SkinBase was incorporated on 17th February 2005, by brother and sister duo, Richard and Leesa Faulkner. As a family of entrepreneurs they recognised a gap in the market after experiencing reliability issues with a leading brand Microdermabrasion machine Leesa used in her salon business. Although the treatments were extremely popular, significant revenue was being lost due to machine downtime and it was impacting the business. Their engineer father, Keith Faulkner, set out to design and make something more reliable.
MDPro Launches from Richard’s garage
The company developed and launched its own system and Richard took the helm to market and sell the new machine from his bungalow, with the first microdermabrasion machines manufactured in his garage. Leesa became SkinBase’s trainer, traveling the country to provide free training to beauty therapists in the use of the microdermabrasion machine. Richard and Leesa’s parents were on hand to offer their business experience and guidance as they navigated this new business venture together.
Two Week Free Trial
With a background in sales, Richard knew that simply offering a demo wouldn’t be enough to showcase the new system’s benefits without the backing of a big brand name. Instead, he decided to offer everyone a two-week free trial, allowing businesses to experience the effectiveness and reliability of the machine firsthand. This bold approach proved to be far superior, as it provided potential clients with real-world results and the confidence to invest in the system.
Recession Hit
Fast forward to 2008 and the double dip recession hit hard, finance dried up as the banks collapsed so machine sales were falling through after trial as therapists were unable to gain finance to purchase machines. Richard remortgaged his house to help finance the cost of PAYG systems instead. In 2009 we introduced the World’s first truly automated PAYG system which uses our patented technology to record treatment data which allowed us to offer payg systems on a rental basis. This revolutionised the industry and helped us to offer beauty professionals these advanced treatment machines with £0 investment and £0 risk.
Richard Faulkner says of this time in SkinBase’s history:
“It’s surreal looking back, it was a completely different business back then, we were new to the industry and I personally spent a lot of time speaking to salon owners and working out what they needed in order to make the business a success. We had a really small team and we did everything. I would be making calls to new customers one minute and printing off direct mail letters to send out to lists of salons the next. We built up a process that worked for us around the free trial offer and that has largely remained the same. I’ve always wanted the focus to be on providing a great service and making it as easy as possible for salons to do business with us and I think we still do that to this day”
Richard Faulkner
That’s the story so far, keep an eye out for the next blog which takes us into the next chapter in SkinBase’s history as we enter new markets, move premises and navigate Covid.
