WEALTH October 18, 2025 0 Comments

From Shutterbug to Game-Changer: How Sonia Deasy Risked It All to Revolutionize the Beauty Industry with Pestle & Mortar

What if your next billion-dollar idea came not from endless brainstorming sessions or market analysis, but from a simple observation at a photography conference? That’s exactly how Sonia Deasy and her husband Padraic went from running a flourishing portrait studio to launching Pestle & Mortar, a skincare brand that’s rewriting the rules on what it means to build a sustainable, family-run business during tough economic times. Starting out with a single, revolutionary product—the Pure Hyaluronic Serum—these two managed to pivot smartly, leaning into their heritage, combining old-world natural healing wisdom with modern savvy entrepreneurship. It’s a story of spotting opportunity where others see risk, embracing minimalism in a world obsessed with excess, and growing a global brand on the back of authenticity and word-of-mouth buzz. And here’s a cheeky thought: who knew a makeup artist’s quick fix for dehydrated skin could inspire a skincare empire that today rivals luxury giants? Stick around as we unpack their journey of hustle, heart, and a refusal to sell out anytime soon. LEARN MORE

Sonia Deasy was running a successful photography firm with her husband, Padraic, when a lightbulb moment led to the creation of their hugely successful skincare business. She talks to Kate Demolder about starting up during the recession, how they’ve grown the company and why the business won’t be for sale any time soon

The story of how Pestle & Mortar was founded involves one business, two people and an ancestry that spans centuries and continents.

The story goes that when co-founders Sonia Deasy and her husband Padraic were at a photography conference, they noticed a makeup artist at work on a model who had dehydrated and textured skin.

The makeup artist chose to prepare the skin with products to make it look better on camera and that was the moment the business was born.

“I come from a natural healing background,” Deasy smiles on a sunny Thursday afternoon.

“My grandfather was a medicine man in India and natural healing goes back in my family for over six generations.

“That’s where the name comes from, as a pestle and mortar would have been what he used in Ayurvedic healing. My uncle, my dad’s brother, still runs their store in India.”

Deasy’s parents moved to Portlaoise, Co. Laois, in the 1960s, where her father, an engineer, worked as a door-to-door salesman.

Eight years in, he opened a fashion store in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, an outfit Deasy managed after she earned a Philosophy and History degree at UCD.

From there, she went on to found and manage a wholesale clothing firm with her brother for eight years.

When she married Padraic, they saw an opportunity to teach people how to run a successful studio photography business.

Padraic’s family owned a successful portrait studio in Newbridge, Deasy’s Photography, with plenty of prestigious awards behind it.

This lightbulb moment allowed them to weather the recession. However, it wasn’t until that fateful conference that they noticed a more lucrative gap in the market.

They were running the early days of Pestle & Mortar and their portrait business in tandem when they realised the limited scaling potential of one business and the unlimited scaling potential of the other.

“Once we launched, it took us probably two and a half years to decide and completely close our portrait studio,” Deasy says.

“It was hectic. But we knew that we had a product that worked and sold. Our first product that we launched paid for the expansion [of the rest of the business] and we just kind of went from there.”

That first product, released in 2014, was the Pure Hyaluronic Serum, a hydration product centred on an ingredient that is naturally present in the body.

“It was really different at the time,” Deasy says.

“We launched a line with one product and the product name was the ingredient. That’s everywhere now, but it hadn’t really happened at that stage.” Word got out through a friend of Deasy’s who worked in PR.

“She sent it out to 20 of the top press in Ireland. And it was immediately picked up by Xposé, who did a feature on us. We got sales on the website immediately,” she says.

“Also, we were very early adopters of technology. So we had Instagram and Facebook [accounts], which not everyone did at all. As a matter of fact, [luxury department store] Liberty London contacted us off the back of our Instagram page. But, honestly, we mostly lived on word of mouth. The product was so good that when someone used it, they would tell their friends. And that’s how it grew.”

Pestle & Mortar has traditionally found itself pitched in a premium category — product prices range from €7 for spot patches to €96 for a retinoid.

The Deasys did a lot of market research before launching to consider the price structure. “We’re not in the top end, we’re in the middle,” she says.

“The Pure Hydration Serum is €45 now, up by €2 as of last month — and that’s the first price increase in ten years.

With skincare and cosmetics, you could spend anything. And I generally consider the target market to be myself, so I always gauge what I would spend on something.

And that generally informs our pricing.” Branding has always been of particular interest to the Pestle & Mortar team, with its products almost exclusively packaged in clean lines and monochromes.

“We started introducing colour at one stage, but now we’re going back to basics. At the minute, we’re actually going through a little bit of a tweak. Not a rebrand, but just aligning things again.

“I suppose that comes from my husband. He is meticulous. But what we really want is our brand to be recognisable. We don’t want to just be another product on the shelf.”

In Ireland, Pestle & Mortar is stocked in Brown Thomas, Uniphar pharmacies and their standalone store in Kildare Village.

It is also sold around the world in premium outlets like Bloomingdale’s, FaceGym and The Lab Organics in Australia.

“We never approached anyone,” Deasy says, in near disbelief. “They all reached out to us.” The brand remains loyal to telemarketing, however. In 2019, Pestle & Mortar bagged a slot on US shopping channel QVC.

“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Deasy laughs.

“We didn’t know we’d be the ones that had to go on it. I got trained by a QVC expert because there’s a method, and we were told we had six minutes, but if things weren’t going well by two minutes, we’d be cut. They ended up giving us an extra minute and when we went into the seventh minute, we sold out.”

Today the Pure Hyaluronic Serum is still their bestseller, consistently bringing in over €1 million in sales every year.

That’s despite the 30 products now available on the brand’s website. The company, which can have up to 30 staff depending on project needs, also boasts a number of new products in the development stage.

The latest planned launch is for biodegradable sheet masks infused with hyaluronic serum.

“We’ve got a whole new mask category coming this year. Our customers have been asking and we’ve been so slow to launch masks due to their wasteful nature. But we’ve now managed to create biodegradable ones, so they’re coming this year.”

In 2019, Pestle & Mortar was named business of the year at the National Enterprise Awards and Deasy was a finalist in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards.

Sonia Deasy

In 2023, the brand was named Sustainability Champion at the Guaranteed Irish Business Awards.

The mantra “less is more” is foundational to its ethos, Deasy says. And in many ways, Pestle & Mortar is a natural extension of herself.

“I am minimalistic,” she says. “I’m not the type of person who buys lots of stuff. Because of that, we really think about what we’re launching; is there a need for it? What problem is it going to solve? Most of my time is consumed with that and, as a result, potential products have not worked out lots of times. We’re not launching something just to have a new launch.”

The dream for the Deasy family is to create a brand that stands the test of time. “Longevity is the thing for us,” she says.

“It’s a family-run business and we love what we do and want to continue doing it.

“And if it can be passed to the next generation, great. We’re not going to force any of our children into the business, but we’re running it to continue; we’re not running it to sell. That’s not our motivation. Having a great business is.”