Empowering Beauty Professionals Worldwide.

By Louise May

SkintifiX was born out of a dream to create amazing careers for incredible therapists in the beauty industry. Something Robyn McAlpine, the visionary behind the brand, craved as an employee herself.

With a passion for fostering growth and empowerment, Robyn sought to establish a workplace that allowed individuals to flourish, tapping into their natural gifts and talents. As the founder and driving force behind SkintifiX, Robyn has always prioritised providing her team with everything they need to thrive in the treatment room, from top-of-the-line equipment to comprehensive training and ongoing support.

This commitment to empowering others has remained the cornerstone of the business, even 15 years on, guiding Robyn through both the triumphs and challenges of leadership. Inspired by her enduring vision, Robyn’s aspirations have expanded beyond the confines of her salon, reaching towards a goal of transforming the careers of 100,000 beauty therapists worldwide.

Through initiatives like the Skinside Out Squad, her book, and therapist resources, as well as her future endeavours with Transforming Beauty, Robyn is poised to make a lasting impact, inspiring and supporting therapists as they step into their authority and leadership within the industry.

Beauty Biz Editor Louise May chats with Robyn McAlpine about her vision, the growth of SkintifiX, her deep love for education and her recent ABIA win of Australian Salon/Spa/Clinic of the Year for 4 Treatment Rooms or Less.

SkintifiX has achieved remarkable success, both in business growth and industry impact. What do you attribute this success to?

The short answer is sheer grit and determination most of the time! I was somehow gifted with a “never give up” attitude and one I’ve become more and more grateful for as business doesn’t really get any easier, we just become more resilient and equipped as the years go on.

The longer answer is having a healthy relationship with risk and a willingness to fail, and sometimes publicly. Whilst everyone sees the wins, there’s a whole lifetime of failures in my wake of each success.

To lead you have to be willing to go first and for many firsts, like those you’ve seen and mentioned here- SkintifiX, the Squad, there are many iterations that didn’t stick that had just as much heart and soul poured into them.

I’ve learned a hundred ways it doesn’t work before figuring out the one that does. There’s no luck or “yes but it’s easier for her” ... I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks so there’s not a whiff of nepotism over here. Success is simply a matter of truly believing that my world will again turn towards the sun, tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

And a wise person recently told me, in the moments of highs and lows, it’s important to remember that things are rarely as bad or as good as they seem. They are usually somewhere in the middle and it’s important to have perspective.

Congratulations on your recent wins with the 2023 ABIA NSW/ ACT Salon/Spa/Clinic of the Year (4 Treatment Rooms or Less) and AUSTRALIAN SALON/SPA/CLINIC OF THE YEAR (4 TREATMENT ROOMS OR LESS)What other accolades or milestones have you celebrated over the last 12 months?

Winning the top honour at the 2023 ABIA’s has certainly been a highlight for us over the last year and it’s certainly an honour to be recognised by industry peers for the hard work and effort that goes into creating an amazing business.

We’ve realised it’s really important to look at the small things because it’s not every day you win a trophy but there’s always a win in every day (yes, even the hard days).

This year alone we’ve created two new roles for therapists on our team and have seen so much growth in the business that we’re opening an extra treatment room to accommodate more clients and create more careers.

We’ve welcomed another apprentice. Offering apprenticeships is very new to the business in recent years as we could see an opportunity to invest in each step of a therapist’s career, graduating them with high level skills beyond the traditional pathway.

Another exciting milestone was reaching the status of dermaviduals Platinum Partner, being in their top 3 salons in Australia. As a business we don’t push retail sales as our number one driver so hitting this milestone in a year that felt a little challenging was a testament to our skin consultation process and the connection we build with our clients.

Sustainability seems to be a core value at SkintifiX. How do you integrate environmental consciousness into your business practices?

For us, sustainability is not just about being environmentally conscious. That’s a given these days in incorporating waste management, responsible use of resources and recycling, reusing and minimising waste.

We work hard to find balance between sustainability in our environment with commercial viability in an industry that requires single use, health, and safety options. From the products that end up down our drains and into waterways, to the number of single use items that are walking out or front door, every impact we have has been considered.

We also look at being sustainable as a lifestyle that runs through every part of the business. From our time management to our longevity and wellbeing as therapists to the financial health and sustainability of the business.

We manage this with a team-first approach. Providing a safe and healthy workplace, balancing workload with rest and recuperation. Our focus has always been quality over quantity when it comes to how we schedule our day and schedule our clients.

Our business practice is about giving the team time to thrive and prepare and the time to understand the needs of each client and space and time to deliver it. Rushing and cramming clients in- it’s not sustainable in the long term, team burnout and also client fatigue is something we can manage with conscious practices and scheduling.

We also focus on financial sustainability- it’s so important to understand the numbers. If this is overlooked, everyone loses, our team, our clients, our community. So, we look at the financial sustainability of our business costs to ensure we are viable for the long term, something that has sustained us in the last few years as our industry has seen a complete shift in the habits of our clients.

The seasonal predictability is no longer there, and we are having to make adjustments to ensure the long-term health of the business.

Your commitment to staff training and development is evident. How does investing in your team contribute to SkintifiX’s overall success?

Having a confident team is everything to the success of SkintifiX. Our team is the face of the business as this is directly linked to the experience every client is going to have. From the moment they call the clinic- the interaction our customers have with our team is ultimately the experience the customers have with the business.

Having a well-trained team is the make or break of this. At SkintifiX we have a very heavy focus on skin education and training. We set ourselves apart as leading experts who will truly help our clients achieve skin results and the only way to truly live up to that is to invest in our team’s knowledge and growth.

Every week we close the business for 90 minutes to dedicate this time to training our team. To some this would look like lost productivity and a sacrifice to income for that time across the whole team, but this training commitment is vital to every other hour in the business.

By taking this time each week, we are ensuring that every single hour is more effective in the way we serve our clients.

SkintifiX has pioneered the “Skinside Out Squad” mentorship program. What inspired you to create this program, and what impact has it had on the industry?

It has been an honour to see the Skinside Out Squad grow and serve our industry on a global scale. Inspirations came as we were consistently approached by industry colleagues seeking career guidance, skin education support and mentorship in their own career growth.

It is evident in our industry the wide gap between education and execution. There are so many courses out there teaching the information, but we’re still struggling to successfully implement that in the treatment room.

There are still so many therapists lacking the confidence and struggling to convert customers into long term clients and create successful businesses.

If education alone was the answer, we’d all be thriving in the treatment room, bookings exploding, results radiating and cash flowing. But many therapists walk away from training still not quite sure how to turn that knowledge into said results.

There’s a missing link where education just isn’t translating into tangible success and it’s really stealing the confidence of therapists who invest in themselves but they’re not seeing it reflected in their day to day. This is where mentorship steps in.

Through the Skinside Out Squad, we have watched beauty therapists around the world transform their careers. By taking on the lessons shared in each mentoring session, we’ve seen therapists double their clientele, completely transform the way they retail to their clients and step into their leadership in the treatment room with confidence, all because we share our experiences and are here to help our industry thrive! We take that education and turn it into practical actions that will have a massive impact in the treatment room.

The past year has presented challenges for many businesses, yet SkintifiX has shown impressive resilience and growth. How have you navigated these challenges, particularly in terms of adapting your operational hours and increasing revenue?

Watching this global shift in our industry has been quite unnerving to say the least. The once predictable seasons and client behaviours are now a new world for everyone in our industry and navigating this has been a matter of trial and error as we learn the new “normal” for our industry.

The most pivotal moment for SkintifiX was when we stopped looking around and started looking within. We looked at what numbers we needed to maintain in order to sustain this shift in our client's booking and buying habits.

This is different for every business so instead of looking at what others were doing and taking solace in the fact it’s not just us and everyone is feeling it (that makes it too easy to assume it’s not our problem to fix) we looked at what our unique business specifically needed.

It’s easy to get a little complacent when you’ve been in business for as long as we have. We forget the things we did in the early years to build and connect with new clients.

This year we’ve been going back to the basics of doing what it took back in the beginning, revisiting some of our “start-up” promotions and coming at this new climate with the freshness and energy of someone starting out.

We are also looking much more closely at the numbers as our indicator of success.

One thing we teach in the Squad is that you cannot measure “warm fuzzies”, the feeling or the vibe. The “warm fuzzies” let you THINK you’re doing a good job (or not) but the numbers? They let you KNOW you’re doing a good job.

So, we have applied this approach with this shift in our industry. Instead of focusing on the quiet days as our measure of success or failure, we are looking at the numbers- because we might have weeks that feel quiet, but when we look at the numbers, we’ve still managed to generate revenue.

So, we are taking the facts and making our moves from there instead of joining in the collective pity party that can happen when we all focus on the feelings, instead of the facts.

Could you elaborate on SkintifiX’s approach to customer experience and why it’s a top priority for your business?

With a salon or two on every corner, our industry is heavily saturated, and clients have a plethora of choices when it comes to their beauty needs. Having a unique customer experience is such an important part of our SkintifiX success as a way of standing out and setting the standards. Our customer experience is far more than a nice facial and a cup of tea at the end.

Our client experience begins from the moment they first stumble across us on Instagram, to the moment they float out the door and the touch points to check in, in the days and weeks after their treatments. We call it the “loving embrace” in which we hold our clients long after their visit with us.

Having this mapped-out journey not only gives our clients the assurance that we’ve ‘got them’, they can see their plan and know that everything we do for them is intentional and focused on their needs and outcomes, it also helps us to keep track of every client in our care, ensuring that every touch point is unique.

This has been vital to the sustainability of the business over the last few years of unpredictability, helping us navigate testing times.

When things get tight, we double down on our customer experience and take care of the clients who have chosen to make their skin health a priority when life’s other expenses could have taken preference.

Yes, we still offer cosy beds and a cup of tea, but the customer experience extends beyond our services and into the lives of our clients in between their visits to our skin-saving haven.

What sets SkintifiX apart from other skin therapy clinics, particularly in terms of your consultation process and client relationships?

If you could see the smile, come across us as we type this answer we want to shout it from the rooftops that the skin consultation is EVERYTHING to the success of SkintifiX and is the standout service that sets us apart, creating the entire basis of the business.

Booking an entire hour for a skin consultation may seem absurd for most business owners, but let me tell you, if you perfect this process, and truly master the consultation, everything, and we mean everything else in your business will flow and grow!

However we realise that not all therapists and salon owners understand the specific outcomes of a consultation that gives these business-building results and that is why we teach it in our Consultations Masterclass. That’s how much we believe in it!

A great consultation builds unbreakable trust with your clients, it builds commitment to a treatment plan and that is the key to business success. Clients who are committed to a treatment plan, and who rebook and invest in their retail skincare are the exact clients a business can build a strong future with.

An incredible consultation process is what creates these kinds of clients and that’s one of the biggest keys to standing out.

By mastering our consultation process, this is how we have built a strong client retention along with life-changing results that make our business a standout amongst clients and industry peers alike, and it’s something we want every salon to be able to do.

Looking ahead, what are your future plans and aspirations for SkintifiX, both in terms of business and industry influence?

Even 16 years on, we still feel like there’s room for growth in everything we do. This year will see us expand from two rooms to three, allowing us to grow our team and create jobs for more amazing therapists to come join our team.

It also allows us to expedite the training of our apprentices, giving them more hands-on growth and learning with real clients in the treatment room.

This year we are taking an even bigger step into giving back through our industry. Yes, it started with therapist careers at SkintifiX, then the global Skinside Out Squad, mentoring others in our industry, but this very week of writing this, we are flying to India to expand a project we’ve been quietly working on for the past 8 years.

We know that our industry empowers women. Both those working in the industry through building a career and businesses that predominantly support the confidence of women, but also in providing skin solutions that also enhance self-confidence for all clients.

“Transforming Beauty” is the next iteration of contribution for both SkintifiX and The Skinside Out Squad. “Transforming Beauty” is teaching beauty therapy skills to girls and women rescued from human trafficking in India.

By giving these women transferable career skills to escape the cycle, we are also through the beauty industry, providing the skills for lifelong independence.

Not only are we making a financial commitment with profit from each business funding monthly teacher wages and resources for students, we have created an opportunity for our wider industry to give back and join us on upcoming “Transformation Tours” travelling to India and personally mentoring these budding beauty therapists.

I think we can safely say it will be a transformation for everyone involved.

@expert_skin_therapist @skintifix @skinsideout