Deal highlights

• Online retailer that uses data and medical expertise from experts to custom-tailor skincare regimens.
  
• Customers take a skincare quiz, our expert team assesses quiz results to recommend a kit of personalized skin care products, we deliver the kit to your door.
• World-class team with 20+ years building and scaling marketplaces.
• Globally sourced inventory from 52 brands (and more coming).
• 50 – 70% gross profit margin.
• $180 billion potential addressable market by 2024.
• Soft launched in late May 2018, public launch in July 2018.

Skin Allies —
Flawless skin made easy.

Skin Allies is a digital retail platform built to address the universal friction found in the modern-day skincare experience.

Democratizing access to expert skincare

We are a direct-to-consumer skincare service backed by world-class dermatologists and estheticians.

Personalized kits for unique skin profiles

We deliver custom-tailored kits to people with dermatologic skin conditions based on their unique skin types. No prescriptions, approvals, or doctor’s visits required.

Clinical standards for everyone

All products are clean, best-in-class, and affordable. We do the homework for you. 

We combine machine learning and medical expertise to match people to the right products.

How we built Skin Allies

#220 Days Finding the Best Experts

We met with many experts all over the country. Helen and Yelena blew us away with their knowledge and bedside manner. Fun fact: Yelena worked on Demi Moore's ageless visage for many years!

#140 Days Platform + Technology

Building the technology to power a personalized user experience.

#52 Brand Partners

We interviewed countless brands to better understand what was actually good. In our relentless efforts, we went international and spent time in Seoul, South Korea, and Hong Kong researching the trends coming from the skincare mecca of the world. We accepted 52 brand partners onto the platform who met our criteria for high-performing clean skincare. We’re proud to be working with these partners who align with our mission. 

We have a supply pipeline through our network of dermatologists, estheticians, and industry insiders to find the best skincare products around the world.

Skin Allies soft launched to friends and family in late May 2018 to great success with early customers.

Laura, 30, PhD Candidate in Behavioral Science, Columbia University

"You have saved my face. This is the best my skin has been in a year of fighting terrible acne."

3 revenue sources

Skin Allies is an online retailer. We have a hybrid platform approach — we sell other brands but also carry our own private label products.

A hybrid platform allows us to leverage the data we collect to make products that are missing in the market, and flexibility in how we accomplish this. A concrete example of how we could use this data in the future is we can create capsule collection products with select brand partners, creators, influencers, or Skin Allies ambassadors for a very specific demographic. Merchandising meets data science.

By operating as a hybrid platform, we also have the flexibility to operate as a distributor for our brand partners in other markets such as Europe, China,  and the APAC.

Skincare is on track to be a $180B global market by 2024

Latest market data

Euromonitor predicts year-on-year growth in constant terms of 2017-2018 to come in at 3.3% for the global skin care industry.

Skin Allies focuses on two core demographics:

• Women aged 22-34
  

• Women aged 35-45

These two age groups are where there are significant life changes that include lifestyle changes (career acceleration), and hormonal fluctuations (pregnancy) in their menstrual cycles that will trigger changes in their skin.

We're pioneering a new category called Consumer Dermatology.

The skincare market has historically been categorized as two distinct need states: consumer (over the counter products) and medical (a doctor’s office visit that often results in a one-size-fits-all prescription product such as tretinoin).

We believe there is a huge opportunity to create a new category by making clinical standards accessible to everyone. We’ve created a delightful experience that solves the trial and error state that most people are stuck in by collecting high-signal consumer data, and using that data to create personalized skincare regimens with the help of experts.

Skin Allies will launch to the public in July 2018

Letter from the CEO

The Origins

I’ve been an avid skincare user since I was 15. My mom had access to a scarce beauty supply through a woman living in Northern California who was importing Asian beauty products. She outsourced a task to me: My job was to make sure she got her skincare products on time every other month. I would snail mail a check and a handwritten order to Kim Nguyen on Tully Road in San Jose.

I was heavily influenced by my mom to develop good skincare habits from a young age. As an immigrant, my mom was extremely frugal but did not skimp on this particular self-care ritual — maintaining a healthy complexion. It was even more important for her since she owned a restaurant and was constantly in the kitchen, always in close proximity to a burning stove and wok.

The Catalyst

When I turned 30, I started developing terrible cystic and hormonal acne that I couldn’t get rid of on my own. I would stay up all night on Reddit acne forums commiserating with my fellow sufferers and spending countless time and money on treatments that ultimately led to disastrous results, dry and irritated skin due to the harsh and misguided use of ingredients. This would often prolong healing times. My skin barrier was perpetually compromised.

A friend recommended I see a dermatologist who graciously offered to treat me privately outside of her practice as my insurance didn’t cover it. She used a holistic and gentle approach to curing my acne, including diet modifications and bespoke face oils that consisted of the highest grade actives — a supply that has been gated to experts.

As women, we go through so many transitional life stages that changes our skin (adult hormonal acne & pregnancy/postpartum skin is real). I learned a lot about the economics of the skincare industry in the process. The EU has banned over 1,300 ingredients. The US FDA lists only 30. Cosmetics manufacturing in the US is the wild west and labeling is completely unregulated. 70% of what we put on our skin topically is absorbed into our bloodstream. 

The Mission

The beauty industry hasn’t changed all that much since I was 15. It feels like the dark ages. The onus is still on the customer to find the best products, stuck in a constant state of trial and error, unsure if the products are driving results.

With the proliferation of technology, where access to information and products is instant, we are truly at the height of confusion with online self-help.

Dermatology has been a gated and premium service in healthcare that only the affluent can afford.

The reality is that bad skin doesn’t discriminate and can strike at any time or stage of life, regardless of your socioeconomic status.

We're on a mission to make clinical standards accessible for everyone, and make transparency the norm in our industry.

Yours in health,
Nu

Nu is the Co-founder/CEO of Skin Allies. She previously led product teams for tier one VC backed startups and big box retailers, predominantly in female-driven marketplaces. She loves solving problems for women. True&Co, backed by First Round and SoftBank, was acquired by Calvin Klein parent PVH in 2017 with 5M customers. She was on the founding team of price.com, backed by Social Capital, launching the product at Google I/O 2016. She also led product for Weddings & Registry (a $20B+ market) at Macys.com, helping to redesign the online and offline registry experience. She has consulted early stage startups on how to get products to market quickly and efficiently with minimal resources, and how to grow their early user base organically.

Sameep is the Chief Technology Officer of Skin Allies. He has been fascinated with problem-solving for as long as he can remember. At age 10, he fixed a broken refrigerator for his mom. From repairing air conditioning to fixing light bulbs, growing up he loved all handyman work. Sameep built up a passion for math and computer science while completing his undergraduate degree. He majored in math and computer science at Boston University, and has previously worked at Microsoft and Goldman Sachs as a Tech Lead and Engineering Manager. He has since run a startup, and helped another 12 startups as a freelance engineer and manager. Sameep has won Top Coder awards, Google code jam competitions, as well as numerous hackathons.

Esther Song
Senior Strategic Advisor

Esther has been a cross-border executive in beauty, fashion, and media. Prior to that, she was at Akamai through the Cisco acquisition. Esther provides support to Skin Allies through her expertise in International & Strategic Business Development, Brand Building, Licensing, Lifestyle Brands, and Asia/US Market Entry and Expansion.

We're making clinical standards in skincare accessible to everyone.

We call it Consumer Dermatology, where you can get access to the best products and experts without leaving the comfort of your home. 

Thank you for your early support! — Skin Allies