10 Things You Didn’t Know about Marcia Kilgore
Marcia Kilgore is an entrepreneur who has founded a number of beauty companies. Currently, she is running Beauty Pie, which is an online brand of luxury beauty products that sells directly to consumers. She’s a female CEO and an entrepreneur, and she is a woman who many young women can look up to for business inspiration.
1. Born in Outlook, Saskatchewan
Kilgore was born in a town called Outlook in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Said town is home to a research facility focused upon the performance of different crops under both dryland and irrigation. This is important because agriculture makes up a considerable portion of Saskatchewan’s economy. Moreover, while the province is situated far from significant bodies of water, it is nonetheless home to a lot of fresh water. In fact, close to 10 percent of Saskatchewan’s area consists of freshwater, thus making irrigation very relevant to say the least.
2. Moved to New York City
Of course, Saskatchewan has its cities. However, it isn’t exactly what most people would consider to be on the cutting edge of things, meaning that it sees a fair amount of outflow to both other parts of Canada and the United States. Kilgore is an excellent example because she moved to New York City as soon as she had completed high school.
3. Became a Personal Trainer
Initially, Kilgore planned to study at Columbia University. Unfortunately, that plan fell through because she missed a scholarship deadline, with the result that she had to scramble for something else. Kilgore became a personal trainer, which proved to be beneficial in a couple of notable ways. One, it covered her bills, thus enabling her to take classes on a part-time basis at New York University. Two, she became successful enough for her to work with a number of celebrity clients.
4. Had an Interest in Skincare
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kilgore has an interest in skincare. To be exact, she has cared about skincare for a very long time because she was one of those people who are unfortunate enough to get hit by a very bad case of acne since her preteen years. As such, Kilgore took a course of skincare, with the result that she started giving facials to her friends from her apartment. Something that paved the way for some of her future businesses.
5. Founded Let’s Face It! in the 1980s
For starters, Kilgore founded a skincare treatment center called Let’s Face It! in the 1980s. However, it was far from being the last business that she has founded. After all, Kilgore is an excellent example of a serial entrepreneur, meaning someone who isn’t content with starting up one company but instead proceeds to start up a succession of them.
6. Has Founded Multiple Beauty Companies
There are some serial entrepreneurs who take an interest in a wide range of businesses in a wide range of industries. In contrast, others prefer sticking to the industries that they are most familiar with. On the whole, Kilgore has been focused on the beauty industry, which makes sense because that is something that she knows very well. For example, she founded Bliss in 1993, which started out as a single spa but has gone on to get involved in bath products, body products, and skincare products. Something that was made possible by Kilgore’s guidance as well as the backing of other interested parties. Similarly, Kilgore has launched not one but two lines of bath and body products.
7. Founded FitFlop
Speaking of which, Kilgore also founded FitFlop, which is a footwear company that emphasizes comfort throughout the entire day. That can sound rather strange to people who are used to thinking of beauty and practicality being in opposition to one another. However, it is important to remember that there is a very understandable demand for products that can balance these two priorities, which in turn, has resulted in a lot of companies seeking to meet that demand in one field or another. Indeed, Kilgore seems to have put a huge emphasis on accessibility for more than one of her companies.
8. Has Appealed to Rising Eco-Consciousness
Eco-consciousness is something that has become more and more important in recent decades. Something that has had a wide range of effects on a wide range of products. The beauty industry is not exempt from this, as shown by how many products stress the recycled nature of their packaging, the recyclability of their packaging, and other factors that make them seem more eco-conscious. This is tied up with a number of related trends among consumers. As a result, it is no coincidence that Kilgore’s most recent line of bath and body products stressed their cruelty-free nature, their suitability for vegan users, and their creation using natural ingredients.
9. Emphasized the Use of Simpler Packaging for Beauty Pie
On a related note, Kilgore has stressed the use of simpler packaging for Beauty Pie products, which is quite interesting. Essentially, the company’s products are supposed to be luxury beauty products. Traditionally speaking, it is common for companies to emphasize the nature of luxury products by putting them in ornate packaging that often contains metallic elements, with beauty companies being no exception to this rule. Kilgore has made a deliberate decision to avoid that kind of packaging. Instead, she has decided to go for simpler packaging with less of an impact on the environment, which reflects changing attitudes on how a product should be presented in modern times. Kilgore’s stated motive for doing so is cutting down on the amount of waste that winds up in landfills.
10. Feels that People Shouldn’t Hesitate to Ask for Favors
Like a lot of other successful entrepreneurs, Kilgore has shared some of her thoughts on finding success. Much of it is pretty much what interested individuals might expect, though this isn’t necessarily a problem. For example, Kilgore mentions working hard, which makes sense considering the kind of effort that entrepreneurs need to put in for their companies to go anywhere. Similarly, she has stressed networking, which covers everything from making contacts to being useful to other people in various ways. However, one of the most stand-out things that Kilgore mentioned was not being shy to ask for favors from other people. As far as she is concerned, there is minimal cost to doing so because being told “No” won’t kill the asker. Moreover, she mentioned that people might not want to think of a “No” as a “No” so much as a “Not yet.”
