Byoma, the barrier health-focused skin care brand, has its sights set on a new need state.
The brand is launching a range of six products targeting acne, called Byoma Blemish, that include a clearing body wash and lotion, a facial cleanser, toner, spot treatment and moisturizer. Prices range from $9.99 to $15.99.
Marc Elrick, the brand’s founder, is getting cozy with his customer, and said that the range was the culmination of robust clinical findings and consumer listening data points.
“Consumers are buying into brands that are listening to them and solving their true problems,” Elrick said. “What we’re building is a highly engaged community that we’re serving and responding to. We had 200,000 DMs in one month, and we turn those into a conversation and build our relationships directly.”
On the retail side, the range is debuting at Target Corp. in the U.S. on Sept. 14. In Europe, it will debut at Sephora and in the U.K. it will launch at Boots. “Something Byoma does well is we have a unique way of delivering education to the consumers — we take science incredibly seriously, but we’re seriously fun. Our engagement is in the top five on Instagram, the top 10 on TikTok, and from a sales perspective, we drive growth at all of our retailers.”
On Byoma’s website, 250,000 consumers have used the brand’s AI skin diagnostic tool, which has in turn formed a treasure trove of data to inform its innovation. In turn, Elrick invested $2 million in clinical testing, completed over 75 external trials and amassed over 130,000 skin measurements. “We understand skin health, and we understand how to treat it,” Elrick said.
As for his consumer’s mindset, “we found with acne that the consumer was overwhelmed, overusing, overexfoliating, and that currently is prevalent because acne still relies on legacy active ingredients like benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid,” he said. “They can be irritating, sensitizing, and disrupt the barrier. Why wouldn’t we combine effective care with Byoma’s barrier-first approach? That’s our north star.”
Expectations for the launch are high. Industry sources anticipate Byoma to close out the year with more than $300 million in global retail sales, and this range alone could land anywhere between $25 million and $50 million in retail sales for its first year on the market.
Elrick didn’t comment on the figures, but did say that the range was years in the making. The hero Clearamide Complex in the products combines ceramide NP, phytosphingosine, ethyl linoleate, hydroxycinnamic acid and rutin to mitigate transdermal water loss in tandem with legacy ingredients like salicylic acid in the spot treatment, cleanser and body products.
“We’ve also developed these products to target the full life cycle of the blemish,” Elrick said. “What we learned through our research is that you can have clogged pores, and dryness, and scabbing, and hyperpigmentation. You need to calm that inflammation; you need brightening ingredients too.”
The formulas were approached thoughtfully, but Elrick doesn’t plan on marketing the range solely around science.
“Acne is a very emotional thing, it’s very personal,” he said. “We’re on a mission to redefine acne because it shouldn’t define you as a person. We’re casting from within our community, and this whole range was community tested by them. We have empowering and emotional stories from that that I think people will be able to identify with.”
Furthermore, “Our content strategy is built around how we redefine the category by empowering people to normalize the acne conversation. It’s very much build around the community, their stories, their transformation and their results.”