Clinic Profile: Esho Wimbledon

Looking at the glossy black exterior of Dr Tijion Esho’s clinic in London’s affluent and leafy Wimbledon Village, his signature engraved in gold on the doorstep and the storefront’s big windows showing off a sleek, highly stylised interior, it’s clear this is the work of someone who wants to make an impact.

But Dr Esho’s newest clinic – his third outpost currently – isn’t an expense he takes lightly. “This clinic is the biggest spend I’ve had and I did question it, but I know why I’m doing it and why it makes sense,” he says. “The Wimbledon clinic is actually a full circle moment for me.” Five years in the making, Esho says he was watching the tennis at Wimbledon years ago when the idea was first sparked. “I thought it was a lovely area with such a nice atmosphere; lots of high-end businesses around and well-to-do people. I thought, ‘we could do a clinic here’”. 

It wasn’t until years later when Esho and his partner ended up moving to the family-friendly area after falling pregnant with their first child that the dream started to take shape. “Walking in the Village one day, I noticed an empty shop with a card in the window and suddenly thought it would be perfect for a clinic,” he says. “So I made the calls and spoke to my dad who is an accountant. We did the maths and decided that I could do it, but then it became a question of how it was going to fit in to the business overall.” 

New in town

At the time, Esho was practicing from his Harley Street clinic, but the thought of opening a site in a completely different area made him question his future in London’s most famous medical postcode. “For the rent I was paying on Harley Street I could have two clinics in places like Wimbledon Village. Harley Street has a name but it isn’t where you need to be anymore if you’ve got a brand,” he says. “And anyway, aesthetics is a service-led industry so people will go where the service is good.” 

A second West London clinic in a yet-to-be-revealed location is also underway. “For the price of one clinic on Harley Street I can have two with more rooms and be able to scale in terms of therapy treatments, particularly with the Esho Skin Lab, which is growing. It’s a no-brainer,” he says. Esho Skin Lab is a subscription-based skin treatment service whereby patients pay a monthly fee for 12 months and get access to treatments including Byonik laser, microneedling and peels at a reduced cost. Designed as long-term treatment plan, patients first receive a detailed skin analysis with 3D mapping, followed by monthly treatments and skin health follow-ups. 

Developing and executing the concept will be a key focus at the Wimbledon clinic, where Esho will ultimately employ a head aesthetic therapist, an additional therapist, two doctors as well occasionally treating patients there himself, and a front of house manager.

Best of the best

Having successfully turned his name – not to mention his skill as a cosmetic doctor – into a brand, Esho believes he has somewhat of a responsibility to the industry to innovate and impress. “At the stage we’re at now, I’ve matured as a brand and people are looking to me to see what I do, so when it came to designing the clinic, I had to do it in way that would wow people,” he says. “I had to make sure that all the details were perfect. For example, I wanted all the machines to be black. I don’t want the classic white, clean look because everybody else has it.” 

Rather than a typical doctor’s office, Esho says he wanted the clinic to be “almost like a bespoke boutique”, so he looked carefully at making sure every element was as premium as possible, “from the building materials and fabrics to the refreshments for clients, like the option of Champagne for those having non-invasive facials, or a choice of coffees so patients can have their favourite.” 

This level of customer service was inspired by Esho’s quarterly clinics at Nova Clinic in Dubai, where he says the service had a real impact on him when he first started practicing there in 2018. “The big thing out there is service; you can’t get away with just giving good results now, the consumer demand is stronger than that so you have to give them an experience now too,” he says. 

Taking this to the next level, patients at the Wimbledon clinic are given a buzzer to let them know when their appointment is ready after they check in, allowing them to make a day of their visit and explore the local area instead of sitting in the waiting room. “We’re also piloting a WhatsApp concierge service for Skin Lab patients, which means we’re easily contactable throughout their subscription for aftercare advice or whatever else they need to know. It’s adding those extra layers of service,” he says.

Humble beginnings

These are all decisions Esho probably never thought would one day take up his time. He started his journey in aesthetics working in the NHS in plastic surgery and began taking on patients in his boss’s private, non-surgical clinic after developing a stronger interest in this realm. He started his own practice in 2013 on a foldout bed in a small space in spa, followed by opening his first proper clinic in Newcastle while still on rotation as a GP in order to gain his Certificate of Completion of Training – something his dad said he had to do if he wanted to pursue aesthetics. 

At this time Esho was also leasing a small room on Harley Street, but when it all got too much to juggle on his own, he brought in GP colleague and friend Matthew McCloskey, trained him and handed over most of his Newcastle patients. McCloskey now heads up the Newcastle clinic, which has since expanded to three rooms, one of which is used for training. “At that stage I got a permanent room on Harley Street, but between us we still couldn’t treat any more patients because we just didn’t have the hands. I also hadn’t matured as an injector yet – eventually you learn to take a more holistic approach to injecting and understand the way people age and how different modalities can help – but I was becoming more interested in skin and things like laser and microneedling,” says Esho.

He realised that in order to scale and free up some of his and McCloskey’s time, he needed to invest in modality treatments and bring in therapists to train: “They’d be able to provide treatments that we didn’t need to be there doing. It made financial sense,” he says. But as someone relatively new even to injecting, let alone the myriad products, devices and technologies available for advanced skin treatments, Esho had another challenge on his hands.

Back to school

“I had to really become a student of aesthetics. I started paying attention to what treatments people ahead of me were interested in and what machines they were investing in, then doing lots of my own research,” says Esho. “I thought, ‘these people have time on me and I can’t get that back, but I can maximise my time now by being awake reading research while they’re sleeping, still going until 9pm while they finish work at six’. That mentally really helped me to mature both clinically and in my business mind set.” 

Esho readily admits that there were ways in which he had to mature as a both a practitioner and business owner in order to make a success of himself. For example, he learned that resisting the “lip guy” title the media tried to bestow upon him could actually do more harm than good. “As I started to understand Instagram algorithms, I’d notice that I’d post a before-and-after image of a non-surgical rhinoplasty that I thought was amazing and it would get maybe 50 likes, but then I’d post a picture of lips that I thought were OK, and it would get 200,” he says. 

“It wasn’t making sense to me but I decided to give my followers what they wanted to see. In a way it was good that I let myself be categorised into that niche, because if you’re general, even if you’re good at many things, it’s harder to make an impact than when you’re known for one specific thing.” Although he started to be known as the lip doctor in the press and on social media, “when people came into clinic, they realised I could offer them so much more”, he says. 

Screen time

This self-awareness has helped Esho establish himself as a regular on primetime TV and a go-to aesthetic expert commentator in the consumer press. His first appearance was in 2013 on BBC Newcastle to perform a hand lift after producers found him on social media. This eventually led to guest appearances on Channel 4’s Bodyshockers and a regular slot on E4 programme Body Fixers, advising and performing corrective procedures on members of the public. 

Most recently, guest appearances on ITV’s This Morning have led to Esho appearing at least once monthly as the programme’s resident cosmetic doctor on all aesthetic medicine or surgery segments, having even injected live on TV. However, Esho is discerning about what he puts his name to, having learned the hard way when he was starting out. “You have to be choosy about who you associate your name with,” he says. “Some people think you have to say yes to every opportunity at the beginning, but I soon realised I needed to think about each opportunity properly and how it will affect me in the long term. With maturity you gain the confidence to say no.” 

A new 10-part documentary-style TV series is on the way, though the network is still under wraps, which Esho says will follow himself, his staff and the clinics, “focused on treating patients day to day and the Esho Initiative charity side”, whereby Esho performs free corrective treatments in collaboration with Church Pharmacy and Cosmetronic. 

On top of this, Esho is also working on releasing a bespoke designer scrubs line under the name ESHO X CLOTHSURGEON, along with an online service that will launch in 2020 and allow fellow medics to design their own scrubs with the fabric, cut and pattern of their choosing. There’s also an impending cosmeceutical lip product line, “because lips is always an afterthought with skincare brands”, says Esho. His range will allow his patients and consumers alike to address concerns like pigmentation and dryness specific to the lips with various products that can be mixed and layered. 

He has worked hard to build this empire, and it’s only in its infancy. While the shiny surface of the Esho brand could give the impression of being run by a big team propping up the doctor’s name, the reality is that this is a very personal passion project for Esho. He’s the first to acknowledge that the late nights and lessons to learn are far from over, but, as he puts it, “Anything that’s hard work is worth it in the end.”