Six years into building and growing Romilly Wilde, founder Susie Willis felt the need to take a "deliberate pause” and reassess her brand’s offering and ethos.
Now, a few months on, the brand is back with a new focus on biotechnology and proteins, relaunching as a five-product system backed by clinical research, trials and testing.
“It was as clear as the nose on my face that I had to just take stock of everything that I had been doing because I just was not feeling it,” Willis told Cosmetics Business.
“There was a sense of confusion with the consumer… so the changing moment for me was when I was developing these two new products, and I knew that we were being really ahead of the curve with the kind of peptides we were using, with the sort of technology we were using with these two products.”
How two products turned into a complete brand overhaul
The two products she refers to are the Peptide Longevity Serum and the Tripeptide Antioxidant Day Cream – originally developed to join the existing line, but ultimately the products that pushed the rebrand forward.
“They harnessed something which was of a next generation – it was like high-tech, and those were just happening sort of alongside while I was running version one of Romilly, but I knew that they possessed a different technical language that needed me to be present.”
It was after receiving feedback from tests that Willis knew this was not just an add-on to the existing brand, but instead a base to rebuild and reassess from.
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Willis adds: “We did these tests and the results came back, and the covering email was, ‘Susie, these are remarkable’.
“That is when I sort of thought, ‘I have got something here. You have got to make a decision, Susie.
“‘Do you just integrate them into the existing brand, or do you just take stock, take a minute, understand what these two new products represent and then just reset?’ – so that is exactly what I did.”
Starting a brand is a challenge in itself – but taking it back to the beginning after building it up takes it to another level.
For Willis, one of the hardest parts of the overhaul came down to a business decision surrounding her team.
“[Pausing the brand] was the hardest thing I have ever done because in that moment I let go of the team,” she shared.
“I knew that I needed just to pause and reevaluate and take stock of how I felt about [whether] I was going to do this on another level.
“A lot of people, unless you have had a brand before, just assume that it is product and branding – it is not.
“You have to possess hutzpah. This is not for the faint-hearted.
“Having [a brand], and especially in the beauty category, in the skin care category, it is not for the faint-hearted.”
Ahead of the brand’s relaunch day on 16 September, Willis shared how she “was sort of sitting in between the two of old and new”.
She adds: “Not that I doubted for a second, but the minute we launched, the website went live, and then sud
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