Skincare industry runs in the family for Auckland beauty therapist
Monday, 15 June 2026
The Small Business Project is a weekly series that shines the spotlight on Kiwi small businesses doing interesting and unusual things in their industries.
Skin therapist Nandika Singh, founder of Auckland-based acne clinic Skin Atelier, started her small business at 23. After eight years and now employing two staff, Singh - a third generation beauty therapist - tells Aimee Shaw how she is navigating challenging economic conditions, and about her dreams of expansion.
What has your venture set out to achieve?
Starting Skin Atelier for me was a lot to do with acne and how I personally went through my own struggles with it. The motivation for Skin Atelier was to open a clinic where I could work towards being a very specialised clinic and helping all ages through acne, because I’d been through it myself, it was kind of like an emotional thing for me.
I started the business eight years ago and operate a three-room studio clinic in Royal Oak, Auckland.
How much time and money have you invested?
To start the business, it cost less than $35,000, including treatment beds, salon equipment, stock and supplies. We were only able to do it on that budget because we DIY’d almost everything. My uncle is a plumber, so he took care of all the plumbing, my dad handled the handyman work, and my mum helped set up the clinic. When we moved into the One Tree Hill area about three years ago, where we did proper renovations. We’ve spent a lot of time, and a decent amount of money, on the business up until now.
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What’s the biggest challenge your business is facing?
The biggest challenge at the moment is how much there is on social media about skin and treatments and what people should do, and people go into this rabbit hole and they pick up all these different random ideas from people that are not experts in the industry, and they end up with really average results and being really disappointed. It's hard to navigate through that, because you have to also have a presence on social media. How do you differentiate between getting help to people versus them listening to people that don't know what they're talking about?
What’s the biggest issue impacting your industry?
It's definitely not the best place to be, in business right now. People have been cutting spending back a lot, with everything happening in New Zealand. All of the prices of products and supplies that we use internally are going up because of import prices, so that's been challenging, because then we have to raise our prices too. However, because we are so specialised in acne and because people do treat that as a serious skin condition versus like other treatments for vanity, we've been able to maintain our clients.
What’s next for Skin Atelier?
It would be really great if we could expand the business in terms of offering more days and hours, expand into a bigger team, and the biggest move would be opening another clinic within Auckland.
In three years’ time you will be …
Opening another clinic is within our three year plan. I’d like to explore having another clinic in either Botany or Manukau. I know there are a lot of South Asians in both areas. I'm South Asian so I know that a lot of South Asians do seek me out because they want specialist care for their skin. Being able to help in those areas would be amazing.
What’s one thing you wish you’d known before starting the business?
I was quite young, I was 23 years old, when I started. I started with a lot of passion and motivation, but I don't think I necessarily understood business in the way that I really should have at that time, and I should have sought it out. At the time, it was all very focused on getting the clinic going and let's see what we can do.
All of the prices were based off of what felt good and felt right, but I didn't actually have the knowledge about the numbers and what that should look like; what percentage of that was my profit versus expense. I operated my business in a way in that kind of a way for a really long time, and I realised I was working so hard and felt like we were making money, but couldn’t understand why it feel like we didn’t have money. I found an excellent mentor, and she helped me understand that I needed to break down every service to the last cent of how much it actually cost me, including putting a percentage of the lighting, the electricity, internet of every service, to know what it was really costing me. I wish I knew that from the start, because I could have pushed so much further than I have already. That's how you really get to know your business.
Most helpful piece of advice you have ever received?
From my mum and my grandma, and it's a really funny, unhinged piece of life advice, translated into English: “Take the leap, because you'll make it work, because you are able and you're smart, you know what you're doing, and because you're an ethical business owner, it'll always work out for you”. My grandma said it to my mum, and my mum always says it to me.
If you would like your business to feature in The Small Business Project, email Aimee Shaw at aimee.shaw@stuff.co.nz