Phelan gets teeth into Cork clinics
SERIAL entrepreneur Pat Phelan’s Sisu chain of doctor-led cosmetic clinics has acquired The Teeth Whitening Clinic, which has two outlets in Cork city.
The deal comes ahead of expansion by Sisu here, with three new clinics set to open in Dublin and Belfast by the end of January, bringing the total to six opened in six months.
In the UK, the fast-growing firm will initially open a small number of its ‘Starbucks of cosmetic clinics’ in a number of cities including Manchester, Newcastle and Liverpool.
Revenues at the firm — which Phelan founded with fellow Corkmen, doctors Brian and James Cotter — are understood to have exceeded expectations, having grown faster than those at either of his previous businesses in their first six months. Sisu raised €1m in seed funding in May from some of the founders’ friends and family, as well as others including a senior Dublin property mogul, Silicon Valley Bank’s Barry O’Brien, PCH Technologies founder Liam Casey and Voxpro founders Linda and Dan Kiely.
Teeth whitening made sense as an addition to the business because it naturally complements lip enhancements, Phelan said. The acquisition will add five employees to Sisu.
In May, Phelan said he intended it to have opened 100 clinics in the UK and Europe by 2022, and that the US would be the next natural market to tackle. The global market for injectable fillers and treatments alone is worth $9bn (€7.9bn) he said, of which Sisu could perhaps capture between $200m (€175m) and $500m (€438m) of revenues.
Phelan sold payment fraud detection firm Trustev to TransUnion for $44m (€38.6m) in late 2015, and previously started telecoms firms Cubic Telecom.