Why Irene Falcone is returning to the world of beauty

Irene Falcone, the founder of non-alcoholic drinks venture Sans Drinks and online beauty marketplace Nourished Life, is launching a new business. Kind of.It’s more that she’s going back to “what [she] does best”. Before Mother’s Day, 14 May, Falcone has plans to launch her own small-scale organic beauty marketplace, titled Sans World, which will serve to fill the gap the declining Nourished Life has left behind.Falcone sold the business to struggling beauty distributor BWX in 2017. She says she has been contemplating the idea of starting a competitor to her former business for some time, but has previously been unable to do so due to a non-compete clause in her former contract and her focus on Sans Drinks.But due to the collapse of BWX and its subsequent receivership, causing Nourished Life’s operations to be paused, Falcone has decided to fast-track her idea from concept to reality.“The plan is to launch Sans World with the top 50 or 100 brands, just the ones people really need – natural deodorants, top skincare and body-care brands, sunscreen, those sorts of things,” Falcone told Inside FMCG.“And from there, we’ll build it all back up again.”A healthy game planFalcone intends to kick off Sans World entirely online, and will offer modern conveniences such as same-day delivery and click-and-collect from Sans Drinks’ Brookvale warehouse, before potentially launching its own, dedicated bricks-and-mortar locations.Stores are unlikely to be launched this year, Falcone said, but could resemble a boutique beauty shop that focuses entirely on organic, natural products, with a clear ingredients policy: like with Nourished Life, Falcone will accept only products with formulations that meet her own criteria.And, like Sans Drinks and Nourished Life before it, Sans World will eventually sell its own private-label skincare products, which will be formulated to meet Falcone’s own high standards.“For the five years that I ran Nourished Life, we had scientists, researchers and doctors that I’d consult with on ingredients, and I was able to put together a matrix that could identify which products were actually clean, and which ones were ‘fake clean’,” Falcone said.“When it comes to ingredients in beauty products, there are thousands, with very confusing names. We’re aiming to take that confusion out, and the greenwashing out, and put a really clear matrix together that says, ‘This is what you get when you shop here.’ ”This is something that she has already started enacting within Sans Drinks, having recently jettisoned any product that has artificial colours or sweeteners, with the aim of ensuring that products purchased through her stores will be “better for you”.“That’s been a really important transition for Sans Drinks – I’ve been grappling with it for a while. I was selling drinks that didn’t have alcohol, but then had some other chemicals in them that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with,” Falcone said.“Now I feel really comfortable with the more curated range, and my customers can be sure they’re only getting the best of the best.”Within the new business model, Sans Drinks and Sans World will operate separately, though from the same warehouse, and Falcone will take on a more strategic role to oversee the direction the two businesses are taking.Hard lessonsWhen BWX initially fell into administration, and then receivership, it was widely theorised that Falcone could buy back Nourished Life and restore it to a more positive state. However, she has no interest in doing that.Instead, she has plans to learn from the lessons and mistakes of the prior business, as well as the new experiences she’s had with Sans Drinks, to make Sans World a better business.“I worked for BWX for two years [before I left], and in that time I learned what not to do,” Falcone said.“People asked me how I made Sans Drinks so successful so quickly. I took everything that I learned from my time at BWX, and did the opposite. And I’ll do the same at Sans World.”