Resilience is easier said than done, but it’s an art that Alice Hatcher has embodied through the years. Moving to a new country, building a brand from scratch, overcoming financial recessions, and having people telling her she’s not good enough were just some of the hurdles she had to overcome. But she did. And her resiliency has molded her to be a successful entrepreneur with three thriving businesses in the beauty industry, including one of the top medical spas in Orange County, California.
Alice Hatcher is the founder and CEO of Essential Beauty Medical Spa & Laser Center, Precision Skin RX, and Beauty Addict. Trained alongside Dr. Zein Obagi, one of the most highly-regarded powerhouses in the beauty industry has become an unstoppable force herself.
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Alice Hatcher immigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of one, carrying nothing but the American dream. Her mother worked as the night shift nurse in Minnesota while her father went through engineering school. The family lived in a one-bedroom apartment on top of their family-owned Chinese restaurant.
“The biggest challenge I faced in life was people telling me I can’t do it, that I’m not good enough and will fail, including my immigrant tiger mom and father. One time, my father told me, ‘no matter how hard you try, you will never succeed because you will never have blond hair and blue eyes.’ I was seven years old at the time,” Alic shared. The negativity coming from her own parents pushed her even further to prove them wrong and build a lasting legacy.
Struggling to make ends meet, Alice also had to face many other challenges in her youth in the 1980s, including racism and bullying, and being the only Chinese person in her school.
“After my youth, I opened our medical spa in 2006 during the economic recession; we did not recover for at least five years after opening. I would go out and solicit people and leave flyers in people’s cars to get them to come into our medical spa. I would sell gift certificates in the parking lots and then take the clients back to the spa and perform the facial. I would also be the acting receptionist and check them out at the desk. I fulfilled many positions to get us through the financial crisis,” Alice recalled.
“I then launched our e-commerce skincare store, which at the time, online shopping just started getting big. We had our highest sales the first year, which beat our brick and mortar,” she added. The success of her e-commerce venture made Alice realize the value of using the digital space to engage with the market.
A decade into the industry, Alice was able to pull herself out of debt. Ready to push herself further, she launched a skincare brand called Precision Skin RX, using all the knowledge she gained from her aesthetics training and retail experience with Clinique, MAC, Estee Lauder, Stila, and many other brands.
Today, all of her businesses are thriving, and two decades later, Essential Beauty Medical Spa & Laser Center has grown to be the leading medical spa in Orange County, California. Her skincare brand is also making waves, providing results-driven medical-grade products made with quality ingredients to address concerns across skin conditions and lifestyles. The e-commerce platform Beauty Addict also thrives on serving customers across the country and abroad and is now providing virtual consultations for their clients to advise them on the right products to use for their skin conditions.
Over the next five years, Alice Hatcher aims to grow her brands and businesses, continually promoting positivity through health, beauty, and wellness and helping people gain confidence in their own skin.
