There’s a version of this journey that begins with a strategy deck, a market analysis, and a clear story of finding a void in the Macedonian skincare industry. This version could have been told much more easily. However, this version would be dishonest.
This story really begins in a small showroom in Belgrade, Serbia, in February 2025, where my good friend Ivan Mitov and I sat at a table facing the CEO of Prima Kozmetika (Petar Radmilovic), and we tried to appear as though we had absolutely no doubt about what we were trying to accomplish.
I think we both knew what we wanted to achieve. However, we did not have the experience to know how to get there, or to know what truly mattered when starting our own business for the first time.
The highlights
| Website | skinology.mk |
| Type of project | • Business development • Full e-commerce storefront and product structure • Payment system and checkout integration • Conversion-focused commerce experience • SEO and search visibility foundations • Analytics and customer journey tracking |
| Platforms | • WordPress • WooCommerce |
| Tools | • Google Tag Manager • Google Analytics 4 • Google Search Console |
| Impact | • 10,000+ unique visitors on the website • 12,000+ impressions on Google Organic • 500+ clients bought Skinology products in the past year |
Two people with no experience open a business anyway
Ivan and I had been friends for many years before we even thought about opening up a company. Neither of us had ever owned a real business, one that has contracts, products coming into the country, inventory that needs to be managed, and our own money invested.
Ivan had a very authentic knowledge of the skincare industry and aesthetic treatments. He knew what made up different skincare formulas, which are the active components, and which skin problems different products can help solve. He seemed to have this understanding as naturally as some people know fine wine.
It turned out Ivan also had connections to Prima Kozmetika – a family-owned production facility in Belgrade. They’ve been around since 1987 when Svetislav Radmilovic, a chemical technologist, realized that there needed to be a cosmetic line in the Balkans where products really work and weren’t just pretty packages.
The result of his efforts, after almost 40 years, is hundreds of unique products, a GMP certification for making high-quality products, and a professional facial care called Skinology – all of these have already earned the trust of thousands of beauty salons, spas, and dermatologists in the region.
This wasn’t a start-up with a pitch deck. This was a legitimate company with a rich history, and for some reason, two men in their 20s from Skopje who had never imported anything in their lives were going to represent them in another entire country.
I recall distinctly the feeling I got when we signed the distribution contract. It didn’t feel like a celebration. It felt like I was standing at the end of a diving board staring down into water below me, knowing my only option now was to jump off.
That’s how our company Eclatique Lifestyle was born. Ivan and I divided ownership of it fifty-fifty. We went back to Skopje in the car with our signed partnership agreement, an official product catalogue and literally nothing else. No website. No local customer base. No customers who’d ever even heard of us. Just a hunch – that if the product was truly great and we both agreed to do whatever it took, something new could develop out of this.
The question that followed me home
After weeks of thinking about this trip, one particular question would haunt me. What if we are completely wrong? What if the Macedonian market had never even heard of Skinology and therefore doesn’t even care what a great brand it is?
I have never worked with a skincare brand. I have never developed a brand of any type from scratch, using my own money on every decision.
On the other hand, Ivan knew how to create sales out of those products. He believed in the products themselves and could articulate the quality of the products with great passion. I knew how to build all of the other things necessary for building a successful business. Initially, I thought I was getting the smaller end of the deal. That changed quickly.
We couldn’t afford to sit back and wait for the “perfect” game plan. We also didn’t have a website to allow ourselves some space to figure out where we needed to be going. Therefore, I built one.
The part where the e-commerce platform was developed
The whole process was really fast-paced, and we had limited time available. That’s why we chose to start with a pre-built WordPress theme that supported WooCommerce, instead of developing one from scratch. It made perfect sense to utilize our time to focus on creating content and strategic ideas that would appeal to our target audience.
That being said, this WordPress theme was reconstructed to visually align with Skinology’s branding across each page. It wasn’t just a copy/paste case of adding the products and calling it a day, but a complete rework that included a lot of activities under the surface.
Next was the component that was truly integral to the success of the brand – the foundation upon which the entire platform resides.
I personally populated over 50 different products onto the website using WooCommerce. Each product contained its own lengthy description, organization category, and navigation placement, so that users could navigate through an organized framework.
I translated all of the language elements of the website and the WooCommerce platform – including ingredient listings and product descriptions, mostly related to dermatology – from English and Serbian into Macedonian (which became somewhat of an impromptu education in dermatological terminology – thanks greatly to Ivan’s assistance).
There were several times when we could have easily gotten something wrong, which was not acceptable, especially since it was important for our customers’ skin and overall health.
Among the translation parts were all those small WooCommerce details that you easily miss – like the wishlists and checkout pages. The ones that you forget about, but are really crucial to the customer’s journey.
During the process, I also built out and fully tested the payment processing platform from the point of entering payment information until after the transaction was completed and processed, making it secure and easy to use. Losing potential customers during checkout is far less desirable than having no sales at all.
Finally, I established and started monitoring analytics data that showed actual usage patterns of our website versus what we assumed would happen based on hypothetical visitor behavior, allowing us to see what was happening on our website once visitors started coming to view our products.
This included a full setup of Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics 4, with events and key events (purchases with purchase value) included. Now we always know how we stand sales-wise only by looking at the analytics.
More than 10,000 unique visitors have arrived on the website since its launch.
Lastly, I set up the overall SEO structure for search engines to find Skinology. This entailed establishing a keyword strategy, creating SEO-friendly pages, linking pages together appropriately, setting meta tags for each product page, and numerous other foundational technical components. The results so far? Over 12,000 impressions were generated from Google Organic alone!
The process was unglamorous. Most of this took place on my balcony long past midnight. What kept me going was some adrenaline rush that comes about when you realize you will be held accountable for doing everything yourself, and the excitement of the outcome.
What owning a business feels like below the surface
When we opened Eclatique Lifestyle, I’d spent over 10 years doing digital marketing.
As such, I’d learned to manage a campaign, produce data-driven reports, and speak of growth… from behind my computer. But at the same time, I had no real experience with running a business.
Most surprising to me was how many different hats we ended up wearing together.
Obviously there was the marketing. But then came sales, and that’s when things got interesting. We met with potential customers and made presentations to them.
Then we did all of the invoicing and managed the stock/inventory.
And then I had a quirky habit of obsessively going through all of those tiny little numbers late at night, just to make sure they added up.
And yes, we even personally delivered some of the purchases to people’s houses because they had to be delivered by that exact day.
You learn rather rapidly that your business includes absolutely every single component of the process… even ones you’ve never done or don’t even know yet… with no one else available to assist you because you’re now responsible for knowing.
Looking back, I realize that was the quickest, most uncomfortable, and most sincere education I’ll probably ever receive.
The way Darko approached the technical side of the Skinology project made it apparent that there was no other option but to build everything in order for the business to be successful.
To me, the biggest thing that impressed me was the fact that he had an understanding that the success of our site depended entirely upon its functionality; therefore, he personally ensured that every single feature of the site functioned properly. He did not simply create a website, but the vehicle through which the rest of the business could operate successfully.
Ivan Mitov, Co-founder of Eclatique Lifestyle
Then… something shifted in me
The shift didn’t happen dramatically. No major numbers. No viral moments. No one single “breakout” month to tell anyone about.
It was much smaller, yet so much more powerful. And there were many small things that came together.
The first handful of actual orders started arriving from people who had never even heard of Skinology just a couple of months before. And I was stunned at that. Someone, somewhere made a conscious choice to place some level of trust in something completely unknown to them.
And why did these individuals feel comfortable enough to give this product a shot? Because we developed a quality website and promo materials in their native language describing a product that we were capable of explaining to them.
It wasn’t simply writing about another person’s campaign anymore. It wasn’t optimizing someone else’s growth while sitting comfortably far away from the action.
I was watching directly, and in an unfiltered way, the result of my own choices spreading into the world and affecting real people, and those people were buying something I had a vested interest in.
Once you have truly experienced the sensation of owning your work, you will likely see the way you approach your professional life change profoundly.
And the inspiration behind Foundgroove was born!
We just celebrated the first anniversary of our first import in July 2026. Skinology is still growing as a brand in Macedonia. Meanwhile, Ivan has established his own aesthetic treatment center in Skopje (Skinology Aesthetic Lounge), where we got an additional physical place to sell the Skinology products.
According to our books, more than 500 different clients made purchases of a Skinology product (both online and on-site) in the past year. For a brand without an established audience base, it is a pretty promising start. The more important number for us – more than 20% of the clients already made a second purchase!
What I learned from watching my first “real” business grow, although I didn’t realize it at the time, is that almost everything that contributes to an organization’s long-term success in terms of the digital presence relates to the consistency and coherence of the underlying story of the organization’s presence and its visibility by potential customers.
I had no way of describing this at the time when I was working late into the night creating ingredient lists. However, I can describe it today. The insight I obtained through the “school” of doing it myself rather than learning it from a book or textbook is the driving force behind the creation of Foundgroove.
The growth of Skinology provided me with an outcome I did not expect: proof. Proof that something that I built had an actual impact. This was very different than years of reporting on other companies’ marketing efforts and successes. My success at Skinology showed me that I could trust myself enough to go out and create something completely on my own.
This confidence enabled me to have the courage to quit working for other companies and to start building my own business. I called that business Foundgroove, because I finally understood what it actually takes to build something that holds.