Jo Horgan founded MECCA in Melbourne in 1997 to bring emerging international beauty brands to Australian customers in a more curated, welcoming retail setting. The change she helped make is clearest in the details: a focused assortment, customer and staff education, in-store services and an early move online. MECCA’s own history documents that evolution, while Horgan has described a broader ambition to give women more influence in beauty and business.
Who is Jo Horgan, and what did she found?
Jo Horgan is the founder of MECCA, the Australian beauty retailer whose first store opened in Melbourne in 1997. MECCA’s retrospective says she had noticed independent makeup artists launching brands overseas and wanted to make that emerging offer accessible to Australian customers. Her idea was not simply to stock cosmetics; it was to shape how customers encountered them.
Horgan explained the opportunity this way: “There was an incredibly exciting new trend in cosmetics emerging, and I just knew there was a better way to bring this to Australian women – for my mum, my friends, for me.” MECCA’s archive attributes the quotation to its founder.
How MECCA began in Melbourne
MECCA’s company history dates the first store to 1997. Horgan and her parents initially looked at Chapel Street, but the rent was too high for the startup, so they opened on Toorak Road instead. The store began with seven colour brands: NARS, Stila, Philosophy, Vincent Longo, Urban Decay, Benefit and Make Up For Ever. MECCA’s account frames the opening as a way to introduce Australian customers to selected international labels in one place, rather than as a claim that no other beauty retail existed.
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That curated offer distinguished the concept from a conventional department-store counter: shoppers could browse a set of emerging labels together, in a dedicated setting. The evidence establishes MECCA’s own early model, not a measured comparison with every retailer of the period.
What made the early retail experience different?
Assortment built around emerging brands
The original seven-brand mix reflected Horgan’s interest in labels gaining attention overseas. One memorable example arrived in 1999: MECCA’s archive says NARS Orgasm blush debuted in-store that year and became one of the retailer’s bestsellers. That milestone illustrates the kind of product MECCA brought to customers; it does not show that one item alone drove the company’s growth.
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Education and customer input
MECCA says it held early learning sessions for staff at Horgan’s home and gathered feedback through customer focus groups. The company’s retrospective page currently reports that it invests around 3% of turnover in team education and engagement. That is a current company-reported figure on a history page, not a statistic for the year 2000.
Services and a place to spend time
In 2001, MECCA introduced in-store manicure bars, starting at its Little Collins Street store in Melbourne. Horgan later described the design ambition as creating “a space that customers would love to spend time in – much like an inviting, contemporary living room.” The aim, as she presented it, was an inviting customer experience as well as a place to buy products.
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Early online reach
MECCA says its website launched in 2001. That early online presence extended the retailer beyond store visits, alongside its mail-order operation. The company history notes that Horgan’s sister Cate ran mail order from the family kitchen in 1998, while her brother Conor helped in the warehouse and with getting online; Horgan’s husband Pete helped establish the back office.
Growth included setbacks, not just expansion
MECCA’s early story was not a straight line upward. In 1999, the closure of department store Georges reduced the business from two stores to one. The company later expanded: its archive records its eighth store opening in Western Australia by 2002. It also says more than 60,000 people around the country were engaging with the MECCA concept in 2002. That is a historical company-reported audience figure, not a current customer count.
The sequence shows how the business developed through different channels and locations: a specialist store, mail order, a website, service offerings and expansion beyond Melbourne. It also makes clear that growth involved a setback before the wider footprint.
What did Horgan mean by changing women’s place in beauty?
Horgan has described her ambition as giving women more voice both as beauty consumers and as people working in the industry. “I wanted to hand power back to women – empowering both the consumers and those working in beauty – and to prove that a business led by women could thrive by building each other up,” she said in a statement reproduced by MECCA’s archive.
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In a later essay published by MECCA, Horgan summarized her criticism of beauty culture with the line, “Beauty standards were set for us not by us.” On MECCA’s 25th birthday, she said the company committed $25 million over five years to MECCA M-POWER and partner organizations supporting women and girls. These are evidence of the purpose she articulated and a company commitment; they do not quantify an industry-wide change caused by MECCA.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How large is MECCA today?
One external snapshot offers a dated view rather than a definitive current total. The International Association of Department Stores reported in September 2025 that MECCA had 110 stores, more than 4.5 million annual customers and 7,000 employees. Those figures are attributed to IADS and describe 2025; they should not be presented as verified 2026 totals.
IADS also reported that MECCA does not disclose sales, and that outside revenue estimates vary. For that reason, a single revenue figure should not be treated as established. The company’s own customer and brand counts use different figures and may reflect different definitions, so they should not be combined with IADS’s annual-customer number.
What “revolutionised” means in Horgan’s story
The strongest case for the title is specific rather than sweeping: Horgan built a business that made selected international brands more accessible to Australian shoppers, paired product discovery with education and services, and adopted online channels early in its growth. MECCA’s records show a business that grew beyond its first store despite setbacks. Horgan’s stated aim was also cultural—to give women greater influence in beauty and to show that a women-led business could thrive. That aim is central to her account, but the available milestones do not establish that she alone transformed the entire beauty industry.
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