I recently turned 40, and the longer I live, the more I truly see how dramatically life can change, and how quickly. If you’re happy and feeling good, you have to cherish it, as things can change for the worse (or better) in a single moment.

Closing down – or so I thought

What a rollercoaster this brand-founder journey has been. The last time I spoke about this publicly, and made the announcement I was closing my skincare brand, I was as certain as anyone can ever be about anything that Faace’s journey had come to an end. I was done in – mentally and physically exhausted by it – left with no choice but to shut down operations forever. Fast forward six months and we’re in a different situation altogether.

Too exhausted to care

When I shared on social media that I was closing Faace, a lot of people got in touch. Some of those people proposed solutions so the brand could continue on, but I didn’t want to know. To every email, I sent back short, precise, and quite honestly not well-thought-through replies. In my heart, I wasn’t interested in finding a solution then. I was just too far along in thinking that we didn’t have any options. I was scared to give myself a shred of hope – and to be honest, I still am. But mentally, I’m more resilient now and less overwhelmed at the prospect of taking the gamble.

If you don’t run your own business, you might think this sounds melodramatic. But when you’ve thought about something every day for years, invested your time, energy, money, to the detriment of yourself, your friends and your family, felt the weight of investors, felt the guilt of letting people down – then the disappointment – it hits hard.

Some things are hard to ignore

A person’s name kept coming up. Brand owners and other people in the industry kept reaching out, telling me I needed to speak to someone – the same someone. Someone who was well known, liked, and trusted. Someone who had helped them and they (and he potentially), believed could help me too. It got to the point where so many people had suggested I speak to this person that I felt silly ignoring all the advice. So we spoke on the phone at length about my experiences and how I was feeling now. We talked some more, we met up, and the proposed plan of action seemed too good to pass up.

Good news and some guilt

No deal is done until it’s signed (and trust me, even then it can still not come to fruition). And when you have investors in place, you can’t always just press go on the decisions you want to make, so I can’t give you an official announcement just yet. What I can say is, if this does go ahead, then Faace will live on – and be even better than before. We’re in a position to revisit the line-up, make changes to formulas, pack sizes, bring in new products and hopefully re-ignite the love there was for the brand, whilst making it a more commercially stable business.

I will always be the founder and face of the brand. I’ll still have my opinions heard and still be able to play a part in what comes next. But with new management who can hopefully overcome the challenges I faced, like with retail, or with manufacturing, which if you’ve read past posts, you’ll know was probably our biggest issue (our old manufacturers, it looks like, have closed down – maybe more on that another time). I’ll be handing over the company to someone else for full control; however, it won’t be Faace as we know it today, and everything and everyone that’s been part of that journey will be no more. I’ll always feel guilty about that, but I don’t have another choice. It’s close down and don’t continue at all, or continue with someone else completely taking the reins.

Finding some hope

I have to see this opportunity as a positive overall. It will be an exciting chapter in the brand’s journey. This isn’t about getting rich, but it will allow me to still feel a sense of pride that my business, Dan, my husband’s concept (he’s our creative director), the idea that we still feel really is a very good one – will be in the world.

I’ll update you when I can about the official plan for Faace 2.0. But for now, we have a small amount of Menopause Faace and Stress Faace back in stock, we’re living on, and I’ll take the small wins – where maybe, one day, some big ones will follow.