tv Influential with Katty Kay BBC News January 19, 2024 3:30am-4:01am GMT
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voice—over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. jane wurwand is the founder of dermalogica, and i've wanted to interview herfor a long time because she has a fascinating story about leaving beauty school in england at the age of 16, coming to america, and founding what became one of the biggest brands in skincare so nice to see you! jane laughs thank you for having me. so nice to see you! jane laughs thank you for having me. oh, my gosh. and you brought out the very rare, lovely sunny california weather.
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i know, exactly! does it feel like home now, california? 0h... you know, i... because i've emigrated to several different countries — i was born in scotland — i feel everywhere is home, and nowhere is. and now... yeah, yeah, of course. now, yourfirst store. our very first flagship for dermalogica. and this was where we really — it became like an open kitchen, open seven days a week, open all day, lots of revolutionary things in our industry that we did. no—one booked by their name, we booked by the room. we redesigned what a treatment room looks like. so, this became the showcase for the brand. let's go have a look. yeah! let's — come on in. i can't wait to show it to you. you've been an amazingly successful businesswoman. thank you. i mean, you've built this incredible empire, and you built it from nothing. i want to go back in time a little bit, because i
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remember the first time we met, it was at a book event. yeah. and you came up to me, and you said that you were the founder of dermalogica — which, of course, i knew — and then, you said, "not bad for a girl who left beauty "school in the south coast of england at the age of 16". that's right. and you have no — when you left.... give us a little bit of the back story, cos there's nothing in your educational back story that led you to being a kind of... no, you... ..having a global business empire. no, the thing that is the root of everything, i think, when i trace back right from the beginning, when i was two years old, my father died. my mother was a trained nurse. but, because she married, she had to give up herjob, which was the case up until about 1967, in the uk. you — it was expected that once you were married, you were already going to be taken care of. so, my mother was 38 years old, my father died suddenly, and she had four children to raise on her own. but she had a skill set that she could fall back on and keep our family together. and now, because my father had died, she was no longer a "married woman",
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she was a widowed woman. so, she was then allowed to work again. and it's just crazy a story, i could write a book about that. so, when my mother was raising us, she drummed into us, "you always have to learn how to do something. "you have to have a skill set. "because if, goodness forbid, what happened to me happens "to one of you, you need to be able to put food on "the table immediately." i got my firstjob at 13, working in the local hair salon just outside of poole, dorset. what, kind of a weekend job? yeah, weekend job. i tried a paper round — it was so bloody awful, i couldn't do it, because when it's raining and cold, you woke at 6am in the morning to get the morning papers delivered. i couldn't, i lasted six weeks, i said, "that's that. "what else can i do? next!" my girlfriend debbie from school said, "i think there's a salon in the village that will "employ you underage", cos herfriend got a job there doing the laundry. isaid, "i'm going in". i got myjob at 13 years old. couldn't be seen by any member of the public, cos it was illegal. but i did the laundry,
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i was always in the back room cleaning up, tidying. it was the most fantastic job i had, because i got to know everyone in the village, i knew every bit of gossip — there is nothing that is not said in a salon. i thought i had the most glamorous job in the world, and i'm going to be a hairdresser. and then, when i was 15—and—a—half, i got promoted to shampoo girl, which was my official title. big promotion. huge! all of that said, when i was 16, they hired a skin therapist to work in the salon, giving skin treatments, and what we would then call facials — which i don't say that because it doesn't stop at the face. your skin actually is the entire... your entire body is a living organ. i was inspired by her, and i realised, "this is what i want to do. "i want to be in the salon industry. "i want to have a skill set. "i want a skill set in my hands that literally could "take me around the world" — and it did. and when i was accepted to university to study skincare — you do your a—levels,
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and then, you get your results in august and then you've got like two weeks to make a decision — i had to break the news to my mum that i was not going to university. i was actually going to enrol at anthony of london beauty school, which i did, and the fee was going to be £2110 for my training, and i was going to be an apprentice. i've asked you this before, but how did you get the confidence to launch a business? what made you think that you could rock up in california, with all of these americans who knew how to do it and had been, you know, building businesses for years, and think, "i'm jane wurwand from the "south coast of england"... yeah. .."with my beauty diploma, and i can do it? "i can launch a business that everybody will know "and associate around the world with skincare? "and that will be known around the world?" that you could launch a business that would be known globally? i actually wrote down my first kind of statement of purpose, was "total world domination
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"of professional skincare". i swear, wrote it down. minor ambition. well, yeah. and it was so ridiculously huge. but i thought, "you know what? i'm going to focus on that," because what that says is it's not about dominating the world, it's about how can i do my very, very best work that would influence and help change other people's lives? because the core purpose of dermalogica has always been skill set training. we train 100,000 skin therapists a year — separate to the product, separate to whatever product we sell to consumers. so, this is the whole back engine — and it was my back engine, it was my training. i remember you told me a story about how, when you went to primary school at the age of five... yes. ..your mum tied a key around your neck. 4.5. i was in scotland, and you start school at 4.5. and i walked to school on my own, and my mum tied our back door key on a string, a soft string — like not a coarse, scratchy
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one, a soft bit of sort of string — and dropped it inside my school uniform and told me, "you will let — you'll use this to open the back door "when you come home from school. "and you never — this is our secret, and you never "show it to anybody." and i felt very trusted, and i thought, "my mum — "i've got this, mum". that was in my head, you know, "yes, i can do that. "i'll do a really good job at that." now, was i scared, at 4.5, to walk down the street? absolutely. i was frightened of the dog down the road that might run out and grab me! so, yes, i was scared — but i had made a commitment to my mum, and i was going to do it, and ifollowed through. i'm quite sure someone would call child services now if that happened, but my mum didn't have a lot of choices. and i walked myself to school, i walked myself home, and i did it. and the thing is, katty, as scared as i was — and i was scared, of course — knowing i could do that, that starts to build your confidence. i think what happens when we...
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yeah, i mean, if you can do that... yeah, i'm going to california! i mean, it didn't click... yes, and it's not totally, you know, here's this dot and there's dot — that dot, but i can see that, as a small child realising, "i can do that, "i can make that happen..." and i'm doing it every day. "..and i can survive it," would then, later in life, make you think, "well, actually, you know what? "i did a really hard thing already." yeah, you can figure this out. yeah. we can figure it out! you don't know what the hell you're doing. none of us know what we're doing until we do it. so, you take a deep breath, and then, all the way through, and now — you know, i'm 65 years old — now, whenever i have something to do like this, ithink... she inhales "i can do this! "i've done the hard stuff before, i can do this." and what's the worst thing that can happen if you don't do it, or you have to do it a second time? you didn't get up and walk straight away. you had a few attempts. it's ok not to get
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it right right away. i'm hoping this is not too hard. she chuckles no, it's fantastic. - you having a miserable time? no, i'm having a great time. so, tell me the story — let's go to the origin story of dermalogica, because you arrive in california... yeah. ..with your new husband? no, with my boyfriend. we didn't get married for ten years. we lived together for ten years, and then we married, i guess once we thought we knew each other, we married. because we always intended to, but we were building the business together. so, raymond and i built this together right from day one. we arrived in california — he is south african, i'd been in south africa forfouryears, emigrated to the united states — very simply, to pursue the american dream. when we got here, it was president reagan's second term, and it was a 10.4% unemployment. so it actually wasn't a good time to come to california. however, raymond, with his marketing degree, his business degree, couldn't get a job. i, with my skill set in my hands and my superpower
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of my accent, i could walk into any skincare centre in beverly hills and get a job. score one for that london beauty school. yeah, exactly! and, yeah, that was my ticket in. what i realised, in that process of trying to get a job in a salon, was that the training was much less here in california. only seven states out of 50 even had a qualification to be a skin therapist, but it was called a cosmetician — now called an aesthetician. at dermalogica, we call ourselves "skin therapists", cos we're trying to bring about a therapeutic change in the skin. when we spotted that opportunity — the opportunity wasn't that i could work in a salon, the opportunity was i could train people how to do the things that i already knew how to do, and they then, in turn, could have their own business — it was this idea of training skin therapists to become entrepreneurs. ray had the business training, i had the skincare training. when we put that together, we were a training powerhouse for the salon industry. we didn't have a product — that came three years later.
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so, you then had to find the money to launch the business? yeah, yeah. well, you're not going to find that because, guess what? when you are an immigrant and you haven't even got a credit card — which we didn't, we hadn't built any credit, we had no credit score, we were unknown — and no credit score is worse than a bad credit score, because, who are you? where did you come from? so, the banks weren't going to lend you money? no, no! no, they wouldn't even give us a credit card. seriously, we had bank accounts and yet, we couldn't do anything with them. when we started the business, we literally did not have a credit card. so, everything, we had to self—fund. and how do you do that? well, of course, it's a longer story but we self—funded on $14,000 that we scraped together from family who loved us, friends who vaguely knew us, and our own savings. you launched all of this on $14,000? self—funded, never took a loan.
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and when we've built the company to an acquisition, we owned it 100%. we had never given equity, never taken a loan. there was no debt to pay off. was there ever a time where you thought, "you know what? "this is too much work, it's too hard, it may not work, "i'm going to chuck it in." no! "and i'm going to get a job and a salary in a salon." did you never...? no, no, no. we were turned on by self—repeated enthusiasm. ray and i would encourage each other like crazy. "this — if this works, this can be great!" oh, my goodness, we celebrated every single thing, and it was very hard work. the fallback situation — if i ever had one — was, you know what? if all this goes to hell, i can still get a job in a salon. good luck to you, raymond... your skill set... my skill set was my superpower. ..that your mother had told you about? yes. every time i go anywhere,
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katty, whether it's in where my family live in mull, in the hebrides, all the way through to anywhere i travel around the world — vietnam, south africa, norway, new zealand, anywhere in between — the first thing i look in any small town or village, do they have a salon? and if i see a salon — and i always do — i am deeply reassured that i could work there. isn't that crazy? cos i think, "ok, you know what?" "i wouldn't starve." yeah! "i can work here." your mum was right. my mum was right. skill set training. i know that the gold standard of education we have built to be the university degree, that's only one form of education. i honest — i know for a fact that we're missing our vocational and skill set training programmes and we're not in america, for example, building apprenticeships the way that we need. we can't execute on the infrastructure bill until we have people that know how to build stuff and are qualified to do it. we can't get our immigrants rehoused, reworking if we don't have apprenticeships and
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programmes to put them into. and, as we were talking earlier, we talk about climate change and political change — we are about to have the biggest human migration on our planet ever. what and how and where are we ever going to cope with all the people that come to our countries with different languages, different... ? if they have a skill, we will be able to use them. and that's exactly — i feel it is a huge gap that we have stopped talking about this in — not high school, cos it's too late when you're in high school — people make a decision about what they're going to do between the ages of 11 and 13. and the reason i know that is because i'm a trustee at city & guilds, which is the biggest apprenticeship programme in the world, and they dictate all the apprenticeship criteria for the uk. and that's when children decide whether they're going to win, or they're going to not. and those skills won'tjust be
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replaced by, i don't know, ai, robots in your industry? you don't see that happening? we still need those people? i have not met anyone who wants to get a bikini wax with... laughs ..with a human being! no, infact... actually, i haven't met anyone that wants to get a bikini wax. well, listen, i can do a bikini wax in four minutes. don't worry, you're in safe hands. but here's the thing — yes, many of ourjobs will be replaced, as they have always been in any industrial revolution. i will tell you that with technology being our current revolution, the equal and opposite reaction to that high—tech is high touch. 0ur industry is booming. we've got, right now, 40% job growth in our industry. i've never seen more spas, salons, medicalspas, massage, nails, hair — you name it. look at your high street. it's a service business, and a lot of
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it's salons, a lot of it's restaurants, but they're service—oriented businesses where humans are doing things that humans do best — cooking, caring, touching, kindness, compassion, talking. i'm not in the business ofjust skincare products, i'm in the business of human connection and, no, a machine is not going to replace that. i love that — "the answer to high—tech is high touch". yes. erm, we have something to show you, a little this is your life, jane wurwand moment, and a set of photographs, which i'm going to do ina minute. but first of all, i'm looking at those chairs and i can't resist. can i go and sit in one? well, that's what. .. can you show me what you do? that's what we hope everyone who passes by says, "i want to sit in one of those chairs". of course! because it looks like a dentist chair but i'm thinking it won't be so torturous as going to the dentist. it's going to be fabulous. ok, let's have a look! 0k. i do feel a bit like i'm at the dentist. no, well, that's because it's just very professional. laughter
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but it's not going to hurt? it's not going to hurt. 0k. so, we're going to talk about your skin. the first thing we'll do is what we call face—mapping, which is where we're going to look at your skin, we're going to look at each area of your skin, i'll have a little conversation about what's happening there, and what we're seeing with it, ok? 0k. so, i'm going to look at your skin and i'm going to talk about what i'm seeing on yourskin, and how, first of all, you have fabulous skin. i have a lot of make—up on, cos we have a very nice make—up artist... i know, but we can see through the make—up. 0k. i'm looking at your skin and not the decoration on your skin. and genetically, you did a really good job in picking your parents. chuckles clever of me, wasn't it? yes, because skin is genetic, like any organ. right. you know, i grew up in the middle east. mm—hm. and it's interesting that you say i have good skin because i grew up in the middle east. i spent 16 years of my life in the sun. mmm—hmm. i don't remember my parents putting sunscreen on me once. well, they probably...
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cos nobody did in the �*70s. no, they didn't have it! even the understanding of the damage that our skin can do to our health, right... yes. ..that we can get must have changed. completely changed. sunblocks really weren't around then. you had zinc oxide then, which would've been just a white paste. we didn't have the level of sophistication in being able to manufacture sunblocks that we do now, and that's improving every single year. they're getting better and better and better. so, your parents probably wouldn't have put anything on your skin — maybe some zinc oxide — and yet, the genetics that you had helped to overcome some of the damage that may have been sustained. it's not the — every skin is different. i don't feel like i'm in the dentist any more. that's good! this is nice! yeah! jane wurwand... yes. ..this is your life. oh, my gosh. do you remember that show? yeah, eamonn andrews! eamonn andrews, this is your life. absolutely. well, this is your life, i have to remember, make sure — so this, i love this photo. ohh!
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i love this photo, too. who is this? this is my family. um, this is me. and i was, er, just a little over three years old. look at my mum. erm, this was about two months after my father passed away. and i can only think that the photographer must have said, "say cheese", because there is no way that any of us felt like smiling, let alone my mum. was your mum alive to see your success? my mum passed away in 2001, so she was absolutely able to see oui’ success. she never took it for granted. and she always would say to me, "now, don't start showing off. "don't forget where you come from." so english. so english, right? ok, this photo i also love. oh, my goodness! this is raymond and myself. and this is our very first training centre here in los angeles in marina del rey.
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it was 1,000 square feet. we paid $1,000 a month rental. we had just had this equipment delivered — this is the equipment we were going to be teaching our students on — and we had this photo taken. and we were so nervous and so excited and we just were hoping that this wouldn't be the last photograph of us together. and i love this photo because raymond's not here with us — he's not doing the interview with us, obviously... no, no! ..but he is the sort of really unknown part of dermalogica. yeah, and... he isjust as much a part of the company as you. 0h — dermalogica could not have happened without raymond, and it couldn't have happened without me. and neither of us could've done it alone. absolutely not, no. he is the smartest person i've ever known. and if i had to start another business — which i don't intend to do — i would not do it with anyone else but raymond. yeah, and you still love each other? yeah. it's our wedding anniversary tomorrow. 33 years. congratulations. thanks, but we've been together 43 years. i mean, amazing, cos
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you've been through — you've built a company together, you've spent so much time together, and the marriage is still good. i know, isn't that crazy? so, this photo i chose because i couldn't resist it. it has nothing to do with dermalogica or the company but can you just tell me what's going on with the hair? oh, my god, a perm! it was the �*80s! it was a perm! what can i tell you? erm... laughs none of these people, other than one, are even alive any longer. i was the new kid on the block. that hair! look at that perm — isn't it a fright? i bet you were proud of it. well, er, you know, i kind of knew that it was... even then... ..a little frizzy, yeah. however, as soon as — this was at a trade show and i got an award for giving a presentation on skin analysis. look at me, see, i'm so clever. i've got my dermalogica pin on. that's well done, jane. a businesswoman notices. that's right. but here i am and i am wearing my hair with the best confidence i can, cos it was really pretty shocking. but a few months after this
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one, it got a wee bit longer, i could wear it up and i wore it up until the whole thing grew out. i cannot believe you found that. i don't know what's making it worse — the perm, which is really catastrophic, or this sort of, like, vegas tinsel curtains! yes. i love it. it's a trade show. it's the combination of the whole thing. it's something out of a sort of bad �*70s movie. i know — although it was the �*80s. and it's the big shoulder pads, it's the whole thing. yeah, look at that! yeah. there you go. i thought you'd enjoy that. i cannot believe you found that. laughs oh, my god. jane, it's been — as i knew it would be — it's been such a pleasure. thank you so much. 0h, thanks, katty. this has been just really lovely, well done. thank you. and thank you. thanks. well done to you, too. we did good!
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hello there. let's take a brief look at the weather for the week ahead. now, it's all change weather—wise as we go into this weekend but on thursday, it was the coldest morning so far this winter for england, wales and northern ireland. weak winter sunshine for most, a lot of dry weather but some blizzard—like conditions with brisk northerly winds across northern areas of scotland. the wind turns more westerly, so the focus of the showers is changing on friday, but still some more snow. still going to be very cold and then, it turns milder, wetter and windier as we head through saturday and sunday. so, if we just take a brief look at the pressure chart, you can see the high pressure pulling away, allowing all of these atlantic systems to flow in from the west, so we're looking at heavy downpours
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of rain, tight squeeze on the isobars, so strong, gusty winds, particularly through the day on sunday — already, met office weather warnings in place and some milder air coming through on that southwesterly wind. temperatures back up into double figures but still a very cold start to the day on friday. temperatures widely below freezing, a sharp frost and some icy stretches, also some patches of freezing fog. the snow levels will gradually rise across western scotland. still some snow showers here through the morning. snow confined to the hills through the afternoon. the snow turning back to sleet and rain to low levels, southwesterly winds, so some slightly less cold feeling air. temperatures will more widely get up to four to six celsius. as we head through friday night, still the risk of some icy stretches across northern scotland. there will be some snowmelt as well as that milder air starts to move in from the west. some heavy rain towards western coasts but it's still a cold night with a touch of frost, i think, out towards eastern areas, particularly southeast england. now, as we head through saturday, this series of weather fronts will be pushing eastwards. the high pressure moves away towards the near continent
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and there are plenty of fronts to come through, so still a lot of detail to add on this, but there will be some heavy rain across the pennines as we head through the morning and for western coasts, particularly the north—west of scotland, some heavy downpours here could be some localised flooding from the added snowmelt but largely dry still across the far south and the east but certainly clouding over and starting to see that milder air filter through. temperatures back up into double figures for western spots. and then, this series of fronts will push through on sunday into monday. a tight squeeze on the isobars. there will be gales or severe gales, potentially, towards western coasts — particularly for northwestern scotland. still possibly a bit of snow over the hills here. there's heavy rain piling through across northern ireland and into north west england as well. temperatures, though, across much of england and wales will rise up to 12 or 13 degrees celsius as we head through sunday. so, we swap that colder air for something an awful lot milder. and it's a day of sunshine and showers, i suspect on monday. there will be a lot of dry weather around, the showers gradually clearing further
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eastwards, so not quite as wet or as windy as on sunday and feeling even milder — still 7—14 degrees celsius. now, the same theme continues as we head through next week. certainly mild with temperatures well above the seasonal average and staying unsettled. really, very changeable day on day. another deep area of low pressure pushes eastwards, bringing strong winds, heavy downpours of rain through tuesday. but then, something a little drier, a little more settled, perhaps with a ridge of high pressure as we go through wednesday and thursday before the next frontal system arrives from the west. as we head through friday and into the weekend, the details still likely to change, of course, but here's the outlook for our capital cities — generally mild, changeable, wet and windy at times. bye—bye for now.
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live from washington. this is bbc news. the us strikes houthi targets in yemen for the fifth time in a week — as tensions rise in the middle east. an exchange of missiles between iran and pakistan stokes fears of wider regional escalation. and a scathing report concludes the police response to the uvalde school massacre in texas was a failure. hello, i'm azadeh moshiri. welcome to the programme. we start with the growing tensions in the middle east — against the backdrop of the israel—gaza war. iran and its proxies are involved in exchanges of ground fire and air strikes across multiple countries. in yemen, us strikes targeted houthi positions for the fifth time in a week.
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