11 minute read
Self Made By Clare Lamberth
SELF MADE By Clare Lamberth
Natalie Papadopoulos, of Clovelly’s The Parlour Room, has always loved helping women realise just how beautiful they truly are and her latest luxury destination clinic, SELF by The Parlour Room, is no exception.
Advertisement
From doing her friends makeup before high school parties, to honing her craft at specialists salons across Sydney, Natalie has always believed true beauty comes from feeling confident and comfortable in your own skin.
Originally having studied makeup and special effects, after six years working, Natalie decided to go back and continue studying beauty therapy. Instantly falling in love with it, Natalie realised she wanted to combine these two passions.
In 2012, at just 24 years of age, an opportunity came up too good to refuse, and The Parlour Room was born.
With a vision to create an inclusive and caring space where clients could come to relax and spoil themselves, Natalie had a mission to create a luxurious experience for clients, surrounded by a supportive, positive and empowering community. The Parlour Room’s flawless manicures and spray tans are adored by Sydney’s eastern suburbs clients and people of influence. Following the salon’s extensive renovation in 2018, which included tripling its size and the addition of a private events suite, Natalie was still experiencing more bookings than The Parlour Room could accommodate.
creating a sister salon for face and body pampering, and after months of renovations the new space. Self by The Parlour Room was born, opening in July 2020.
“This is a huge moment for us” says Natalie, “extending The Parlour Room brand and giving our clients another destination for beauty and relaxation. The new salon is a luxury experience for people to indulge their skin, body and mind and invest in the ultimate self care.”
Self by The Parlour Room is an extension of The Parlour Room brand. Self is a space dedicated to relaxation focusing on the skin, mind, body and self. A space to relax, indulge and look after yourself. This concept salon offers clients a luxurious experience where they are invited to look after their skin, their mind, their body, their self.
Self by The Parlour Room is a deeper level of beauty and wellness experiences offering an extensive menu of over 13 luxe facials, plus decadent full body treatments and restorative infrared sauna sessions.
It’s inspired European interiors, with a calm neutral palette and playful shapes such as scallops and curves bringing depth and texture. Architectural finishes range from marble, timber, onyx and stone and four large treatment rooms lead off from the hall, each with their own one-of-a-kind design.
The salon will stock premium skincare brands OCosmedics, Sodashi Skincare and is Australia’s first and exclusive stockist of US clinical skincare line, iS CLINICAL.
Self’s Facial Menu doesn’t disappoint either, featuring 13 individual Facials treatments including the Australian first “Fire & Ice Facial” by iS Clinical, and Glow & Go. Body doesn’t miss out in this luxury spa escape, with top-to-toe body treatments including Crystalus massage, a physical body therapy with the sensory energy of ancient Australian crystals and full body Marine Wraps, which will have you floating back to Positano sipping Aperol Spritz by the Sea.
Unlike many day spas which only feature body and massage sessions as packages, SELF offers each body treatment as a stand alone appointment encouraging its clients to make these deeply restorative sessions a regular routine. Boasting one of the most luxurious infra red saunas, Self provides guests with the detoxifying, oxygenating & immune boosting benefits to compliment any treatment, accomodating private bookings up to 3 people (in line with COVID 19 guidelines).
Self by The Parlour Room truly is a space to relax, indulge and look after yourself. Natalie has ensured the calming beauty is positioned firmly alongside The Parlour Room as one of the jewels in Sydney’s crown of go-to destination luxury skin escapes.
SELF by The Parlour Room is located at 1/210-212 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031. www.theparlourroom.com.au
> FEATURE Prin-cess of skin! By Clare Lamberth
Jazmin Camelleri is a Skin Therapist and Entrepreneur on a mission to shake up the Professional Skincare industry. Building her empire at a great speed of knots in the midst of a global pandemic, Jazmin and her skincare brand, Prin, are meeting the needs of both her own clients and hundreds of clinics around Australia with her innovate approach to business and professional facial therapies.
TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF. HOW DID YOU ENTER THE INDUSTRY AND WHAT FIRST DREW YOU TO BECOMING A SKIN THERAPIST?
I’d worked across a number of different sectors before I entered the Skin Industry. I had always been drawn to it from the time I was young; pulling off scabs and investigating what was underneath, and regularly burning holes in my skin, treating pimples with metho! Even though I perused a corporate career, there was always something inside me that kept whispering to me that I had another path. It wasn’t until I was in my late 20’s that I decided to study Beauty Therapy. After having my first child I used an exit payment (along with a loan from my mum) to buy a run down salon & convert it into my own space. It was then that I realised it was “Skin Health” that I was my true path, and everything evolved from there.
WHAT ARE SOME TREATMENT PHILOSOPHIES YOU HOLD DEAR TO YOUR HEART WHEN TREATING CLIENTS?
I trust what I see, not what I am told. The human body, and specifically the skin, is incredibly complex and still very undiscovered. So, whilst much of the education is geared around the known (for good reason), that doesn’t mean that an alternative approach can’t be true. It just means we don’t know until we try. Over the years I have been shown approaches to skin that I have been told work, the ‘selected’ science supports it, and yet – I’ve seen it not work. Or I’ve been told something is bad for the skin, again it makes sense in theory that it ‘could’ cause an adverse response, and yet I’ve seen it produce amazing results. The key here is what I have been ‘told’ and what I have ‘seen’ are often opposing. I guess my philosophy is not to pigeon hole yourself to any philosophy, trust what you see, stay in awe of the skin, and maintain a variety of approaches for different skins needs. Secondly, no organ works in isolation – and the skin is an organ. Gut health plays an instrumental role in skin health, and therefore needs to have some bearing on our scope of practice. If you are not incorporating gut health into skin health, you are not working with all of the skin. This means that if you have been working with a client for months and not getting really good results, you need to stop taking your clients money, time and hope. Not just a reduction in inflammation and an improvement in healing, because that is skin therapy 101, but actual tangible results. I’m now at a point where I know in my first consultation with a client whether to refer them on or not, and I don’t work with anyone I can’t add significant value to. There is an abundance of information available from super smart industry gurus and great nutritional ranges for our industry to
leverage. It’s time to lean in to gut if you haven’t already.
YOU’RE A MUM OF 2 ALSO, HOW DO YOU JUGGLE BUSINESS & MUM LIFE?
How do I juggle? I don’t. Everything is a constant trade-off, and nothing is done well. When my kids were babes, I could work until the early hours of the morning and survive the next day on coffee. And whilst I wasn’t an overly present or patient mother during the day, I could get away with that routine to an extent. Then as the kids got older, they really needed us to show up as parents, and I wanted to be there, which meant something had to give. Not to mention that I became completely one dimensional and lost who I was as a person. So, a few years ago I pulled back on driving my clinic and put it into cruise mode with my team at the helm. The plan was to pick it up again when both kids were at school (which was this year). Then Prin happened and we were back in the fire pit again, everything stretched to the limits, waiting for something to give. We tried Nannies, doing the before and after school thing, countless routines, but the kids didn’t thrive, and we didn’t want to live this way. My partner Scott has just left his 9-5 job to come work for Prin & give our family the consistency it needs when I can’t be there. This means the kids will have one of us around all the time, our lives will slow down. The house will be in routine, Prin will pick up Senior Management experience from Scott, and I will be able to give the time to BOTH my businesses and then come home and have time for my family (and myself). Without a proper support system, juggling all this is an impossible task.
TELL US ABOUT PRIN AND HOW IT ALL START?
I was using an alternative skincare brand in my own clinic, when after moving locations I suddenly encountered a distribution issue where they were no longer in a position to supply my salon. I had built my entire business around this brand, and now I was face with no longer having it. It was a cornerstone moment in my life & in business for me. I sought out alternative masks on the market, and trialed alternative therapies, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, nothing worked the way that I wanted to. I decided I had to make my own solution. Product development was a huge process. I was heavily involved in every step. I worked alongside an accomplished cosmetic chemist and we trialed umpteen versions of the mask. Prin is proud to be Australian made and owned, from someone who has worked hands on in the industry, is made ethically with free range albumen, and showcases local botanical ingredients. Our branding is fun and modern, and we threw the traditional distribution model out the window, along with the rules on how people interact with our brand. Our retail products can be purchased without ‘prescription’ which opens the door for more people to experience the brand. Overall, Prin is accessible, which is a win for skin!
HOW HAVE YOU MANAGED THE EARLY YEARS OF A NEW START-UP?
Fail hard and fail fast right?! Every teething issue that could happen in the first 12 months, happened. Packaging issues, supply issues, manufacturing issues, raw ingredients discontinued, formulation changes, distribution errors, trade mark rejections… and we have one product. One! Then on top of that we grew FAST and didn’t have the resources to allow us to adapt as we went. We tried to slow our growth down but it’s a tricky balance. We want to promote so that our stockists are doing well, but we don’t want to because we haven’t been in a position to take on anymore demand. Despite the hits in the first year, I’m thrilled about the education I’ve received, and I’m super excited for the next chapter. It’s a new ball game now.
HOW HAS THE BRAND GROWN DURING THESE FIRST FEW YEARS?
We announced Prin in December 2018 and came to market 3 months later. The brand enjoyed excellent brand awareness from the get-go. I didn’t realise, prior to creating Prin, that salons were literally waiting for someone to come along and do what I’ve done – create a stand-alone, professional mask treatment, that delivers phenomenal results, and was accessible to any clinic. TICK! – All we had to do was tell people about it. We knew that once the industry were aware of our brand, they would share it and we’ve grown and grown from there.
WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE THE BRAND?
My original vision was just to create a one-off product for my clinic and my clients, but almost immediately I had to change that as Prin just exploded onto the Australian professional skincare market with such success. Over the past 12 months I’ve been sent opportunity after opportunity. It’s been really hard to let a lot of that go, but the timing for me just wasn’t right. Then came the 1st Covid shutdowns, and that created the most perfect storm for me. My businesses were all but closed which gave me time and space, and home self-care was booming, specifically ‘IT’ masks and A-beauty. I see two options for Prin. Stay local and build out a range or tweak our current offer and chase international distribution. Our strategy is the latter. I can also see some collaborations in the future too. I love the idea of working with other Australian brands, both in skincare and across categories.
