Clinic Profile: Westroom Aesthetics
It was only a matter of time before Dija Ayodele opened her own clinic.The expert aesthetician of 12 years and pioneer for women of colour in the skincare space has gained a massive following over the two years since she launched the Black Skin Directory, a platform for women of colour to find vetted practitioners who understand the nuances of treating their skin effectively and safely.
Ayodele was into skin long before BSD’s launch, though. She achieved her Beauty Therapy Level 2 and 3 NVQ at the London College of Beauty Therapy in 2008 and went on to train with aesthetic practitioner Sally Durant, making every effort to get to know big names in aesthetics such as nurse prescriber Anna Baker. Over the past three years, Ayodele was working from a rented room in a clinic space in Kensington, London, having built up a cult following among women of colour who trusted her with their skin concerns. The launch of Black Skin Directory (BSD) in February 2018 soon brought an influx of mentions and requests for expert commentary in the consumer beauty media, and it wasn’t long before Ayodele needed a place to call her own.
“Being able to also offer as many days as my clients required was challenging because where I was before wasn’t my space. There were three to four rooms for rental at any time, but they were always booked up, so I couldn’t actually satisfy the demand of my clients. I could only ever offer one day in the week, which made it difficult to realise the full potential,” she says.
Heading west
The official launch of Westroom Aesthetics in Maida Vale, London was scheduled for April as Aesthetic Medicine went to print, but Ayodele said she needed to open the doors early for her existing clients. 99% of her clients are women of colour, although this isn’t necessarily something Ayodele set out to achieve. “The market as we see it at the moment doesn’t satisfy,” she says. “Women of colour don’t feel like they are spoken to or don’t feel like they can walk into any clinic and have their needs satisfied – perhaps the therapist who is seeing them doesn’t have experience in black skin or understand the concerns they have.”
“I have a lot of people who come in and say it’s great to have a women of colour therapist because they know I’ll understand their concerns around hyperpigmentation or things like keloid scarring. I hear from my clientele that there is a need for a specialised service to satisfy that nuance.” A big focus for Ayodele, in both her work with BSD and for Westroom Aesthetics, is representation. Simply showing women of colour through imagery and messaging that clinics can and want to cater to them, is one of her key messages for fellow aesthetic practitioners. “Say a client is walking past a regular clinic on the high street. If there’s no imagery which shows different skin tones or says, ‘we treat all skin colours and tones”, then people of colour will generally assume that it’s not for them.”
She recognises that the misconception happens in the reverse too, with some assuming Westroom Aesthetics only treats black skin.
“Westroom treats everyone but we especially provide a space where women of colour know that every product we’ve selected or every treatment that we do has been tailored towards their skin,” she says. “We’ve selected brands that have clinical trials in skin of colour across the Fitzpatrick scale and use imagery that reflects that. So, while anybody is welcomed – I’m trained in all skin – this is especially for black women; they don’t need to feel dubious as everything has been created in their image, though I do also have Asian and white clients.”
Personal space
Ayodele wanted to create a vibrant and inviting space for clients, so she set about sourcing interesting furniture pieces, fun design elements and warm, comforting colours to fill the space, taking Instagram followers on the journey with her and asking for their input on the clinic’s décor. “It’s me casa, su casa,” she says. “I want you to feel comfortable in my space. I wanted it to be chic, a luxurious but comfortable environment that wasn’t intimidating.” Along with wanting to make the most of the building’s abundant natural light, Ayodele started following bathroom design accounts on Instagram and looking for flooring for the clinic’s WC since summer 2019. She says she wanted an “Instagrammable” bathroom so clients could take fun pictures, adding to the free and safe environment she set out to create.
A lot of love has been put into the one-treatment room space, with a reception area “that’s like a living room”, though Ayodele has bigger plans for Westroom Aesthetics going forward. “I decided to go for a smaller space that would give me room for growth. I only plan to be at this space for eighteen months to two years; even with all the work I have done on it, I feel that if I’m there in two years I haven’t progressed, that’s why I went for a smaller space as it would push me to not be there for too long,” she says. For now though, there are just four options on the treatment menu: an in-person or virtual skin health consultation, The Reset Treatment and Time Plan Programme. The latter includes six to 12 hours’ treatment time and autoenrolment into Skin+, in-clinic education evenings with wellness and nutrition experts. Modalities on offer include peels, microneedling, nanocurrent, LED light therapy, mesotherapy and microdermabrasion.
However, she says many clients will pay for one of the in-depth consultations, purchase some recommended products (Westroom stocks Aesthetic Source brands including NeoStrata, SkinBetter Science, Exuviance and Cyspera, among other separate brands) and report back that their skin health has improved massively. She notes that she’s also aware of budget restraints for a lot of clients, so gives them the most personalised and actionable skincare and lifestyle advice she can within the consultation timeframe; some of which won’t involve any cost. “Cost to the client is something I have to bear in mind. For example, someone came in recently and by the time they had paid for a consultation and bought some products, they’ve already spent just under £600.”
Interestingly, Westroom doesn’t post client images on social media. “We have a policy not to share photos of our clients on Instagram. I got fed up of before-and-after images on social; people are only going to upload pictures taken in a glowing light or might edit them, and I think it can be misleading,” she says. “I also have celebrity clients and want them to know that we are discreet. Every so often, if the results are spectacular and the client is happy, I may put an image on our grid, but I will obscure everything – you might just see a cheek to show the difference in skin quality, for example.”
Up to the challenge
Ayodele is refreshingly open and honest about the challenges she faces as a business owner in the early stages of owning her first clinic. She’s also a mother of two young children who lives outside of London, so works hard to keep a healthy balance in her life while also looking after those around her. “I think with something like this there are always challenges, financial and time. Some of the finance we thought we had secured to open the space didn’t materialise at the last minute, so we had to sit down and look at our priorities and peel away the excess that wasn’t absolutely essential,” she explains. “Our branding still hasn’t been sorted, for example, and while it’s great to have nice branding it’s not essential to opening the front door, so things like that had to be pushed back so we could get all the products in, because you need that to carry on a business.”
Managing and controlling some of the elements involved in starting a business also proved tricky. “There’s so much to do when you open a clinic; I didn’t realise it but the admin
time pressure – HMRC, accountants, going through the books all the time – can really keep you up at night. Because the investment didn’t work out we needed to make sure that
every penny we got paid we could access it again straight away so we could reinvest it back into the business,” she says. “We had to choose our banking based on how quickly
that money would get back into the business account, and that pressure is quite a lot. It’s the pressures other people put on you as well with their expectations – how they envision things to be for you, giving unsolicited advice, and how you deal with that extra stress. You feel like you don’t want to let anyone down.”
Despite these pressures, Ayodele will no doubt rise to the challenge and continue to solidify her status as a thought leader in the industry. With Westroom Aesthetics at least, she can rest assured that she’s rising above and beyond expectations; “I wanted women of colour to know that everything here, from products to devices and treatments, has all been designed with them in mind. It shouldn’t even have to be a question.”
