9am and then work all the way through until 3/4am in the morning, non-stop packing orders. I slept over on the floor of the office literally every night. “The hours were crazy. My mum, who works for me now, worked full-time before she got made redundant and at the time would help at weekends and early in the morning before she went to work, but it was mainly me and then some friends would come and help.

Image Credit: The Sun [Woman in pink robe.]

“The business started off in my bedroom and then it moved to a spare room at a salon. "But then that got too small, so we moved salons and I had another spare room, but that ended up being too small too, so then after that I got my first formal office, which again we grew out of way too quickly.”.

Image Credit: The Sun [Three pink makeup sponges and a cosmetic product.]

Chloe explained that when the company would do a restock of their products, items would sell out rapidly. She explained: “The demand was crazy. We would sell out every restock and the website would crash. We would make £10,000-£20,000 on a restock, which would happen every four months. We would have to triple our stock every time.

Image Credit: The Sun [Four women surrounded by numerous boxes and bags ready to ship.]

“There was always a two month wait for people to get the products, so the hype and demand was so high. We would get messages every day from people asking when the restock date would be and as soon as we announced the date, it would be crazy. “I would order 10,000 sponges in every restock and then we would get 10,000 orders in a day.

Image Credit: The Sun [Hand holding a set of four Coco Cosmetics by Chloe marshmallow sponges.]

“Now, we order around 100,000 sponges on every restock. I’ve got no room for them now. “Recently I did a 50 per cent sale. There’s a limit on TikTo sales and we were hitting the limit at 3am, every day, within three hours. “TikTok has been massive for the business. It’s been great for forming a community. The average monthly sales are around £250,000 just from TikTok.”.

Chloe then decided to expand the business and created Cmfrt - a nightwear and loungewear business - and secured a large billboard for the launch. But it hasn’t all been plain-sailing. She shared that due to an expensive year-long legal battle, she had to change the name to Clomana - and tweaked the branding of her beauty products.

Meanwhile, TikTok introduced ads which affected their organic reach “almost overnight”, causing views and sales to dip. During this time, Chloe admitted she was “anxious and scared” about the business - however, the good days outweighed the bad.

Chloe added: “We are now stocked in Beauty bay, Asos, Sephora & Boots!. “CMFRT has taken off massively and now we know how to work ads, our orders have rocketed again as more people globally discover the marshmallow sponge!. The demand was crazy. We would sell out every restock and the website would crash.

“We were cramped in our 2 separate units.[but then] this [large warehouse] came up locally (it's hard to find units from my small town) so we decided to take a big leap & make it work. “Am I scared? Yes, but in business you've got to take risks, and you've got to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable if you want growth.”.

Her business success has helped her to change her family’s life too. Chloe shared: "My whole life is my business. Personally, I don’t need money in my bank. I don’t buy myself handbags. It’s only really food I buy. “But I did buy my mum’s house for her. She has rented it for 28 years and could never get a mortgage because she didn’t earn that much and my dad wasn’t around. But the landlord died and the family got in contact and said they were going to sell it.