Joanna Jensen

Published: 11/06/2024

The proverb ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ is the story of Childs Farm, the popular skincare brand founded by Joanna Jensen in 2011. It was borne from a need to find the right solution to treat her daughter’s eczema.

Jensen’s youngest daughter Bella, struggled with atopic eczema but she found she wasn’t suffering from this condition alone. The NHS says that one in five under fives suffered from this condition in the United Kingdom. Like many parents, she was determined to find a solution.

“The Female Founder community group, Buy Women Built, has research that more than 98% of female founded business were created from a need that couldn’t be fulfilled,” says Jensen. ”If you need something, then chances are other people will be left wanting, too.”

However, creating a skin care brand wasn’t a natural career progression for someone who had a career mainly in investment banking. But she’d always had an active interest in alternative medicine and believes that passion is enough.

“You don’t have to be an expert,” she says. “If you have a healthy interest in something this can be ‘as good as’. Businesses are driven by passion as there’s no way you’d work the hours required to fuel and maintain a new business if you weren’t truly passionate. This – alongside resilience - is vitally important.”

Whilst Jensen was a solo founder, she would bring in investors with particular skills. “All money is not equal, and some money brings expertise that you wouldn’t be able to afford as an SME, so it’s important to pick your investors carefully,” she advises.

Jensen used an uncommon tactic when it came to financing Childs Farm – her pension. She transferred her existing pensions into a self-administered scheme (SASS). “There are restrictions to this of course, but for me it was great. I was fully invested in my pension and I could lend the business up to 50% of the value of the pension, meaning at times I could support the growing needs of the business without having to do another fund raise.”

She admits this funding model is unusual but she adds that it’s one that could offer shareholders more confidence. “If you as the founder do not go the extra mile, what message is that to potential investors? You must always have skin in the game, and have taken some risk to be able to do that.  If you are not willing to take risk, why are you expecting someone else to?” she explains.

Things didn’t always go according to plan for Jensen, who has survived divorce, abdominal surgery and cervical cancer.

“I was a single mother and bringing up two little girls on my own, financially dependent on myself and I was poorly for a while,” she says. “But that’s life. Everyone has ups and downs and when it comes to the entrepreneurial journey. Everything I had was invested in the business. The lows were always financial. But you also learned to have faith in yourself and every single time I did we came up trumps!”

The highs, when they did come, were the stuff of entrepreneurial dreams. The first six Childs Farm products hit the shelves of small independent shops and online stores in 2012, but it wasn’t long before they captured the attention of Boots and Waitrose, following a nationwide launch in 2014.

“To launch in Boots was a big deal when you don’t have any money and up against Baby Dove and Johnson & Johnson. These are household names with millions for their marketing budget,” says Jensen.

The product quickly gained momentum through a viral social media post.

“We could barely make the products quickly enough. It was completely mad, but we were blessed as we had amazing manufacturers and suppliers that never let us down.”

When asked what advice she’d impart to other entrepreneurs, Jensen says: “It’s important to know your consumer. If you don't know who you're selling to or who your end user is, you will never be able to get your products, your service or idea into their universe.”

She adds: “The best advice I got was from my Antiques dealer grandmother and she said that ‘everything’ comes in three – for her it was turnover, turnover, turnover. For me it’s know your consumer, know your consumer, know your consumer’.”

Childs Farm’s turnover went from £375,000 in 2014 to £17m in 2019.

The company’s products are now available in over 7,500 retail stores across the UK and more around the world. What began as a mother’s mission has turned into a successful global business.

In 2022, Jensen sold a controlling stake of the business to British consumer company PZ Cussons PLC for £36.8m. Jensen is still an ambassador for Childs Farm but she’s also on a mission help budding entrepreneurs.

She says: “I want to do as much as I can for other founders and give them the gems of insight that took me six months to learn in six minutes. I see it as my responsibility to share this sort of intelligence to help others, to grow investment in British businesses which in turn will grow our economy.”