Member Article

Beauty guru set to inspire North East businesswomen

“I want women to be taken seriously and feel confident, and that’s what I’m hoping to inspire them to do. My message is that if I can do it, anyone can.”

Beauty guru, Judy Naake is the entrepreneur behind St Tropez tanning, and is set to inspire women at the North East’s Achieve conference this Thursday March 8.

Bdaily spoke to Judy ahead of her talk to find out what she thinks it means to be a successful woman in business.

“If you speak to any woman, she will feel the same. We want to be everything to everybody, and this is where the difficulty can lie. With this, it can seem like you’re not doing anything properly.

“For instance, if a woman is late for meeting, quite often she will feel she needs to have an excuse - ‘I had to pick up the kids.’ But a man will more typically just sit down and want to get on with it, without any apology.”

The entrepreneurial spark began for Judy as a young girl, observing her father’s businesses, including various wallpaper, hardware, jewellers and florist shops in Nottingham.

Following her first job as a glamorous sales agent for John Player cigarettes, Judy went on to forge her own successful business after spotting the value in the St Tropez product.

In 2002, Judy sold distribution rights in the UK and Europe to Lloyds Development Capital for a reputed £70m, marking the huge amount of work she had invested in building the brand.

Throughout the course of her hard work and determination she encountered sexism and mysogyny that she says spurred her on to strive for even greater achievement.

“When I was getting a divorce, the solicitor said why are you coming to me for a divorce, you can’t even afford a loaf of bread. I said it’s a good job that my dad owns a bakery. I couldn’t believe how cheeky it was. That was a catalyst for me, and I really set out to show them and within six months I was on to my third BMW.”

Judy acknowledges that there are differences between men and women in business, and believes part of her experience has taught her to have confidence in her own decisions, and not to be knocked off-course by the staid opinions of business processes asserted by her male contemporaries.

“I think women bring different things to the table. Take for instance paying bills. I always settled my bills on time, and then I had a male accountant who said that isn’t what you do. He said you need to wait at least 30 days, and a few extra if possible. Well, there’s advantages in leveraging some lee-way, but I believe women are more typically frightened to let people down and will look to keep people happy.”

She sees the ability of women to remain sensitive in business relationships as a quality which can really be used to drive success.

“When I was a sales rep I would go out of my way to put a complaint right for someone, and my partner at the time might say, ‘why did you waste half a day on that.’ But for me, something wonderful would always come of that, because you had gone the extra mile for people.”

As the EU measures up forced quotas for women on corporate boards, Judy thinks this could be a good idea to ensure these qualities get the chance to make a difference at the top.

“Women always achieve fantastic things in higher positions, but the problem is getting them into these instances in the first place, which is where this quota might come in. Someone said to me, if Emily Pankhurst was given the vote, but told to wait 70 years, there would be outrage. At the moment its more a case of, ‘he’s leaving this post, who can we get in to fill it, well she’s available.’ It shouldn’t be that way.”

Judy will address women at the Achieve conference at Hilton Hotel, Gateshead on Thursday March 8.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .