Yahoo Finance Behind the brand: Pai Skincare, the British product loved by France
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The product launch in Paris wasn’t going well for Sarah Brown and her Pai Skincare brand. With most of France’s top beauty journalists engaged elsewhere due to a diary mix-up, Brown had little hope of anyone turning up to the speciality store for her latest product reveal — until queues started forming around the block.
“We call ourselves the Pai-ettes!” a group of young women first in line revealed to Brown, with France now Pai Skincare’s biggest market.
“We have never fully understood it but I think they see it as a really chic brand and is a great compliment, and their love is deep when people come to the brand,” adds Pai‘s founder and CEO.
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Brown has become an organic skincare pioneer whose expertise developing all-natural, efficacious products was born from her own experience living with a challenging skin condition, chronic urticaria, in her mid-twenties.
The company today is a rarity in the beauty industry in that Pai manufactures everything – despite being told it would be “commercial insanity” – from its west London premises. Brown, alongside her ‘chief problem solver’ husband, Ed, recently pulled in £14m series C investment as it targets 24% growth in 2023 and staff nearing 60.
“We were born out of the garage but we were always born out of a problem, and that was my skin condition, which I still have,” she reveals.
“It is very common but very misunderstood. It is termed as an idiopathic condition which means an unknown cause and when you are trying to fix an unknown cause it’s really bloody hard. I was in a bad way and it happened so instantly.”
Brown was referred to Charing Cross Hospital in London and left, she says, to take drugs for life. “They knew nothing of the condition and said it was a mystery. It is very erratic and you can’t control it,” she admits of her condition. “I was left in this abyss to navigate my way around.”
She started to mix her own formulations as a last-ditch solution for her hyper-reactive skin. By hook or by crook, Brown was determined to understand ingredients better and their functioning purpose. “By doing it from a very desperate place it became something much more positive,” she adds.
Brown also started to see flaws in the market and set out to create a solution for sensitivity and create products for customers “bamboozled and daunted by having to self solve”.
Brown launched with £15,000 of personal savings in 2007, which lasted four months into the business, before joining forces with her husband, who was selling T-shirts at the time. “We were so green in what we were doing we thought maybe we should come together and help each other."
Brown went back to the wine industry as a freelance PR to pay the bills and raised a £20,000 bank loan three years into Pai’s journey. “As a manufacturing business we’ve had to raise a lot of money and it’s an expensive endeavour, but it’s what makes the brand completely unique,” says the Londoner.
“Most beauty products today are made by the same third party contractors. We never wanted to be a sales and marketing outfit, we wanted to be passionate creators and makers.
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“One of the things that got harder was when every single investor and bank manager said to quit manufacturing. They said it was sucking up cash and was such a headache.
“I always said in meetings that manufacturing was so important and to the product quality too. I knew we wouldn't be the same brand if we went to a third party.”
Pai’s early business acumen was assessed by an external expert, who wondered why Pai had three cosmetic chemists and no salesperson. That soon changed, alongside Brown and Co overseeing every part of the product’s journey.
“It is really satisfying doing something in a vertically integrated way,” she says. “It’s not for everyone but I love it and particularly in our space if you genuinely want to be a sustainable brand.”
Organic growth has also been garnered via movie A-listers. Brown recalls one conversation on the phone with a Hollywood make-up artist agency who wanted a stack of product sent as a priority to see their client through the awards' season. It was assumed Pai knew who their client was. "Natalie, who?" said Brown. "Natalie Portman... she's a huge fan," came the response.
A small business at the time, Brown realised they had supplied the set of Black Swan a few years prior and that Portman had been buying from Pai ever since.
Pai now sells its rosehip oil to a consumer every three minutes, with Brown admitting that Pai is only “scratching the surface” in becoming a global presence.
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“We are well-placed for growth as we have such great credentials and all the machinery (plus some in bubble wrap) but just short of space,” she says.
“All the products in our space are all medical looking and, apart from ours, there are no products for sensitive skin that have a bit of soul and artistry to them. These products should bring joy. There shouldn’t be ‘this is all I'm allowed because I’ve got a skin challenge.’ Why should you compromise?’”
Behind the brand: Pai Skincare founder Sarah Brown
What I know now...
"It depends on the scale of your business but I would say now to small business owners who have visions of being a global brand that we tried to be global far too early, as we didn’t get enough traction in our home market (the UK is our third biggest market after France and US). We took the opportunity wherever it came, rather than staying focused on one or two single markets, which is far better than taking pockets of distribution all over the world that you can’t possibly service or support operationally."
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