Dr Antony Nakhla holds up the most recent addition to his Eighth Day beauty brand. The matte lotion is about 10 times the price of a tube of Banana Boat’s mineral sunscreen. Photo: The New York Times
Before he introduced his skincare line, Dr Antony Nakhla, a dermatologist based in Newport Beach, California, would frequently vet the products his patients were using.
More often than not, he was unimpressed.
“I was taken aback by how much these things cost and what was actually in them,” he said, sitting in a small outdoor area at the Whitby Hotel on a recent trip to New York.
“If you buy a Lamborghini and you look under the hood, I can tell you why it costs this much,” he added. “With luxury products and skin care, when you look at the ingredient list, there’s really nothing in there of real value.”
Nakhla wanted to develop something worth the money. So in 2016, thinking of starting his own brand, he began researching ingredients.
He created what he calls a “Peptide-rich Plasma” – a patent-pending mix of laboratory-produced extracts that he said are identical, on a molecular level, to what’s already in human skin.
Peptides can help hide the skin’s signs of aging, which often become more pronounced as aging skin begins to lose collagen.
When he was satisfied with the formulas, with the high concentration of active ingredients and patented technology that is typically why certain brands cost more than drugstore ones, Nakhla invested several hundred thousand dollars of his own money to start his company, hoping that the business could go, according to him, from “expensive science project to enterprise.”.
He named the company Eighth Day to express his view that “you look best when you look like yourself, and that beauty transcends time”.
Read more: The science-backed skincare trend proves that beauty is not just skin deep
But this comes at a cost, in this case a steep one: Products range from US$85 (approximately RM377) for face cleanser that lasts four to six weeks to US$450 (RM1,996) for a 50-milliliter bottle of serum that claims to improve a long list of aging-related skin woes, like wrinkles, reduced elasticity, loss of volume and dullness.
Despite their prices, his products seem to be gaining a following by word of mouth.
When Eighth Day’s Regenerative Serum became available on luxury beauty boutique and website Violet Grey, it “sold out three times in the first two months”, wrote Sarah Brown, the retailer’s chief brand officer, in an email (the company wouldn’t share the volume or sales figures).
Investors are taking note. Last year, Elevate Beauty, a division of private equity firm L Catterton that has minority stakes in companies such as DIBS Beauty, acquired a minority share in the company (neither Elevate nor Nakhla would share the precise amount of the investment).
Beyond wrinkles
Nakhla has been based in California since 2006 but considers himself “an East Coast guy”.
The son of Egyptian immigrants, he and his two older sisters grew up in New Jersey between Ridgefield Park and Jersey City. He knew he wanted to be a doctor by the time he went to college and earned a degree in osteopathic medicine at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2004.
Mohs surgery (the process of removing skin cancer in precise stages, so as not to harm healthy tissue and minimise scarring) has become a big part of his work – he performs it on about 75% of his patients.
His collection’s most recent addition, the Rejuvenating Moisturizing Primer Broad Spectrum, is a zinc-based sunscreen without the chalkiness of many mineral products.
At US$140 (RM621), the matte lotion is about 10 times the price of a tube of Banana Boat’s mineral sunscreen.
But, does the world really need another doctor-founded skincare line?
“There are so many products by so many physicians,” said Dr Seth Matarasso, president of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery.
Nakhla is a member of the organidation, although Matarasso doesn’t know him personally.
“I think we’re almost cannibalising – this physician claims this, and this physician claims that. One doesn’t know who or what to believe.”
Many celebrity skincare lines are developed with the input of doctors, presumably with the notion that it lends credibility. Take, for example, Dr Jean-Louis Sebagh, who worked with Cindy Crawford on her Meaningful Beauty line and appeared regularly in its frequently aired infomercials.
Pharrell Williams’ skincare line, Humanrace, was tested by his dermatologist, Dr Elena Jones; Rhode, Hailey Bieber’s brand, was made with input from Dr Dhaval Bhanusali, a dermatologist, and Dr Ron Robinson, a cosmetic chemist.
Read more: Exploring what Malaysians want in makeup, plus tips on making beauty looks last
“People are not over the doctor thing,” said Larissa Jensen, the global beauty industry adviser at Circana, a research company devoted to consumer shopping habits.
Sales of clinical prestige brands sold by retailers like Sephora were US$723mil (RM3.2bil) in the first quarter of this year, up about 8% versus the same period last year, according to Circana.
In a consumer survey the company issued last May, nearly 60% of respondents said they sought out brands endorsed by a dermatologist or doctor.
Susan Martin, 49, a Manhattan-based event planner who loves skincare, is one of those consumers.
When she’s shopping, she said in a phone interview, she looks for “doctor things paired with clinical research that shows results”.
She’s purchased products from Dr Nicholas Perricone’s popular line, for example, and Kaplan MD, developed by a Beverly Hills, California-based dermatologist, among others.
But for customers to remain loyal, products need to perform the skincare miracles they promise.
“At the end of the day, skincare is about efficacy,” Jensen said. “They’re looking for products that will work.”
When it comes to the habits of beauty shoppers, “A doctor’s name on a bottle might be the initial grab,” said Cori Aleardi, one of the founders of Elevate Beauty.
But, she added, “They are not stupid.” – The New York Times
