Make-up artist Brendan McDowell has opened up about his motivation for starting BPerfect Cosmetics, revealing he was ‘inspired by my dad’ in his 30s.
The Analonga native founded his company in 2013 with just £500. He has since turned the business into a multi-million dollar empire.
Talking to The Sunday TimesMr McDowell said he developed a love of business and hard work early on and that student life at Ulster University “wasn’t for me”.
“I really wanted a white horse, but my parents didn’t want to buy one, so I went to work and saved up money,” he told the newspaper about his childhood.
“You have to find out what you want in life and work for it.
“I was inspired by my dad, who started his company when he was 40, and I wish he had done it earlier.”
McDowell’s first deal in life was running his grandfather’s horse in a local show, which he won, before he landed his first grown-up job selling credit cards for Ulster Bank.
“We won the class and then we won the championship and I remember my grandfather being very proud, but he was actually preparing the horse for sale and we sold him.”
On his first post-graduation job, he explained: “It was before the credit crunch and it was a tough gig. It was 100 percent commission-based, and I was one of those annoying people on the street who stopped every passer-by.”
The tycoon father was only 43 years old when he broke his back in an excavator while working at his construction company.
He made a full recovery from the injury, but died in 2005 from MRSA, a superbug he contracted in hospital.
Earlier this year, the businessman told Sunday Life about coming home to his father after an accident at a construction site.
“I guess I just came to see my father when he died. It’s actually quite a story that I’ve never told before,” he previously explained.
“He had a big neck brace in the emergency room. He just reached out and said, “Brandon, you’re my son and I love you.” That was his reaction.
“After a few months, Dad was up and walking and the doctors told us he would make a full recovery, but on New Year’s Eve [in 2004]they told us he had the hospital superbug MRSA as a result of the surgery.
“It was another six or eight weeks before he died.”
BPerfect Cosmetics opened its first flagship store in Belfast’s Victoria Square in November 2020, followed six months later in Foyleside Shopping Centre.
The company recently opened its fifth store in Dublin’s Blanchardstown shopping center and thousands of people are flocking to the branch to catch a glimpse of Love Island 2022 winner Ekin-Su Kulkulaglu.
“The [shopping] Security at the center said we might have to close the shop to control the crowd at one stage,” McDowell told the Sunday Times.
“Our opening in Belfast was big, but we think Dublin may have topped it.”
McDowell will appear in a reality show based on the BPerfect story, which is due to air on BBC3 next January.
