Not only did Karen Lam have to earn her mother's trust before taking over Estetica Group, she also had to overcome a personal skincare battle of her own after suffering third-degree burns due to a kitchen accident
How I’m Making It is a weekly series in which Tatler speaks to influential individuals about their unique journeys and what keeps them going.
For a tiny island such as Singapore, we have a lot to be proud of when it comes to our local beauty scene. Over the past decade, especially in recent years, the country has seen numerous homegrown beauty brands make a name for themselves. While it is common knowledge that it is no easy feat to start a business, no one knows this better than the owners themselves.
Karen Lam, a second-generation business owner in Singapore, can very well attest to this. She joined Estetica Group, founded by her mother, back in 2003 and took over the business in 2016 and has been at the helm of it ever since.
The local business has subsidiary brands including Est.lab, Verdure, Heure as well as the chain of Estetica beauty salons.
Some may assume that taking over a family business may seem straightforward enough and less daunting than starting a company from scratch. But every entrepreneurial journey comes with its fair share of challenges. In an email interview with Tatler, Lam shared that her own experience “is not without difficult challenges” and she had to work very hard to build up her mother’s trust and confidence in her.
“For the first few years, we often had differing views in the ways we operate the business,” Lam said. “It was also tough trying to gain the trust and respect of many of our long-serving staff. In hindsight, I’m grateful that I had someone like her to ‘mentor’ me in this journey and I have grown to become more resilient and adaptable.”
In fact, one of the first things on her to-do list was to enroll in a course to be certified as a beauty therapist. She started from the ground up, starting first as a therapist to better understand how she could implement policies that would improve staff welfare, job satisfaction, career progression and more.
This also allowed her to engage with customers and identify gaps in the skincare market, thus allowing her to source for the latest facial technologies to launch in-store as well as develop new product innovations to resolve skincare woes.
See also: How I’m Making It: How Lawrence Wong Started His Own Skincare Brand During the Circuit Breaker
While she was busy trying to help customers achieve their skin goals, Lam encountered a personal setback in terms of her own skin health. Seven years ago, she suffered a horrific kitchen accident that left her with third degree burns on about 20 per cent of her entire body. She spent two years undergoing multiple skin graft surgeries and physiotherapy.
“Having been groomed in the beauty industry and brought up within the culture and expectations that came with it, I then spent the next few years covering up all my scars fearing stares and weird looks,” Lam shared. “For me, the physical scarring from the accident layered much deeper mental and emotional scars, and I didn't realise that I had spiralled into depression.”
But the entrepreneur took this major challenge in her stride and worked towards overcoming this obstacle. She was introduced to a fellow burn survivor who taught her “about how each scar is a wound that has healed”, and this should therefore bring about relief and gratitude instead of despair.
Lam continued: “Since then, I have started to take steps to move on and live life with greater purpose and confidence. Hopefully right where I am rooted in this beauty business, I can continue to inspire people to build up their self-confidence through skin confidence, and more importantly, to know that there’s beauty to be found even in life’s imperfections, scars and all.”
Today, as the director of Est.lab, Lam has spearheaded the company to emerge as a major player in the competitive beauty industry. In under three years, Estetica has expanded from a beauty salon brand to a company with several other beauty brands under its belt. It even launched two new skincare products amid the Covid-19 pandemic, with two more in the pipelines.
In her own words below, Lam shares more about her inspirations, goals and of course, her best beauty tips and advice.