“If you want customers to be loyal to you, you must be loyal to them”: Frances Russell, Absolute Collagen

“If you want customers to be loyal to you, you must be loyal to them”: Frances Russell, Absolute Collagen

Creating customer loyalty and taking a data-driven approach to international expansion plans and new product design.

“Being direct to consumer, we know a huge amount about our customers. We are obsessed with understanding and consulting them. That, ultimately, is what has driven so much of our growth,” says Frances Russell, CEO of Absolute Collagen.

The genesis of the health supplement brand came in 2015 when co-founder Maxine Laceby started experimenting with collagen to boost her skin vitality and midlife self-esteem, boiling beef bones on her kitchen stove and using the broth as a dietary supplement.

Maxine then teamed up with her daughter Darcy who was studying a food development degree to identify a commercially scalable approach to producing collagen and found they were tapping into huge customer interest. By 2017 the company’s hydrolysed marine collagen sachets were on the market and turnover was £414,000. Last year it hit £30m.

Data drives international expansion

Being close to its customers is also necessary for Absolute Collagen from another perspective – education. Knowledge around collagen and its role in skin, hair and nail vitality is still relatively nascent, so being able to provide direct support to its “Absoluters” as the business calls its customers, is a crucial part of its success.

Consumer education also feeds into the business growth strategy. This year sees Absolute Collagen launch in high street retailers and move into international sales as it launches in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany – finely tuned targeting based on consumer data, augmented with a layer of country-specific personalisation.

You can't just expect to turn up in a country and thrive - we tailor our approach. Some countries prefer powder over liquid, some need educating on collagen to a lesser or greater degree. We spent a huge amount of time researching the best opportunities and ensuring our brand activity is aligned to the market’s needs and expectations. But beyond that, you do need to use a little instinct. You can’t get everything from the numbers.”

Rapid growth brings talent challenges

While such data-centric business acumen has helped fuel the success of Absolute Collagen, that trajectory has come with familiar challenges.

Co-founder Maxine Laceby believes Absolute Collagen should always act like a start-up - with energy and urgency - however large it grows and however experienced the new hires it recruits.

“We need things to move fast. We need doers who are also thinkers. Making sure that we balance experience with entrepreneurial spirit and are not curtailed by tunnel vision,” says Russell.

Team empowerment brings NPD success

Protecting that agile culture has proven valuable. A good illustration is how one of the company’s brand team proposed an entirely new product line after analysing customer data, presenting the case for topical collagen for thinning hair to complement the consumable supplement that formed the core offering.

“It was a pivotal moment. We would have gone down the route of more dietary supplements for our next product launch before that, but we listened, and it has been a huge success. Having the courage to hand people the reins, allowing them to bring something different and fail fast makes space for innovation. But know that comes with mistakes sometimes. If you want your team to push boundaries, you must allow them to make mistakes.”

Cross-generational listening feeds culture

Much of the success of the culture is credited to co-founder Darcy, who champions an enabling energy across the 60 full time staff located in the company’s main office in Birmingham and its Telford warehouse. Employee empowerment and autonomy is a central edict to her approach, with flexible working deeply embedded in the form of “work from anywhere August” and “work from home December” to help with work-life balance. A multi-generational diverse leadership team also brings different energies, says Russell.

“I think we learn different things from different generations and cultures, and it is crucial that they get equal respect, that we are open to that thinking. That’s where momentum and loyalty live. And it’s the same with our customers. We prioritise staying attuned and we’ve got a lot of trust because of that. They are hardworking and intelligent; they challenge us time and again and we make it clear that we are listening. If you want customers to be loyal to you, you must be loyal to them.”

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Zahra Bahrololoumi,
Salesforce