Entrepreneur Niamh Murdock runs a successful cosmetic surgery business with her mother Ailish Kelly. She tells Ben Haugh how would-be buyers came knocking on their door, and why they landed on a private equity cash injection to expand the firm

I am standing in a consultation room of the Avoca Clinic’s newest location in Dublin, holding a silicone breast implant. “Give it a squeeze,” Niamh Murdock, the plastic surgery company’s chief executive, encourages me. “You’ll probably never get another opportunity to see what the implants feel like.”

The implants, which resemble beached jellyfish, are laid out like pieces of jewellery inside a wooden display case with pull-out drawers below a large screen that can show women what they would look like after surgery.

This facility, which opened just a few weeks ago following a €7 million investment, is the company’s fifth. The firm was founded in 2012 by a mother and daughter team, Murdock (39) and Ailish Kelly (63). They opened their first clinic in Kilmacanogue, Co Wicklow, in 2012 after purchasing the lease of a clinic that had closed down.

Murdock, who studied economics and sociology in UCD and took a Master’s degree in International Business from DIT, always had an entrepreneurial spirit. “I used to sell pancakes in school at lunchtime, and I bought a spray tan machine for a couple of thousand when I was in my first year in college,” she says.

Murdock’s father lent her money to buy a car, but instead she spent it on the tanning device and charged people €35 per session. “He thought I was out of my mind, but I made a fortune doing it.” She was eventually able to pay her father back and quit her job in Dunnes Stores.

The Avoca Clinic opened its second location in Limerick in 2016, followed by Dundalk in 2022, Cork last year and Carrickmines earlier this year. The original Kilmacanogue clinic carries out major surgeries while the others are used for consultations and minor procedures.

The company employs 50 people, including three consultant plastic surgeons. In September 2023 it took on private equity investment, selling 27% of the company for €7m to BGF, which describes itself as the “most active equity investor in Ireland and the UK”.

Murdock says they decided to do this after receiving several unsolicited offers to buy the entire company. “So Ailish and I were doing great down in Kilmacanogue and had opened Limerick and had our sights on Dundalk, and it was like…” She raps the table to simulate the sound of a door knock. “Would you sell?

“Those kinds of contacts started happening to the business. People were just reaching out to see if we were interested in selling, trade buyers. It wasn’t something we’d ever thought about before.”

Murdock says these offers weren’t tempting because the business is their life and they felt there was more “low-hanging fruit” in the industry to be plucked. “We eat, sleep and breathe this. I don’t know what we would do then. This is what we’re passionate about.”

She declines to say how much the offers were, only revealing that they came in lower than the €7m received from BGF for just under a third of the company. “We didn’t have a CFO. We didn’t have an in-house finance function — it was all outsourced,” she says.

“The best thing about BGF is that minority shareholding piece. I think, as a family business, if we were to sell 90% it would have been incredibly hard to keep running this as passionately.”

She says the investors have been “very supportive” but are not involved in the day-to-day running of the company. “We have a board meeting every six weeks and they have their nominee on the board. I really see him as a great sounding board and almost like a colleague in a way.

“I think that they have brought us from the kitchen table to the boardroom, but not in a scary way. I find that their backing gives us the confidence to do things faster, and not just the money. It’s the market’s belief in you that gives you that confidence to move forward.”

Murdock concentrates on the behind-the-scenes elements of the company while her mother Ailish, its patient experience director, is more customer-focused. She says they are “complete opposites”, but work well together and even reside on the same street.

“We live ten doors apart,” she says with a laugh. The two women are open about having had work done at the clinic and say they don’t sell anything they wouldn’t do themselves. Murdock thinks of herself as the clinic’s “typical customer” when making decisions.

The demand for plastic surgery in Ireland has increased significantly over recent years. A 2022 report by the Irish Association of Plastic Surgeons (IAPS) found that 89 full facelifts were performed here in 2019. In 2022, one surgeon alone performed 223.

Murdock says the Avoca Clinic’s typical clients are not young women seeking a “perfect bikini body”, but mothers in their 40s and 50s that want to reverse some of the physical effects of having children.

“The perception is that it’s [about] big breasts, big lips and looking great in a bikini on the beach. But in reality, that is not what plastic surgery is any more in Ireland. And I think that’s what we’ve been able to capitalise on really well.

“We’re at the forefront of that changing industry. Our main thing would be tummy tucks, breast uplifts and breast reductions. If you’ve had your three kids or whatever and you’re getting in and out of the shower, it’s that really human moment we’ve all felt at different times in our lives of thinking, ‘oh, that’s not great’.”

Murdock says that many of the company’s customers are referrals from hospitals or GPs. “It can be women whose muscles have split during pregnancy, particularly with caesarean sections [which] are going up one per cent every year. The only way to fully recover and get your muscles all stitched back together is an abdominoplasty.”

I ask whether she sees what they do as medical rather than cosmetic. “I do, and I’m very passionate about that. It’s women who want to feel back to themselves. As I said, nobody cares about a white bikini. Nobody’s saying to themselves, ‘God, I want to [look] like Cindy Crawford.’”

The clinic also caters to other types of customers, including young men and women who are simply unhappy with how they look, Murdock concedes after further questioning.

“Now that’s not to say there aren’t women who have asymmetric breasts and things like that, and maybe they’re 27 or 28 having surgery. And equally, we’re seeing a growth in the facelift end of the market… upper eyelid surgery and things like that. That can extend to 60-plus.”

Not all of the clinic’s customers arrive following a referral from a doctor. Amanda Brunker, the journalist, media personality and former Miss Ireland, has been promoting it on social media.

Murdock says they “have to be careful” about using influencers in their marketing. “Amanda is a good friend of ours. So that was kind of organic,” she says.

Her rule of thumb is that they must be a patient first rather than sought out by the clinic. Murdock also says there is a growing number of men looking to get procedures done.

“It’s still primarily women, [but] we find the men are having some of our newer offerings. We’ve just launched a rhinoplasty specialist clinic, and our plastic surgeon who does that is actually an ENT [ear, nose and throat] surgeon. He’s a dual speciality.

“We’re finding guys [who have] had their nose battered in sports over the years, and they are having that fixed. It happened to my husband, who broke his nose in a Gaelic match.

“We [also] see liposuction for men, particularly around the tissue in their chest. It’s guys my own age who are in big jobs, working all the time with young kids and no time to go to the gym. They will have a bit of fat to remove on the tummy, and that’s done as a day case procedure under local anaesthetic.”

Despite this increase in male clients, the Avoca Clinic’s customers are about 90% female. Does Murdock feel any responsibility for contributing to the pressure on women to look perfect? “I don’t,” she says.

“I think it’s a very fair question. I don’t think we’re playing into it. I would hate to think we’re perpetuating some view that everyone has to be a size six with big boobs and look a certain way, because that is not the reality of our market at all.”

Murdock says they approach everything with an “ethical mind” and have turned people away who had “unrealistic expectations” of wanting to look like someone else. “You go away and think about this for six months,” she says they would be told.

“Because, look, our whole ethos is safe, happy patients. So if a patient is coming in with unrealistic expectations or wanting to look a way that wouldn’t be right for them, it’s not in our interest to treat them. From a business perspective…but also from a human perspective.”

I ask whether she would support either of her sons having a procedure when they are older if that is what they wanted. “Well, when they’re adults. You have to support your kids. Depending on what it is now, all within reason. But yeah, of course,” she says.

The Avoca Clinic’s most recent accounts for the financial year ending October 2023 state that it had assets of €2.59m, including almost €2.1m in cash. Directors’ remuneration was €220,258, down from €565,000 in 2022. Turnover last year was about €9.5m and the target for 2027 is €15m.

Murdock is not resting on her laurels. She has big expansion plans, which have been sped up following the recent investment. “I’d like to see eight clinics by 2027. The plan for 2027 is to double the revenue, so more sites would be essential. We’re looking at the midlands [as] we’re getting a lot of our customers from [there].”

The company intends to keep Kilmacanogue as its main surgical hub, but also to offer local consultation sites. “I think people always travel for surgery, but don’t necessarily want to travel for the consultation,” Murdock says.

“I am not a big believer in online consultations. We’ve never done that. It’s really important that you build up that initial relationship with your surgeon. And I think there’s nothing like doing that face to face.”

Murdock also wants to expand the company’s offering. “I would like to see more accessibility for women, no matter what that means. Radiology, the menopause — there’s a couple of other things we’re looking at, [such as] access to hormonal care for men.”

It’s clear that Murdock has no intention of selling her remaining stake in the business any time soon. “There’s no ‘plan B’, this is it,” she says. “This is our everything."

Photo: (l-r) Ailish Kelly and Niamh Murdock. (Pic: Tom Honan)