Erin Graybill’s vision to reduce stress and exemplify experience instantly resonated with her consumer base.
Let’s face it, you either love buying gifts or find it draining. Luxe England’s hampers are designed to take the stress, time, and endless scrolling out of gift-buying. From cruelty-free makeup brushes that are perfect for all skin types, to thoughtfully designed handmade self-care gift hampers, they design beautiful gifts to make their customers smile. Erin shares her Secrets of Success with Business Matters.
What products or services do you provide?
Luxe England Ltd is a house of brands specialising in designing and creating beauty and lifestyle products from makeup brushes to bespoke self-care gift hampers.
What type of businesses do you work with?
We work with a handful of carefully selected suppliers who share our vision and passion for creating products that are beautifully made and thoughtfully priced. This can range from small British boutiques to local charities for picking and packing, all the way through to working alongside Amazon to deliver these amazing products to our customers quickly and efficiently.
What problem does your company solve?
My team and I are on a mission to completely transform the gift-giving experience. We want to take any of the stress, the time, and the endless scrolling out gift-buying and become the one-stop shop for finding the perfect gift to make your loved one’s smile. From cruelty-free makeup brushes that are perfect for all skin types, to thoughtfully designed handmade self-care gift hampers, we design beautiful gifts that are not only going to put a smile on our customers’ faces but go above and beyond all their initial expectations.
What is your USP?
What is truly unique about our products is that we have done all of the thinking for you to provide a personal and innovative gifting experience like no other. From packaging to digital guides, and online support, we anticipate every small thing that our customers may want or need to make it the smoothest and most memorable unboxing experience when their gift arrives. And we do this all with the planet and with people in mind, from working with charities to using cruelty-free and vegan-friendly products and eco-packaging, our products are thoughtfully designed and wrapped in layers of kindness.
What are your company values? Have you ever had them challenged and if so how have you dealt with it?
Luxe England’s DNA as a company is made up of 4 key values – we value innovation, simplicity, kindness, and reflection. All these values used in tandem really help us to keep pushing forwards and rising above challenges, competitors, and even old ways of doing things or outdated ways of thinking. Above all else, we always aim higher. Whether that’s with the products we’re offering or our environmental policies, we’re never okay with standing okay.
How do you ensure that you recruit a team that reflects your company values?
We prioritise a team that is rich in both diversity and in passion. My team is one of my greatest achievements and I’m so proud to work alongside talented people that share my passion which is and always has been: making a customer smile. We’ve always valued diversity and inclusion when recruiting for new members -— without it we couldn’t be so creative, we couldn’t diversify our ways of thinking, or understand different cultures and demographics; we wouldn’t be the award-winning team that we are today.
Are you happy to offer a hybrid working model of home/office post-covid?
Our team has always been quite diverse with employees working remotely across the globe, so with the systems we already had in place and with the reliability of Amazon’s distribution network, we were lucky enough to have quite a smooth transition from the office to remote work during covid. Having said this, we design, develop and market award-winning products and it’s a must that the team is together in the same room with our products from idea for launch. We are currently offering a hybrid model however that certain magic in our team working collaboratively to develop products can’t be beat!
Do you have any tips for managing suppliers and customers effectively?
When it comes to customers, we believe that having a customer is a privilege, not our right. So we make sure we treat them accordingly — in our books the customer is our boss! We try to give them what they want before they even know that they need it, and if we miss the mark on something, we hold our hands up and do everything we can to make it right so that at the end of the day every customer has a smile on their face.
Any finance or cash-flow tips for new businesses starting out?
Don’t be afraid to start the business as a side hustle and keep it like that as long as you can. Many new entrepreneurs put so much pressure on themselves to go full time from day 1 but keeping cash in the business for longer helps you grow faster and afford the mistakes we all will make at first. Keep lines of communication open with your accountant, bank and suppliers so you can ask for support when needed. In the early days we were also supported by Amazon Lending which allowed us to grow our business more quickly.
If you could ask one thing of the government to change for businesses what would it be?
Simplify everything! It is so important to understand all of the rules and regulations, which can be overwhelming as a small business owner. Also I think more grants should be available as every bit of finance helps small businesses!
What is your attitude towards your competitors?
I think of the customer as our boss so it’s our job to make them happy. Therefore having strong competitors helps the whole market consistently step up their game to innovate for our customers. It’s really fun to work as a team to figure out not only what our customers want now…but what they’ll want next.
Any thoughts on the future of your company and your dreams?
My team and I have big plans and high hopes for 2022. We’re hoping to hit the ground running with this and bring out even more new and exciting gift hampers for our UK and international customers. We currently have three amazing brands that we sell on Amazon globally. Developing expectation-setting products is what we do best so we’re planning to keep expanding our product ranges to give customers exactly what they want and need before they even know it. In fact, we recently added a new shower-only unisex gift hamper to our Luxe England line of much-loved self-care hampers so we’re excited to see where this takes us as it’s a completely unique gift set and really fills a gap in the market; we just launched it on Amazon in the UK and have been delighted with the feedback so far.