The beauty of AI in action: Hair Syrup and Dr Adams Aesthetics

Entrepreneurs in all sectors are embracing AI, figuring out the best use cases for them. The beauty and health space has specific issues to contend with, like compliance, labelling and supply chain management. Recently I encountered two entrepreneurs who have found ways to use AI to help with these pain points.

Lucie Macleod is the founder of Hair Syrup. She came up with her winning hair formula to sort her own needs, devising the product in her parents’ home in rural Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales, while she was a university student. Her creation went viral on TikTok and she’s taken her brand global.

One of the practicalities of international expansion is sorting out labelling. She uses Anthropic’s Claude to help with this.

“We’ll have four people proof-check the labels,” Macleod told me. “Then we’ll run it through AI and it’s crazy what it spots.”

It catches typos, of course! But this is more than a spellcheck. The AI is also spotting compliance issues.

She needs labels appropriate for different territories, including the EU and the US, which are bound by different laws. Then individual distributors and retailers may also have their own specific labelling requirements.

“It will flag possible claim issues too,” says Macleod, “[reminding us to] make sure you have clinical evidence to substantiate that claim, all of which we do.”

The technology is a huge help to a first-time entrepreneur who started her business aged 21 and doesn’t yet have the resources to hire a large, experienced team.

So here’s the key lesson from her: AI isn’t just about efficiency in large organisations. It can also help entrepreneurs in smaller companies to fill knowledge gaps, helping them to scale.

Keeping AI in-house at Dr Adams Aesthetics

Billy Wang is another entrepreneur from the world of health and beauty who is reaping the benefits of AI.

He is the founder and CEO of Dr. Adams Aesthetics, a London-based B2B aesthetics product supplier. It was founded in 2023, has 20 employees, revenues of £10m and serves clinics with products like dermal fillers, both in the UK and abroad.

He believes that “AI is revolutionising the landscape” in his industry, but you have to be careful how you approach it because of cybersecurity threats.

He didn’t want his employees using their own private accounts with the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI.

So he’s tried to keep AI more in-house by investing in an AI team and building a platform for his employees. It’s called their ‘AI Space’ and lets them access more than 20 customised tools, that use the power of LLMs like Claude and GPTs in the background. These include tools for marketing intelligence and customer experience.

He fires up the dashboard to show me one nice example that automates procurement. This AI tool can analyse the demand from clinics and weigh this against prices from suppliers before generating all the necessary communications in the supply chain.

“What took 3 days with a lot of manual inputting now takes 10 minutes,” Wang tells me. “100 per cent, I believe the investment in AI has paid for itself already, even if you look at productivity alone.”

What does this mean for leaders?

You don’t need scale to benefit. Macleod built Hair Syrup’s compliance process aged 21, with no in-house legal or regulatory team. AI can plug specialist knowledge gaps for founder-led businesses long before they can afford to hire for them.

Keep it in-house as you scale. Wang’s decision to build a controlled ‘AI Space’ rather than let staff use personal accounts is as smart as it is efficient. Sensitive supplier, pricing and client data shouldn’t sit in tools you don’t control.

Measure it in hours, not just cost. Wang’s procurement tool turned a three-day task into ten minutes. As you professionalise operations, look for the manual, repetitive processes eating your team’s time, not just the ones eating budget.

AI augments judgement, not replace it. Hair Syrup still runs labels past four people before AI ever sees them. The strongest use cases pair automation with human sign-off, especially anywhere compliance or regulation is involved.