From the garage to a multi-million-dollar beauty empire: Inskin Cosmedics’ family business secrets

Maria Enna-Cocciolone started her distribution business Inskin Cosmedics 15 years ago from her garage. Since then, she’s grown it into a multi-million-dollar family business and pioneered the use of medical aesthetics with the launch of her own brand O Cosmedics.

When Maria Enna-Cocciolone told her parents she wanted to be a beauty therapist, her father refused to speak to her for three months.

But she knew she’d found her life’s passion, so Maria worked nights at her local Franklins supermarket to pay for a beauty course, graduating in 1985.

After working for professional beauty distributors for more than 20 years, Maria launched Inskin Cosmedics in 2007 from the garage of her Sydney home, distributing a single beauty brand from the US.

When a second international brand landed in her portfolio, Maria moved the business out of the garage into her first commercial premises.

Two years later, she launched her own brand O Cosmedics, creating a new category of medical aesthetics.

“With skincare, people get caught up in beautiful packaging or fragrances,” Maria tells Kochie’s Business Builders. “It was important that what we put inside our products was a functional dose.”

This means that the percentage of the active ingredient was enough that it could change the behaviour of the skin and particularly skin cells, without having to be administered by a doctor.

A family business – and culture

Maria’s children Cassandra and Alex were young when she first launched Inskin so they grew up with the business, helping with the packing. Her husband Mario was unofficial CFO, working in the evenings after full days in his corporate job.

Now, Cassandra leads the marketing department and Alex is the warehouse manager, while Mario heads up operations full-time.

Yet Maria views the entire company as family. “I’ve built this business on the culture of family that we now take into the professional beauty industry,” she says.

This was illustrated during the pandemic when beauty clinics were forced to shut. Maria sprang into action to support her clients by helping them to set up websites and an online store and teaching them how to serve their customers by Zoom.

The realities of running a family business

A report by KPMG and STEP Project Global Consortium, the Australian Family Business Survey 2022, found that the most successful family businesses are entrepreneurial, meaning they embrace transformation and have strong family bonds.

Inskin fits into this category, yet Maria admits the family business has had to overcome issues over the years.

Cassandra was the first person Maria ever sacked from the business (she returned shortly afterwards and has remained with the company for the past 11 years).

Meanwhile, Mario had to learn to become at peace with running decisions by Maria. “He came from the corporate world but I didn’t want us making corporate decisions and seeing people as dollars or numbers,” explains Maria. “So I asked him not to make any big decisions without asking me first. That was hard for him so it took some time, but even now he still checks with me.”

One of the recommendations in KPMG’s report on family businesses is to foster healthy communication as a family. To this end, Maria organises a family dinner every Tuesday with one rule: No one’s allowed to talk shop.

“If there’s any business issues, we don’t wait for Tuesday night to bring them to the table – they’re addressed in office hours,” says Maria. “It’s been a learning curve for everybody, but it’s a really nice way that we can all be together and enjoy being a family.”

Ginger&Me: A mindful beauty brand that saved a life

In 2017, Maria launched a second brand: Ginger&Me with a business partner whose mother had terminal cancer. At the time Maria’s father was experiencing dementia.

The pair wanted to create a beauty brand that was more nurturing for skins that weren’t ready for the power of O Cosmedics. They also wanted the brand to inspire and uplift clients.

Ginger&Me includes a range of gentle skin and body treatments for in-clinic sessions (which come with guided meditations), and a selection of gift boxes and cards with inspirational poems written by Maria.

One client, after her treatment at an Inskin clinic, was given a card with a lotus flower. The message alluded to how we have to swim through murky waters of emotional pain to arrive at joy or wisdom – just as the lotus flower has to grow in muddy water to eventually blossom.

A year later the client returned to the clinic with a tattoo of the lotus flower on her shoulder.

“She told the beauty therapist that on the day of her previous visit she was going to take her own life,” says Maria. “But the message on the card resonated with her and she wanted to always remember the moment that saved her. That really moved me.”

Growing with the help of an external partner

Maria loves developing new products and her next goal is to create an affordable brand under the $50 price point that still leverages functional actives, as well as taking O Cosmedics and Ginger&Me global.

To help her achieve this, she needs to be freed up from the day-to-day activities of the business.

“Too often we see family business owners weighed down with working in the business instead of using their entrepreneurial skills and passion working on the business which is where the value lays,” says Naomi Mitchell, Partner in Charge, Business and Tax Advisory, Private Enterprise at KPMG Australia.

When Naomi started working with Inskin, the business was facing challenges from the changing regulatory environment for medical aesthetics. “This resulted in Maria’s team needing to focus on compliance issues that distracted from her true value to the business which is her talent in product development,” says Naomi.

KPMG Australia came on board as an adviser to help Inskin with updating their systems, setting up the right governance structures, tax accounting and restructuring, securing grants, strategic growth and succession planning.

For Maria, KPMG has become part of the Inskin family.

“They guide us through all the opportunities that we wouldn’t know about, because you’re so busy working in the trenches,” she says. “They give me a sense of security that I don’t have to worry about what goes on in other aspects of my business. It means I can focus on my dreams.”

Find out how KPMG Australia can help your family business with formal governance structures, grants, strategic growth, tax accounting, business transformation and succession plans here.

Australia's Favourite Family Business 2022

In 2022, Kochie’s Business Builders, in association with KPMG Australia, searched the nation for Australia’s Favourite Family Business. We’ve found our finalists and crowned a deserving winner, based on your votes. Have a look here – and keep on supporting our country’s amazing family businesses every day.

This article is brought you by Kochie’s Business Builders in association with KPMG Australia.