Sabrina Tan, 49, knows insanity.

Fifteen years ago, the mother of two toddlers left a steady career in information technology (IT) and blew apart the status quo in the beauty and skincare industry filled with giant brands.   

The source of this insanity was a vision; the vision was of an all-white store with a multi-coloured bar.

Sabrina, then 34 years old, believed it was a vision from God to rewrite the narrative of beauty to embrace imperfection and celebrate the uniqueness of every person. 

Still, she wrestled with God over the calling.

“I’ve been a corporate executive in IT for the last 11 years. What do I know about starting a business?” 

God’s loving response to her was: “Don’t ask so much, just do it by faith. Like Moses.”

But Sabrina continued to fuss with God. “How do I start a business in an industry filled with big brands with deep pockets in a tiny market like Singapore?”

God won the wrestling match.

“It’s going to be an uphill task but, God, if you are with me, I’ll do it,” she conceded.

Sabrina, whose gentle speech belies an iron will, grabbed the vision by the horns and sank her heart and life savings into bringing it to life.

And that was the genesis of what Sabrina calls “insanity with a purpose”. 

The multi-coloured bar would be a place of conversations where women could have fun mixing cocktails of serums.

So in 2008, Sabrina founded Skin Inc, a David in an industry of Goliaths.

Skin Inc has since grown and spread to 78 cities in seven countries, selling through major retailers including Bergdorf Goodman, Nordstrom and Sephora. It is the first homegrown company with products distributed through beauty megastore Sephora. 

God of inspiration

When Sabrina first acceded to God’s vision, she and her two toddlers – then two and four years old – were suffering from eczema.

Her constant business travels during her IT years piled on a hefty weight of mum guilt to the frequent flareups of eczema.

Sabrina was a time-starved and frustrated consumer seeking a panacea for her affliction. But bottle after bottle of serums and creams only taunted with vain hope.

She collected so many bottles of dead dreams, she dubbed them her “vanity graveyard”.

There were so many options and no good choice.

“Why is it so hard? Beauty should be effortless and effective!” Sabrina wailed to herself.

The skincare industry was due for a reboot, she thought.  

Sabrina, like David, was going to take on that Goliath.

She started her journey in Japan – revered for its long history of innovation in skincare – to study formulations, delve into water quality and dissect the science behind skincare.

Leveraging her technology know-how, Sabrina hit on the idea of using encapsulation technology to encase active ingredients in capsules. These capsules would suspend in a hydration serum and burst on application to release the high-performing ingredients. 

Sabrina took the business digital, harnessing big data to offer personalised solutions for evolving skin.

The first customisable serum in Skin Inc’s fold was created.

Sabrina was going to make the business both personal and digital. 

Today, the company has a line of 10 serums that can be used on their own or blended as a personalised cocktail called My Daily Dose.

An interactive tool called the Skin Identity Check (Skin ID) guides users with a series of questions to diagnose their skin type and requirements before any recommendations are made. 

In keeping with the God-given vision, Sabrina created the white store with a bar of vibrant colours where women would have fun mixing their own cocktails of serums tailored to their skin. 

“Beauty is not skin deep,” Sabrina told Salt&Light. “I don’t want to just see good skin. I want to see wellbeing.”

For branding, Sabrina takes liberal inspiration from the Bible.

The skincare bar is arrayed in the colours of the rainbow, in remembrance of God’s promises.

My Daily Dose, the flagship customised serum is inspired by My Daily Bread.

She also added My Daily Dose of Armour and Skin Saviour Dose.

Building a business on bended knee

Today, Skin Inc is recognised as a disruptor in the skincare industry, leveraging big data to meet the needs of customers instead of offering a one-size-fits-all solution.

The early years, however, were fraught with risks and filled with tears, angst and loneliness. The business began in Sabrina’s own car porch.

The first order required a minimum quantity of 50,000 pieces of serum. Sabrina blew her life savings and took up loans to place that initial order, without knowing if she would sell even one bottle.

“This business is built on bended knees,” Sabrina recalled. “One really has to walk by faith.”

She was crying in her car porch after three bleak years. “On top of struggling with the founder’s dilemma of ‘Do I continue to invest?’, entrepreneurship is a very lonely journey.”

Sabrina often questioned God during that rough season, if she should be throwing in all her energy where giants ruled when she could turn her attention to her two little children.

She was averaging four hours of sleep and could find no solution for the skin problem they were struggling with. She was ready to call it quits.

Sabrina borrows freely from the Bible for branding.

But God brought people to fulfil the vision and mission He had for Sabrina.

A Christian brother in Japan granted her proprietary rights to the encapsulation technology that made possible the personalisation of the serums. Because of the technology, Sabrina could offer up to 200 cocktails of bespoke serums.

When Skin Inc needed funding for inventory to expand into Sephora, a strategic investor called unexpectedly, offering to put money into her business. “I was not even actively fundraising. How does this happen?” she exclaimed at the time.

To launch the brand, Skin Inc secured Korean actress Son Ye-Jin of Crash Landing on You fame. The wildly popular actress would be the first brand evangelist for the company.

On a random occasion in 2015, François Arpels, grandson of the co-founder of luxury brand Van Cleef & Arpels, walked past one of Skin Inc’s store. Arpels became the board advisor of brand and strategy before recently moving into a more consultative role.

“This is mind blowing, how someone his calibre just chances on my store and eventually gets involved,” Sabrina said.

She also convinced Dr Shekhar Mitra, who used to run product innovation for personal care giant Procter & Gamble, to collaborate with Skin Inc. The scientist, with whom Sabrina used to work, examined and determined the ingredients that played a pivotal role in propelling Skin Inc to a brand with 150 skincare awards. 

Even behind the scenes – for instance, conducting random quality checks on products – Sabrina saw God’s hand guiding her.

In a warehouse filled with thousands of boxes, for example, Sabrina would ask God to point out the box she should check and inevitably, she would pick a box that had defects that needed to be fixed.

“My son used to laugh and say God was scanning for me,” Sabrina chuckled. “I’m so busy so I always ask God to supplement me for the things I cannot see.”

On a few occasions when sales in new markets came in slower than expected, even pre-believing staff at Skin Inc would pray with Sabrina for God to rescue the business.

On others, when delays in shipment became untenable, Sabrina would pull her supplier in to pray and the situation would turn around.

“How can it be anyone other than God?” she marvelled.

A virus brings new life

In 2020, just as Skin Inc was glowing, Covid swooped in and shut down more than 200 retail outlets around the world.  Sabrina thought that was the end of the business.

“My staff was still on payroll, the rent needed to be paid. What was I going to do?”

Sabrina was at her wits’ end. Remarkably, sales online jumped 400% during the pandemic to hit seven figures.

“How does this happen if not for the hand of God?” she concluded.

As Sabrina was sitting alone in the office one day during the pandemic, God dropped into her heart an idea of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) could reboot and power up the business. The tech-savvy entrepreneur lost no time in developing a mobile app. 

The app enables a precise reading of skin health, which in turn gives a reading of mental and body health. The app boosted users of the Skin ID to 1.5 million, providing big data that enables and speeds up innovation.

My Daily Dose 

In the 15 years since the Skin Inc started, Sabrina has gained renewed strength through God and learn to lean in on Him.

“He really is my daily manna, my daily dose of strength to keep going.”

Whether she does well from this day on, today is already a testament of God’s faithfulness, Sabrina said.

“The process alone is the testimony – there were so many challenges that were turned into blessings.” 

Sabrina turned to God in 1998 when she received a bookmark with Psalm 23. Working in IBM then, she did a search on the Internet on how to accept Christ and found the sinner’s prayer, which she read out loud in front of her computer.  

Sabrina’s mother had suffered from a stroke then and a Christian sister accompanied them often to the frequent hospital visits.

Sabrina was struck by the love the friend had for her and her mother, so when the friend invited her to church, Sabrina went. When a coworker gave her bookmark with Psalm 23, Sabrina was ready to give her life to Jesus. 

Sabrina celebrates a life she considers successful, not because of her commercial achievements, but because of her growth as an individual.

“I have a beautiful family, a community of friends I truly love and I’m able to give back to,” she said. 

Through World Vision, Skin Inc adopted 100 young girls in disadvantaged communities to provide education. She also carves out time to journey with young female entrepreneurs navigating the rough terrain of startups. 

Making it a point to share her faith journey with fellow entrepreneurs and church friends, she believes they have been encouraged by the knowledge that unless God builds the house, we will all labour in vain. (Psalm 127:1) She has even seen her non-believer friends start praying through hearing her testimony of the “blessings and angels” on her journey and how “His anointment of the clarity of path has granted me wisdom and mercy many times over”.

“This insanity has to come with a purpose. Everybody can do a  startup. But one has to have the end goal in mind to finish strong,’ Sabrina Tan, CEO and Founder of Skin Inc.

In her own life, the education from God has taught her precious lessons on the journey that have become guiding principles for Sabrina’s business and life:

• Be authentic. “Authenticity in loving people and staying true to self is very important.”
• Be kind. “Grace and kindness triumph over being right. There will always be someone smarter than you. Be humble.”
• Add value. “If one cannot create value, one cannot impact life. Then don’t waste your life doing it.”  
• Be purposeful. “This insanity has to come with a purpose. Everybody can do a  startup. But one has to have the end goal in mind to finish strong.”

“Whatever God wants you to do, do it no matter how crazy it seems,” Sabrina encouraged.

“I want to give my best in life because one never knows when a day could be one’s last on earth. I’m giving my best effort to my Maker.” 

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