Melissa M Chen, Founder, melissachens

Entrepreneur extraordinaire Melissa Chen is the founder of melissachens Skin Beauty Spa in Kuala Lumpur. Melissa, who successfully public listed her businesses with reputable salon names Leonard Drake and Aster Spring, was also instrumental in bringing in Dermalogica and setting up the first Leonard Drake centre in the country.

She revolutionized the concept of beauty and wellness by establishing the Head to Toe Beauty Centre in 1984, which eventually evolved to become the first local skin care company ever listed on MSEB, as well as one of the most successful companies in Malaysia’s skin care and wellness industry.

She became interested in the skincare brand Dermalogica in 1987 and four years later launched the first Leonard Drake centre in the country, as well as outlets in the region including Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.

The melissachens Skin Beauty Spa opened its second outlet at One Utama, just weeks after its flagship outlet opened at Sunway Giza. With plans to open more outlets in key centres of the city, Melissa feels that everyone must experience beautiful skin with its revolutionary professional skin care products formulated by an international Swiss R & D team.

L&S: Your industry is one that is considerably niche and target-market specific. How did you become interested in working with skincare in the first place?
MC: What ultimately drives me is my passionate belief that true happiness comes with beautiful skin, and my desire to help women and men to nurture and sustain timeless skin health and radiance, effortlessly.

I started working in the skincare and beauty industry many years ago as a beauty advisor and thus travelled quite a bit around Malaysia. Throughout my journeys, I noticed that women in general have neglected their skin due to the stress and expectations in their daily lives. I then realized the importance of skincare and wanted to help women change and redefine what beauty is all about.

L&S: With your extensive wealth of experience it was only natural that you founded your own range of products. Could you tell us more about your brainchild melissachens?
MC: After 27 years of skincare experience and knowledge garnered from years of extensive experience, research and innovation, I wanted to bring all my experiences into melissachens skincare system, which is truly an era of a new revolution in the international professional skincare market today.

I founded melissachens with a deep driving passion to achieve healthy skin within the shortest time, and that can only be achieved by having the best in high-performance skin care formulations for all skin types; especially sensitive skin. The melissachens Skin Beauty Spa is a specialist skin care centre focused on 2 core areas:

Catered for all ages and across all groups of people with various skin conditions, our customers upon walking in will experience the very best in skin care from our holistic approach. We understand our clients’ needs and ensure our deliverables meet their needs. We educate our client to understand his or her skin concerns and how to best care for it to achieve healthy and beautiful skin amidst the daily stress from internal and external stressors.

Our experienced and qualified skin therapists will conduct a comprehensive assessment of skin types where specific treatments and products are recommended to meet its (skin) needs. For immediate corrective remedy, an active execution of processes with facial treatments coupled with body treatments will be recommended to achieve the desired transformation results.

L&S: Bearing in mind that diet and the environment can play havoc on the skin, what are some skincare essentials everyone should have with them?
MC: Mental wellbeing and physical relaxation go hand in hand, complementing each other. Therefore, “feeling good” and “looking good” must not be compromised. The environmental factors in the world we live in today derived from stress at work to poor air quality, especially in the cities, have given most of us skin inflammation and irritation that need the correct formulations from the skin care experts.

At melissachens, we strive to understand the needs of our customers and aim to provide a holistic approach to our treatments that are specifically formulated to meet those needs. Our products and services are developed to resolve skin concerns, uplift and maintain a healthy skin to look vibrant, youthful and ultimately prolong beautiful skin that look and feel good.

I strongly believe that for beautiful skin, the skin integrity is a core essential factor where we must focus on by protecting skin and preventing skin barrier damage due to common skin problems such as acne and sensitive skin triggering chronic inflammation of the skin that is further aggravated by environmental factors and our hectic lifestyle.

L&S: Could you share some tips for maintaining healthy skin?
MC: One area to begin with in order to maintain a youthful looking skin is to understand what we use to cleanse our skin. Cleansing is an important daily routine that not only helps to keep the skin clean, but to restore the optimum skin function. In fact this is one area that most people pay the least attention, as many are willing to spend on expensive creams with lavish formulations but would most often ignore the type of cleanser they use.

A skin beneficial cleanser will help rebuild the skins' integrity and protect the barrier to ensure that it is free from sensitizing trigger when used daily; as oppose to a cleanser that uses harsh chemicals such as SLS/ALS which are common surfactants added commercially to cleansers. These aggressive chemicals will strip the skin’s natural protection by removing not only grimes and residues, but also the essential moisturising and lipidic factors that eventually thins the barrier. The progressive thinning of the barrier will expose the skin surface with micro-gaps that will raise the skin intolerance by making it more vulnerable to sensitive triggers. That is why many people are facing sensitive skin issues today despite the fact that they are using so many skincare products.

Melissachens skincare range helps to support and strengthen sensitive skin recovery. By adding Pro-Biotic Agent and Tomato Leaf Stem Cells in the cleansers to prevent skin inflammation and protect cellular DNA function. Of course, then the daily skincare regimen will need to include toner, moisturiser and sun block, in order to boost the skin’s performance added with the occasional use of serums is essential. Also, allocate a weekly regimen to charge up the skin with mask therapy and exfoliation to ensure the skin is able to regenerate effectively.

With years of experience in treating sensitive and acne skin, I have incorporated effective solutions in the melissachens skincare range with the right skin solutions that will take your skin onto a sustainable journey of lifelong skin beauty and wellness by nurturing, repairing and protecting skin integrity and cellular reformation to help attain ageless-vitality for women - regardless of physical age and physiological conditions in today's hectic environment.