'My Story' by Jo Malone

One of many interesting and generally good things about being a reliable member of a local reading group is that from time to time you read a book that you would not otherwise every considered reading. For me, in this case, the author was someone who I had never heard of despite her being an admirable and very successful businesswoman whose name really should have been familiar to me. The reason is that the products she develops and retails are simply totally outside anything in my world. I do not ever buy luxury goods (except very occasionally a box of expensive chocolates from Fortnum and Mason), do not use perfume or face creams, and have never knowingly found myself in the vicinity of a burning scented candle. These are just not my things. But as with the memoir written by a clothing person called Esme Young that my reading group chose last year, ignorance sometimes works well as you go into a life story with no preconceptions whatsoever. In both cases I ended up warming to the authors (in this case via a very skilled ghost writer) and got a lot of enjoyment from the experience.

Jo Malone is only slightly older than me, but she grew up in much less privileged circumstances. Her family was loving, but dysfunctional in many ways and money was always tight. She also suffers from severe dyslexia and for these reasons ended up leaving school very young and starting to work alongside her mother as an assistant beautician as well as in various retail jobs.

Always based in London, she evidently had great entrepreneurial flair and by her 40s had established a leading eponymous brand of fragrances alongside her husband, Gary, who is an equally driven and effective manager. She obviously has great skills in the nose department which she put to good use, selling her company to Estee Lauder for (presumably many millions) while continuing for a period to work for them. She then got diagnosed with breast cancer, which she survived thanks to outstanding American medical professionals, before starting all over again and building another perfume-related business from scratch called 'Jo Loves'.

The book tells the story of her various ups and downs very skilfully, also of course in the process acting as an enticing shop window. Pictures of her products appear on the inside covers as well as the front cover. The book serves as a most effective marketing tool. In all honesty, I think if I was ever to buy perfume for someone as a present I probably would choose one of hers', just because I rather like her having read her book.

Jo Malone went on to host a TV show in which she provided assistance to would be retailers and befriended a range of celebrities, many of whom were also her clients. She is a smart person who has a lot of wisdom to dispense. I liked this passage particularly, which played very effectively to my prejudices, pushing at all the right buttons:

The power and value of entrepreneurs, whether it's your shopkeeper on the street corner or the owner of a local factory, truly hit home during the filming of High Street Dreams, and I often said that Britain needs thousands of small businesses to drive a 'Dunkirk economy'. When this country was called to rescue all those people from France in 1940, the bigger boats couldn't get close to the shore. It was the little boats, which set out from Ramsgate to rescue 70,000, that ended up bringing 300,000 home. And that is what we'll always need to keep this country on its feet: small businesses flying the British flag all over the world.

Absolutely right. Spot on.

If I am honest though, I found the chapters outlining her extraordinary business success a touch tedious to read at times. And if the whole book had been self-congratulatory in this manner I would not have enjoyed it anything like so much. While nothing like so nice for her, it is really reading about the struggles and setbacks that makes this one really engaging as a reading experience.