Pai Skincare

Sarah Brown founded Pai Skincare in 2007, working out of a converted garage with around $30,000 of her own savings. The push behind it was personal: she’d developed chronic urticaria in her mid-twenties, spent years cycling through products marketed as “hypoallergenic” and “organic” that turned out to be loaded with synthetics and irritants, and eventually decided to just formulate something herself. The name comes from her mother, who’s from New Zealand; “Pai” means “good” or “goodness” in Māori.

From there Pai built its identity around doing things the harder way. Rather than outsourcing production, the brand formulates and manufactures everything itself out of a custom-built facility in West London, which is unusual in an industry where most brands lean on third-party labs. That in-house model, paired with Soil Association organic certification, Vegan Society accreditation, and Leaping Bunny cruelty-free status, became core to how Pai positioned itself. It got recognition too, including a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2016 and a “First Woman in Manufacturing” award for Brown at the CBI First Women Awards in 2015. The brand eventually reached shelves in more than 50 countries.

Ownership shifted more than once over the years, though. Famille C Participations, the investment arm of the Courtin-Clarins family, first invested in Pai, then took a majority stake in 2023. Roughly four and a half years after that initial investment, the family sold the brand on to HSNF, a beauty group whose portfolio already includes Mylee, Magnitone, and PraNaturals. Mike Bryce, HSNF’s group CEO, stepped in as Pai’s new CEO as part of that deal. Brown and her husband and co-founder, Ed Saper, stayed on as shareholders and board advisers throughout and returned as interim co-CEOs in November 2025 to help steady the business through a rough patch. The brand had been running at a significant loss and is now forecasting a return to profitability in the first quarter of 2027.