James Mishreki started as a professional poker player before turning to health tech.
James Mishreki suffered from acne as a teenager growing up in Northumberland. A debilitating period which dented his confidence, he was nicknamed ‘pizza face’ for a year as he went through NHS treatments. It then returned in his 20s and led to another round of medications.
When it came to the entrepreneur co-founding dermatology service Skin + Me in 2018, Mishreki “knew how badly people wanted to get rid of acne”. In four years, the British firm, which provides skin treatment on prescription-grade subscriptions, accrued near £40m revenues since launch in 2020.
“I became fascinated in the skincare industry, this £140bn industry with 55% customer dissatisfaction,” he says. “I knew what it was like to go through the acne journey and it’s not like you can talk to your dermatologist on a regular basis.”
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We first talk through Mishreki’s early career, which comprised two years of playing poker professionally after completing his marketing management studies at Northumbria University in 2008.
Having tinkered with a few web-based startups, co-founding retail intelligence outfit Competitive Monitor led to him quitting poker full-time to join the booming e-commerce sector.
An idea was forged on scraping websites which could index and package to customers including John Lewis, which would use its information software to keep tabs on rivals’ pricing.
The Skin + Me co-founder has a unique philosophy on ‘rejection training’.
For a long period Mishreki paid himself £500 per month, but as one of the first movers the company didn’t double down on being enterprise first or raising private equity. “We ended up competing with bedroom operators in Russia and being undercut on price,” he admits.
After successfully exiting in 2018, Mishreki worked with co-founder Philip Wilkinson in setting up a personalised skincare recommendation service called Mr & Mrs Oliver, primarily to test what consumers valued and wanted.
Mishreki ventured to Space NK and Debenhams where he would chat to skincare advisors and ask if they wanted to earn extra money working on his startup.
Consumers were sent a treatment box for their skin goals and the founders learned that people placed high value on having credible specialists reviewing consultations and making recommendations.
Mishreki admits the business model was “flawed”. Shipping third party skincare products, consumers would then find cheaper brands elsewhere. However, the founders’ goal to build a personalised regime had been born, which proved a complex operation to set up.
The company only uses real Skin + Me community members in its marketing.
Skin + Me had to build a regulatory-approved pharmacy, set up personalisation technology for prescriptions and create a brand “people loved and trusted”. Meanwhile, the founders set about seeking skilled consultants by sending over 200 handwritten letters to a third of the UK’s dermatologists.
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