Experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic from five aesthetic practitioners

My clinic—West Room Aesthetics—had been open for just 6 weeks before being closed for lockdown.

Naturally, I was devastated, but I was also optimistic because I thought that the closure would only be for a few weeks. After the initial disappointment, I looked forward to the slower pace that would allow us to make more detailed plans and strengthen our systems.

However, as the daily news briefings took a turn for the worst, I soon realised that the clinic would be closed for an indefinite period and, suddenly, that threw us into uncertainty. We had to quickly create and implement a business continuity strategy in one fell swoop! The questions we were asking were: how do we maintain momentum and stay relevant? How do we keep our patients interested? How do we attract new patients during this period? How do we keep sales up?

I knew from research that web-based skincare sales were on the rise, so we very quickly devised an online content and social media strategy. This meant many sleepless nights trying to put all this content together. Typically, you would have done this over a few months, while we were doing it in a matter of days. We ended up calling this process ‘Corona Creativity’. I am convinced that this mad period of activity is what held the business together.