Sort of a consultancy for founder-led beauty & skincare brands. 20+ years building. We imagine stuff and then make it happen. Hence the name.
Sort of a consultancy for founder-led beauty & skincare brands. 20+ years building. We imagine stuff and then make it happen. Hence the name.
Imaginists is a consultancy born from building things. We're Sarah Brown and Ed Saper, the co-founders of Pai Skincare. We started the brand in our garage in Ealing Broadway in 2007 and grew it through nearly 15 years of compound growth and profitability.
After Pai's acquisition by Clarins, we launched Imaginists in 2023 to help founder-led beauty and skincare brands grow and avoid some of the mistakes we made along the way. We focus on product ideation, R&D, Amazon growth, D2C, operations, manufacturing, pricing strategy, margin analysis, AI integration, and international expansion.
We've supported investors with due diligence and investment readiness.
In November 2025, we stepped back into Pai as Interim Co-CEOs when the company was hours from being shut down. We're now leading a turnaround, rebuilding the culture, and returning it to growth.
We're both cyclists. Because cycling is faster and life's too short to spend waiting for other people to get out of the way. That came out deeper than expected!
Founder & Brand Innovation
In 2007, Sarah left a successful career in Communications to start Pai with just £15k of savings. No knowledge of the beauty industry. No cosmetic chemistry background. No experience running a business. What she did have was chronic urticaria, which had onset in one night and turned her life upside down. It gave her a unique view of how underserved the sensitive skin community was. She grew Pai from that drafty Ealing Broadway garage to 65 employees, building a factory and delivering year-on-year profitable growth. Executive Board Member at CEW UK since 2015.
LinkedInCo-Founder & Operations
Ed turned a university project into a fashion business. Anything to avoid working for someone else really! He launched the Disney Mickey Mouse Diamante t-shirt in Top Shop (sidestepping Selfridge's exclusive which was only for a sweatshirt). He'd spend his Saturdays transporting black bin liners of tees hot (literally!) off the press in Neasden and putting them into Top Shop SB2. They'd sell out in hours. At Pai, he coded the first websites and built the D2C function, set up wholesale and opened the USA and France markets, became an expert in trade marks and IP, and led fundraising. Currently also consulting as COO at Stories & Ink, growing their Amazon channel internationally. His focus: operations and customer.
LinkedInWe've made every mistake in the book. Hopefully we can help you avoid a few of them.
Channel strategy, marketplace optimisation, and international expansion. We've grown Amazon into the #1 revenue channel for brands we work with.
Site builds, conversion optimisation, and scaling direct-to-consumer operations. Ed built his first sites in OSCommerce and still believes e-com people should be able to code HTML.
In-house vs contract manufacturing, supply chain, forecasting, stock control, and logistics. 20 years of learning what works and what doesn't.
Formulation guidance, green chemistry, ingredient sourcing, regulatory compliance, and getting products that actually work to market.
Understanding your numbers, building profitable pricing strategies, and making sure growth doesn't come at the expense of margin.
Supporting investors and companies with due diligence, investment readiness, and getting those multi-month processes over the line.
We've navigated the accreditation process for all of these. Happy to share what we learned.
COSMOS Organic
Leaping Bunny
Vegan Society
B Corp
Living Wage
ISO 22716 GMP
Pai was the first beauty brand to conceive, formulate and launch a hand sanitiser during COVID. Just two weeks from idea to first delivery. Named after our home base in South Acton, we created what became the world's first prebiotic sanitiser: the most natural and the kindest to skin.
Sunday Times Style Beauty Award Outstanding ContributionWe gifted the vast majority to NHS nurses, then care homes, supermarket workers, tube staff, and schools. For every bottle purchased, we gave one away. This wasn't pivot marketing. It was using what we had to help when it mattered most.
Ed originated the concept; Sarah made it extraordinary. Our bestseller represents a genuine innovation in extraction technology. While everyone else was cold-pressing rosehip seeds (hot, reduces potency), we used a liquid CO2 supercritical extraction process using volcanic CO2. And we combined the whole fleshy hip, not just the seed.
5x Carotenoids 2x Regenerative SterolsMillions of bottles sold, thousands of five-star reviews. Constantly copied, never matched. This little orange bottle became iconic for the Pai brand.
This is the innovation we've been building towards for 18 years. NAD+ is your skin's cellular battery. It powers repair, protection, and regeneration. But it declines as you age, and you can't apply it topically.
NAD+ Activation Tripeptide Complex Exosome-Rich CicaOur solution: a Sunflower Sprout Extract that stimulates NAD+ production, combined with a TriPeptide Complex and exosome-rich Centella Asiatica. Clinically proven to reduce wrinkle depth. The Benjamin Button treatment for your skin.
View ProductSarah led groundbreaking research into tween skincare that revealed alarming trends: 1 in 4 UK tweens aged 9-12 are using Retinol and AHAs. Nearly half have experienced irritation. Our clinical study proved that tween skin microbiomes are significantly underdeveloped compared to teens and adults.
1,500 UK Girls Surveyed British Skin Foundation PartnershipWorking with dermatologists and the British Skin Foundation, we created the #StaySkinSHARP guide to help parents navigate the active skincare conversation.
Read the GuideEd joined this brilliant, founder-led tattoo skincare brand as Consultant COO. Working remotely with the Cornwall-based team to scale operations while fuelling growth across key channels.
Amazon UK → #1 Revenue Channel International ExpansionFrom contract manufacturing management to forecasting systems, B2B wholesale tech, international logistics, and supporting fundraising. A steep learning curve after 20 years of in-house manufacturing, but proof that the operational playbook translates.
Visit Stories & InkWhether you're building a brand, navigating a turnaround, or exploring green chemistry innovation, we'd love to hear from you.