The sweet smell of success for cancer-survivor Jo Malone

At the height of Jo Malone’s success, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It left her temporarily unable to smell properly, a cruel blow for one of the world’s best-known fragrance gurus. But it led to her making some of the biggest, and ultimately the best, decisions of her life, she tells Esther McCarthy.

As a child, Jo Malone would sit around a table with the exotically named Countess Lubatti, mixing potions and lotions for well-heeled Londoners.

Skincare guru Lubatti, whose customers included Ava Gardener and Vivien Leigh, trained Malone’s mum in the beauty industry and saw potential in the young girl with a natural nose for fragrance.

“Madame Lubatti was probably the closest thing I had to another grandparent. She was 6ft 2, she was in her 80s, she was amazing. Helen Mirren would definitely play her — she had white hair, blood-red lipstick, fishnet tights. She would do yoga for hours on end, you could walk into the apartment and she’d be standing on her head.

“She had dementia towards the end of her life, I saw this wonderful woman… I’d take her to this little tea shop and she loved it. She was my dearest friend by that stage and she’d hold my hand and say, ‘Don’t lose me’, and I’d say, ‘I won’t lose you’.

“I made my first face cream with her, and she said to me, ‘Do one thing brilliantly and the world will remember you for it’.” Malone has surely achieved that. One of the world’s best-known fragrance gurus, the English innovator’s candles and scents under the brand Jo Malone London went on to become an enormous global success, its iconic cream packaging with black edging instantly recognisable.

But at the height of success, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it led to her making some of the biggest decisions of her life.

“Breast cancer came when I was 38 years old,” she says. “I’d just had my son, I was flying in my business, and it was a big shock, and I was given a very short time to live. I remember thinking, ‘They’ve got the results wrong. This isn’t my life’. But it was my life, and I was set to go through a year of gruelling chemotherapy.

“When you face your mortality… at that point, I didn’t care about bath oils, lime basil and mandarin, but to survive, that was my sole motivation.”

Determined to survive the disease, she travelled to the US to undertake a groundbreaking, intense form of treatment. “I went to the States to live and take this pioneering chemotherapy. I was under a brilliant man called Dr Larry Norton. He did save my life. I went through mastectomy, surgery. Cancer stripped me down to the very core of who I was.

“When I look back on it, do I wish that had happened — no. But I think it took me back to who I really was. I got rid of a lot of things in my life that were not good for me. And when I came back I was a very different person for a period of time.

“I’d taken chemo every five days, by the way, so it plays with your head. And that was the moment I kind of decided to leave Jo Malone. I couldn’t smell properly, because of the chemo, I could just smell metal, metal, metal.

“I didn’t leave because of that, I left because I couldn’t relate to the brand any more. I’d never had a job, this was my life. So I made that decision to walk away, and then 48 hours before that big day arrived, when I turned the key and I walked away, I realised I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.”

But by then, the decision to move on from the business, which had been sold to Estee Lauder, had already been made.

Malone made a full recovery from the disease, but is mindful of how difficult and frightening a time it can be. “It’s part of what made me who I am,” she says of her own treatment and diagnosis. “Someone will read this, and if we come through this with the baton in our hand of survival, we have an obligation to hand it to somebody that needs it.”

Later, Malone sat down at her kitchen table and started over. Her brand Jo Loves has become a huge success, and business is again thriving. Her innovative range includes new ways to wear fragrance such as the best-selling Fragrance Paintbrush.

“I think of myself as an innovator. The paintbrush, the graffiti sprays, the things that we’ll go on to do. I didn’t ever repeat.

“I don’t want to repeat something I’ve already done. In September, I’ll have been a shopkeeper for 25 years of my life. I want to go out there and when I sat round that kitchen table, seven or eight years ago, and started Jo Loves, it was never to repeat what I’ve done.”

Malone has been evolving and adapting ever since she was a child. She grew up in a housing estate in Kent and left school with no qualifications at the age of 15. But she says she had two “very devoted” parents. She describes her manicurist mother as a very hard-working woman. But she also learned life skills from her creative dad.

“My father was a brilliant artist. He was also a magician and he was a gambler as well. He had three things that were very creative. The artistry — I would go to the markets and sell his paintings, so that’s where I learned to be a shopkeeper. I was the magician’s assistant so I learned entertainment and theatre. And gambling. I’ve never gambled in my life. I saw it as a complete disruption. But I could read marked cards at the age of eight,” she says, laughing.

We meet just hours before Malone judges The Pitch, a competition for innovators sponsored by Samsung. Seven female entrepreneurs were selected out of 115 entries from across the country to compete in The Pitch to win a career-changing prize valued at €100,000.

Malone, as you’d imagine, is invited to contribute to such events all the time, but she’s here because she’s passionate about small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

“I’m passionate about entrepreneurs, because I am one, and I’m passionate about SMEs because to be one today is one of the most courageous things. I’ve gone back this morning and read each story. To support one another, and to hear each other’s stories, I think that’s the really important thing. There’s one winner but there are seven companies that have been put on the map.

“They say that 30% of SMEs fail in the first year. That’s not because they don’t have a great product and it’s not because they’re not great people. When you start off in a business, you have to be all things to all men. You have to be the marketing director, the PR director, the operational person. Sometimes you’re not particularly gifted at all of those things.

“With me, that was the case. I’m very creative. But it was when I partnered with my husband Gary that he brought the business element. I started Jo Loves around the kitchen table again. I didn’t have a smart office. But it’s kind of what I know — my plastic jugs and my dreams and aspirations.”

While starting a business is always tough and challenging, Malone believes this is an exciting time for independent enterprises. “There’s never been a time where small businesses are so relevant. Our voices are much stronger. We’re not the poor cousin like 20, 30 years ago.,” she says.

“Small businesses are agile, unlike big corporations. Those big businesses sometimes can’t take risks that small businesses can. They can’t turn the boat really quickly. What I would say is learn from that as you get bigger. Keep that agility. If something’s not working, don’t keep doing the same thing.”

Malone is a great believer in kindness in business and in life, but says it is also important to know your own mind. “It’s what makes life go round isn’t it? And it costs us nothing. But at the same time, when you own a business, you can’t be weak, you have to be strong. You have to be the person that you are. I’m strong willed, and when I believe in something I’ll hold on to it.”

- For further information on The Pitch go to image.ie/thepitch