When the skincare brand U Beauty made its debut on Net-a-Porter in 2019 with only a single product to its name, co-founders Katie Borghese and Tina Chen Craig barely considered the event a “brand launch.” “We didn’t even have an LLC,” recalled Chen Craig. It was only when the product, its skin-evening Resurfacing Compound, sold out within a day of its release, Chen Craig said that she and Borghese realized they had a bigger business to navigate than the exclusive, limited-run offering they’d envisioned. Since then, the company has grown to include a suite of skincare products for face and body, with the Resurfacing Compound firmly anchored as its consistent bestseller.
The brand’s latest news, however, isn’t a product release, but instead an announcement that’s poised to set it apart from others on the market.
This month, the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology published a “white paper” (industry-speak for a fact-based document offering new insight) classifying U Beauty’s proprietary SIREN Capsule technology as a result-driven breakthrough in the effective delivery of active ingredients to the skin. What’s more, the paper deems it a “successful strategy” to utilize in the development of future U Beauty cosmetic products.
To explain the “how” of it all, a SIREN capsule’s molecular structure mimics that of a healthy skin molecule, allowing it to be readily absorbed, along with whatever combination of active ingredients it happens to contain. According to one of the scientists behind SIREN’s development, the capsules deliver localized treatment by neutralizing free radicals where they accumulate, which is often where skin is in most need of visible repair. In other words, the capsules were designed to target areas specific to the individual, rather than overload the skin with a high concentration of additives, which could potentially cause imbalances and harsh reactions.
Along with U Beauty’s own clinical testing, the studies for this particular white paper were executed by third-party independent laboratories under the supervision of board-certified medical doctors, which for Chen Craig, validates U Beauty’s very existence on retailers’ shelves. “There is so much BS and noise, and claims that don’t stand up in this industry right now. I think the skincare industry should be held accountable,” she noted.
It’s precisely because of all the smoke and mirrors that Chen Craig never imagined herself starting a skincare brand. As an influencer and public figure with over half a million Instagram followers, she’d fielded offers to partner up for the launches of several new beauty and skincare lines in the past, she noted, but declined because she had yet to come across a formula that met her own exacting standards. “I always say that I was the most unwilling skincare founder,” she laughed.
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