Samantha Faiers has opened up on her debilitating skin struggles which left her in tears at its worst.
After she stopped breastfeeding her second child Rosie, now five, Sam suffered with severe acne which caused her great emotional distress.
“I was so self-conscious, some days I didn’t want to even leave the house,” the 32 year old mum-of-three, who also shares Paul, seven, and 14 month old Edward with partner Paul Knightley said.
“I remember one Christmas I was in The Maldives and I was crying every day because I was so embarrassed – it was so bad and inflamed. I confided in Paul [her partner] and was like, ‘I don’t want to leave the room.’”
Sam Faiers breaks America: 'I left school at 16 – now I've made my LA dream come true'
Sam found the only thing that really worked for her was collagen and which sparked the "lightbulb moment" to create her own ingestible collagen business, Revive Collagen.
“One of our big slogans from Revive Collagen is, ‘Beauty starts from within’ and it’s so true," she said. "Collagen was the only thing I tried that lead to me seeing improvement with my skin.
"Women contact us who have had severe psoriasis, rosacea, or eczema. These women are buying the product for their skin or hair or wrinkles and it’s completely cleared their skin conditions. This business so rewarding because we help so many women.”
Sam recently headed to LA as her beauty brand headed Stateside – it launched in Saks Fifth Avenue and is about to launch in 1800 stores across America in August and she’s just signed a very high-profile celebrity as her Stateside ambassador.
“When we first decided to create the ingestible skincare brand, I put all my savings into it,” she told us. “We didn’t take any investment. It’s a huge risk, when you’ve got years and years of savings, and at the time we were renting in Surrey and searching to buy a house.
She continued: "That put me back from buying a house for a good year and a half. But the reason I did that is because I really believed in it. I wanted it to be the crème de la crème of collagen. I guess in my heart I just knew I had something special. It’s like all of my dreams come true.”
As well as being hard at work building her brand, Sam also revealed she's filming a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the business.
“I’m filming everything we’ve been doing from photoshoots, where we launched with Amanda [Holden their UK ambassador], awards ceremonies – a bit of everything,” she explained. “The way I feel about this, is it’s more about inspiring young women to see that it’s possible to be a businesswoman and be successful.
"And we’ll have fun with it. Where it’s filmed over such a long period of time it’ll be interesting to see how the business is growing from where we started.”