Most beauty brands sort customers by what they look like—skin type, hair color, oily or dry. Nicola Elliott built NEOM on a different premise: not who you are, but how you feel. Nicola was a burnt-out magazine editor blending essential oils on her kitchen counter when she and co-founder Oliver Mennell launched in 2005 with £15,000 between them and a single candle. Twenty years on, NEOM is a global wellness brand organized entirely around four well being needs–Sleep, De-stress, Energy and Mood Boost—and a pioneer of the science of scent therapy. Here, Nicola shares how running a business off customer insight shaped every decision that followed: the channel she started in, the products she added, the in-store test that tells you what you actually need, and the market gap that opened up the US.
On building a brand around how customers feel, not who they are:
Twenty years ago I was on the celebrity desk at magazines—Glamour, InStyle, Marie Claire—flying between New York, LA, and London, working 60-hour weeks, living off pasta pesto. We call it anxiety now, but back then that wasn’t even a word. I was having panic attacks. My mom said, “You’re just shoving too much in. You don’t do the basics.” That was step one—me realizing I had to do something proactive to look after myself.
I got into essential oils at a little crusty health food shop and started making blends at home. I created one candle for myself with 24 essential oils—Real Luxury, still one of our best sellers—so I could come home and light this haven of calm. That was the lightbulb moment.
At the time, beauty always spoke to who you were: your hair color, your skin type. I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if a brand spoke to what you needed instead? Not “Is your hair this,” but “Are you feeling stress?” “Have you got a lack of sleep?” “A lack of energy?” “A low mood?” Every friend of mine fit into one of those four. That’s what took me from magazines to NEOM.
On why she markets to women even when men have the same needs:
There is a but. In the UK, 87% of all household shopping is done by women. So the customer insight for us is: How do we get the woman to buy, and use it on the whole family? All our messaging is done with the whole family in mind—partners, children, elderly parents, exam times, workplace tensions. All those life moments that don’t just affect you, they affect your family.
Pillow mist, for example—we sell more in packs of four than we do in ones. Men will absolutely say, “Oh, that really works, can you buy some more?” or “Get that candle lit, we’ve all had a stressful day.” They just don’t tend to come and buy it of their own accord. She’s generally the one in charge of the purse strings, so that’s who we speak to.
On choosing spa boutiques as her first channel:
I’ve always run the business from the customer insight—what is our customer thinking and feeling?—and then built the product, the channel, and the marketing around that. Where are people most aware that they’re stressed, or not sleeping, or that their wellness has taken a hit? When they walk into a spa. They’ve just spent money on a treatment. So if we could piggyback on that moment and get the receptionist to say, “You can keep this feeling going at home by lighting this candle,” that made sense.
We armed them with a bit of data, too: There are about 20 treatments in one candle, so it works out at around $3 a treatment.
The other reason was simpler—no one knew us, so we couldn’t get into the big stores. You build it brick by brick. And those small, owner-operated places act as marketeers for you. They tell the story. That’s what you want early on.
On mapping the pattern of her life to decide what to launch next:
I try not to be too trend-focused, because we’re not a fragrance brand chasing perfume trends. Instead, I look at how people’s lifestyles are changing—and honestly, I follow my own life. We launched a calming pen that’s doing really well, and that came from becoming a busy, multitasking mom and realizing you need your wellness on the go. So I think about it as: Where are the areas of your life that need servicing through wellness, from a.m. to p.m., and where are the holes?
Then anything new has to amplify our story—it’s got to be true to it. What further helps with sleep? Magnesium. What helps with stress? Magnesium again. What’s great for mood? Vitamin D. So we bring in elements like that where they make the products richer and more helpful, never just because they’re having a moment.
There’s an ebb and flow to it. You push on with something that has a richer, more complex story, then pull back and let it settle rather than always re-educating the customer.
On the scent test—and why you should dislike half her fragrances:
This is really cool. The way essential oils work is that your brain—your hypothalamus—is drawn to the oils your body needs most. So I’d see someone wandering around the store and say, “You shouldn’t like all the fragrances in here. You should actively dislike at least half of them.” And they’d go, “That’s kind of weird.” Well, that’s how aromatherapy works—your body rejects the fragrances it doesn’t need. Even as the founder creating them, at any one time half of them I’m like, “Ugh, not that,” and it changes with the season, the life cycle, whatever’s going on.
Then I’d say, come and do our scent discovery test and we’ll find out what your underlying well-being need actually is. Someone would come in certain, “I know what I need, I’m not sleeping,” and the test would reveal they were really stressed. So we’d say, let’s build you a de-stress toolkit and see if that helps you sleep in turn.
On hiring people who can sit with you over a cup of tea:
It gets emotional. I’ve had dozens of people in tears with me: “Oh my God, how did you know that? I’m going through a divorce.” “My mom just died.” “I lost my job.” We’re not selling lipstick, where you go, “Pink looks nicer than red.” Within a few questions we’re talking to someone about something really personal.
So when we recruit for the stores, I’m always mindful: Forget whether this person is a great salesperson. Can they sit with you and have a cup of tea if you’re going through a problem? That’s what cracks open the conversation, and that’s what matters.
On the wellness “cliff” she spotted above the Goop customer:
For a long time I thought America had wellness completely sewn up—that they were ahead of us in the UK by a country mile. Then I’d come out, talk to press and influencers, walk the stores, and I realized the top end is very well served. The Goop customer is alive and kicking, buying all the smoothies and gadgets. But when you speak to a woman who’s a bit more like me—a bit more real—it falls off a cliff. There’s some nicely scented product, but no wellness that feels user-friendly, that feels like it’s for everyone.
That was the green light for the US. I thought, we can serve an awful lot of customers here in a way they understand—you come in, you get the four well-being need states, you find the one for you, you use it at home. It’s not complicated or fussy.
I kept saying, “Nah, it’s not going to work.” But it took off far better than I thought. We were too early to the concept for years; now the appetite’s there.
Hear Nicola’s full conversation on Shopify Masters for the £15,000 bet that launched NEOM, why she treats her stores as 3D billboards rather than profit centers, and what B Corp certification actually demanded.
Across our 11 UK stores, we found the vast majority of people’s underlying well-being need was very, very different from what they thought it was. People love the personalization of it.
