Jordana Ticia Cosmetics Q&A - An Interview with Founder, Jordana Banks

QA&

AN INTERVIEW WITH FOUNDER, JORDANA FRANKS

QWhat did you want to do when you were younger and what steps did you take to follow those goals ?

When I was younger I always wanted to do something creative. I wasn’t fully set on any job in particular but I knew I wanted to do something that satisfied my artsy side. I remember sitting and drawing dresses when I was around 9 years old, so from then on I just pictured myself in the fashion industry doing something like buying or even designing. I studied Fine Art at A Levels so decided I wanted to go to university to do a fashion degree as I couldn’t find any other creative courses that peaked my interest other than art or fashion, but I was persuaded by my school that I was ‘too smart’ to go along that path and that a business degree would suit me best. So, I ended up studying Business Management, which I really didn’t enjoy. In my first year of university I decided I needed to do something creative as I was so bored of the analytical coursework, so I began doing makeup at the weekends on clients! From there everything just snowballed and I found my passion. I had always loved makeup and spent hours watching Youtube tutorials teaching myself the skill since the age of 14 but never realised I could make a career out of it. Essentially, I turned my love of painting with oil paints on canvas, to painting faces with makeup - which gave me a great creative outlet whilst I was miserable studying for my degree…(yes, I ended up dropping out of university in my final year!)

QHave you always been passionate about make up and the way it makes a person feel, if so why and what is your bond with the beauty industry ?

I was always fascinated by makeup. I have photographs of myself when I was 7 years old with bright red lipstick, as I used to sit in my Grandma’s bedroom for hours, going through her makeup drawer and transforming myself. I have never had a makeup lesson, but I taught myself how to do makeup from the age of 14 by watching Youtube tutorials, it was just something I loved to do and had a natural flair for. Of course I wasn’t great when I first started to teach myself, but with plenty of practice I improved. I think the reason I loved the beauty industry from such a young age is simply because I am a very creative person. I have always loved to paint and make things, so makeup just felt like a natural progression for me. QHow do you predict the next trends and stay ahead of competitors ?

One thing I really beat myself up over internally is not being a strategic thinker, I simply do what feels natural to me, so I can’t say I ever follow trends closely and plan product launches strategically. However, I do have an amazing insight to the beauty industry by still being a working makeup artist. I do makeup on clients every weekend and I pay close attention to what looks they ask me to create on them. This helps me when developing products as it is a direct insight into what consumers want.

My goal with the brand is to bring makeup artist techniques to every persons makeup bag. So, I try to lead trends as opposed to following them; why follow the crowd when you can do something totally different and make your brand stand out from the rest! I found my brands niche by following my instincts, noticing that when I do clients I always layer different textured products in one area to provide a long wearing, flawless finish. This insight helped the development of all my duo products, including the Base & Sparkle Eyeshadow Duo, Face & Sparkle Highlighting Duo and our Set & Brighten Powder Duo - they all incorporate the layering technique in a simple way that is easy for customers to use.

QBeing a Northern girl, do you think Lancashire has more advantages or disadvantages for women in business ?

Being brought up in Manchester, I genuinely feel has had a great advantage on me in the beauty world. Northerners are beauty pioneers. We love to get glam when going out, and this has been majorly helpful to me, with a lot of our first customers being locals who love makeup. I am so lucky that I live in a place where it is so normal to get your makeup done professionally to go out for the night, as being a busy makeup artist gave me the ability to create my own brand - without that MUA experience I doubt I would have ever started a makeup business. QWhat is your favourite product and why ? That’s a tough one! I love every single product I have ever created. But, I think if I had to choose my favourite it would be our Set & Brighten Powder Duo’s. They are a totally innovative concept of a pressed and loose powder in one compact which really makes me proud to have created something different. And the formula is just incredible. I apply it to my face every time I do my makeup and I’m like wow, this is genuinely the best powder I have ever used…and I promise I am not biased, I am my biggest critic!

QWe notice your brand is cruelty free, how important is this to you and is it difficult to achieve ?

Being cruelty free is so important to me! In this day and age it is crazy that brands are still testing on animals. It isn’t necessary to test on animals anymore, the world is so much smarter than it was even 10 years ago, science has become so advanced, there are many ways to develop safe products without animal testing. It just seems to cruel to me to test beauty products on an innocent life. I would say it is pretty easy to achieve a cruelty free brand, as long as you are working with reputable factories you simply tell them you’re cruelty free and testing on animals should not be permitted. Luckily, I work with UK based factories to make all of our products which makes the cruelty free aspect so simple and easy for me. My factories have the same views as myself and are against animal testing.

QDid you have any role models / mentors when you were younger and how did they inspire you on your journey to the woman you have become today ?

My biggest role models and mentors were my family. I come from a super close family and all my immediate family members are my biggest cheerleaders. My Grandpa and Dad are both entrepreneurs and have a lot of business experience, so they have helped me so much along the way. My Grandpa is in fact my business partner, we started the company together, with me being the creative and him being the brains when it came to crunching the numbers and making smart business decisions. I honestly couldn’t have built Jordana Ticia to where we are today without my Grandpa Ivor; he believed in me from the very beginning and encouraged me to keep going even though I started the business at 19 years old and have constantly felt like a fish out of water when it comes to the nitty gritty of business. QWhat is your most difficult time and also your proudest moment in your business life ? The most difficult times for me happen on a regular basis! This is my first ever job and what a big responsibility it is at that. I never expected such success with the business, and I often feel like I am running the business with my eyes shut as I’m still relatively young, and without previous work experience. But I just have to push myself through those moments of self doubt and remind myself that surely I must know what I am doing to some degree as I’ve not got to the position I am in today with just pure luck, there must be some brains in there somewhere! My proudest moments are every single time my phone pings with an order notification. Yes, they’re more often now but the excitement never fails. The fact that people all around the world are ordering products that I have developed and brought to the market is just mind boggling to me. It really is amazing.

QWhat advice can you offer to someone starting out at the beginning of creating their own business ?

My biggest piece of advice is just be fearless. Don’t worry about failure. Don’t worry about what people may think of your endeavours. Don’t worry about competition, focus on yourself. As long as you have passion and drive, you’re bound to succeed.

QCan you tell us a little about your future plans and goals ? Going forward, my biggest goal is to just keep growing the business! I am hoping to hire more people to help build the business in the near future and delegate some of the things that aren’t my strong points to people who are experts in those fields. As a start up it is essential to take on all the roles yourself, for both experience and to cut costs, but I am now at the point where I have grown the brand a successful level with myself and my Grandpa, but now to scale it is all about handing over the areas we struggle with over to people who are skilled in those fields to help the business to grow further.

I just want to make my family proud!

LANCASHIRE & NORTH WEST MAGAZINE 121

A catch up with

Peter Rutt

Our monthly column by Peter Rutt.

Part 2 of 3 In the summer of 2008 over a period of three months there was an upsurge in people reporting UFO’s in the UK. The claims came from Ramsgate, Bristol, Birmingham, Wales, London and Lancashire. In July of that year Pat Regan was with his young daughter and they were walking on the bank next to Rufford Canal in Scarisbrick near Southport. His daughter alerted him to a weather phenomenon coming down from the dark clouds. A twister or start of a tornado could be seen coming down but it never reached the ground. As the funnel spiralled downward and was too far away to harm these two, he took a photograph of this rare occurrence. After they returned home he studied the photo of the twister and noticed something to the left of this funnel. When he zoomed in as far as his camera would allow, it showed a yellow craft was hovering right next to it. He surmised it was not a helicopter or airplane as this thing had no rotor blade or wings. There may have been something that the twister had earlier sucked in and this was perhaps debris after it was released. However no other debris was apparent and the craft was far too big anyway. He submitted the picture to the Lancashire Evening Post newspaper who printed an article on this and other sightings. Another two people I know saw a large red orb in the sky above Bolton in 2019. I was nearby but by the time I arrived and surveyed the night sky it had gone. It shook these two men up after the event while trying to logically process what they both saw at the same time. This was not publically reported and I reckon there are many who have not reported their sightings as well. In the same year a woman was driving her car up the M61 north bound and saw a flash overhead in the sky and something disappear which left a lightening trail although there was no storm this night. Weather phenomenon? In 2020 I was told of another, this time in Leyland. The person wishes to remain anonymous too. They said it was about ten thirty at night in the winter. They glanced up at the dark sky and noticed a curious white light that was travelling quite rapidly from a southern direction. It came close enough that they said it was round or oval shaped. The craft came to a stop. So that rules out a meteor as some

Part 1 of 3. Regular readers will know I love weird and wacky stories, even if they are not true. So imagine my pleasure when I came across the sensation of alleged time slips in Liverpool.

Various people claim they slipped back in time, usually to the 1950’s or 1960’s. One claimed he slipped back to early 1900’s. He said as he walked down Bold Street the sky went very dark and what had been that year in the decade of the 1990’s changed to early 1900’s judging by the fashion he spied. Also the shops were old fashioned. Gone were the modern day stores as were modern day cars, replaced by horse drawn carriages. There was air there was sound and if he felt more confident contest. In an instance it rapidly flew noiselessly over where this person was standing to another point in the he would have interacted with a person. distance and came to another dead Imagine whipping out your smartphone stop before dissipating from view, to show someone from the early 1900’s! like a flame being snuffed out. They Or go a step further and take photos explained when it went from dead or film what you see. What would your stop to immediate acceleration it left phone record? momentarily a white lined trail. In that

There is the story of a man who split second the witness judged the walked near to Bold Street and he craft to have travelled well over a mile alleges as he turned a corner, was as it went south to north. A triangle faced with a dead end. An old wall shaped noiseless craft was seen near that wasn’t there the previous day had Winter Hill last year which again suddenly appeared. Like the previous worried the one who saw it. And man he said the sky became suddenly another triangle craft was seen in west darker prior to this obstacle being there. Lancashire by two witnesses. One said He even touched the construction and he was seeing things and kept quiet as it was solid. Confused, he headed back he was not prepared to be ridiculed. the way he came. The other person told me. Most of the stories centre on a period of 1993-1997 apart from the one in the next paragraph. They may well be Urban Tales and tall ones at that. But it is thought provoking. But there are three particular stories I will centre on. Military establishments are interesting to these beings who fly in their air space without impunity. Obviously people who witness and document these sightings are forbidden to say anything to Joe public.

This one allegedly occurred in 2006 In the final instalment next month when a lad called Sean admitted he I channelled a being with startling shoplifted an item and ran out of the revelations. I am wrestling with the shop pursued by a Security Guard. As revelations revealed as I don’t want Sean got to a corner (and the sky went the men in black knocking on my dark) he turned and carried on running front door telling me to say nothing but when he looked back he noticed before neuralising me!

his pursuer was nowhere to be seen. Relieved, he stopped and took in his surroundings. Everybody was wearing clothes from the 1960’s and cars were old fashioned from this era. Starting to worry he brought out his modern mobile phone, but it displayed no signal. As he walked back past the store he robbed he noticed it wasn’t the one he entered earlier. As he looked ahead he could see the modern world. When he took a look behind him it was still the 1960’s. Frightened by his experience he caught a (modern) bus to get away. The Security Guard that chased him asserted that he was only a few paces behind the thief but as he got to that corner, the lad had vanished. He was bemused by this.

The other two stories appear in May’s edition and a plausible answer to the conundrum. But going back to an earlier point, which is of interaction, I pondered on this. If you talk to someone from a long ago era and influence them to take a different course to one they historically did take, would that have ramifications on the here and now? Also if you collect an item from the 1950’s, does it travel with you back to the present day?