You Can’t Make This Up

Florence did …

You know you can’t make up stories like this. Florence was born in Ontario … and went to nursing school in Toronto.

Not excited about it she dropped out and then moved to New York City where her older brother lived. She got a job as a bookkeeper for a pharmaceutical company .. but before long she was spending a lot of time in the lab learning about skin care.

She loved it … and together with a friend Liz started helping women with beauty treatments. But the partnership didn’t last … so Florence decided to start out on her own … with a small loan from her brother .. Flo opened a small salon on 5th Ave in New York … her stroke of genius?… where all the other buildings were grey and looked the same …. Flo painted her door red … and called it the Red Door Salon. It was an immediate hit … and things just went from there.

But Florence Nightingale Graham needed a better business name … so she just created one … she used her former partner’s first name and the title of a favourite poem by Lord Tennyson for the last name. Elizabeth Arden.

Today, Elizabeth Arden is known worldwide with sales of over $1 billion annually … all because a nursing student turned bookkeeper had an interest in skin care.

Elizabeth Arden is a Great Idea because doing what you love can often turn out beautifully.