Eve Taylor - the 81-year-old company founder who won't retire
Great-grandmother Eve Taylor founded her family-run cosmetics company in 1968 and has been working for the British brand ever since. She talks to Radhika Sanghani about 7.30am starts and the Asian export market.
Eve Taylor, founder of Eve Taylor cosmetics company specialising in aromatherapy oils Photo: MARTIN POPE
By Radhika Sanghani12:46PM GMT 25 Nov 2013 Comment
It was the moment one Christmas when Eve Taylor had just ironed two dozen grey school shirts for her five sons that she realised something had to change. She was in her early thirties; feeling trapped in a man’s world. She put down the iron, signed up for beauty classes, and went on to found an aromatherapy and skincare company.
Fifty years on, Eve Taylor is 81-years-old and still working in the Peterborough-based family business she created, alongside three of those five sons. The business is making record amounts of money in British exporting, with a turnover of £2m, 60pc of which is export driven. It has a global market – the largest of which is Asia - for its aromatherapy oils, which are natural essential oils designed to enhance psychological and physical well-being.
“I start work at 7.30am every day, and often stay until 6pm,” says the great-grandmother, who works ‘part-time’ seven days a week. “I’m supposed to be cutting down. I keep hearing ‘you must cut down mother.’ But I know if I stop working I’ll just be the woman in the dressing gown.
“I enjoy what I do. If I didn’t, I’d be out of here in a second. Some people are surprised that I’m here answering the phone, because I’m the chairman of the company, but why not? I have got to be involved because that’s what makes the business successful.”
Eve began working as an Avon sales representative in south London in 1963, while her ex-Navy husband worked as a postman. They divorced after 23 years of marriage, and Eve says, “With respect, the man I was married to and the father of all my sons wanted me to be a Derby and Joan kind of person but, sorry, I have got a brain and I wanted to use it.”