Sustainable Success: Medik8’s makeover

From a British founder-led brand to a leading global skincare player, Medik8’s journey with Inflexion married focused ambition with bold innovation. And proved that staying true to your roots needn’t mean staying small.

Medik8, the premium science-led skincare brand founded in 2009 by British scientist Elliot Isaacs, has undergone a remarkable transformation since partnering with Inflexion in 2021. Known for its iconic serums and CSA philosophy – vitamin C and sunscreen by day, vitamin A by night – the brand has scaled rapidly while staying true to its core values of efficacy, transparency and sustainability.

During its four-year partnership with Inflexion, Medik8 tripled both its headcount and sales, expanded significantly in the US and Asia-Pacific, and developed into a digitally powered, direct-to-consumer business. The phenomenal journey encompassed successful founder succession, building value through talent and technology, and maintained brand ethos throughout.

“We were drawn to Inflexion’s entrepreneurial yet capable approach, category knowledge, shared vision – it was rocket fuel rather than an engine rebuild,” recalls founder Elliot Isaacs. “They had experience where we needed it – in US expansion, D2C, strengthening the management team, and enabling founder transition.” Indeed within the first year of partnership, over 70 people were hired, a US subsidiary was launched, CEO succession began, and they opened a 100,000 sq. ft. Net Zero Innovation Centre. This new site would go on to help triple R&D and operational capacity, contributing to the successful launch of several award-winning products.

It was a strong start to a phenomenal partnership. “We were already a successful growing business, but investment from Inflexion changed the trajectory: helping us become a global brand with their impressive focus on growth. We created a lot of jobs in the process, tripling the headcount in four years, and so it created a lot of value for the UK economy – private equity investment was the enabler of that,” Elliot explains. 

And a healthy relationship and aligned vision with Inflexion underpinned Medik8’s success. “Growing too quickly across lots of channels and geographies is tempting, but can come at the expense of the brand, offering and management bandwidth. Ultimately it can erode value, but alignment has ensured our growth is sustainable,” says Simon Coble, CEO of Medik8. 

The success of the four-year journey was multi-faced, involving intelligent and pro-active origination as well as the full support of Inflexion’s Value Acceleration team: 

Buying well: deep sub-sector origination

Founder transition and organisational design: headcount tripled

Building a digital team from scratch to boost D2C: D2C sales up 6x

Winning in the US: US revenue surged > 6x

Sustainability and B Corp certification: accelerating net zero journey

A new chapter with L’Oréal: Inflexion remain minority partner

Buying well: deep sub-sector origination

The journey started before any transaction was agreed, with Inflexion continuously researching its core sectors to devise investment theses. Anti-ageing skincare had been identified by the team as a key category as early as 2018 and they met founder Elliot at a conference that same year. A relationship was built over time, and it was sufficiently strong that he directly approached Inflexion in 2020 when he was ready to bring on a partner.

The result was a bilateral, off-market deal completed swiftly in 2021. At the time, Medik8 was a fully vertically integrated, high-margin, fast-growing brand with strong international potential. Inflexion’s investment thesis centred on scaling digital and D2C, accelerating US expansion, and embedding sustainability more deeply.

Founder transition and organisational design: headcount tripled

The founder’s planned succession was a key milestone. Inflexion worked closely with Elliot to ensure a smooth transition, helping recruit a Chair, CEO, COO, Chief People Officer and Chief Marketing Officer.

The organisational redesign was ambitious, with the new structure built to enable growth. It aligned the CEO role more closely with global objectives, added dedicated resource for D2C and data, strengthened commercial leadership with two new senior sales hires, and refined global roles to sharpen regional focus, especially in Asia-Pacific and the US. Targeted C-suite appointments addressed key capability gaps needed to deliver on the company’s ambitions, while two additional senior sales leaders were brought in to accelerate commercial momentum.

Overall headcount tripled during Inflexion’s stewardship, with the new structure designed to support the business well as it scales and grows internationally. 

Building a digital team from scratch to boost D2C: D2C sales up 6x 

Digital transformation ran alongside the reorganisation, with fresh systems enabling a firm focus on data. Its existing data warehouse was not initially ready for the journey: the multiple BI tools they used had been developed as Medik8 grew and were primarily focused on financial information. The existing ERP system, which served as the main source of information, was approximately 10 years old and vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. Most of the business operations relied on spreadsheets, making it time-consuming to generate reports – time that should have been spent analysing data – and by the time they were downloaded, they were often outdated. It meant the company faced challenges with multiple sources of truth and limited visibility into its data.

Management decided to overhaul the systems entirely, and Inflexion were fully behind it: defining the vision, scoping the different workstreams, supporting with the hiring of permanent staff and finding contractors to execute alongside the Medik8 team. Inflexion’s Data & AI team also provided advice on tech stack, data modelling, process, and priorities throughout the project.

Around 75 net new roles focused on digital, data, innovation and sustainability were added in 2022 alone. The new ERP system introduced live tracking, automation, and a unified BI tool that reduced reporting effort by 95%.

This infrastructure laid the foundation for accelerating Medik8’s push to boost its D2C sales – adding a capability that hadn’t been there before the buyout and doing so within six months of investment. Customer profiling and analytics were significantly improved, allowing for more efficient product development and targeted marketing. The result: direct customer numbers surged 73%, and D2C revenue climbed 6x. 

Winning in the US: US revenue surged > 6x

Recognising the strategic importance of the US market, Medik8 appointed a US-based Chair with deep digital skincare experience. This not only strengthened credibility stateside but also helped attract top-tier digital talent.

The approach paid off. US revenue surged over 200%, with the country now Medik8’s second-largest market. Localised strategies, enabled by splitting global roles and empowering regional teams, contributed to over a 6x increase in US revenue share.

Sustainability and B Corp certification: accelerating net zero journey

Sustainability has long been core to Medik8’s mission, and Inflexion helped deepen this commitment. Within the first year, the business launched a 100,000 sq. ft. Innovation Centre supported by Inflexion, ultimately tripling R&D and operational capacity. The state-of-the-art site has incorporated a solar roof, massive water reduction plans and electric car charging. Separately, a full internal ESG team was assembled, and sustainability became embedded in all product and operational decisions.

This culminated in B Corp certification in 2024. “People joining us told us they were attracted by our B Corp status,” notes Alex Florea, Head of Sustainability. 

They’re not done: Medik8 have pledged to reach net zero by 2040, a full 10 years earlier than set out in the Paris Agreement. To achieve this, Medik8 have removed all fossil fuels from the business, resulting in almost zero scope 1 emissions, and their operations are powered by 100% renewable energy (partly generated by an on-site solar array), also resulting in zero scope 2 emissions. Their efforts have been recognised externally, with their near-term target being validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative.