Forte luxury cosmetics brand in growth push as sales soar 300%
After business leaders call for lower taxes...
COSMETICS entrepreneur Irene Forte might seek new investment to grow her business after a surge in demand.
Sales at Irene Forte Skincare have risen 300 per cent this year after a string of luxury department stores and websites snapped up the brand. Products, including the £88 Hibiscus Night Cream, are stocked in Bergdorf Goodman in New York and Le Bon Marche in Paris, as well as online at Net-a-Porter and Amazon’s Luxury Stores.
‘It depends how fast we want to push the pedals. If we want to double our sales next year, we’re totally fine. If we decide we want to grow by 400 per cent, we need to start thinking about [the possibility of raising new investment] in September. We are exploring both options at the moment,’ said Forte, daughter of hotels tycoon Sir Rocco.
She began supplying the face cream and skin serum products in her family’s hotels and spas. Now she has contracts with around 40 retailers, and says that physical shops are still important for highend cosmetics labels because shoppers prefer to try them in the shop. ‘For luxury brands, it’s hard to make the first purchase online if you haven’t smelt or tried the texture of a product on your skin,’ says Forte. The brand combines ingredients from the family’s organic farm at its Verdura Resort in Sicily with scientific research to show the efficacy of its products.
Sir Rocco is a vocal business advocate. Last week, he told the MoS that failure to slash corporation tax would have ‘clear and damaging implications for our economy’.
THE boss of FTSE100 software giant Sage has called on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to deliver sweeping tax breaks for tech investment.
Steve Hare said this could foster an unprecedented £232 billion ‘turbo charge’ for the economy.
He said Ministers must ‘pull every lever’ to accelerate the shift and he called for new policies to encourage investment.
Newcastle-based Sage is one of Britain’s most successful technology firms and employs 11,000 staff. In a piece for The Mail on Sunday this weekend, published online, Hare said he does not underestimate the challenges facing the economy. But he said he believes businesses are ‘resilient’ and he remains optimistic.
Last week, business leaders called for the Government to scrap a planned hike in the corporation tax rate and instead slash it dramatically to give the economy a boost.
They said the tax – currently 19 per cent but set to rocket to 25 per cent next year – should be cut to as little as 12.5 per cent.
Hare wants tax breaks on investment in traditional plant and machinery to be extended to cover technology and digital industries.
He said he believes a digital boom could lift businesses in a shift that will be as important as ‘the original internet revolution’.
A report on 5,000 small and medium-sized firms handed to Parliament by Sage reveals that more than half are using technology to cut costs and better compete for customers. The study found that many would go much further, but are concerned about the cost and access to the right skills to use and implement it.
The use of technology by small and medium firms contributes an estimated £216billion to the economy. But that could more than double with new policies to encourage tech adoption, the report said.
That includes providing 5G and high-speed broadband across the country, demanding ‘digital literacy’ in schools and remodelling the tax system ‘so that every pound spent on tech equipment is treated as a capital investment rather than an operating expense’.
Hare continued: ‘Looking beyond the immediate economic and political cycles, there are reasons to be quietly and cautiously optimistic about the future.
‘At Sage we work with small and medium-sized businesses every day. They are a resilient and thriving part of our country’s fabric, responsible for 62 per cent of all economic activity. The greatest risk is that some are unable to share in the coming digital boom.
‘All political leaders that wish to be taken seriously should turbocharge their policy ambitions to support this digital future.’
Milton Keynes MP Ben Everitt said: ‘SMEs and the next unicorns will be born digital. We need to grab that talent and opportunityand support them, and government has a big role to play.’