Jennifer Sieg meets Joanna Jensen, serial entrepreneur and founder of family skincare brand Childs Farm, to discuss all things business, investment and start-up trends
If you are not prepared to make big personal sacrifices to boost your returns or retain your staff, you might not want to start a business anytime soon.
This is the view of British entrepreneur and investor, Joanna Jensen, who says the future of running a business in the UK has become increasingly unattractive for quite some time.
“What we need right now is to grease the wheels of business again,” Jensen, 54, says.
“What we do not need is to make doing business even less attractive,” she adds, referring to the substantial package of tax hikes recently announced in Rachel Reeves’ chilling Budget.
Jensen, who now sits as chair of the EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) Association, founded her family skincare brand Childs Farm in 2010.
Despite going up against some big industry players at the time, such as Johnson & Johnson and Unilever, Childs Farm became the number one brand in the UK child and baby toiletries category by 2019.
That same year, it became the ninth fastest-growing business on The Sunday Times Fast Track list.
In 2022, Jensen sold a 92 per cent stake to PZ Cussons, owner of household brands Imperial Leather and Carex, for £40m.
She is now a mentor, supporter and angel investor in 11 female-founded businesses, including hand-iced biscuits brand Biscuiteers and food supplements brand Hunter & Gather.
Regardless of having her hands full, Jensen is not afraid to voice her opinions – especially when it comes to consumer trends and, of course, the latest challenges surfacing under the new Labour government.
The state of UK enterprise
Prior to Jensen’s career as a business founder, she worked in investment banking at UBS, BNP Paribas and WI Carr.
Naturally, she says, she has found herself with a keen interest in economic trends, especially when it comes to their implications on smaller businesses.
Unfortunately, she says, the trends she’s noticed over the last two decades have made the UK an increasingly unattractive destination for both investors and businesses.
“We’ve had two hideous things occur, one which is Brexit and one which is Covid,” Jensen says.
She adds: “They’ve turned the whole way of doing business on its head and made it, in some instances, much more complicated.
“This government could have done such a different thing by making it more attractive, not only for investors in the UK, but for founders in the UK to set up a business here.”
This government could have done such a different thing by making it more attractive, not only for investors in the UK, but for founders in the UK to set up a business here.
The “nail in the coffin” was day one employment reform – but things have only worsened since the Chancellor’s Budget introduced even more tax burdens on the country’s hard-working businesses.
Family businesses, for example, now face growing fears around the impact that a hike in inheritance tax will have on their succession planning.
Family farms are struggling to grasp what’s in store for them next, and budding entrepreneurs are questioning whether to follow through with ideas due to a change in capital gains tax.
Jensen says: “My view is, this time in a business’s life, you probably need to be eating out of the bins if you need to, and the question is, are you prepared to do that to keep it going?
“It’s what you’re prepared to do to make your business succeed, and or, what you’re prepared to do to [even] keep your staff.”
One challenge after another
Jensen has faced a number of challenges over the past decade and a half, but can still remember the moment her business nearly folded like it was yesterday.
A £3m investor had pulled out of signing their contract just four days before her products were meant to hit the shelves of Boots, leaving Jensen to scramble for a solution.
“We were strung along for six months, and he [the investor] knew he couldn’t invest – we spent a fortune on lawyers… I’m still, to this day, not sure what he thought he was going to do,” Jensen says.
Like many entrepreneurs do, Jensen pivoted to find the money elsewhere, saving the listing in Boots and eventually launching in Waitrose shortly after.
The disloyalty displayed throughout the encounter, however, resulted in a lesson she’s since kept close to her heart.
“If you are an angel or you are an investor, and you are thinking of getting involved in an SME, you have to mean everything that you say,” she adds.
Standing your ground
Her advice to others who might find themselves in a similar situation?
Stand your ground – and stay true to your brand.
If you want your business to succeed or your brand to succeed, you’ve got to be very passionate about it without being emotional.
“If you want your business to succeed or your brand to succeed, you’ve got to be very passionate about it without being emotional,” Jensen says.
“You have to be logical and you have to be concise, and you have to take all the emotion out of it and deal with facts.”
Whether or not Jensen would start a business all over again in today’s political and economic climate seems unlikely.
Regardless, the successful entrepreneur seems pretty confident she’s spending her time where it needs to be.
“I would never say never… but it’s more about sharing my experience with others [and] helping bigger businesses understand how they can learn from SMEs to be better and to be more agile and to be able to pivot quicker and better,” she says.
And, looking ahead into the new year, she is hopeful the state of entrepreneurship will prevail.
She adds: “I think going forward, always, the most robust and resilient businesses will win, because if they try to do something and it’s not working, they pivot and it’s those businesses that will survive.”
CV
Name: Joanna Jensen
Company: Childs Farm
Founded: 2010
Staff: 35
Title: Founder
Age: 54
Born: Suffolk
Lives: Wiltshire
Studied: Very little!
Talents: Singing and riding
Motto: If you can dream it, you can to it – so dream big!
Most known for: Solving the problem of eczema prone skin
First ambition: To be a vet
Favourite book: Any historical thriller
Best piece of advice: Know your consumer, know your consumer, know your consumer.