One thing weve learned is that if your customers absolutely love what you do and how you make them look and feel, that if they want to be part of that community, you will prevail, no matter what. Our ability to trade them into Meccas broader offers has been another silent winning lever. MECCA Brands. Contact. For many women buying makeup in a department store can be an intimidating experience, and Jo Horgan was no different. They are leading a necessary charge for others to follow; not only women but anyone who recognises that the arts are for everyone., Tony Ellwood is one of those people. J.H. As the macro headwinds come to buffet us, if we stick with a laser-like focus to listening to our customers, and were agile in our response, well look to weather those headwinds. As Sheryl Sandberg says, the most important [career] decision youll make is the partner you choose, if you choose to have one. Using funds from the sale of her house, Horgan, then 29, opened a small store in South Yarra in Melbourne in 1997, selling cosmetics by cult brands such as Nars, Stila and Urban Decay. | Learn more about Kelly Jo Horgan's work experience, education, connections & more by visiting their profile on LinkedIn . From that first store in South Yarra, where she fatefully lost the first days earnings, only to find them again 18 months later, Horgan has opened 105 more. But . Its always Mecca. Why Alex Murdaugh was spared the death penalty, Why Trudeau is facing calls for a public inquiry, The shocking legacy of the Dutch 'Hunger Winter', Why half of India's urban women stay at home. "It was an incredibly useful early example for me of changes I needed to make to my business model to actually make that viable. No! Horgan is quick to remark that, whatever the focus she gives to M-Power, her philanthropy is fuelled by her business. It means we need to frame our approach differently and say if we have an offer that appeals to customers and that customers love, which seems to be the case, then it is our responsibility to take that more broadly. Nicole Reed, It could have been the Jo Horgan x NGV Women in Design Commission but as ever, it is Meccas name in lights rather than Horgans. Staff receive 200 hours of training in their first year Meccas training budget is more than 2 per cent of sales and everyone from the shop floor up is encouraged to develop their skills. Julie & Christopher James. The first 10 years, I spent the entire time thinking: How do I make sure this thing stays viable? The most Horgan families were found in USA in 1920. A new team member gets over 200 hours of education in their first year. Partner with us. I think I had very lofty ambitions that I wanted to create a new customer experience, but it wasnt about being a pioneer. What do you think your primary impact has been? Jo was brave enough to set up shop in Australia, he continued. jo horgan family. Both are ambitious and sprawling; works in progress that have no end point because, well, the world can always be more beautiful. June 15, 2022 . Remy Rippon 5 Apr 2018. But you know, there is just so much to do! I wake up every morning and I feel I have to put my running shoes on and run fast and run hard. She writes about lifestyle including the arts, entertainment, fashion and travel. Weve crafted a globally unique model that is proven where it is equal parts customer obsession, brand service and team engagement. Three times over the course of our conversation, politely inquiring members of her inner circle try to wrap us her up. Sue Mitchell writes the fortnightly Window Shopping column for the Financial Review and has covered retailing for over 30 years. Our customers want the dermatological treatment, they want the product, they want the quick fix. Ms Horgan says that she was attracted to L'Oreal more out of an interest in marketing than makeup, and that working for the company turned out to be a crash course in business and entrepreneurship. Basically I am, one, a master delegator and, two, I really encourage teams to give it a go and believe in themselves. To stand out from its competitors, Ms Horgan say that Mecca works hard to ensure it offers the "absolute benchmark" of good customer service. View Jo Horgan's profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. Transactional retail was never our bag, but over time we have pushed the boundaries on experiences and our customers have followed us on that march, where 35 percent of our space in the new flagships are service-oriented offers, because that is what our customer wants. The other side was a little more realistic: to have 10 stores doing $30 million in sales within the first five years. Jo Horgan Josh Robenstone/WWD. Its incredibly exciting and exhilarating and slightly astonishing to look back on an action-packed 25 years of events, activities and incredible milestones. Was education always a key part of your strategy? A former heroin addict who had nowhere to live, he has cleaned up his own life and gone on to help others. I think circumstances help usher you onto that path. In it, an emerging female Australian artist would be commissioned to create packaging for Mecca during the Christmas period. As a mass society, our interest in those subjects is trivial. Horgan won the 2008 British Comedy Award for Best TV . She also created the HBO comedy series Divorce (2016-2019). Youre receiving the Beauty Inc Pete Born Impact Award. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. London had the highest population of Horgan families in 1891. Family Pet Animal Hospital Oct . Mermaid-Core Beauty Looks at Milan Fashion Week Spring 2023 Today, Mecca operates 109 stores in Australia and New Zealand and has a 25 percent share of Australasias 4.2 billion Australian dollar prestige beauty market; its business has grown tenfold in the last eight years since archrival Sephora set up shop and doubled over the last three years of COVID-19 despite its home-base, Melbourne, being under lockdown for longer than any other city in the world. Mary Jo Horrigan Dever. Of the top 100 architecture firms in the world, just three are run by women.. All Rights Reserved. J.H. So how do we use that for good?. J.H. Horgan tries, graciously but unsuccessfully, to retract the data. Owned by French luxury goods multinational LVMH, Sephora now has 13 outlets in the country. As a result, weve been able to build an absolutely customer obsessed proposition from the outset and have been able to come up with a completely unique brand management model. I cant really be philanthropic, to the same degree, without Mecca firing on all cylinders.. : When we opened our first store, we had a two-week education session for the three team members in my front living room. 78. As a child Jo Horgan liked to watch when her mother put on her makeup, Mecca is an extensive user of social media, Mecca's stores bring high-end cosmetics under one roof, Ms Horgan runs the business with her husband Peter Wetenhall, Mecca now has 87 outlets across Australia and New Zealand. The Bourke Street Mall store is opening next year. Whatever you can do to make each experience exceptional, that is your gift not just to the customer but to the world. Jeweller Sener Besim worked with Horgan at the now-defunct department store Georges, where Mecca had an early concession. How do I make sure we are here, thriving, here to stay?, Now that it is thriving, her focus has shifted, but is no less intense. Now, she wants to make the world more beautiful. But as she notches more than two decades of growth and success, Horgan has no interest in taking a victory lap. I try to make sure we have a really good time on the way through. The "Real Housewives of New Jersey" husband told Page Six exclusively at BravoCon . J.H. And yet when I went to a department store I found it exhausting, going from one counter to another to be presented with only one-20th of the offer from one beauty consultant, Horgan recalls. Jo has 2 jobs listed on their profile. As we enter an exciting period of growth, we look forward . Not only that, day by day, year by year, she built her brand in such a way that it is today one of the largest beauty retailers in Australia. Make-up for men is set to be the next big global beauty trend, according to Jo Horgan, founder of the Australian cosmetics retailing giant Mecca. Gracemary & Anthony Huntley. When Ms Horgan left L'Oreal to set up Mecca she was just 29. I loved cosmetics I thought there was a real space for them that should be fun and entertaining. In September, the work by Bilbao will be unveiled at the NGV, and a new M-Power leadership team will be announced. It is an echo of something Tatiana Bilbao said in her conversation on stage with Horgan that morning: if you want to see change, you must enact it yourself. Premier John Horgan, seen here on Oct. 2, said Thursday that a growth he found on his throat several months ago has been confirmed as cancerous. And she speaks. Previous Addresses Home address, vacation, business, rental and apartment property addresses for John. That will be our approach. Im being cheeky now.. I feel like everyone is out there trying to get their stone to hit the target and my role is literally to shine the ice in front of their stone so madly that, even though at times I might be a hot sweaty mess, if I do my job properly their pucks hit the target. San Jose State. Mary Horgan. Its her personality, its her aesthetic, everything. Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you. So, having the brands become the baseline of your offer and it is what you do to bring them to life, the experience, the team, the content and the way in which you know your customer and how sticky you can make your relationship with your customer, that becomes the differentiator. She has been co-CEO of Mecca Brands since 2005, when she began sharing the role with her husband, Peter Wetenhall, a former Boston Consulting Group strategist. She was born in Big Rapids on Jan. 3, 1941, the daughter of Joseph and Ruth (Cooley) Bouman.Joanne graduated from Big Ra The bet paid off. What does that mean for us? Horgan resides in Melbourne, a stone's throw from the original Toorak Road store, with her husband (and co-chief executive of Mecca brands) and their two children. How do you think about the role of the store today? In 2016, Horgan launched M-Power, Meccas charitable arm. But as she notches more than two decades of growth and success, Horgan has no interest in taking a victory lap. Looking at Horgan now, it feels preordained that she would be here, at the top of a beauty empire that has all but toppled the department stores and has left LVMH-owned Sephora in the dust. Email. We all know them because the meeting rooms are named for them. At Mecca HQ you can book Fake It Til You Make It for your weekly team work-in-progress meeting, or If You Dont Ask, You Dont Get for performance reviews. Thats what were meant to offer our customers, so if we cant live that ourselves, what are we doing? J.H. Jo needs to dream, and keeping the company as it is allows her to dream big, on her terms.. And I do say so far, because Im now looking at the next 25-year horizon and knowing whats possible gives me enormous confidence for what Mecca can achieve in the next 25, with all of the learnings and brand relationships we have, and with the ambition, grit and determination that we have to redefine the way beauty is presented to consumers. Southern Utah. The connection. We also love what we do its exciting and exhilarating and we feel a sense of purpose and contribution. We have over 4 million women on our database. What impact is this having and how do you mitigate it? "Sephora, in comparison, has 13 stores and a market share of less than 1%". Mary Horgan. We also need to integrate digital into the in-store journey, and blur the lines between physical and digital. Horgan and her husband Peter Wetenhall, Meccas co-owner and co-chief executive, are now exploring expanding beyond Australia and New Zealand by setting up dedicated websites in major overseas markets within the next 12 months. Its a complete joy to buy Murano glass chandeliers from Italy for the Sydney flagship. One of the joys of having the best product in the world is that we can allow customers to experience it. There is so much volatility today in macro terms the economy, culture, politics, etc. So how much further does that go?. People named Mary Jo Horgan. That hurt too, but as Horgan says: You cant have a holiday without fragrance.. Getting people connected, back into stores and the support center, really deepening the cultural beat of Mecca, ensuring people are engaged, happy, flourishing and thriving, is my first rock. It has since profiled 1500 ingredients for their nutritional properties and identified potential uses. How will you approach narrowing down markets? As a frequent and dedicated customer of Mecca, and a long time admirer of Jo Horgan and what she has created within the Aussie beauty industry, it's so exciting to be part of the family. The company was selling online as far back as 2001, and uses the likes of Facebook and Instagram to promote itself and connect to customers. Sign up for beauty news straight to your inbox every day. They can access all information and all products, so retail is polarizing into either transactional convenience or absolute human connection, personalization and community. I feel my role is to furiously shine the ice so as many [stones] hit the target as possible, she says. Selling her home to help raise funds, she opened her first Mecca boutique in the city's upmarket South Yarra suburb, selling cosmetics from cult brands such as Nars, Stila and Urban Decay. Imagine the best product offer, a beautiful environment and my best beauty friend next to me taking me from zero to expert in one session thats how I wanted to experience cosmetics myself, Horgan says. Horgan sees it as a chance both for the artist to be exposed to a wider audience, and for her customers to be exposed to the artist. Jo Horgan with husband and business partner Peter Wetenhall. Today, 21 years later, Mecca has 87 outlets across Australia and New Zealand, and reported annual revenues of 287m Australian dollars ($223m; 157m). The first time, she waves them away, equally polite. Horgan plans to keep as many heritage features as possible, including the pressed tin ceiling and Aztec-inspired tiles on the columns of the 1930s-era building. We want to be the worlds most loved beauty destination, said Horgan, during a wide-ranging interview with Beauty Inc. Weve learned over the last 25 years that if your customers absolutely love what you do and how you make them look and feel, and they want to be part of that community, you will prevail. Horgan, Jerome Esley Of Jackson, passed away on Monday, November 2, 2015 at the age of 85. Noah Cyrus Confidently Freed the Nipple in a Showstopping Mesh Look for Milan Fashion Week, Woody Harrelson Slams COVID Set Protocols as Nonsense, Urges Hollywood to Stop Forcing Vaccination: That's Not a Free Country, McDonald's Franchisees Say Cardi B And Offset Meal Broke 'Golden Arch Code'. With skin, we have semi-private booths, where you can have boosters, half-hour walk-in sessions, but we also have three skin care rooms upstairs, where we do everything from injectibles to dermal therapies to peels. What did you learn? Jo Horgan founded Mecca Brands with one store front in 1997. He was super-seminal in the business. Jo Horgan has spent the last 25 years building the business she founded, Mecca, into Australia 's largest prestige beauty retailer. Ill get in tremendous trouble. John Horgan net worth 2022. I admire her tremendously., Jo is full of enthusiasm, positive and high energy, which infuses Mecca with that same spirit, said Masahiko Uotani, chief executive officer of Shiseido. Crew and is currently CEO of Alex Mill, who was introduced to Horgan by Lauder more than a decade ago. We see our role as acting as a lightning rod, where we take the brand DNA and deliver it directly to customers, and because we see ourselves as absolutely responsible for building both the brand equity and the sales performance, weve been able to do so to this ever-growing and captive audience. How would the affiliate model work on an international level? 65. The magic is in the human interaction., She is Pollyanna, says a staff member of Horgans. That is the Mecca magic.. Horgan describes her leadership style as akin to that of sweepers in the sport of curling. There is no true end game to Horgan at Mecca, nor to Horgans philanthropy. Or the time the company had to pay retail prices for luxury fragrances in the Christmas holiday period, after a shipment worth half a million dollars was stolen in Marseilles. We had to pivot and pivot to the point of pirouetting through the pandemic. Melissa and Joe Gorga's new family home was purchased for $950,000 in June. : A true advantage and key differentiator is that we are independent. : I like to think if we put our minds to creating product that is worthy of our customers, we would have to set ourselves a standard that it would be worthy of customers anywhere. When Ms Horgan was 14, her family relocated from the UK to Australia, settling in Perth. "I was the customer," she says. As the business continues to grow even bigger, do you plan on remaining independent? As youve grown, how have you maintained that agility? Right from the outset, I was really clear on what Mecca was, she says. Then we said, can we expand this through to jewelry as adornment, so were doing piercings, solderings, engraving. Australians love beauty. (Read on!) She says she has no plans to step back in any capacity. No matter what.. A former LOreal marketing executive via degrees in English literature, Latin and communications Horgan saw a gap in the market. The most Horgan families were found in USA in 1920. Currently, the first is Meccas culture and that has become even more important coming out of COVID-19, at a time when there is culture erosion because we could literally not get together for two years. Its the memories of the people Ive done this with, how weve built it together and celebrated the highs and huddled during the lows that have made it incredible so far. I used to do education sessions for two hours every second Tuesday night. Photograph by Gareth McConnell for The New Yorker. 2014 Flagship #1. How has your vision of what Mecca is/could be evolved over the last two decades? Robbie Fimmano. She then started working for L'Oreal, first in London, and then relocating to Melbourne, so she could return to Australia. Austin was among the most notable debutants on The List this year, when the 2022 edition was published in late March, alongside the likes of beauty retail phenomenon Jo Horgan and her husband . Whats your primary focus today? Kylie Lewis (Female Entrepreneur Kin) Net Worth: Difficult to ascertain. "The question is not is it going to happen but . If you look at 25 years ago versus now, the retail landscape has totally changed, the brand offer and category offers have multiplied out of sight, the players have diversified. Our purpose why we roll out of bed and choose this one thing to do above all other life choices was to make people look, feel and be their best. What the judges said: Jock is creating business and a living wage for Aboriginal communities. J.H. : Our entire focus is customer-centric and our owned brands have been built to fill gaps that we dont feel we can fill otherwise. Credit: Charles Sykes/Bravo. Preceded in death by his wife, Bettie Jo Horgan (Christian) and his sisters, Patricia M. Birney and Rosemary C. Trier. Australian entrepreneurship Jo Horgan turned a love of makeup into 87-strong chain of cosmetics stores. Today, the customer is all-ruling. They include Mecca's Jo Horgan, Decjuba's Tania Austin and Megan Wynne, a one-time occupational therapist who's now running the $1.5 billion human services giant, APM." We bring our managers and sales team together twice a year and get extraordinary speakers, like Julia Gillard, Australias only female prime minister. I am naturally optimistic, I am quite bloody-minded, I am naturally curious. The annual program features unstoppable entrepreneurs from more than 60 countries and territories. AOC under investigation for Met Gala dress, Mother who killed her five children euthanised, Alex Murdaugh jailed for life for double murder, Zoom boss Greg Tomb fired without cause, The children left behind in Cuba's exodus, US sues Exxon over nooses found at Louisiana plant, Sacred coronation oil will be animal-cruelty free. Horgan has been named a BOSS True Leader for forging a new path in beauty retailing in Australia, creating an alternative distribution path for brands outside department stores, inspiring other female entrepreneurs, and creating a work environment and culture that has seen Mecca voted one of the top five places to work for the past four years. Senior leaders and retail staff attend annual conferences, where the likes of Julia Gillard, Gail Kelly and Horgans own favourite motivational speaker, Jim Collins, have spoken. That helped us say OK, in color, were going to have not only our entire offer, with big makeup stations on the ground floor for applications, but were going to have our Beauty Lab where 12 people can have half-hour beauty lessons on the hour every hour, like the Apple Genius bar. Were taking an agile approach, because were very cognizant that the beauty landscape is ever changing at warp speed and its our job to predict where its going and to make sure we can continually adapt and evolve to always be ahead of the market. It's now Australia and New Zealand's largest prestige beauty retailer, with more than . Horgans parents, who brought her to Australia to live at 14, had their own businesses: her mother ran a mail-order fashion start-up; her father owned factories that made yarn and clothing for the likes of Marks & Spencer. WWD and Women's Wear Daily are part of Penske Media Corporation. Mecca was one of the first beauty businesses to embrace e-commerce, launching an online store in 2001, and mecca.com.au is one of the largest players in the online beauty market. (Horgan family / Courtesy) The death of a Pembroke Pines cardiologist in the British Virgin Islands is being investigated by police in the . A Victoria Supreme Court sided with Jo Horgan's business that the Unilever-owned cosmetics brand had acted unlawfully when it walked away from an exclusive deal with the retailer due to Covid-19 restrictions. Based on this, were launching MeccaAesthetica as a stand-alone trial in Melbourne. Living in Melbourne, Australia, she quit her project management job at French cosmetics giant L'Oreal, and launched her own company, which she called Mecca. Mary Horgan. Ms Horgan adds that much of Mecca's success comes from choosing the right people to be around her in the first place. 62 years. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google. The family settled in County Meath, north of Dublin, where they had a turkey farm . Especially because during the first year, I kept thinking of the statistic that nine out of 10 businesses fail in year one, so I knew I had better be pretty focused on how I differentiated myself from the average. Our big hairy audacious goal was to be Australia and New Zealands number-one beauty destination whatever it takes. Go and ask the team and they will know them. I ask a team member who laughs, nodding. This year's winner will be chosen by a globally diverse panel of independent judges, based on six criteria that measure long-term value. You can bring your whole slightly flawed, slightly zany, slightly learning-as-you-go self with all of the optimism and joy and curiosity and slight astonishment of where you are with you. Since 2015, Stars has forged enduring relationships with many government, philanthropic and corporate partners. Instead, shes using the opportunity to set a big, bold goal or BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) as she would say for the next 25 years: global domination. Mecca sees its role as providing a highly engaging, multiple touchpoint experience that is personalized to each customer in store. But he recalls a sense of lightning in a bottle. Thats what makes you feel like a million dollars when you put it on. Being involved in the business is good for giving. And thats great fun, great fun. As she clasps her hands in front of her face with eyes wide, I ask if she can tell me anything about the store, apart from the fact that it will be positively enormous. I love what I do, on all different levels, she says, after feigning offence that in asking whats next? Ive suggested she ought to think about retirement. JEROME HORGAN OBITUARY. That has given us enormous confidence for Melbourne. The eldest of a family of four, he was just 16 when he was arrested on suspicion of raping and killing Rachel (22) on October 26, 2000. But it goes much deeper than that. J.H. John William Horgan was a Solicitor in Cork in a firm called M.J.Horgan & Sons. And yet she speaks. Andrea & Leigh Jasper. The Mecca magic that Horgan frequently intones stems from the idea that staff members should be empowered to make decisions to ensure their customers look, and more importantly feel their best. Horgan stars opposite Michael Sheen; they play a couple battling over whether to let their severely disabled daughter die. J.H. She is one of a small but mighty coterie of female philanthropists whove made it their mission to prop up the Australian arts industry: Judith Neilson, Gretel Packer, Gene Sherman, Naomi Milgrom, Krystyna Campbell-Pretty.