Home Australia It looked like the perfect name for Salvatori and Talia’s business – and the entrepreneur couple spent a small fortune setting it up. Then they made a horrifying discovery

It looked like the perfect name for Salvatori and Talia’s business – and the entrepreneur couple spent a small fortune setting it up. Then they made a horrifying discovery

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Talia Jackson and Salvatori Agostino excitedly thought they had gotten a brilliant name for their men's skin care business, until they discovered it was an X-rated site.

A young couple who launched their own skincare brand got the surprise of their lives when they realized the name they were using had already been taken from a porn website.

Talia Jackson and Salvatori Agostino invested $80,000 they had saved for the deposit on their house into buying shares and setting up their online store and even registered the trading name ‘Mr Skin’ with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

“A mistake in choosing our brand almost got us cancelled,” Jackson said in a post recently shared on Instagram.

The couple started the business in 2022 and double-checked that the name was available and checked social media to make sure they could use the handles.

What they didn’t do was a basic Google search.

Just a few days before launching her business, Ms. Jackson typed the name into a search engine to see if they had been detected in SEO.

It was then that the couple received a severe shock.

“Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw next,” Mrs. Jackson said.

‘It’s every businessman’s worst nightmare. It was a famous “corn” site in the United States.

Corn is an online euphemism for circumventing censorship of references to pornography.

All of their products already had their own ‘Mr Skincare’ logo and they were told it would cost $15,000 to change the name to ‘Mr Skincare’ on their future orders.

In the end, the couple had to shell out the money to update their product labels and had to go through the tedious process of filing paperwork to change their company name and then scrambling to get new social media handles.

Agostino also had to pay $1,000 to change Mr Skin’s personalized license plate on his beloved Audi, so people wouldn’t get the wrong idea.

His business is now known as Mr Skincare.

The couple believes that despite the highly competitive landscape of the cosmetics industry and facing international giants in the sector with huge budgets, they have found a niche in the market.

Mr. Agostino suffered from acne during his childhood and found that many products already available did not help or worsened the condition.

Meanwhile, Ms Jackson had worked at makeup retailer Mecca for several years and knew the ins and outs of not only cosmetic ingredients but also how the industry works.

Talia Jackson and Salvatori Agostino excitedly thought they had gotten a brilliant name for their men’s skin care business, until they discovered it was an X-rated site.

The couple have now rebranded as Mr Skincare and hope to make $10,000 in sales a month to make the business viable and help them move out of their parents' home.

The couple have now rebranded as Mr Skincare and hope to make $10,000 in sales a month to make the business viable and help them move out of their parents’ home.

The company focuses on men’s skin care by offering no-nonsense products that they say work for many skin concerns and that their customers love.

It focuses on a three-step approach (a face wash, a scrub and a moisturizer) that provides a combined solution that they said no other company offered.

They’re also vegan, free of nasties like parabens, and made in Australia.

According to research firm Inkwood, the Australian skincare industry alone was worth around $3 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to around $4.4 billion by 2028.

He said growth in the sector is expected to rely heavily on the trend for natural, “minimalist” and vegan formulas.

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