A Teen's Chronic Nosebleeds Inspired a £100M Wellness Empire: How Two Brothers Built Healf

What started as a teenage health struggle has grown into a multi-million-pound wellness empire. Brothers and former Manchester Grammar School students Max Clarke and Lestat McCree founded Healf, an online wellness marketplace that was first launched in 2021 and has since grown into one of the fastest-growing start-ups in Europe.

A Teenage Struggle That Changed Everything

Behind the numbers is a much more personal beginning, mostly rooted in Max Clarke's early experiences navigating unresolved health issues. As a teenager, he suffered recurring nosebleeds several times a week that disrupted his normal routine, with limited clarity or effective long-term solutions from medical consultations.

Max, now 26, recalls how it all started: 'When I was younger, I used to have chronic nosebleeds—blood pouring out of my nose—and this would be multiple times a week. I didn't really know why it was happening or what was causing it, and when I went to a GP, they said, 'Oh yeah, just put some Vaseline in your nose and it will be fine.'

From Nosebleeds to a £100M Idea

The simplistic medical advise didn't solve Max's medical problem. However, it triggered something much more significant: a personal wellness experiment that eventually grew to be the starting point for a business. His experiment became increasingly structured: sauna sessions, dietary changes, meditation, yoga, supplements, and significant lifestyle changes. According to him, the results proved transformative.

'Within about a year of starting to take supplements, doing regular sauna, changing my diet, doing yoga, meditation and all things like that, I literally felt like a completely different person and the nosebleeds completely stopped.'

What began as self-experimentation soon turned into a firm inner belief. He channelled that motivation into developing a brand that's built on empowering individuals to take charge of their own well-being.

This would eventually lead him to develop a concept for a platform that would simplify access to various wellness products and solutions.

Building Healf: Innovating Access to Wellness

From that personal turning point, the brothers launched Healf in 2021, a wellness marketplace built to make it easier for people to find and access health and wellness solutions. The aim was to unite the fragmented industry under one platform, built on four pillars: Eat, Move, Mind, and Sleep.

They were ambitious even by the standards of a competitive wellness industry. They wanted to be the 'Netflix of well-being' by building a platform that helps with daily health choices, not just to sell products.

From £100M Revenue to Bigger Plans

Even after reaching £100M in turnover and emerging as one of the fastest-scaling start-ups in the UK, Healf's founders believe that the company is still in its early stages. According to them, while the milestone is significant, their focus is firmly on future expansion rather than short-term financial indicators.

Max stresses the importance of customers' feedback in shaping the company's trajectory. Their focus, he says, is to build a platform that helps people feel well enough to perform in all areas of life. His brother Lestat echoes this, stressing the importance of simplifying wellness and making it more widely accessible to all. Despite its rapid growth, the company's core is still firmly grounded in personal transformation rather than corporate ambition alone.