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Moneymakers: Selling Christmas trees fit for a prince
Amanda Chantal Bacon’s exotic potions and lotions are going down a storm with celebrities,. Plus, Making men smell better, and hip Christmas trees.
The brothers behind Pines and Needles, Sam and Josh Lyle
If you thought Christmas trees couldn't be hip, think again.Brothers Sam and Josh Lyle, descendants of the co-founderof sugar firm Tate & Lyle, have sold Christmas trees to MickJagger, Noel Gallagher, Madonna and One Direction's LouisTomlinson. Last week, Prince Harry was spotted leaving theirstall in London's Battersea Park, alongside girlfriend MeghanMerkel, carrying a six-foot Nordman Fir on his shoulder. Sam,now aged 35, started the business, Pines and Needles, whenhe was just 13, together with his brother, Josh, now 27.
Their father was clearing woodland on his farm in Perthshire andSam realised that they could sell the Norwegian spruces hewas taking out, says the DailyMail.co.uk's Bianca London."Two decades later they're planting 60,000 trees a year andhoping to break through the £3m barrier."
Burly men in kiltsdeliver the trees and even set them up, then come back afterChristmas to sweep up the needles and recycle the trees."We want to be the Rolls-Royce of Christmas trees, so we have to do everything to make that happen, from our guys delivering in kilts to the ultimate clean-up service," says Sam.
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Join more than 165,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with latest financial news, insights and expert analysis to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
"Would you like Brain or Sex?" Amanda Chantal Bacon asked a bewildered Jessica Pressler from New York magazine. Not waiting for an answer, Bacon sprinkled her interviewer's coffee with "a thick brown powder", which turns out to be "Sex".
Bacon is the 33-year-old founder of Moon Juice, a "Los Angeles-based potions-and-lotions emporium" selling "prettily packaged combinations of Chinese herbs" known as Dusts under bizarre names. They have gone down a storm with celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow, who "claims to dust' her smoothies every morning". Bacon also runs a popular vegan food blog on Elle.com, and has recently published a book, The Moon Juice Cookbook: Cosmic Alchemy for a Thriving Body, Beauty, and Consciousness.
Not everybody is a fan. "Personally, after ingesting a latte of Sex Dust I feel nothing other than a need to brush my teeth, to rid my mouth of the barky aftertaste," says Pressler. Some of her claims carry the "whiff of snake oil", and her products don't come cheap: the full Moon Dust collection costs $175. Bacon hopes to bring down the price by upscaling the business. "I will be next to Coca-Cola on the shelf," she says.
Making men smell better
"Men stink," Nate Checketts, the 34-year-old co-founder of sportswear brand Rhone, tells Peter Lane Taylor on Forbes.com. "They sweat. They smell really bad. And they're really, really hard on their workout clothes." Checketts, who began his entreprenuerial career selling lemonade at a golf course, aged 12, was working in business development for the US National Football League (NFL) when he first noticed the flimsiness of the products landing on his desk everyday. So in 2014, he launched Rhone, with the goal of combining classic cuts with "elevated" technology, such as silver molecules for odour-resistance and faster drying.
Sales took off quickly: in Rhone's first two months, it made more than $80,000. Last year, it raised $5m from investors to fund expansion. "Our niche from the very beginning has always been to create an up-market activewear product for sweaty men who live a modern, active lifestyle", says Checketts. "And there are millions of sweaty, modern, active men out there."
If you thought Christmas trees couldn't be hip, think again. Brothers Sam and Josh Lyle, descendants of the co-founder of sugar firm Tate & Lyle, have sold Christmas trees to Mick Jagger, Noel Gallagher, Madonna and One Direction's Louis Tomlinson. Last week, Prince Harry was spotted leaving their stall in London's Battersea Park, alongside girlfriend Meghan Merkel, carrying a six-foot Nordman Fir on his shoulder. Sam, now aged 35, started the business, Pines and Needles, when he was just 13, together with his brother, Josh, now 27. Their father was clearing woodland on his farm in Perthshire and Sam realised that they could sell the Norwegian spruces he was taking out, says the DailyMail.co.uk's Bianca London. "Two decades later they're planting 60,000 trees a year and hoping to break through the £3m barrier." Burly men in kilts deliver the trees and even set them up, then come back after Christmas to sweep up the needles and recycle the trees."We want to be the Rolls-Royce of Christmas trees, so we have to do everything to make that happen, from our guys delivering in kilts to the ultimate clean-up service," says Sam.
The MoneyWeek audit: Zsa Zsa Gabor
How did she start?
Actress Sri Gbor, better known as Zsa Zsa, was born in Budapest in the early part of the last century, the middle of three sisters. She was famously unwilling to confirm her age and only after her death last Sunday did her publicist reveal her date of birth to be 6 February 1917, which would have made her 99 years old. Her father, Vilmos, was a diamond dealer in the then-Austro-Hungarian Empire, while her mother, Jolie, who lived to the age of 100, encouraged her daughters to marry into money, says The Times. "The sisters would rack up 17 divorces between them." After attending boarding school, Zsa Zsa went into acting aged 16, and four years later, met the first of her eight husbands, 50-year-old Turkish diplomat Burhan Belge.
What was her big break?
Her marriage to Belge secured her a diplomatic passport and allowed her to move to America just before war broke out in Europe. In 1952, she married hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, with whom she had her only child, Francesca Hilton, who died last year. Her acting career took off when she appeared in Moulin Rouge the same year, followed by Lili a year later. In 1958, she acted in Touch of Evil and Queen of Outer Space, "a camp favourite about virile American astronauts landing on a planet populated by scantily clad women", notes The New York Times.
How much did she earn?
Gabor was never much acclaimed for her acting and the bulk of her money came from her marriages. "I'm a marvellous housekeeper," she once said. "Every time I leave a man, I keep his house." But she had a costly lifestyle, ran up large medical bills late in life, and also reportedly lost up to $10m in the ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff. In 2013, she sold her Bel Air villa, once occupied by Elvis Presley, for $11m, having bought it in 1973 for $280,000, in a deal that let her continue living there until her death.
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