MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT
Beauty innovator i Sarah Brown
I WAS working in PR in my 20s when, out of the blue, my skin broke out in hives and became hyper-sensitive.
At a hospital dermatology department, I was told I had chronic urticaria, an auto-immune condition, and was given highstrength antihistamines.
Trying to keep my skin under control was a daily battle. I’d wake up and think: ‘Is it going to be a good or bad skin day?’
After moving to work in the wine industry in the States, I had a huge flare-up in a high-stress meeting. My boss said: ‘What’s happened to your face?’ I was mortified.
I started keeping a diary of what I’d eaten, how I slept and, crucially, what skincare I was using, and noticed a pattern in the ingredients I was reacting to.
Unlike the food industry, there is no regulation in the beauty industry controlling the use of terms such as ‘natural’, so there is a lot of mislabelling. I’d ended up with a bathroom of products claiming on the front to be ‘hypoallergenic’ and ‘organic’, but their ingredient lists were full of known irritants.
Back in London in 2007, in my garage I started blending creams with good remedial properties, such as rosehip and chamomile. Focusing on a few core (but puregrade) ingredients was better than having 94 in one formulation.
It took me two-and-a-half years to persuade the bank to lend me £25,000 to buy ingredients, build a website and start with six products. Natural skincare had a slightly homespun reputation back then, so I wanted the packaging to be sophisticated. Pai means ‘good’ in Maori (I’m half-Kiwi) and that sums up what I wanted the brand to be.
Today, we have a 12,000 sq ft factory in West London with 53 staff and are stocked in John Lewis and Bloomingdale’s in the States.
Our hero one-ingredient product is rosehip oil, which has amazing regenerative properties. Our products are certified organic, cruelty-free and vegan, and we won a Queen’s Award for enterprise in 2016.
Fifteen years ago, I just wanted effective skincare I could trust. The last antihistamine I took was on my wedding day. I thought: ‘This is the last time I use this crutch.’ And it was. Creating Pai was my way of taking back control.