When it comes to the cutting edge of beauty in Nigeria, you need to talk to Bimbo Ige. Not only is she the visionary Founder behind Celeb Laser and Aesthetics Clinic—a trusted hub for laser, cosmetic, and aesthetic services, but she also serves as the President of the Medical Aesthetics Association. With her clinic recognized for bringing advanced technology and luxury to the region, Ige is a professional who walks the talk. In this interview with IFEOMA OKEKE-KORIEOCHA, Ige shares the fascinating journey of how a background in radiography led her to permanent hair removal, the surprising global history of glutathione, and the uphill battle to professionalize the booming and chaotic medical aesthetics market.
What is Celeb Laser & Aesthetics Clinic is all about?
Celeb Laser & Aesthetics Clinic is known for medical aesthetics, advanced laser treatments (like hair removal & teeth whitening), Botox, fillers, IV therapy, and skin rejuvenation. We have five different departments. We have the dental department, which does cosmetic dentistry like laser teeth whitening. And we also have a specialist dentist. We also do scaling and polishing in that department.
The second department is our glutathione department, where we do intravenous injections for glutathione, vitamin C’s; we do B12, we do Ginkgo, we do vitamin D’s, any type of IV or IM you can think about, basically. But the popular ones are vitamin C, B12 and glutathione. Then the other department is the laser department.
So, the most popular procedure here is the laser hair removal. Laser hair removal removes hair permanently. It helps a lot of people that have the PCOS medical condition, whereby the hair grows all over their faces and their chest, and they feel uncomfortable. This affects people’s marriages, and relationships. When they do makeup procedures, the hair is showing outside the makeup. It makes a lot of people feel very uncomfortable. So, we help those kinds of people with their self-esteem issues, basically.
The next department is the therapy department. This department helps people that have stretch marks after childbirth. They have things like cellulite, loose skin that comes up after childbirth. It helps to firm it back up, so that ladies can actually get their confidence back. So, these departments are just for females. The ones that affect males are usually excessive sweating of the armpits. So, when they wear white shirts, everything is dripping with sweat. This can also affect their self-esteem. So, when they do laser, laser stops the excessive sweat on the armpits permanently. They also do the back hair. Men do that as well.
Some people may have been insulted about their teeth being too yellow. They will come here and we will help them with that. Most times, we get messages in our DM and a lot of men send me DMs. They tell us they don’t like the way their wives have stretch marks all over their bodies. They ask us how we can help with that. I’m usually very touched when I get these messages because it shows the men really love their wives and want the best for them.
So, we do the other side as well, which is the Botox and fillers. So Botox helps when people have masseter, wide masseters. This area tends to get wider. This is the largest muscle of the face. It starts to get wider. So we use Botox to make it slim. Because the younger you are, the more triangles your face is going to look.
So, what we do is help with anti-aging. We would inject this side and it makes it look slimmer, basically. So in charge of our dental department, we have a dentist and a dental nurse in charge of that department. We have two nurses in charge of the glutathione department. And we have two laser therapists in charge of the laser department. I am in charge of the Botox department.
So, we have different people that are specialized to do different things. We don’t interact with each other. The general nurse probably does not have an idea about what is going on in the other departments.
So the general nurse probably does not know what is going on in the dental department and vice versa. The dental nurses are not trained on IVs and other aspects. They are usually quite specific on IVs.
When did you start?
So I started this in 2011 in London and then I moved the business to Nigeria in 2017. So I have been training on different things by then.
So, I have a medical background in radiography. And I became obsessed with lasers and laser hair removal. Because I also had issues with ingrown hair and razor bumps from when I was a teenager. So that’s how I actually got into that aspect of aesthetics medicine because there was nobody to help me. There was nothing out there.
What is your best-selling procedure?
For now, our best-selling procedure is laser hair removal. That’s our number one for now. It changes sometimes. Like last year, it was laser teeth whitening. And then maybe two months ago, it was glutathione injection. So when we inject you with glutathione injection, it helps to brighten up your skin and helps the texture get better. So, glutathione has the most vitamins in the world. It has 10 times more vitamin C than oranges. So there are a lot of vitamins in glutathione. So once you inject glutathione, it helps to brighten up the skin. So the Caucasians used to use glutathione back in the day to help refresh their bodies. They used to use it on people that had cancers to give them vitamins. Then they realized that, ‘wow, this thing is making us whiter’. That’s the side effect of it. A lot of things have side effects. But they didn’t like it because white people don’t want to get lighter, they want to get darker. That’s why they’re always under the sun in sunny countries. But when Africans heard about that, and all the vitamin C it has, they went for it because it has the side effects they want. That’s how glutathione entered our market. That’s how it got even more popular than the people that brought it in. It’s one of the best sellers.
Do you think this market is growing despite the economic downturn and low purchasing power?
The market is growing but I’ll tell you what the issue is with the market. So when I came in 2017, I’m sure our clinic was among the top three in the market then because people did not know much about the aesthetics industry. It was new then. But now, there are about 1,000 people doing this.
So that’s the difference. The market is extremely saturated and there are a lot of problems with the industry. There are issues of regulations and people not being qualified and not doing their training. We’re trying to help with that, but it’s a lot of work. I’m the president of the Medical Aesthetics Association. It’s a lot of work to regulate that industry, because you find that some people that have these kinds of clinics open because maybe daddy is the president or a prominent person in the country.
Demand is probably going up, but there’s so many people operating in this space. And a lot of people are coming from abroad to even do it. That shows the demand is there.
Speaking of regulation, for me this is a very sensitive sector and regulation should be key. So, as the president of the Medical Aesthetics Association, what are you doing to ensure issues around regulations are addressed?
We’ve collaborated with the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH). So they go to check everybody’s clinic every three to six months to make sure that everything is clean and tidy, to ensure they have nurses and doctors on ground. They check their licenses. So we’ve collaborated with the Ministry of Health to make sure that works.
We’ve collaborated with Lagos State Medical School as well to train people that we see that are not doing things the right way. So we send them back to school to go and do a course. So these are what we’ve done so far. But you know this is Nigeria and there are people in other States which we may not see or monitor. It’s really difficult, to be honest. So, we’re just managing how we can with the Ministry of Health. But the ones in Lagos are very good. They go everywhere.
