Hart’s in the beauty business

A LOVE of retailing runs in the blood for Belinda Hart, the daughter of Western Australian retailer Rick Hart, as she steers her business through its formative years.

Ms Hart started Bella Hart Beauty Emporium in 2008, and stocks all major overseas beauty brands, such as Clinique and Dior, which are normally only stocked in department stores or their own outlets.

Having always worked in the family business, Ms Hart said it took time for those iconic international brands to put their faith in someone who had little beauty experience.

“When I went to brands like Estee Lauder and Lancôme, and here I was, this girl who had been in electrical appliances, they were a little bit shocked that I thought I would be able to get a concept like this off the ground,” Ms Hart told WA Business News.

Each brand told Ms Hart it would sign on if she could get another brand to sign first, and after going in circles for a while she managed to convince them to all take the leap together.

Ms Hart said the ability to provide advice across brands was something that set her store apart.

“When you go into a department store to buy cosmetics, there’s the lady standing behind the counter and she can only ever sell you the one brand,” she said.

“Our staff members are trained across all the brands we sell so we can genuinely provide the customer with what we think is best for them.”

Ms Hart wasn’t handed a career in her family’s business; she had to work her way up, spending her school years working part-time on the shop floor and then beginning full-time work in the administration office of the chain’s Rockingham store.

She spent 15 years with the company, ultimately overseeing the marketing and buying departments.

While 2008 wasn’t the best time to open a luxury retailer, Ms Hart said sales had grown steadily over the past three years, with an online store added in 2009.

“We have met our objectives of what we set out to achieve, but it will be nice to know what it’s like to trade in non-tough economic conditions,” she said.

Those tough conditions are also a factor for her father as he builds his latest venture, Kitchen Headquarters, which opened in July last year.

“We all know retail’s pretty tough at the moment but WA seems, in that higher end of the market, to be a little bit insulated” Mr Hart said.

“The store’s been well received, we expect it will become a bit of a Mecca for home renovators, designers and architects.”

Ms Hart said her father was her sounding board when she was in the early stages of planning her business.

“We sat here and said, ‘how many lipsticks do we need to sell to make this work?’,” she said.

“There was a lot of his experience that I really tapped into when opening.”

Ms Hart said she hoped to open a new store in the next couple of years, but was also focused on improving the quality of her online retail site.

Mr Hart said it took him about 15 years to launch a second Rick Hart store.

“I hope it doesn’t take Belinda 15 years,” he said, a sentiment with which his daughter agreed.

Mr Hart left his namesake brand in 2009, and last year it went into receivership; but he said it hadn’t deterred him from future retail endeavours.

“It was just one of those crying shames that it happened to the business,” he said.

“At least it’s continued on, but it is a bit funny in the morning when you wake up and hear the Rick Hart ads and you know it’s owned by Gerry Harvey.

“Wherever you go in retail there’s an element of risk but if you do your planning right and work out how many lipsticks you have to sell or how many fridges you have to sell and plot it out, then it usually works out pretty well.”