No strangers to business, Amy and Emilee Hembrow grew up in a family that was very entrepreneurial, with Emilee starting and selling her first business at the age of 18. Amy is the co-founder of the highly successful Tammy Fit app and she helped launch and build her sister’s clothing brand Saski Collection.
In 2019 Emilee went to Amy with the idea for SSKIN and they haven’t looked back, even with having to navigate launching a business during COVID restrictions.
Here’s our interview with the sisters and the lowdown on SSKIN.
What was your career path like before co-founding SSKIN Clinic?
A – I followed a very traditional career path. After finishing school, I moved back to Australia (I went to an international school in Singapore) to study at university. I did a Bachelor of Business majoring in Marketing and before graduating got a job as a Marketing Assistant. While working I upskilled by doing my Diploma of Graphic Design and I worked my way up in Marketing roles while living in Sydney, from PR roles to Marketing Coordinator. While working as Marketing Coordinator I always had the business bug and started a T shirt business with my now husband that failed miserably! A while after that my sister came to me with a business idea for a clothing brand and asked if I would move to the Gold Coast to help her with her business. I decided to take the leap and apply everything I had learned to manage and build her brand Saski Collection. A year later we co founded the app Tammy Fit, which I still manage.
E- I’ve always been a bit of an entrepreneur and love starting businesses. I also studied marketing and fashion design so maybe if I didn’t take this leap, I would have done something in the fashion industry.
A lot of people out there have great ideas but don’t ever bring them to life. How do you bring your vision to reality?
Having set goals, timeframes, budgets and breaking up bigger tasks into smaller tasks. It can be so overwhelming knowing where to start. If you make a list of manageable smaller goals each day that build towards your bigger ones and actually set timeframes for getting them done, then eventually you get there and it’s honestly not as overwhelming anymore.
SKINN Clinic was founded and opened during the pandemic, whilst you were both pregnant. How did you manage that feat?
During the renovation of the property, we faced many obstacles. We had planned to have all building completed by April 2020. With the pandemic we not only had to strip back our builders to only one person on site at a time but saw delays in materials and fixtures. Some of our suppliers even cancelled our orders due to being small businesses who were hit hard by the pandemic. This became a very slow process in comparison to our initial timelines.
With regular Zoom meetings and constant communication, we were able to source new suppliers and progress with caution. Because of this we were able to take our time and readjust elements that may have been obstacles if we had not had the time to relook at the plans and approach them slowly.
Being mums, Amy with a new baby, we just had to juggle things as best we could. It got a little scary, we had invested a lot and were getting to the point where we were waiting to open.
We were fortunate enough that by the time the build was complete beauty clinics were able to reopen in Queensland.
How did the idea of SSKIN Clinic come about?
We wanted to create a space that we wanted to go ourselves. A space that focused on the whole experience from the moment you are greeted all the way through to your aftercare. To be honest there wasn’t a place on the Gold Coast that we would 100% recommend to our friends and family.
Having always been passionate about beauty but with a business background we knew we could create a strong brand and business plan based on our in-depth knowledge of the customer and experience we wanted to create.
Can you tell us more about SSKIN Clinic?
We have 4 treatment rooms each themed by a colour, our Rose room, Ocean room, Sage room and Lavender room. SSKIN provides a beauty experience that is calming, bespoke and luxurious. The interiors approach aims to focus on the notion of sculpture by implementing organic forms and tactility; and employs a colour palette that is indicative of skin tone gradients, with complimentary earthy accents. We really wanted people to leave talking about how they felt in the clinic and how they feel leaving after a treatment.
A key element was making ourselves into a story, a story that the client would want to tell their friends about and share their experience. That they felt more confident, relaxed, or more themselves.
We strive to go beyond just treatments, there is a bond that’s formed when people feel seen and valued. The below testimonial shows that we have achieved this goal. We care for each of our clients, and we are results driven in more ways than one.
What drives you both? Why do you do what you do?
A – Creating experiences for our clients that impact them, my passion for business and being able to create the work life I envisioned with flexible hours so I can work around my family.
E- I love hearing our clients’ feedback, I love how a treatment is so much more than a superficial thing, how our treatments can help with self-confidence and self-esteem and feeling good from the inside out.
What do you enjoy most about being an entrepreneur?
The limitlessness, having creative control and the ability to really implement change within the business. In the past I (Amy) worked for a company with terrible company culture and felt really undervalued. With SSKIN we have been able to really focus on company culture, making sure the team grows with the company and that they feel valued. It must be a mutually beneficial relationship to succeed.
How do you personally measure success?
Going to work and loving what we do, being able to have the flexibility we need for our families. Happiness and having a purpose.
What tips do you have for other women who would like to start their own businesses?
Don’t do it for the money you need to be passionate about whatever you do because you will be the one to hold yourself accountable and it’s so much more enjoyable when you love what you do. When you’re passionate and believe in something you work hard at it and then when the money comes in it’s a bonus but that could take some time so you really need that passion to fuel you for what might be the first couple of years.
What do you want to achieve next?
Expansion! We have really found something we love and bringing it to more clients and building a bigger team is something we are really excited about.
We Are Emersyn uses an inclusive definition “female” and “women” and we welcome trans people, women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who identify, have identified, or have been identified as female, women, or non-binary.