Brand view

Skin Rewired

As Skin Authority expands into the UK and Europe, founder Celeste Hilling tells Eve Oxberry how a tech background and a focus on therapists have shaped a business built on prevention and long-term relationships

Celeste Hilling’s route into skincare didn’t follow the usual pattern. Before launching Skin Authority, she was running global software business Compaq, working in AI long before it became part of everyday conversation.

“I grew up with AI and all the technology you see today,” she says. “I designed and engineered for it.” That background informs how she approaches the business now. But the turning point came from somewhere far removed from tech.

“At the time I had some family members who were stage four cancer… all at the same time,” she says. Working closely with clinicians through her role as co-chair of the advisory board at Scripps Hospital in California, Hilling began trying to understand what connected their diagnoses.

“All of their cancers were different,” she says, “but they all were vitamin D deficient.”

The condition had a hereditary element, something she only fully grasped later. “It’s a genetic condition. I didn’t know that I’d passed it on to my daughter because we didn’t have genetic testing back then,” she says. “You have a very different lens when you look at prevention for someone you love.”

A problem worth solving

What followed was a period of intense learning, speaking to immunologists and oncologists, trying to understand a system that most consumers rarely think about. “Vitamin D is made in the skin… and it turns on and off our immune system,” she says. “I thought, if I don’t know much about this, I’m guessing the average person doesn’t,” she says.

The first product Skin Authority developed came directly out of that thinking, a patented topical form of vitamin D designed to support the skin’s ability to produce it.

“That was the problem I set out to solve… selfishly, for people I loved,” she says. Over time, the focus broadened. “My goal is to be an evangelist for educating people so no one ends up where we are,” she says.

Now, Skin Authority is preparing to grow in the UK and Europe, with Hilling set to introduce the business to the market at Professional Beauty London this October. After building the brand over two decades in the US — alongside select international partnerships — the focus is now on establishing a broader professional network. For Hilling, the timing reflects a shift in how clients are approaching treatments and skincare, with greater emphasis on consultation, personalisation and longevity. It’s a model Skin Authority has built its business around since it was founded.

Technology as infrastructure

Hilling’s earlier career remains visible in how the business is built. Skin Authority was set up in 2005 and had a digital focus from the start, something she says the industry hadn’t prioritised at that time.

“We started with a multimillion dollar cloud-based backend. There’s no skincare companies that invested in that,” she says. That system has evolved into an AI-driven platform used across salons, spas and clinics.

“We’ve built an AI platform that lets somebody sit in a chair take an image of themselves, and the AI analyses your skin health,” she says. From there, it can recommend products and treatments from the range.

However, the therapist remains central to that process, using AI to back up their own expertise and increase sales. “We use technology to scale the professional. Not to scale the professional out of the equation,” she adds.

Keeping value with the therapist

That same thinking shapes how the brand is distributed. Skin Authority is only available through professionals, with no push into open retail or discount-led online channels.

“If you want everybody just to come to your website and buy, guess what’s going to happen? They’re also shopping every other website in the world,” she says. Instead, the focus is on long-term relationships between client and therapist, supported by digital tools that extend beyond the treatment room.

“We have over five years’ purchase history with the average consumer,” she says. “That’s unheard of in skincare.”

Supporting that model requires infrastructure, so marketing content, training and education are built into the partnership. “Most of our partners don’t have any marketing pros or any budget,” she says. “So we provide that. We give them ready-made social content, email campaigns and education they can use as their own.”

The line on longevity

While many Skin Authority therapists shout about the brand’s connections to longevity and health, Hilling is careful about how those claims are framed. “We’re not prescribers, we’re about prevention,” she says. “What we’re here to say is, for example, ‘have you ever tried a topical vitamin D? You’ve been telling me you can’t sleep, you have night sweats… why don’t you try it and see if it helps you?’,” she says.

The rest tends to come from experience. Therapists using the products themselves, clients feeding back over time, and those observations shaping how the products are recommended.

“We don’t make medical claims, we say, ‘look, we have things that have the potential to help. Let's try them and see if they help but at a minimum, when you're vitamin D sufficient in your skin, 72% of your dermis is collagen, so at a minimum, we're a great skincare product – and if you happen to get a health side effect then great,” she adds.

Raising expectations

The wider market is under economic pressure, and Hilling is realistic about what that means. “The days of just providing a fluff service and charging for it… they’re not there anymore,” she says. “People only care about one thing – what’s in it for them.”

That’s the shift Hilling is responding to as Skin Authority looks to expand into the UK and Europe, a market facing many of the same pressures as the US. For therapists, it places more weight on consultation and explaining the ‘why’ behind what they do, to build lasting relationships with clients.