Woman Expects To Turnover £50m From Glitter Business In Next Five Years

It can be quite enjoyable spending an evening in the pub discussing the obscure business ideas you've never had the bottle to actually pursue - honestly, why has nobody developed a self-cleaning cheese grater yet? There's got to be a market for that.

But even six pints deep, you'd struggle to convince anyone that you could rake in millions by selling glitter. Yet, Jenna Meek has defied the odds, making a huge success out of selling the annoying sparkly stuff.

The Gypsy Shrine

The 26-year-old, from Bishop Auckland, County Durham, launched The Gypsy Shrine as a festival pop-up in 2016, investing a few grand to get the business up and running. From these humble beginnings, the business - which has been renamed Shrine - has grown rapidly and massively.

Jenna now has a store in Carnaby Street, Manchester, a festival clothing range called Drippin with Jewels and has seen her designs worn by the likes of Ariana Grande and Kylie Jenner.

The meteoric growth of the business - which has been boosted by large orders from the likes of Asos, Pretty Little Things and Missguided - has seen Jenna forecast an eye-watering turnover of £50 million in the next five years.

The Gypsy Shrine

Speaking to Femail, she said: "I am really excited to be expanding Shrine further into more categories in the next three years; for me, taking it from a small festival brand to a global lifestyle brand, with an expected turnover of 50 million is so exciting and a place I could have only of dreamt about when I first started the business.

"We have really developed as a brand over the last four years and learnt a lot about who we are and our customer along the way - launching beauty and apparel has been a direct outcome of these key findings and has been by far the most successful launches to date."

The business has managed to build a large and global following of almost 400,000 people on Instagram, in part due to the creation of glitter boobs and bums, which have become a massive festival trend.

The Gypsy Shrine

Reflecting on the short history and potentially huge future of the business, Jenna said: "After launching the first-ever self-adhesive face jewel and creating new trends that are now part of festival season year on year, I wanted to expand on this momentum of the brand and what we do and carry it through to become even bigger and better - which is what we've done.

"Knowing we created the mad trends of the festivals, from the glitter booty to boobs to the crazy braids and glitter eyes - I can't wait to see what more we can do with our new products in the future.

"It's a very daunting thought to think of where we can be in just five years time.

"We're still a super small team of only eight of us, but knowing how much we have achieved so far and how amazing the team I have is, the ideas and passion from everyone in the team, I know we can do it."

Topics: UK News, Money, Interesting

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey