Thanks for including me and great recap! That was fun!
There are apparently two key approaches that the beauty industry agrees on, "miracle ingredients" and "problem specific" products. Yes, but after learning about this new skin care brand… I feel they need to add another approach.
Thanks to an invitation through the Houston Fashion Bloggers, myself and Shalanda from Live Life in Style had attended a very informative session regarding new skincare brand, Boston based- Bona Clara. The session featured the brand's CEO- Jasmina Aganovic- an MIT chemical and biological graduate-turned- beauty entrepreneur. She first explains that she was first working with a very well-known professor in one of the largest bio-medical labs in the world and in the process of developing an anti-biotic eardrop for babies to treat ear infections. She went through much riggerous testing, which included having to test on slabs of donated human skin that she received from the hospital. The final test was on different age groups (20s, 30s, 40s and 50s). This formula proved to be the winner, but not for the eardrops. Instead, she concluded that it was similar to formulas found in skincare products. This finding stuck with her and she started to pursue a different route, which led to the beauty industry. Upon graduation, she worked with three beauty brands and firmly stands ground on cutting edge science and natural product formulations.
When Jasmina started her brand, she wanted to make sure the brand provided education and actively taught women something about the products and their skin. She came up with the name Bona Clara because 'bona' is derived from "good" or "beautiful" and 'clara' means "clear." She came up with a mission statement "Clear change of vision to create more beautiful and better lives for people everywhere." In Bona Clara's early stage, it launched strictly online and only offered four treatment creams for the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s age groups. The company saw a tremendous growth (by 200,000 customers) it's first year. Jasmina was then able to fund other products to coincide with the treatment creams. I was really impressed when she (the CEO) personally called up her top customers and chatted with them about the brand (what they did or did not like, etc). She learned that women were constantly telling their friends, co-workers, etc., about the products and word spread like wildfire; leading to more orders and feedback. As people continued to ask questions about the product, she developed handy training tools, that included a newsletter- with her personal phone number (which is so awesome, because I've never heard of a CEO just giving out their digits like that). It was then that one of her best customers, who is now a rep, offered up the idea of also doing direct selling. After thorough research, she, along with three other people, initialized direct selling with zero (direct selling) experience.
Since the brand's official launch in February 2013, there are now reps all over the world. You won't find it sold in stores. Jasmina thinks it's very important that the entire experience (from whatever angle, like as a customer, rep, etc.) with the products "is uplifting, inspiring and fun…that the experience does beyond picking up the bottle and putting it down and that's done…I want it to be something you keep in your spirit the entire day." The reps are also 'on-call' to further enhance the experience by delivering a person-to-person relationship. They make sure everyone has their questions answered and understands what they need to know about the brand. I'm absolutely thrilled Jasmina switched her career to the beauty industry. She surely seems to know what she's talking about and I'm happy to support a brand where the ingredients are natural and that the CEO is so hands-on. So I guess now the beauty industry can add "age specific" to their key approaches.
Shalanda and I both received samples of product for our 20s. I have been trying to use it everyday and I have noticed a difference in my skin's texture. It's incredibly smooth and looks healthier. I highly recommend trying it! I also recommend reading their blog, it has some really helpful information on staying healthy and other lifestyle tips.