As the director of one of Singapore’s largest aesthetic groups, it’s safe to say that Karen Lam is an inimitable guiding force for all entrepreneurs aiming to break into the beauty space. Having taken the reins of her family business in 2016, Lam has since expanded Estetica Group’s burgeoning portfolio and brought it to new heights by branching out from salon services and into science-driven solutions. With revered local labels Ést.lab, Heure and Verdue under her belt, she is deeply passionate about redefining what beauty means in the modern age especially following a tragic kitchen accident that left her with third-degree burns on 20 percent of her body.

⁠What drives you as a changemaker?

Success has become more internal over the years. It’s less about scale and more about alignment, whether what I’m building still reflects what I believe in and whether the people growing with me feel that same sense of purpose too. External treatments can enhance and enable, but transformational confidence shifts only when someone rewrites the way they speak to themselves. That inner narrative is ultimately what matters. As a burns survivor, I am passionate about going deeper rather than wider—refining what we already do and continuing to build something that feels meaningful both to the team and to the people we serve.

Ést.lab has branched out into the supplement sphere this year with the launch of Daily Skin Boost. What prompted you to make this pivot?

Taking a skincare brand into the ingestible space is an incredibly steep climb. Traditional Chinese medicine has always viewed the digestive system and the skin as deeply interconnected. Today, a growing mountain of clinical evidence has finally proven this through the ‘gut-skin axis’—showing us that internal digestive health is the absolute blueprint for treating everything from acne to eczema. With this knowledge, we took a new approach, where beauty meets wellness for a holistic understanding of skin health. This pivot resulted in the launch of our Daily Skin Boost.

What is the most challenging part about inheriting, and now running, a family-owned business?

The greatest challenge is mastering the delicate balance between preservation and progression. My mum had incredible intuition and built deep, lasting relationships with her clients. When I stepped into the business, my goal wasn’t to erase that heritage, but to scale it and bring it into the modern era. In the early years, the challenge was simply earning the trust of my mum. We naturally had differing views on operations and modernisation. When you inherit a family business, you aren’t just managing spreadsheets; you are managing a legacy, familial emotions, and the expectations of long-term staff who have known you since you were young. The transition from a traditional, relational salon model to a corporate, multi-brand ecosystem was steep, but pushing through those growing pains is what has allowed us to thrive today.

Estetica Group has expanded from salon services to science-driven products across multiple categories. What inspired you to take the business in this direction?

The initial inspiration was simple yet ambitious: we wanted to give our customers a seamless extension of their salon treatments at home. But beyond that, I had a deep desire to build a homegrown brand we could be proud of. However, we quickly realised that to do this right, we had to build it ourselves. At the time, it was common for beauty companies to purchase ready-made technology to build their products. We disrupted the model by investing heavily in our in-house R&D lab. By collaborating with world-class scientists, we engineered game-changing innovations from the ground up.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Looking forward, what change are you most excited to see in your industry?

The change I am most excited to see is the shift from reactive beauty to proactive wellness. The full convergence of beauty and health, where skincare is informed by your microbiome, supplements are personalised to your bloodwork, and wellness rituals are preventative rather than cosmetic. Getting there requires a massive commitment to education and technology. Brands must be willing to step out of the traditional beauty lane and collaborate with biotech labs and wellness experts. We have to teach consumers to demand more than surface-level results and provide them with the scientific tools and transparency to optimise their health from the inside out.