What you need to know:
- The 42 -year-old sought the assistance of a dermatologist but could only find spas in the tourist town. The closest one was in Mombasa.
- Today, the business has seven employees and is looking to add five more in the next three months to cater to the growing number of clients seeking their services.
- Soon after fitting out her outlet back in 2015, the owner of the shopping mall asked her to bring it down since it did not meet the standards of the premises.
When Peris Mbuthia returned home in 2014 after years of study and work abroad, a number of business ideas crisscrossed her mind.
She had worked as a medical aesthetician in Canada after graduating in the United Kingdom in 1997 and looked forward to building her homeland.
When she jetted back to Kenya and holidaying in Mombasa, a terrible and extensive skin disorder attacked her.
The 42-year-old sought the assistance of a dermatologist but could only find spas in the tourist town. The closest one was in Mombasa.
Armed with Sh25 million from her savings, she decided to set up a skin care facility.
This saw the birth of Timeless Medical Spa in 2015.
“We wanted to create a bridge where people can come to a clinic that looks like a spa and get skin edge treatment, be it acne, hair removal or anti-aging treatments.
They can also relax and unwind,” she told the Business Daily during an interview at her office in Lavington Mall off James Gichuru Road in Nairobi.
Some of the services that the facility offers include photo rejuvenation, electrolysis and laser hair removal microdermabrasion and body contouring.
Photo rejuvenation is a treatment that uses laser, intense pulsed light, or photodynamic therapy to treat skin conditions and remove effects of photo aging such as wrinkles, spots, and textures.
The process induces controlled wounds on the skin, promoting it to heal itself by creating new cells. It costs Sh5,000 per treatment which lasts between 45 minutes and an hour.
On the other hand, electrolysis facial hair removal is a method of removing individual hair from the face or body. After a very fine probe is inserted into the hair follicle, the hair is removed with tweezers.
It also cost Sh5,000 per treatment.
Microdermabrasion is a procedure that exfoliates and removes the superficial layer of dry, dead skin cells using a machine that has fine crystals or a diamond tip.
The treatment goes at Sh7,000 and takes about an hour. Timeless Medical Spa uses products, which Ms Mbuthia says have been extracted from natural ingredients.
They include Moroccan Argan oil, corrective eye serum, moisturising cream, hand cream, facial scrub cream, foot cream, face cream and eye cream ranging. They retail at between Sh1,500 to Sh5,500.
The business handles between eight to ten clients a day.
In a good month, she makes about Sh400,000 on the sale of products and services. She hopes to hit the Sh1 million mark before the end of next year.
Today, the business has seven employees and is looking to add five more in the next three months to cater to the growing number of clients seeking their services.
“We create a rapport with our client hence enabling us to serve one better. We start a journey with each client and do not stop till we see it through to guarantee customer satisfaction,” she says.
Ms Mbuthia says it has not been all smooth sailing.
One of the hurdles she faced was when setting up the business.
Soon after fitting out her outlet back in 2015, the owner of the shopping mall asked her to bring it down since it did not meet the standards of the premises.
In the process, she lost Sh5 million and had to start over.
Today, her main challenge is competition which she says is unhealthy. “The market is full of people who are only good at copy pasting ideas. For me, I have always learnt to stay true to my model,” she says.
The mother of two is now looking to expand her business in Kenya as well as Rwanda, Tanzania and South Sudan by 2019.
