Talking to… Katie White

The skin studio owner and beauty school founder tells Ellen Cummings about her passion for affordable, bespoke skin treatments and the importance of realistic business goals

Katie White has all the makings of a beauty industry legend, with two skin studios, a beauty school and a skincare brand under her belt before the age of 35 – and an incredible drive to achieve even more.

Her beauty career started in 2012, in a sales role for a luxury brand in London. “I was learning so much about the industry and I loved it, but it was a stressful experience,” she reflects.

Having moved from Somerset, White’s new city lifestyle combined with the pressures of hitting targets took its toll on her skin. She says, “I was suffering with acne, but I was also getting hives and eczema which I hadn’t had since I was a child.”

Working for a beauty brand, White had access to an unlimited amount of skincare – but when none of it was helping her skin issues, she turned to the professionals. “I started going to see different facialists in my price bracket and found they were either offering spa facials, which were lovely but weren’t addressing my skin issues, or they were very clinical and extraction-based and made my skin more inflamed. Then they’d do the hard sell and say, ‘If you buy these £300worth of products your skin will be better,’ and I was like ‘No, you haven’t heard me – I don’t need more skincare, that’s not the issue’.”

White went to her GP next, who offered her the choice between going on the pill or taking antibiotics. While she was disheartened by this generalised approach, it was a lightbulb moment. “I thought, ‘Why is nobody asking about my lifestyle?’ I realised there was a gap in the market for treatments that were affordable but still had a 360-degree approach. There are some incredible facialists out there doing that, but I didn’t have £400 spare to see them every two weeks to get the results I wanted.”

White went down to four days a week at her job while she trained as a nutritionist until she realised she wanted to do more. “The nutrition element is great because it helps with understanding what’s going on in the body. However, it has to be part of a 360-approach because skincare is so important and facialists have the power to do so much good.” This is when White left her sales job completely to train as a holistic therapist at the London School of Beauty and Make-Up.

Re:lax is born

White finished her training with a clear vision of how she wanted to implement her treatments, from the holistic approach and dedication to consultations and followups, to the accessible price point – but she initially struggled to find work.

“Salons wanted people who could do waxing, tanning, nails and brows but that just wasn’t me,” she explains, “The specialist facialist businesses also wouldn’t hire me because I didn’t have any experience.”

Instead, White decided to operate as a sole trader and her business, Re:lax, was born, but it still wasn’t smooth sailing. “I had no money, nowhere to work from and no clients. As a new therapist, you have no confidence or experience, so you’re grateful for anyone who will throw you a bone,” she says.

This led to White taking her first job at a wellness studio in East London, but the structure didn’t work for her. “I naively took a block booking, so I had hours every week that I had to fill and pay the rent for. I was going around flyering, trying to drum up business, but I never got it off the ground there.” White then discovered The Refinery fitness studio in Hackney, and they took her on as their facialist. Now she’d found a place to work from, White had to build up her clients – and luckily, she’d found a champion in The Refinery’s front-of-house staff. “She was such a big help in getting it off the ground; she would mention me to all the clients waiting to go into their classes and book them in on the spot, and it snowballed from there.”

White continued to graft, doing collaborations with brands and working for free at events to get her name out. “I started working at other treatment rooms and was travelling all over London with my little bag,” she says. “It got to the stage where the rent exceeded what I could rent my own place for.”

Studio setup

After deciding to take the plunge and set up her own premises, White spent a year looking for the perfect location without realising it was closer than she thought. “The first Re:lax studio is opposite the flat where I was living; it was there the whole time and I didn’t know,” she laughs.

The studio is housed in the Gossamer City Project, where entrepreneurs rent container units. White started off with one unit there but now has six. “I’d found the space, but it wasn’t fitted out yet, and I’d given notice at all of the studios but didn’t have a new space to work from, so I was in limbo. By this point I’d built up a substantial client base so I turned my flat’s spare room into a treatment room,” she says.

Despite initial concerns about clients not wanting to see her in her ho, the business continued to grow, and White was working six days a week while she waited to get into the studio. During this time, she also launched Re:lax Skin School – a VTCT, Babtac and ABT-accredited beauty school – which she originally ran from her living room. Two of the students on that course became her first therapists, and the three of them started working together at Gossamer City when the studio was ready.

White had to think outside the box to generate more business, collaborating with other therapists and yoga teachers, performing express facials and inviting journalists for treatments – earning Re:lax press coverage in Time Out, Sheerluxe and Vogue.

Recommendations were crucial to Re:lax’s initial success, and White maintains that it’s still the best form of marketing for her today: “There’s nothing more wonderful than when we ask clients how they heard about us and they say their sister or best friend recommended us. It’s the biggest compliment.”

Finding a niche

White believes that Re:lax’s point of difference from other skin-focused businesses is its accessible price point and whole-body approach. “Our approach has always been bespoke person-centric, not product-centric treatments. That is our USP,” she says.

“We never assume anything about a client. Someone might come in presenting with acne, but it might actually be the best their skin has been in 10 years. So, it would be really disheartening for them to go into a treatment and the therapist to say, ‘Oh, you have a lot of acne and it’s quite bad.’ I know this because it’s happened to me. We listen to clients and gather information, doing a verbal and physical consultation so that we’re really getting to know their skin rather than doling out unsolicited comments or advice.”

White is also committed to education, with the majority of her days spent doing in-house training. When it comes to how she keeps Re:lax’s team motivated and committed, she says, “My team love their jobs and they take a lot of pride in their work, so that’s already half the battle. We also make sure that everyone’s always working towards something, so they have a goal.”

This education extends to clients, something which came about as a result of the Covid pandemic. Just before the first lockdown in 2020, White had expanded the Re:lax studio and taken on five new team members. As beauty businesses were forced to close, White decided to switch to an online business. She explains, “We put our all into making educational content and promoting the products on the online store. The store was doing well so I could afford to keep some of my team on to help me with the content.”

White launched a monthly subscription service called Re:lax Skin Society, where people paid to access exclusive content such as skin consultations and massage workshops. She explains, “Education is a core part of our brand and business, and Instagram and YouTube are perfect platforms to share what we’re all about.”

The online content kept clients engaged and ensured they came back to Re:lax when the lockdowns were lifted. The business continued to grow, and by 2023 White was ready for it to expand further. “The big jump came when we opened the second studio in Borough Yards. It was a big investment and a brand-new team but we had the capital and I wanted to bring our services to a different demographic.”

Business tips

White is quick to emphasise that Re:lax didn’t start as people see it today: “My advice to anyone who wants to start a business, is to start at the beginning – you don’t start with two salons and a team of 24 people.”

“9.4 out of 10 beauty businesses fail within the first three years, which is higher than the average rate of failure for new businesses,” she adds. “I think this is because the people setting up businesses in this industry are really passionate and have a vision of where they want to go, and that’s fantastic – but cash is king no matter what industry you’re in, so if you borrow or work beyond your means because you have a dream then it’s only ever going to end badly.”

She adds that it’s important not to rush things or take unnecessary risks. “It’s alright to start by renting a room a couple of days a week and building up your clients, then you’ll get to a point where you can’t service everyone, and you’ll know it’s time to risk taking on a bit more – but only once the clients are there and the cash is guaranteed. Otherwise, you put yourself in a very stressful situation. Ultimately, you could be the best therapist in the world but if you can’t pay your bills, it doesn’t matter.

“Don’t be discouraged if you’re not where you want to be. I think if you ask any business owner if they’ve reached their goal, the answer is no – that’s what keeps everybody going. There’s always something else that you want.”

Future plans

White says she would love to have salons in other parts of London and would even consider a franchise model in the future. However, as she’s seven months pregnant, she’s understandably postponed opening another salon location for a couple of years.

In the immediate future she wants to open treatment rooms for self-employed therapists to use. “Having rented rooms myself, I understand what therapists need and I think we have the skillset to provide this. The industry is changing – gone are the days when therapists were happy to spend their life working the same job for minimum wage, not getting to choose their hours and having no flexibility. It’s very common now for therapists to want to both employed and self-employed work to fit around their lifestyle.”

White is also planning to develop more professional products for Olixa, the skincare brand she acquired last year, as well as introducing new courses at Re:lax Skin School. “I’m so proud of Re:lax Skin School,” she adds. “We’ve trained hundreds of therapists, many of whom have gone on to start their own business using our three-pronged approach of lifestyle, skincare and nutrition. I just want to support the industry to keep growing and getting better.”