Marcia Kilgore's Bliss World Taking Beauty World By Storm
JAN HOPKINS, HOST (voice-over): This is what Marcia Kilgore used to do for a living, facials, giving more than 40 of them every week. Now she does just 20 facials every month. She's too busy and successful to do more. These days, Kilgore spends most of her time running Bliss World, a spa and beauty company that's taken New York and the spa industry by storm. At the center of the storm is a 31- year-old Canadian woman who grew up poor and insecure and as aspired to be a hairdresser.</s>MARCIA KILGORE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BLISS WORLD: When I was growing up my mother would very often say because I studies hard and was pretty disciplined, and my cities test were a little more of the wild children and I was the last hope, kind of, they probably had a lot more fun than I did growing up. but I was studying and I was pretty serious about getting my homework done and all that kind of stuff. She would say you should be a doctor, you should be a lawyer. I always wanted to be a hairdresser. You know, it was one of those things where I wanted to have fun, finally, and after studying so many years, I thought the perfect career would be doing hair or doing something like that.</s>HOPKINS: Bliss clients now include doctors, lawyers, hair dressers and celebrities, including Madonna and Jennifer Lopez. They all shell out big bucks for facials, massages and other Bliss treatments, like carrot sesame seed body busts. The average cost of a visit to Bliss, $150.</s>HANNELORE LEAVY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, DAY SPA ASSOCIATION: She has been able to reach out to people who are not necessarily the demographics of the regular spa goer, but she's reaching out to people who want to be -- who want to be somebody and feel that they are when they come to bliss and when they buy her products. They feel that somehow, she has that talent of plugging into people to bring out desire to be somebody, to experience it, whether they have money or not.</s>HOPKINS: Through relentless marketing and lots of media exposure, Kilgore has built Bliss into a highly successful brand, a brand that extends far beyond the company's two Manhattan spas. Bliss sells beauty products through a catalog mailed to a million people six times a year. Retailers and other spas also buy Bliss.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's what a lot of people do. They use the heavier cream as a night cream and it will absorb their daytime moisture.</s>HOPKINS: It all adds up to a company that's on track for $30 million in revenues this year, a 50 percent gain over 1999. Kilgore's winning ways caught the eye of many hopeful suitors. In 1999, she said yes to LVMH, the French luxury goods conglomerate, that owns brands including Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Hennessy cognac. LVMH bought a 70 percent stake in the company for an estimated $30 million. Kilgore became a very rich woman, but not before and during some hair-raising moments.</s>KILGORE: I remember getting the first legal bill, not knowing if the deal was actually going to happen, and it was two-hundred and something thousand dollars, and just thinking, if this doesn't happen, we are really going to be, pardon me my French, but screwed, because we've got this tax to pay and then we've got these legal fees, and this is the tip of the iceberg, and God.</s>HOPKINS (on camera): So this is going I'm a multimillionaire or I'm broke?</s>KILGORE: Yes, broke and paying off debts for a really, really long time, and I knew you could pay off debts, but it's sad to think you can work 20 hours a day for seven years and never have a cent, and then because a deal doesn't work out, you can have debt for another three years before you ever think of making a cent, that's pretty scary.</s>HOPKINS (voice-over): Ahead on MOVERS, how adolescent acting, body building and not going to Columbia University put Marcia Kilgore on a path to bliss.</s>KILGORE: ... against the growth of the hair, and it will make those short stubborn hairs stand up, and then when you peel them off, they will just come right out, they will stand at attention and come right out from the root.</s>HOPKINS (voice-over): Marcia Kilgore is doing what she does best, selling Bliss. In this case, pushing waxing kits on QVC. A week earlier, she flew to Las Vegas to teach a class on low-anxiety waxing, showing beauty professionals how to use beauty products that Bliss sells.</s>KILGORE: You want to go lightly, put the strip down, and go like that. Remember, pretend they're a loose cake, and you want to smooth them out, but you don't want to dent them.</s>HOPKINS (on camera): You're very good at marketing. You're very good at figuring out clever things to do to do things differently to get people's attention. Is that part of the success?</s>KILGORE: I think that the marketing of Bliss and being able to use Bliss in words like the Bliss Certificate and "Bliss Out," which is our catalog, and all those kind of fun phrases, and the catch phrases that we've had are refreshing to people. I think they see there's wit in it. There's humor in it. We take ourselves from seriously, but not too seriously. We know that a shower gel is not something that should be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. And we keep it in perspective, and I think it's very refreshing for consumers to see a beauty company that keeps what beauty is in perspective.</s>HOPKINS (voice-over): Kilgore's personal perspective on life was shaped by the death of her father when she was 11 years old. Her mother had to support Kilgore and her two older sisters on a secretary's salary. Those years formed Kilgore's resolve to build a different future for herself.</s>KILGORE: When I first started, I had a lot of, OK, now I'm own my own, and I'm going to make my life better than it was, and I'm going to have more security, I'm going to give myself more security than I had, so that I can finally feel I don't have to worry about sleeping in a tent or my electric bill. I always though, when I grow up, I do not ever want to even have to think about whether or not I could pay my electric bill.</s>HOPKINS: Kilgore excelled in high school, worked several part- time jobs and took up competitive bodybuilding. She was accepted to Columbia University, but couldn't afford to go. She moved to New York anyway and started putting her physical prowess to good use, working as a personal trainer. With help from her sister, a model, she attracted celebrity clients, including Carrie Fisher and Paul Simon. For three years, she juggled clients and college courses, and started to burn out.</s>HOPKINS (on camera): So what was the next thing. It was faces, yes?</s>KILGORE: Well, I always had bad skin, and in traveling on the subway, and going to my customers houses and exercising them, my skin kind would --it would never be perfect and it always bothered me. And from the time I was 11 years old, I actually woke up one morning when I was 11, and I had sort of acne all over my face, and it always really affected me, and I had been to many dermatologist, and nothing that was prescribed for me ever really did that much of service to help my skin get better, and I thought one summer when my clients were a little bit, you know, AWOL, that I would just take skin care school and try and understand what was going on my own face.</s>HOPKINS: And then that led to other people's faces, right?</s>KILGORE: Absolutely. Yes. It was a lot of fun.</s>HOPKINS (voice-over): Kilgore started giving facials on the floor of her small apartment. Eventually, she bought a facial table, and in 1991, rented a small, one-room office in Soho. Business took off, and in 1993, Kilgore opened Let's Face It, a three room mini-spa. The economy improved, and Solo became a red hot destination for the young, cool and affluent. That helped focus more a tension on Bliss. After three years, Kilgore needed even more space and a new name.</s>KILGORE: We wanted to expand and incorporate massages, and body treatments and more manicures and pedicures, and more relaxing things. I knew that we had to change the name so that it really sounded more like how we wanted our customers to feel leaving there. It was tough, because I was trying to think of a new name, and I didn't want to be too clinical, because we are really not about clinical, we are sort of more about fun. And then I thought, well, you could go the French angle, you know, La Jardenta (ph), and then I thought that's kind of pompous and that's very pretentious us, and it's really not me, and I can't pretend to be something that I'm not. It's going to feel too weird every time you're picking up the phone. So then I thought, well, OK, how else do we approach this? Maybe the way people should -- what's the best feeling you could possibly have? And that's when I thought of it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, at 6:15, you are with Laura for a carrot sesame seed body bath at our Soho spa.</s>HOPKINS: Landing an appointment with Bliss still takes up to three months, unless you luck out and get a cancellation.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we don't close until 8:30.</s>HOPKINS: When MOVERS returns, why the immense popularity of bliss pushed Marcia Kilgore to sell her baby to a French luxury goods powerhouse.</s>HOPKINS (voice-over): Marcia Kilgore is taking French lessons, and it's not because she's planning a trip to the French Riviera. Like nearly every aspect of her life, the lessons serve a business purpose. Kilgore wants to master the language of her colleagues at LVMH, the French conglomerate that bought a controlling stake in Bliss in 1999. Kilgore received numerous offers from companies eager to buy a piece of Bliss, and Kilgore's success convinced her she had to sell.</s>KILGORE: It was something that had taken on a life of its own, and it was almost something that I couldn't control the growth of anymore, because it became much bigger than it actually was. Everybody had heard about it. People were calling from all over the place, offering this opportunity, this opportunity, and it was impossible to manage, and it was also impossible to fund. We kept expanding and putting every sent we had into expanding so our customers wouldn't get mad because they couldn't get appointments. It was like being forced to expand faster than we wanted to expand, because if we didn't take this step, then the customers would be so upset, they wouldn't come to us anymore. So it was sort of do or die.</s>HOPKINS: The most tangible result of Kilgore's deal with LVMH is Bliss 57, a nine-room spa in the French company's building on 57th Street in Manhattan. Bliss 57 and its larger downtown sister, Bliss Soho, are usually packed, too packed some customers complain. (on camera): Some people say, though, that you are so big now that it's kind of an assembly line, that it's a factory.</s>KILGORE: Once they get into that spa, it's not an assembly line. It might be busy at the front because there are a lot of people coming in and out because it's a 24-room place, but once you get in there and have your treatment, you're going to have the best treatment there is.</s>HOPKINS (voice-over): Kilgore says great treatments don't stop some people from complaining about everything, from the soap in the showers to not being offered cheese and crackers during a pedicure. But the good letters and e-mail outweigh the bad. One myth even became part of the decor at headquarters in Brooklyn.</s>HOPKINS: The sign behind you, the story.</s>KILGORE: It was actually an e-mail that was sent in by one of our customers who had received our mail order catalog and he was so thrilled about being able to try on these pop-out sunglasses that we had included as a sunglass promo, he wrote this e-mail going on and on about how fabulous we were, and I wanted to remind the staff on a daily basis how fabulous they were, so I had somebody paint it on the wall. It's similar to waxing, where you hold the skin in one direction and pull in the other.</s>HOPKINS: Kilgore keeps her hand in the game training her staff and by giving facials twice a week. She writes all the copy in the Bliss catalog and is hard at work developing a new line of beauty products, working at LVMH labs in France and meeting with ingredients suppliers in the</s>U.S. KILGORE: You know, it's a small amount of stuff, so you put the best stuff in there, and then who cares if it costs more. Our client doesn't care. They want the best stuff, and it's hard to even talk about something if you don't think it's the best.</s>HOPKINS: Kilgore says LVMH doesn't mess with the day-to-day affairs of Bliss, giving her total creative control, and the deal gave Kilgore a level of comfort both professionally and personally. (on camera): You went from the stage of being terrified about spending so much, taking a risk to get a partner, and then, you get $30 million or whatever the amount is. How has it changed your life?</s>KILGORE: I think that it hasn't really changed how I view anything on a day-to-day basis. It's easier for me to go and spend $400 on a pair of pants, because I don't think, do I have this $400, or should I budget for something else? If I need to buy a suit because I'm doing CNN or something, I can go and buy the suit and I don't really have to think twice about it. But otherwise, it's exactly the same. I still will look at a phone bill, and think, wait a second, they're charging me 10 cents a minute and I could get 5 cents. And I'll still sometimes get these feelings in my gut that are just like, no, this could be terrible, and then I kind of have to do a reality check, because you know, what are the possibilities of something like that happening and just blowing my world a part? Not very high at this point.</s>HOPKINS: You've been able to use that sense of insecurity to kind of make you a better business person, to make you a better...</s>KILGORE: It's a reality check. I think, you know, the reality check of there is competition out there. There are customers out there. You have to always remember where your last dime came from and keep your customers happy, and remember that you should be thrilled and honored that they choose to come to you instead of getting on a high horse and thinking, we're so good.</s>HOPKINS (voice-over): Ahead on MOVERS, the man who helped Marcia Kilgore hook up the deal with LVMH, and why his relationship with Kilgore is not strictly business.</s>HOPKINS (voice-over): Thierry Boue is the man in Marcia Kilgore's both at home in Brooklyn and at work. Boue is the CEO of Bliss World and Kilgore's husband. He's also a good cook. The 45- year-old Frenchman is a former photographers agent and fragrance consultant. Kilgore's sister introduced the two, and Kilgore was soon calling him for business advice. She ended up hiring him to run Bliss' product distribution business. Then thing got personal.</s>KILGORE: I hate telling this part of the story. Apparently while I was selling one of my customers a day cream, he says he just fell in love with me watching me, because I was very enthusiastic about this day cream, and he was kind of, you know, just waiting for something to happen after that, and you know, it is funny, because he's a bit of a tough -- maybe not a tough character, but he's an odd character, but I always found him really entertaining, I suppose. But Bliss, if you look at it, is also a very odd character. If you had to put a character on it, it's a little bit twisted, but in a naive and very open kind of way, not weird twisted, but just a little wacky, and so I guess that's what attracted me to him; you know, he just really doesn't care what anybody thinks and wants to get his stuff done, and he knows what he believes, and really believes in the business and in Bliss, and it was nice to have partner to also really had the same goals and dreams.</s>HOPKINS: Boue negotiated the multimillion dollar deal with LVMH. Like Kilgore, he has a contract to remain at Bliss until 2004. He runs the business end of Bliss and helps focus Kilgore's boundless energy.</s>THIERRY BOUE, CEO, BLISS WORLD: Marcia has 200 ideas a minute, so there are some that are very feasible and that can be achieved, and there are some that are very, very unachievable, at least at this time. So I think a am maybe a little bit more patient.</s>HOPKINS: Boue and Kilgore have big plans for Bliss, including a spa in London, a new line of cosmetics, and a chain of nail salons called Quick Bliss. Plans for their life outside Bliss are far less defined. (on camera): Do you see sometime in the future that you back away a little bit, that you have your own family?</s>KILGORE: It's a difficult question. It's tough to think that, if we had children that I would be leaving them and for God knows how many hours a day, because I am responsible for making sure that things here happen, and I can't just walk out the door at 5:00, and I don't know how comfortable I would feel knowing there was a child or children waiting for me, when I also knew that there were children here waiting for me. Thierry, on the other hand, would love to have a family, so there's a little pressure from that side that might make things happen a little bit faster. You have to compromise.</s>HOPKINS (voice-over): Kilgore has not compromised in the past when it comes to her commitment to Bliss. She compares her devotion to making Bliss a success to one of her spa's best-known customers.</s>KILGORE: I was going make it work. And I really believe if you put your mind to something, like Madonna -- you know, she decided she was going to be a megastar, and she is, and whether or not you like what she does or think she's the greatest singer in the world or the greatest performer, she's a megastar, and if you decide you want to do something, and you're going to make it work here, and your going to do whatever it takes, and you're smart about it, I think you can do it.