From a young age, it was always clear that Marcia Kilgore was going to become an entrepreneur — if anything, just to be her own boss.
“I was not meant to be an employee,” said Kilgore on stage last week at the Sifted Summit. “I did have jobs as a teenager, just trying to pay my way.. and I found it difficult to follow instructions from whoever it was I was working for because I would like to execute it in a different way. And I think you’re kind of born like that.”
That ability to think and do things differently has led Kilgore to found not one, not two, but five successful consumer-facing companies which are all still operating.
Her first big success was Bliss, a boutique day spa in New York known for the iconic Bliss facial that’s attracted celebrity clients like Hollywood star Uma Thurman and pop icon Madonna. In 1999, at the age of 30, she sold a majority stake in the Bliss Spa spinout skincare range to LVMH (the company that owns Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Dior, Tiffany & Co and other luxury brands) for a reported $30m.
Then, in 2014, she sold her affordable beauty product range Soap & Glory to UK health and beauty retailer Boots for a reported £40-50m.
Her other businesses include Fitflop — an ergonomic footwear line which is today sold in 64 markets — and her latest venture Beauty Pie, a membership business that allows users to purchase beauty and skincare products at up to 70% less than the typical retail price.
Thinking differently
Finding novel ideas always seemed to come naturally to Kilgore, who was born in Canada and later moved to New York to attend university. On stage, she’s quick to mention that she did not study business.
“I think people often come out of business school (which I did not) looking for ideas or thinking they’re going to build a better mousetrap, and it doesn’t allow you to come up with something that’s really new and disruptive because you’re just doing another version of what everybody else has done in those crowded markets,” said Kilgore.
You have to be willing to try something crazy.
To build an impactful business, “you have to be willing to try something crazy,” she added.
Spotting gaps in the market
Kilgore got the idea for Bliss by having a “bad facial” on the Upper East Side in New York which, instead of being administered with care, involved “steaming your face and hitting you with twigs,” she recalled.
Leaving the building and stepping onto the metro, she remembers seeing the reflection of her swollen face in one of the metallic cars. “I thought, If I ever had a place like that where people would look forward to going to and treating themselves, I would never, ever let them feel bad about themselves when they were leaving,” she said.
“And that's the idea for Bliss. It was, you know what? How can we do this in a way that people get something beautiful out of it, rather than shaming them?”

Finding original ideas is about looking for gaps in the market, questioning everything and ultimately following your curiosity, said Kilgore. “You just need to keep reading, looking, talking to people, finding out what you don’t know.”
Kilgore also recommended that entrepreneurs read things that are outside of the sector their business operates in.
“I’m a beauty industry person. I would normally be reading beauty industry newsletters and reading about raw ingredients and how to sell beauty products. But if I didn’t read a newsletter that comes in about the automotive industry, or AI —all the random things — I would never connect the dots in a new way to find a new idea.”
Overcoming scepticism and building trust
New ideas can, however, be met with scepticism — and companies have to hold customers' hands and provide them with factual information to build their trust, says Kilgore.
Beauty Pie is a case in point. Described as a ‘luxury buyers’ club’, the company sells its own-brand skincare and cosmetics through its website at “factory cost prices” to members who pay an annual fee of £59 after a month’s free trial — allowing them to get their hands on luxury goods without the beauty industry’s markup.
You just need to keep reading, looking, talking to people, finding out what you don’t know.
But some beauty customers are sceptical that such high-quality products could be so cheap.
“Beauty is one of the most egregiously marked-up industries in the world. Generally if a beauty product costs £10 to make, it will retail for £120 or more. And in skin care, it’s like the Wild West — you can charge (those prices). That's been happening for such a long time that no one really knows what the price of a beauty product is,” says Kilgore.
"People are totally irrational,” she adds. “You can tell people, ‘Hey, you don’t have to pay $150 for that, you can pay $30’, and they will be sceptical.”
So, how do you build trust with consumers?
Kilgore says that some customers would rather ignore the fact that there is a better decision in front of them than admit to themselves that “they've been paying way too much for way too long.” So, to get around that, you have to tell them that the Beauty Pie solution is a new thing.
“You have to really guide people through that in a really gentle way and say: it's ok. You just didn’t know about this (solution) before, or it wasn’t available,’” said Kilgore.
“One of the crazy things is that when you say ‘now’ you can buy stuff like this, people are like: ‘This wasn’t available before. It’s not that I was taken for a ride before, my ego is intact. I can now do this in a better and smarter way,’” she added.
Reading material
Having recently re-read a book called “Great by Choice” from one of her favourite business authors, Jim Collins, Kilgore’s new mantra, she said, is to “fire a bullet before you fire a cannonball”.
“For startups that’s really important: test something small, before you put all your time and money into it. Especially if your business is online, you can have a cohort of people that you can test that with before you jump in with both feet,” she said.
With five businesses under her belt, two of which she sold, who’s to say Kilgore won’t be needing this early customer feedback a sixth time around.