Feelunique proves men and make-up can work together

Men and beauty products might not be natural bedfellows.

But Aaron Chatterley, the chief executive and joint founder of online beauty retailer Feelunique, looks at home in his warehouse full of expensive face creams.

Chatterley is chatting to his "pickers" who receive customer orders from his online beauty business. It's the pickers, based in St Helier, Jersey, who take orders from around the world and aim to post them within 24 hours.

Chatterley may now know his L'Oréal from his Decléor, but he isn't a beauty guru; he is a former web site designer who set up Feelunique.com in 2005 with accountant friend Richard Schiessl, with only £60,000 between them.

Selling cosmetics online is proving a hit with investors as beauty brands are waking up to the fact that customers like buying from the web; latest figures show the industry is already worth £420m.

It was after a particularly boozy trip to Dublin that Chatterley got into beauty after finding himself with time to kill in the airport. He was caught by an overenthusiastic cosmetics saleswoman. He explains: "I wasn't the metrosexual kind of guy. I had Head & Shoulders and a bar of soap in my bathroom. But the Clarins saleswoman started chatting and I used the cream on my face and it actually felt quite good. On the plane I thought: if I wanted to buy this again where would I go? It was a light bulb moment."

After selling his web design company, Chatterley and his friend tried to come up with an idea for an online business. The encounter with the Clarins saleswoman was the beginning of the pair's venture that had sales of £16.5m last year with predictions of £24-£25m this year and earnings (before tax EBITDA) of £1m, and predicted to double for this year.

Despite knowing nothing of the beauty industry, the pair knew the basics of their business model must work. Chatterley explains: "Beauty products have a shelf life and then they run out and you have to buy more. You can't download products like you can with the music or films."

The pair quickly built a team of beauty experts, including beauty buyers from department stores. "We bought in the resource of knowledge of the industry and what we had was a really good understanding of e-commerce."

Feelunique began to target some of the large beauty brands but quickly realised that the business wasn't so straightforward. Big beauty brands will not sell their products to online retailers that do not have a physical presence.

Unlike most purely online retailers, Feelunique began to open shops and spas. Chatterley and Schiessl sold an equity stake in the business to a spa, hotel and business group – Jersey-based Huggler Group – in 2007 to gain access to its spa and salon. Feelunique now owns a handful of shops and spas. The company has seen 100 per cent growth in sales in the past four years and this year is growing at a rate of 60 per cent. Chatterley's target is to "own this space. We can be the ASOS of beauty".

Feelunique was approached by private equity and venture capital funds but it is now focused on making its own acquisitions. Chatterley says: "We will look at all options but there is no specific exit plan. None of the investors want to get out yet. We will always talk to interested parties but it has to be a deal that brings something to the table that we don't have."

Despite the business not having drastically improved Chatterley's own beauty regime, it has improved his private life. When he met a former beauty buyer at a party he "was able to talk to her about something other than the usual football and sport". It must have impressed her – they are now married with twin girls.