Eva Alexandridis is the co-founder of 111SKIN, the luxury clinical skincare brand favoured by Lady Gaga, Margot Robbie, and Victoria Beckham, and stocked at Harrods, Selfridges, and Bergdorf Goodman. In this episode, Alexandridis joins Sir Richard Harpin to trace her journey from growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria, to working at Silicon Valley startups during the dot-com boom, to co-founding 111SKIN, the doctor-driven skincare brand, with her husband plastic surgeon Dr. Yannis Alexandridis, in London.
Alexandridis reveals why she refused to sell 111SKIN anywhere but her husband's Harley Street clinic for the first few years, and what changed her mind after years of resisting outside investment, leading her to agree to Estée Lauder taking a minority stake. She shares her advice for founders on patience, scaling, and avoiding the "fast beauty" trap and reflects on treating every failure as a learning opportunity. Alexandridis also explains why she deliberately avoided over-extending the luxury brand into too many stores or too large a product range, focusing instead on experiential treatments in luxury hotel spas. Alexandridis learns from her mentor Angela Ahrendts, mentors other beauty founders, including Aman Essentials' Kristina Romanova, and believes mentorship is a two-way street.
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