Gym For Your Skin - From Treatment Couch to 10k

The first skin strengthening regime...

Hi my name is Helen Ritchie and I’m the founder of Gym For Your Skin. My healthy, vegan, clinically-active skincare is transforming millennial's skin because right now people are being mis-informed.  

We all think that washing, toning and scrubbing away at our skin improves problems. But it doesn't.

So, GFYS is a simple daily pro-active skincare routine that gives you strong, fit skin without the stress. That’s the key difference between GFYS and other skincare brands. We strengthen skin. Others advocate products that weaken it.

Alone, I’m taking on traditional norms. If I can re-educate even a small sector of a market worth billions and improve as many millennials self-esteem that I can, then that will be a big achievement.

I’d like to ask for your help to accelerate the brand story, stop so many people following weak habits and get the nation SKIN FIT!

From treatment couch...

I’ve trained with the best cosmetic doctors, worked with many faces and brands (luxury ones, natural, scientific, budget, clinical and high-street ones) and the one thing I discovered that’s common to all, is that WEAK skin (and the PRODUCTS THAT WEAKEN IT) are the #1 cause of bad skin. And this means more cash to buy even more skincare (you get the picture?)

...to 10k faces

After I secured a listing with QVC, I obviously celebrated a little. 600 beauty brands pitch to QVC each year and they list only 1%. 

I launched the range on two of their multi-shows 20 months ago. We sold £500 per minute from a standing start, achieving £10k sales in 20 minutes.

Stage 2 

After the success of QVC live, we went on to partner with QVCs TILI beauty discovery box, and sold 8k units.

We’re ready for our next stage, which is growth of our brand communications and our retail footprint.

We've upgraded our website, have our own blog, created a skin type quiz and a loyalty scheme.  We’ve educational material at the ready. We’ve found the right tone of voice on social media and are gathering more case studies.  We have a listing with David Lloyd clubs in the pipeline and we’ve had initial discussions with Superdrug. Between January and March 2020 we partnered with 3 independent salons/clinics.

Time for extra power

I love Tom Hanks quote about his ’13 year, overnight’ success.

Like Tom and skincare itself- there are no overnight successes. 

I’ve come a long way solo but I’ve a long way to go. It’s time to hire.

How you can help

With help from you guys, your friends, family and other people who love to help small business, I’ll be able to manufacture 10k sachets to sample and seed direct and clinic sales, make our first hire and engage an interim account manager/ agent for new business.

10k sachets of one product = £3k (made in partnership with a UK manufacturer)

£14k will help cover one salary and an interim account manager while sales incubate. 

Brand champions 

Making a leap to recruiting people is the hardest thing to do in any small business because you need a fast return on investment.  Your financial support will make this leap possible and also help create jobs.

For brand communications, I would like to hire Katie. (Pictured here). 

Katie is creative, our target market, and a social whizz. She would take ownership of our social media and content, advertising, events, collaborations, influencer marketing to help build our voice, followers and engagement with the brand. Ideas come quickly and naturally to her. Katie is currently available and timing is everything.

To grow our account footprint and develop new accounts, I would like to employ an interim sales agent who has experience in growing skincare brands from scratch and has an established network. We are looking to secure 10 accounts in the next 5 months.

With 10 accounts in place the business will be able to sustain these 2 incomes.

Selling through our current retail stock.

Covid 19 means salons and clinics are still closed.  I need to double my business development activity and can do this with an extra person, also secure high-street visibility for the brand and move our stock as quickly as we can. We need it to be on girls faces, doing good (and not in our warehouse).

We are up against brands with big budgets and celebrity skincare but we have a good story and everything in place to move forward. We can’t out-spend others but we can proliferate our unique strength message.

About Gym For Your Skin

GFYS borrows more than just its name from the gym. Great results are rarely seen in a single session. But when you look at it like joining a skin gym, with daily practice your skin can get into its best shape within a few weeks.

GFYS is a gym in a Jar if you like.

It takes a David to stand up to Goliath

Millennial girls with low skin confidence are naturally less keen to switch away from well-known and celebrity brands. We know with sampling, more communications and professional recommendations that more girls might just go for it.

We’d love to see girls go for it, in a ‘go for it’ kind of upbeat way, not rock-bottom way.

When professionals and consumers try GFYS they love it. We just need your help to bring our skin fortifiers to more businesses and more people’s kits.

A successful Crowdfunder will mean we can:

1. Manufacture and get FREE samples on 10k faces.

2. Create one communications role and amplify our story.

3. Fund an interim agent for new business while sales incubate.

4. Improve more girls self-esteem. Genuine healthy skin - made easy.

5. If we meet the first wave and go for stretch funding - then we’ll be able to make  a full-time sales hire and manufacture salon sizes and travel kits.

5 * Customer Reviews

I thought I was happy with my skincare regime...then I tried GFYS

Well - wow! I wasn’t expecting results so quickly.

The best cleanser EVER!

GFYS has changed my life.

So glad I found you and your amazing products at reasonable prices.

C-hit really made my skin brighter. I’ve already used up my first bottle!

Makes L*z E***e Cleanse and Polish look like Home Bargains.

Having tried endless night creams in my time I must say this is fantastic.

This is everything I have been looking for.

We need a supersize version!

Loving the WORKOUT! Highly recommend.

Truly re-hydrating and comforting

So so good. Wouldn’t use anything else now

Great. Really love how it makes my skin feel and look.

LOVE LOVE LOVE - it leaves my skin looking so bring and smooth.

This has been a saviour for my blemished skin.

Our target

To get our operation scaling I’ve set the target quite high but good people don’t come cheaply. And cheap people cost. 

In return, and to say thank you for your investment, I’ve created a programme of rewards that I hope will tempt you to pledge! Take a look, see what your investment will get you and please pledge if you can. 

Thank you so much for reading my story and I hope I can be in touch soon with news of a successful crowdfunder. 

Have a lovely day.

Helen