Fabian Geyrhalter:
Welcome to the show, Lucy.

Lucy Goff:
Thank you for having me, Fabian. It’s so amazing to be here today. So thank you so much for having me tell my story.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Absolutely. And talking about your story, LYMA is a very buzzy London-based brand that provides, and I’m citing this from your website, the world’s most powerful skin longevity system. So the company was founded in 2018. You personally have been working on LYMA do for a little bit longer, I think since at least 2016. Tell us about, I mean, how did it come about? I believe it started with a rather dramatic illness you were battling at the time.

Lucy Goff:
Yeah, no, it is quite a remarkable story that every time I say it, I just think, did that actually happen to me? And it just seems so removed from where I am now. But genuinely, after I had my daughter in 2012, everything went wrong with the birth, but thank goodness my daughter was okay in the end. But I caught septicemia and I was in intensive care for weeks while they were trying to find the right antibiotic to help me. And although medicine saved my life, my life, which I’m eternally grateful for, it came at a cost because my body was just completely finished. And I was going back to all these doctors and I was saying, I just don’t feel well. I can’t stand up. My body’s shaking, I can’t hold my baby. And they were saying, well, look, there’s nothing wrong with you. The septicemia is gone.
You’ll just have to give it time. And as a new mom, it’s very difficult to give it time when you just can’t function as you need to be. And so I was at a clinic in Geneva while they were looking at my bloods and seeing what they could do. And it was there that I had a life-changing moment in that I first met Professor Paul Clayton, who’s an incredible Oxford Longevity professor, and he introduced me to the hidden category of pharmaceutical grade supplement ingredients. And he was explaining how the supplement market is basically filled with lots of organic and generic ingredients and they’re not properly formulated. And so that it’s not particularly effective because there’s little regulation that means that a supplement ingredient has to work. And literally, he sent me this parcel through the Post where he’d sent me a selection of these ingredients and I thought, well, I’m never going to hear from him again.
And when the doorbell rung and I got this package through the Post, my heart just stopped. I knew what it was and I knew it was these ingredients and I took them and literally three or four weeks later, I was back at work. I just felt myself again. And that was the impetus for starting LYMA. We started as a supplement brand, but as a different proposition to the rest of the supplement market to, and we kind of sat in a different category in that we were the equivalent of a pharmaceutical, the pharmaceutical equivalent of a supplement that was specifically formulated to look at sleep, skin and stress as one symbiotic system. So it’s kind of like if you can’t sleep, your skin’s never going to look as good. If you are stressed, you can’t sleep and your skin’s not good. So looking at skin through the sleep and stress issues that many women and men face,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And I mean a remarkable story. And so launching the supplements must have been, in hindsight, the easier part because then you launched lasers and that must probably must have been a much more involved product to get into, I would assume.

Lucy Goff:
I think it’s kind of different stages of the businesses of the business. You have different issues. We started out with zero customers as a supplement proposition in a crowded, saturated supplement markets. So that came with its own set of challenges, which is why not only did we have the most powerful formulation in the industry, the only formulation to be engineered with 11 patented peer reviewed ingredients all dose properly. But you’ve got the issue that you’ve got no customers. How are you going to get your first customers? Who are your first retailers? How are you going to fund the business? You’ve got a different set of challenges. When we launch the laser in September, 2020, obviously we had a successful supplement business as our foundation. So we had a customer base who were spending 150 pounds a month on the LYMA supplement. So we had some brand trust at that point to then launch a 2000 pound cold laser.
So I guess at each stage of the business, you have different problems that you are going to or challenges that you’re going to encounter. The laser was a different challenge. We were launching a brand new laser technology into the beauty tech space. It was a technology that nobody understood. It was a technology that our competitors within the space feared because it was a different proposition. And so we had to start educating customers on a different way of skin regeneration. A tool that you can’t feel when you use, you switch on the LYMA laser, you cannot feel it at all. It’s completely sensationalist. It’s a completely cold laser. And subconsciously women or men, whoever’s using a beauty device is used to feeling something and it’s kind of, that might hurt, it might buzz it, you might feel like a pinprick or something like that. You associate pain with results. So it was a totally different technology at a totally different price point. We had re-engineered a 40,000 pound floor standing huge hospital cold laser machine into a tiny little, not a tiny little, little handheld cold laser device at exactly the same power with exactly the same size treatment lens, but for 2000 pounds. So it was still 2000 pounds, and the industry was kind of heavily centered around the 500 pound beauty gadget.
So it’s kind of just as a supplement offered a different price point to what consumer perception was for how much you should pay for a supplement. The LYMA laser also was a totally different price point. It was since gone on to launch the LYMA Laser Pro, which is 5,000 pounds. So it’s three LYMA lasers engineered into one device. It’s a much larger treatment lens to enable you to transform larger areas of your face and body faster, the skin on your face and body faster. So again, that it is a different form of communication to really empower the customer with as much knowledge as you legally can to help them make an informed choice.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
There’s so much to unpack. So even when you talked about the supplement launch, right? So you’re launching a product in a very opaque market space that is not used to the price point and you’re a completely new company, or not even a brand at that point. How did you go about those first six to 12 months to educate an audience on this is the new norm, you can now do this and it actually works and it’s worth the money. How did you go about this without even having the brand? Because like you said, with the LA now, you already had a customer set, you already had people spending.

Lucy Goff:
Yeah, we had a supplement customer. Not all supplement customers are laser customers, but we did have a base and we did have, our brand was visible and it was known within our target audience by that time, I guess when we launched a supplement, that’s why I used to do the PR for Selfridges. And I stood in the Selfridges Beauty Hall for many years being part of the launch of many different brands into that beauty hall from Joe Malone who had repurposed a commoditized candle and repackaged it, and all of a sudden added a beautiful scent in beautiful packaging. And all of a sudden a candle that you would normally pay a 10 or four at your local supermarket was like 400 pounds. And it did make candles, a lifestyle statement in the home. And probably we all remember the first time our friends started to put expensive candles into the home. And you can’t just say, oh, well they’ve obviously doing well if they can afford the super large Joe Malone candle. It’s kind of all that chatter goes on subconsciously in your head. And I think that’s what I did with the supplement.
That’s why I created a brand around the product. So it wasn’t enough that the product was the most effective supplement for sleep, stress and skin on the market. I wanted the product to become a lifestyle statement for the home. And in order to do that, I had to take supplements out of the bathroom cabinet or out of the kitchen cupboard and make them into a lifestyle statement for the home, which is why we house them in this beautiful hand hammered copper vessel. So you store your LYMA capsules in that vessel, and so you go around to somebody’s house and maybe you’d see LYMA, a LYMA vessel in their kitchen and Oh, I see you’re taking LYMA. How do you find it? It becomes a discussion point
In somebody’s room. So the plan was to create a brand around the product, so it kind of spilled into the culture of the target audience that were buying into it. Because the other problem is supplements fall under the food industry. So the European in Europe, they fall under the food industry, and you can’t make a medical claim about a supplement ingredient, even though all of our ingredients are patented. They’ve been peer reviewed and published in medical journals to demonstrate a variety of benefits, medical benefits at the doses we use. Legislation prevents you from making a medical claim in Europe for the supplements. You’ve got a separate set of challenges that you are actually selling something that you can’t tell the consumer what it’s going to do for you, which is why we grew very organically. And I think that that’s been one of the, you might think, for a growth business, it’s all about fast growth, fast growth, fast growth, but the way that we did it was in the first place, yes, we doubled revenue each year, but because you’re starting from a very low base, it still doesn’t grow that much in order to start scaling the supplement in an organic way.
So we found in, somebody bought it in one postcode, and then we quickly saw over a three week period, you’d see these dotted clusters of new subscribers around that initial customer. And it happened like that quite organically in the key cities in the UK or the key territories in the uk. And we then started to see it spill over into New York, into San Francisco, into la, into Seattle, into the main markets in the us. And I think that gave us an incredible foundation for when we launched the LYMA laser in September, 2020. So it’s an organic process,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And I think that that organic growth now, you are upping this quite a bit with a growing number of a-list actors and supermodels who have been handed most probably one of the devices, and many of them have turned into raving fans. And so now you have that cloud of that one person, but it’s not any person in San Francisco with their friends. But now it’s actually you have that PR reach, which I’m pretty sure your journalism background has influenced your marketing, your go-to market strategies quite a bit, I would assume.

Lucy Goff:
Yeah, no, I mean PR has formed the core of our digital marketing. It is an incredible storytelling platform. It sits outside of the stringent regulations that you are bound to on your website and your own marketing channels, and you can really allow other people to tell their story in a way that you can’t necessarily on your own platform when you are in the medical space or you are in spaces that are regulated by the MHRA.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Very smart, I did not even put the two together. That allows you to be just a degree separated and have others tell the story that you

Lucy Goff:
Tell. Yeah, especially in the uk, there are really trusted media sources in the UK and the way that consumers purchase. It’s a key factor in their purchase decision. Less so in the us, but definitely in the uk, which is obviously our home territory.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Right, right. I did see your brand in a couple of US outlets as well though. And it seems to be a really good strategy to have very unbiased reviews about a product that many too many. They have the question of is it legit? Is it worth the money? It’s like $6,000 for LYMA Laser Pro. And so it’s great that you have others answer that question, right?

Lucy Goff:
Yeah. And the US especially, I mean the US is now our biggest market, so obviously the UK will always be really, really important to us. It’s our home territory. We’re proud to be a British brand, but America is our biggest market now. Having said that, we haven’t moved to America. We still have our head office in London, so we do everything from London. I think that’s where we retain the true essence of our brand that we haven’t opened other offices in other key markets. It’s all handled outside of our London office, which I just want to cling onto as long as I can.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
No, that’s great. That’s really great. That’s very authentic that way. And talking about the essence of your brand, your mission statement is very upfront and center on your about us page on the website, which I love, and which I direct my clients to always do as well. And it is quite open-ended, so it reads, our mission is to create powerful solutions to the problems you face. No compromises. You deserve the best to be able to feel your best. So to me, this vagueness suggests that there’s a lot more in store with LYMA even beyond skincare. Can you share a little bit about the longer term vision for the brand? Which areas do you see yourself expanding to or can you not reveal any of that? Which I would understand and I would just back off.

Lucy Goff:
Yeah, no, we started out as a supplement brand, and the supplement is still a really important part of our business. But if we were to think of one product that we are famous for that says spearhead of our business as it were, and that’s obviously the LYMA laser technology, it’s a technology that IT has disrupted the beauty tech space. It’s the only zero damage laser technology around. And when the beauty industry really relies on the stress damage approach to collagen production, and when you create inflammation, when you create damage, the body prioritizes the speed of healing over the quality of the skin that is produced over the quality of the collagen that’s produced. So the LYMA laser is really a completely, it is a complete game changer if you want the best skin that you could ever have. So the laser is what we’ve got, an incredible laser pipeline that we have engineered and that we are developing.
And obviously the other USP for LYMA is that we have created the LYMA system. So the laser, the supplement, and all the skincare has been engineered to work as one symbiotic system. So when you mix and match different products from different companies, you risk certain ingredients canceling each other out. You don’t really know how they can work together and you don’t really have results from, because you are using so many different brands, you don’t have the clinicals to back that one system. And so the beauty of LYMA is that we’ve got the laser, we’ve got skincare, we’ve got the supplements, and they’re all engineered to work together to transform your skin through tackling inflammation, sleep stress, and obviously the laser technology literally switches off the aging process in your dermis, which is absolutely incredible. So yeah, the short answer that I’ve given you a very long answer is we’re a very exciting laser roadmap

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And what a smart way of building not only trust and showing results and being able to own the entire journey of your skin health and beyond, but also a very strategic way to build a brand because now you have trust and you have, I wouldn’t want to call it codependency, but you basically have people buy into a series of products because they can see the effect jointly, which is of course a great roadmap for moving forward into wherever you want to go.

Lucy Goff:
What’s actually really interesting is that the laser works with, it powers up all skincare, so it was starting to get different brands that we’re working with really incredible skincare brands, one Skin, LA Prairie, Augustine as barda. So they’re integrating the LYMA into their skincare protocols because ultimately the LYMA laser is the beauty hall’s best friend. I always describe it as the beauty hall’s best friend. It makes all skincare work better. So it’s kind of like we’re friends with everybody.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That is a great position to be in. Let’s talk for a second because I’m very curious about this and I’m sure some of my listeners as well. What is the story behind the LYMA brand name? Where did it come from?

Lucy Goff:
Well, do you know what it’s, it’s actually not as interesting as it seems.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, make it interesting. I know you can. Well,

Lucy Goff:
No, no. The word LYMA is hugely interesting, but actually where I started from was that I wanted a four letter word. I mean such an unimportant thing, but I was really quite fixated on a four letter word, and the four letter word of the company couldn’t be anything linked to the supplement because I didn’t know whether the supplement was going to be successful or not. We might’ve had to pivot in a cushion company or a shoe company or a jewelry company. It could have been anything. So it had to be a name that could lend itself to anything. And it also had to be a name that was available. So obviously many good names that had been taken. And we went through about 10 names that I really, really liked, but they were just not available. And then I just stumbled across, I was going through some ancient Greek names, which people go through the latter names, the ancient Greek names, and trying to make something and then saw the word LYMA.
And obviously it wasn’t spelt like LYMA, it wasn’t spelled, we spelled it LYMA, but it meant the origin or the source in ancient Greek. And I just thought there was something really magical about that because we were using ingredients that were thousands and thousands and thousands of years old, and we were kind of pairing these ingredients with the future of high tech technology with these high tech delivery systems. And I felt that there was something really interesting about the way that LYMA was met in the middle of this collision of the origin and the future. And I checked and it was available, so

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Unbelievable, like a four letter word was available. Unbelievable. I mean available for sale, I assume, but for a certain attainable price point that is unbelievable. And it was more for

Lucy Goff:
The trade marks actually. It was like that was because you can fudge your website to be called anything. It was more for the trade marks.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Absolutely. Yeah. You have to have the trademark on a name, and I mean a great name is exactly built the way that you build it, and it has to have that foresight allowing the company to expand, which LYMA has because it can be really anything but that story of the source, which is also great, where the company headed, which you wouldn’t have known back then. But having that laser as being the focus point, that really is the source. Even if you have a third party skincare routine, you can still use the source, which is the laser. So it’s really interesting how it works out. Isn’t it great when things work out because you have four

Lucy Goff:
Cells? Well, it is, isn’t it?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Isn’t it? I was also very delighted and rather surprised that as a company that creates laser devices, now you are B Corp accredited. That is such a big commitment for putting out a product like that that is usually seen as anything but sustainable. Tell us a little bit about what your drive was to get a B Corp accreditation and how difficult it was for what you do. I

Lucy Goff:
Think we were the first beauty tech brand to be B Corp certified. And I think that was because we just had complete ownership of the supply chain. We were not manufacturing out of a country far away that we didn’t know where all the components were coming from, we manufacturing the eu. So I think because of that, I just felt as though that we had to have this commitment. Our company empowers people to change and people can only change if you respect your environment. And I think that making sure that we were respectful of the planet and that we were sustainable was just a no brainer. It even it was something that I just thought, well, it is not even a question. It has to be. That’s why we didn’t compromise on any aspect of our supply chain because we had to be B Corp certified. I just felt as though you have to can’t be credible unless you act credibly and responsibly, and it was something that was really important to us.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s true too. It creates even more trust. And you’re just casually mentioning that the supplements are made in the EU that Well, the

Lucy Goff:
Supplements are in the UK actually. The laces are made in. Yeah. Yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Amazing. I mean, that is something that alone comes at a, I don’t know, 3, 4, 5, 10 x price point just from a manufacturing perspective, so to speak. So that’s amazing. That’s really amazing. When you look back, so you launched the supplement line very much as a very different type of product, also a lifestyle product of sorts, the way that it was packaged at a very different price point. When was that big breakthrough moment where you felt like where all the anxiety slowly left and you’re like, Hey, I think this is turning into something, people like this, this is working out the way that we want to. Do you remember, I know there are so many of these points in an entrepreneur’s journey and every week there was some kind of highlight and definitely a lot of low points, but was there one specific highlight where you felt like this was it?

Lucy Goff:
I think I always remember when doctors started backing LYMA. For me, that moment, everything changed. Obviously we had very high profile customers, but to me it was when doctors started backing LYMA, that was the moment that everything changed because that clinical credibility turned us from a supplement product into almost a movement. And it was no longer just about me saying it worked. It was about professional doctors in this sector saying, do you know what? I’ve been waiting all my career for something like that. I think that was definitely a huge breakthrough for me. And I guess the turning point wasn’t really the sales, it was almost the belief that when world class professionals, experts and all these incredibly talented people started recommending LYMA and that we really became a brand that people trusted and not just tried because validation comes from the top

Lucy Goff:
Down.

Lucy Goff:
So the movement that experts aligned with our mission, the moment that these experts had aligned with our mission, it just kind of shifts the narrative. And we weren’t kind of disrupting wellness anymore. We were actually leading it. And to me, that was the moment when I realized, shit, it’s all come together. Do you know what I mean? Exactly,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Exactly. And you know what? I think it’s so great that you said that because there are so many D two C companies that are out for, here’s a white space, here’s where we can relabel something. And you give an example early on with the candle company, but even in a completely blatant way of let’s make a quick 10 million. I’ve always said,

Lucy Goff:
Yeah, LYMA doesn’t exist in a white LYMA exists in the space that you can’t see. That’s where we innovate technologies that don’t exist and there is no space, and we created that space and we bring them to disrupt or transcend the sector that we sit in,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Which doesn’t make your life much easier from a storytelling perspective, but it is a DNA that you can always fall back to of like, this is what you need to do with every product you put out. But I think it is the difference between any company that is just out for the quick buck where they say, Hey, what was that big moment of breakthrough? It’s like, oh, when our sales hit, when our sales went past the six figures. But I love what you said because it’s like for you getting that validation from the very, very top of the peer level and they say, this is amazing. That’s all you needed to know because the rest is just going to fall into place. Sales will happen once that happens. And so yeah, it’s amazing. And then on the flip side, and we were already flirting with that idea that it’s not only ups in startups, there’s also a lot of downs, and I’m not going to spend the rest of this episode on this, but I mean, was there enormous brand fail or any kind of fail that happened where you felt like, oh my God, what did we do maybe earlier on in the company?

Lucy Goff:
We’ve had huge challenges. We have had huge challenges. We have challenges every day, but I guess I just blinker myself out of what they are and just think, how can we solve it? Because the one thing I do believe is that every challenge is sortable. And I think that you learn from those challenges and the team gets stronger from those challenges because you never really know what truly works until something goes wrong. And it’s how you overcome that and fix it that then gives you greater success in the future.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Absolutely, absolutely. Great way around the question. You must have been in PR and publicity. Very well done. Very well done. So for everyone is perfect. Switching the topic very quickly here, no, but this is a question that I know a lot of my listeners always enjoy because I ask the same question for every one of my, I don’t know, 150 or so interviewees at this point, because the word branding is such a strange word. It’s people usually mistake it for the logo and for all kinds of things and for super fluids, but it’s actually really deep and it’s really important. And obviously you more than many others know that intrinsically because you had to build trust, you had to build a brand, and then you had to change what the brand stands for in a customer’s mind where there is not even a category because you basically built your own category. What does branding mean to you?

Lucy Goff:
I guess branding is the core of you’ve got to split your company, cut your company in half, and you’ve got to see that brand at every stage down to its core. So I guess for me in LYMA it would, branding means proof. It’s not the packaging, it is the proof. It’s how that product makes you feel. And I think in health and beauty today, especially branding must start with efficacy backed by this real life storytelling. Ultimately, I guess if it doesn’t work, it’s just theater. You can’t disrupt on a superficial level, but I knew that I had to disrupt. I didn’t want LYMA to fit in. I wanted it to kind of redefine the space. So for me, I guess branding is our chance to change the rule book entirely. And every new product that we’ve launched, we’ve been pioneers in the sector, which is exactly what I set out to do, and it is a testament to the team that we’ve managed to achieve it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
So for LYMA, branding really is proof, which makes so much sense because it creates trust. That’s what you need, if that is the word. What is one word that can describe the actual LYMA brand? Or is that the word or is there another word that if you think about

Lucy Goff:
Change, if I had to have one word, it’s either power or change. So it’s kind of, we empower people to change. So whether it’s you want to change your skin, you want to change your sleep, you want to feel better about yourself, ultimately what we’re doing is we’re giving the power to people to change. So it is that word change. It’s never too late. You’re never too old. I didn’t set Lemur up until I was 46. You’re never too old and it’s never too late. And the power to begin again starts every day. If you’re fortunate to wake up the power, that’s your little gift to begin again, to change, to change whatever you wanted to from the day before.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Love that. Really, really, really powerful. As we come to a close here slowly, is there any brand advice that you might have for founders or for marketers for branders as a takeaway that you might have not mentioned yet?

Lucy Goff:
I guess kind of know they’ve got loads of advice. If I had to say one piece of advice, I’d say never build your brand to fit in, build your brand to challenge. And I guess if your brand doesn’t make people stop or question or feel something, then it’s just going to be wallpaper. And I think that the success of a brand is a brand that challenges.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I love your philosophy, and I’m very much adhering to that with my own advice and with my own startup at all times. Is this product really necessary? Do we really need it? Does it innovate? Does it change anything that hasn’t been changed before? I think it’s so important. What’s next for the LYMA brand? What are you excited about in the next six months? I know lot of laser action coming your way, I think, but is there anything specific you want to tease?

Lucy Goff:
Yeah. Well, obviously America’s our biggest market now. We’ve got some really exciting activations coming out later on this year. We’re doing also an exciting partnership with such a talented artist for the holiday season, so I’m really excited about that too.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, we’re excited to get to know who that is once it rolls around. And where do people do that? Where can they follow either you or the LYMA brand online?

Lucy Goff:
Well, our website is LYMA.Life, or you can find us on Instagram @LYMALife or me at @lucygoffy because I couldn’t get gov.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s fine. You couldn’t get that, but you got the trademark from LYMA, but you didn’t get the LYMA.com, but you got LYMA.Life, which is totally fine because it’s all about making sacrifices, but you’ve got the trademark and that’s what matters. Exactly. Listen, Lucy, thank you so much for hopping onto this show. What is it, eight o’clock your time? Nine o’clock your time at night? Either way.

Lucy Goff:
Well, no, it’s earlier. It’s only quarter past seven, so it’s

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Quite, oh, I always forget. The UK is different. That’s right. But still, it’s still in the evening. Thank you so much. I know we could have talked for another hour or two with all the brand advice that you would’ve been able to give us. So thank you. Thank you so much for your time, and we’re really excited to keep following the LYMA Brand journey.

Lucy Goff:
Thank you so much for having me, Fabian. It’s been a real pleasure to speak to you. So thank you so much.