If SoulCycle and Saks had a baby, it would probably be The HUB — Bridgehampton’s new 6,000-square-foot luxury playground where wellness, beauty and fashion collide under one roof. Think Isaac Boots torching your core by day, immersive champagne-fueled pop-ups by night and a rotating roster of brands bringing what the founders call “retail-tainment” to the Hamptons.
Enter SKINNEY Medspa, the cult-favorite NYC spot that basically wrote the playbook on looking like you got eight hours of sleep when you definitely didn’t. From botox and salmon sperm facials to contouring with CoolSculpting and Morpheus 8, the twin-powered medspa has officially touched down out east for its first real summer run.
Their Hamptons pop-up may be seasonal, but their ambitions are anything but. We sat down with SKINNEY founder Adriana Martino at their space in The HUB to talk twins in business, how they scaled from humble beginnings to a growing national brand and what’s next for SKINNEY — in the Hamptons and beyond.
I've always been obsessed with anti-aging skincare, and so I naturally gravitated towards becoming an aesthetician. Initially, I wanted to be a dermatologist, but I was like, ugh, can't get over going to med school. So I became an aesthetician and then saw that there was an ability for me to create my own company in the industry that wasn't done before, and I started SKINNEY Med Spa in 2010. A very long, long time ago. My twin sister and I started off in one room in a doctor's office and then continued to grow a brand.
We fight a lot, but we love a lot. I think that we're yin yang twins. Naturally, when we first started, we took on many hats. We were every single role in our company, from the housekeeper to the front desk manager to the sales director to the aesthetician. We did it all. We realized our strengths and weaknesses. Like, I'm better at front of the house, she's better at back of the house. It’s sort of like building our infrastructure and back of the house marketing and all of that, which led each other to different roles.
We’re ready to scale and grow with a partner. We have no outside capital. It’s been me and my sister from the beginning to now, so we’d love to expand and grow more in the northeast area and even Florida.
It’s definitely very seasonal, which is why the pop up is perfect for us, but we'll see. This is our first real summer out here full-time, and it’s been great. I love it. We’re doing light treatments, not anything with laser skin care. You can get cellulite reduction, drainage and hydro facials, more easy breezy, beach ready procedures.
There’s a medspa literally on every corner. I stay in my own lane and continue to do what I want to do visionary-wise. I look at the future of SKINNEY and not at the competition. Obviously if there’s a new technology that I love and see being the next best thing, I’ll invest. Competition is a natural progression within the industry, especially since we started in 2010.
Botox is a very specific treatment. It's not something that every single injector or PA doctor can do and perfect. I think referral rate based is always really important so you know you're in the right hands, because Botox can be easy to mess up, in my opinion. Other procedures like a hydro facial, many aestheticians can perfect.
Our practitioners do Botox, filler, AQUAGOLD®, salmon sperm. We now have a company aside from SKINNEY called skinneypharm.com that functions as an online pharmacy where we can prescribe GLP-1, an alternative to Ozempic. It’s like Ozempic, but a different compound and less side effects. GLP-1 has taken over the industry… everyone’s into it now. You can microdose to your ideal weight. Obviously if you’re within five pounds of your ideal weight, maybe it’s not good for you, but as someone who has challenges with their weight like Oprah – look at her now.
We did a partnership with Saks Fifth Avenue in 2017, and opening in Saks locations all over the country would be something I would dream about, but obviously way too big for me and my sister to do by ourselves. So onboarding a good strategic partner slash investor to get us to the next level is ideal, because we'd love to continue our partnership with Saks on a national scale while also naturally growing in our target areas like New York City and Miami. We've always naturally grown where our demo goes.
The Hamptons is amazing because there's different little towns. You can go to Sag Harbor one day, you can go to Montauk another. East Hampton's great for other reasons. If I want to party and have a night, Montauk, obviously (and we’ve been doing some events out there). If I’m letting loose, Surf Lodge. Stephen Talkhouse is never out of style. And Bagatelle just opened out here.