A Nottingham business owner has been left thousands of pounds in debt and has closed her salon due to a huge legal battle with global beauty giant L'Oreal. Rebecca Dowdeswell spent more than a decade building up her waxing business nkd, which still has a location in Leicester.
The business owner faced the "same nightmare as everyone else" when it came to keeping her household safe and homeschooling the kids, which she did alongside trying to keep a business running that had effectively been closed by the pandemic. Despite the circumstances, Rebecca worked hard over the lockdowns and restrictions and used the pandemic to create a line of her own aftercare waxing products, which included a moisturiser, skin wash and exfoliating body scrub.
She was then left confused when L'Oreal opposed her registration of the trademark and has been locked in a legal battle with them ever since. She explained: "It has been going on for nearly two years, and it has just been a nightmare. Rebecca added: "They said on the basis of their eyeshadow palettes I had to stop using it and rename the business. There was no way I was going to do that, I put a lot of resources, time, money, effort, love, passion and investment in every different way possible into the nkd brand and brand identity and we built a very distinct brand identity of our own."
Regarding the closure of the salon, she added: "My Nottingham lease was coming to an end, it would have come to an end and just with the uncertainty, the stress, the expense, it got too much and I couldn't consider renewing a commercial lease for ten years with that hanging over me.