Brendan McDowell
BELFAST-BASED cosmetics czar Brendan McDowell (who landed the Entrepreneur of the Year award at Ali Ryan’s Gossies bash in the RDS last year) continues to make millions in the competitive cosmetics sector. It turns out that TikTok is one of his secret weapons.
Bren managed to raise his profile significantly in 2023 courtesy of a 10-part reality television series screened on BBC One called Made Up In Belfast. It focused on BPerfect, with viewers invited “to see exactly how the young, enthusiastic, hard-working team works in a high pressure, creative environment that has led to the success of the company so far”.
Among the collaborators signed up by McDowell for high-profile commercial tie-ins are the likes of former Eastenders actress and I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! queen of the jungle Jacqueline Jossa and Erin McGregor, sister of Conor.
The 2023 BBC programme had included reference to McDowell’s then impending departure from BPerfect to enable him to concentrate on his personal life, which turned out to be having a family with his partner, Tony.
Things didn’t quite work out as planned in terms of the anticipated timeline and it was only last December that the BPerfect founder announced the birth by surrogate in the US of a daughter. In fact, the proud couple were in Los Angeles when those wildfires broke out, with fans of Bren kept up to date by his regular Instagram posts.
In terms of ‘stepping back’ from his company, McDowell had a rather shorter period in mind than might have been understood by some and he recently told the Pop My Cherry podcast that he anticipated taking six weeks off before heading back across the Atlantic to launch BPerfect’s US TikTok shopping channel.
Certainly, Bren could afford to take as much time off as he wants given the impressive performance of his company. The accounts that have just been filed cover the year to the end of March 2024 and reveal a hike in turnover of almost £10m to £26.5m. This delivered an after-tax profit of over £2.5m and left an accumulated surplus topping £14m.
The jump in profits was accompanied by an 80% jump in staff numbers and a big increase on spending on advertising and promotion, which was up more than £1.6m to £3.9m.
One of the main factors behind the explosive pace of growth turns out to be “the emergence of TikTok shop as a revenue channel”, while income has also been boosted by the availability of the cosmetics in BPerfect’s two so-called “mega-stores”, which were previously opened in Blanchardstown and Tallaght.
Along with the two mega-stores, McDowell has also incorporated a new company south of the border called BPerfect BMD Ltd and he is a 50% shareholder with Kildare-based partner Denise Phillips (aka Denise McLean) in the hair tech company Voduz, set up “to empower everyone to create their own crown”.
When it comes to the business of turning cosmetics into hard cash, Brendan McDowell can presumably claim royalty status.
