First gift suggestion for Christmas 2020 – Ipsum Oil

For the the next few weeks I'm going to run through some Christmas present ideas. I have been using the Ipsum oil ( body) all year, this is a very lovely product and would make an excellent gift.

Read about the wonderful woman who started here.

Meet Janet Hayward, the mother of Ipsum Oil . The birth of this wonderful face and body oil is so inspiring I'm posting this over two days. OK we both like a chat and I couldn't stand to cut anything out of our conversation.

LG: So you grew up in England?

JH: Yes I grew up in England and lived in England until I was 35, then I moved out here to Australia permanently. When I was 26 I had come to Australia on a working holiday. I’d been working at the BBC in archives. I got an opportunity to come out to Australia to work at the ABC in the news room helping edit film and rushes for the news reporters .… it was the time of the bi-centenary celebrations so I was helping to archive footage and cut the rushes for the news stories.

LG: So then you moved to Australia permanently?

JH: When I arrived in Australia I thought “oh my-goodness people actually live like this, it was sunny all the time, you could get champagne for $2.99 – it was that dreadful rubbish stuff … mind you ….. with the hangover from hell, but I truly could not believe that people lived like this ... and that it was a possibility that I could too. So I went back to the UK, applied for residency and got it but it took me 5 years to actually get back here. During that time I had a really good job with Selfridges and was travelling the world being their creative controller, working with photographers on their fashion and homewares catalogues and brochures, that was a great time. After that I went to work for ACP as their deputy bureau chief which lined up to be a very nice gig and very helpful for when I came back. So I came back to live here when I was 35.

LG: So you worked as a Journalist in publishing …. for how long?

JH: Well gosh how long have I worked as journalist, all-in-all I think maybe about 25 years and in between that I have worked as a picture editor and I also did a very brief stint in PR.

LG: In what area did you work in for ACP ?

JH: So I worked as the deputy bureau chief in London, we had to commission photography and articles and buy stories from British and European publications and ship it back to all of the magazine titles in Australia. ACP also had an office in New York.

The obsession with the Royals was pretty stressful – remember the exploits of Sarah Ferguson and Princess Diana!  I lived through most of that and woe betide us if we didn’t get the paparazzi pics for Woman’s Day and then NW, that were floating around!.

After I moved out to Australia I actually never worked for ACP when I arrived back.

LG: So then what did you do?

JH: Before I arrived back I had been offered a job on Elle magazine (the first time it had launched in Australia) but as soon as I got here, I joined my very good friends from Uni who had decided to settle here after visiting me during my first venture here. By the time I came back, they had established what became a very successful PR agency in Sydney. I worked with them for a year – I wrote press releases and I knew a lot of journalists here so I could help selling stories about beauty products. A year into that, a literal lightbulb moment changed everything. There are so many beauty brands trying to get noticed by the media and I know what it’s like when you’re struggling to think of products for stories. I said why don’t we create a directory where Media can find things and Brands can be in front of journalists whenever journalists need the information. Simple solution! So we set up beautydirctectory.com.au which was an online resource for journalists to find beauty and health products and find stories about beauty and health.

LG: What year was that because it would have been very early uptake of digital ?

JH: It was, we were pioneers but we had no idea! We knew we couldn’t produce it as a printed resource because things change so quickly -new products on the market, PR agencies always changing Media always jumping titles etc so we had to embrace digital in 1999 and we were the first. We would walk into brands and some would say great and others would say ..” what ? put my logo on the internet where everyone can see it?” and we’d say yes that’s the point! When we first launched, not one of the publishing houses would allow their journalists to have access to the internet at their desks because they thought they’d just be sitting on Facebook all day! So we were live for maybe two years and journalists would have to use it during their research at home and then send the info into themselves at work for their stories. It was only in 2001 or 2002 that the publishing houses realised their journalists actually needed internet access for their jobs. We launched despite of the fact that no one was allowed to use it! But it worked.......

Part two tomorrow