CAROLINE NEVILLE

I like to talk about the 'founding mothers' of the cosmetics industry. These are: Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden, who both became enormously rich and successful. Then came the legendary Mrs Este Lauder and Mary Kay who was one of the first to do direct selling of beauty products.

It's still true to say that our industry is dominated by men at the top and, well, that's not okay with the Board of CEW or with our membership. Maybe the men cottoned on to what a successful industry it is and decided that they wanted to run it.

I had originally started up in business, on my own, from my parents' council house in Wandsworth. I would be having a bath, my mother would pick up the phone and she'd say, "Oh, you have to hang on, Caroline is in the bath." Not the most professional impression. So that had to end very quickly.

Do you know what I've decided just recently? I will be longer accept any appointments at eight thirty in the morning. I have had it. Somebody asked me recently and I said, "My office doesn't open till 9.30 and I'm not rolling in till ten." I still go to evening events that are relevant to the business but I make a speedy exit. It's important that I should know what's going on but you have to get things into perspective. It's not going to be my whole focus. You have to concentrate, and you have to devote yourself to the business in work hours, but it's not going to be my whole at this stage in my life.

Women today get bombarded with pictures of celebrities. And that's fine. It has its place. But really and truly, I think that the beauty industry is about something more profound. Women are going to be in work for longer than ever before. I'm seventy. I'm out there and working full time. I know lots of women who are in the same position, they are working longer because they enjoy it or they need a little more cash.

So I'm surrounded, in this office, by women in their twenties and thirties. I don't want to compete with them. But I want to go out every day, feeling confident about the way I look and to face whatever comes along.

Every week, now, I have young men asking to join CEW. They can't, at the moment, the CEW (UK) board won't allow male members until there are more women in top jobs. I think I'm the lone voice for male membership. I've love to have all the male heads of companies join because if they do, they have to sign up for bringing women through the ranks. But either way, it is wonderful how many men now want to hear the secrets of women's success in our industry.