Joshua King, CEO of Dermaclara, has a track record of disrupting spaces, creating niche products, and scaling businesses. He caught the entrepreneurial bug when he co-founded Manscaped and has never looked back. In fact, Dermaclara and Manscaped were incubated simultaneously in 2016, but after a Shark Tank appearance in 2018 with Manscaped, they realized they had a tiger by the tail, focusing all their efforts on maximizing the opportunity at hand.
Fast forward to 2019, Joshua and his "Pops," suffering from the start-up bug, spun back out and jumped headfirst into their next start-up. They took Dermaclara off the shelf for a second look. A lot can change in a couple of years. The proposition of competing with a 12-step anti-aging process targeting women 55+ was going to be an expensive proposition.
They took a hard look at the competitive landscape and landed on silicone patches for stretchmarks and scars targeting pregnant women. With that pivot and a rebrand, they had their MVP and were on their way. After earning this community's trust, they could quickly segue into a conversation about anti-aging patches.
While the brand started with the pregnancy market, it is not where it ended up, and that was always the goal. Sometimes, the path to success is horizontal. Today, 90% of the Dermaclara’s business is face and body patches; the rest is pregnancy. The brand reached $1.7 million DTC in 2022, growing 340% to $8.4 million by the end of 2023.
BeautyMatter sat down with Josh to learn more about his playbook and the Dermaclara business structure in which every team member has equity in the brand, creating a cognitive bias for action.
You certainly have the start-up bug. Please share a bit about your background.
I went to college, but probably shouldn’t have. First job was knocking on doors selling IT communication tools for SMB’s; that was rough but it gave me thick skin. I got my creative/marketing brain back at my second job selling airtime for the local radio station. I saw digital on the rise and took some night classes, learned SEO (most of that is useless now), and started working at digital agencies. At 24, I created my own digital agency, and after a few years found myself wondering why I was providing these services for others; why not do this for my own brand or products? Although I had some digital skills (limited as they were), I had no idea how to build a brand (sourcing, R&D, operations, packaging, shipping, etc.).
It was at IDK, a tiny agency/incubator, that I learned the missing pieces. I worked alongside some very talented people who propelled me to what felt like the next stage of life, and this is where Manscaped was born. I had been out of college for a few years (Arizona), where pool season is a thing, and my homie group was always trimming down excess hair; it was a normal thing to do, but just not spoken about. With an audience (my age group) and a unique product offering (the perfect package for your perfect package) that fit into a growing category, we knew we had something and the MVP was born! For the first one and a half years, we were considered a gimmick, but deep down I knew this was the starting point; own the groin and then move north and south.
Our first commercial was shot in my house and tanked. We went back to the drawing board quickly to figure out how to speak to men. We used the stories I had heard from friends (i.e., I knicked my sack (no cord), I hate all the little hairs all over the bathroom (the magic mat), and filmed a series of Manscaping horror stories and using the wrong tools for the job with humor as the main focus. This time around we sold out 3,000 units in three weeks; the recipe had been written and we now knew where we needed to go!
What is your methodology when building DTC brands?
I always start with an MVP, what market are you disrupting, where does it fit, what's the competition, if I build it will they come, and how many! The next step is how quickly can I get my MVP live and attain proof of concept while pivoting and/or persevering along the journey? Once the concept has traction, I raise money to scale growth.
To get from MVP to proof of concept can be done quickly through paid, and pay to play. Get that data as fast as possible and make changes as fast as possible; agility is key in this phase. Sell, Sell, Sell … Go get customers. Your customers will tell you exactly where you need to go, build your brand around them; that's the next phase in moving you out of MVP.
I always start online first; it's an easy way to learn what the customer wants, get proof of concept, and build social proof. In order to do this you need good margins. It's the absolute key to success and gives you the wiggle room to learn very quickly (I like to use 7-10x margins). I always make sure the margins can support CPAs and all potential channels of distribution for the opportunity.
When it comes to digital, it's all about data; without data, you can’t make moves. Whether the move is positive or negative it doesn't matter; data will inform the next step. The quicker you get data, the quicker you can make changes, and the quicker you can scale towards profitability.
We all start a business with an idea, some market research, etc., but it doesn’t matter how good the idea is if nobody buys it, so turn your first customers into your besties and build what they want without losing sight of your margins. Better margins equals more tests; more tests means quicker results and faster success. Customers can help you shape the brand out of MVP mode and remove a lot of guessing.
I believe in self-funding, the proof of concept, and showing true ownership in what you want to build. Before raising money, I like to be done with the MVP, have the team, know the members I need, have proof of concept, and attain growth with predictability. Having skin in the game and showing results allows you to keep control, making accessing working capital easier and cheaper. We grow fast because if we don’t, we are burning and that’s wasting money which isn’t an option when you're self-funded.
Dermaclara was initially launched in 2016, shelved, and then dusted it off in 2019. Can you share a bit about the incubation behind the business?
I was building Manscaped at the same time other Manscaped founders were building Dermaclara as a 12-step anti-aging process for 55+ women;(we had patches, cleansers, serums, creams, tools, etc.) with a very medical vibe. Post our Shark Tank episode starring my father and myself, Manscaped took off in early 2018. We realized we had a tiger by the tail and needed to pull all resources in to help tame the beast. We couldn’t fund two projects at the same time and needed all the manpower we could get merging the teams and shelving Dermaclara.
Fast forward to 2019, my Pops and I, suffering from the start-up bug, spun back out and jumped headfirst into our next start-up. Dermaclara was the perfect opportunity to revisit and ignite success. This is one of the most difficult tasks we’ve undertaken, involving a proper pivot, significant rebranding, and a market that was new to me:marketing skincare to women. The first thing we needed to do was create a flagship because too many products create distractions.
The Silicone Fusion Patches were all we needed. These things treated a multitude of skin conditions, were unique to the market, played well with all other products, were reusable, used your own body to heal from within, and were one simple ingredient (100% medical grade Silicone). Everyone can use them unless you're allergic to Silicone. These patches are a tool that everybody should have in their beauty arsenal. Our biggest white space is how well Dermaclara plays in the sandbox with other brands. Dermaclara does not want you to change your skin products, but include our Occlusion Patches into your existing regimen.
Now we needed a niche market. The anti-aging space is highly competitive and expensive; new products are coming out daily. How is one going to move through that noise quickly? My sister-in-law had her appendix removed back in the day, and the doctors had given her silicone patches to treat the scar. At the same time, her sister became pregnant and was worried about stretch marks as stretch marks are scars. We quickly went into R&D mode and created our biggest patch ever to be used during pregnancy; the patches come in the shape of a heart to help fit the contours of one's body as well as having the ability to use them as puzzle pieces to get more coverage. She became our first test subject and the results were amazing.
There were no competitors in the space. Women were using butters, creams, and lotions to help treat/prevent stretch marks; we embraced that. Our angle was complementary: use our patches before the topical products to help with the absorption, dramatically increasing the skin’s hydration, essentially triggering the skin into healing itself.
We found our audience quickly adapting our patches to their lifestyle, often being used during the day, walking their pets, while cooking, cleaning, and even commuting to their jobs. Specifically for pregnancy, the audience found a huge bonus while being able to “patch and sleep,” wearing our Occlusion Patches overnight (6-8 hours of coverage), we quickly became an additional supporting product to anyone's skincare routine.
Mastering the art of the pivot is a skill that successful entrepreneurs master. The brand launched, filling a white space in the pregnancy category and has pivoted the brand to focus on anti-aging. Why and how did you make this shift?
Earning the trust of this community, our customers quickly adopted our anti-aging line of patches. During pregnancy, one can’t use retinol, botox, etc., which provided the perfect segway for us to have a conversation about still being able to have a skincare routine with real results.
Although we started out focusing on the pregnancy, it is not where we ended up and that was always the goal. Today 90% of our total business is face and body patches; the rest is pregnancy. Having a targeted audience helped us get our message out there, refine the conversation, and created easier traction to go horizontal. Focusing on the face, having a younger demo, giving us a wider audience to communicate with, this was always the goal.
The year 2020 was spent getting the right people on the bus (quickly) to find the right team members. We finally nailed this in Nov 2021 and scale began. By 2022, we had done $1.7 million, and by the end of 2023, we had done $8.4 million (over 350% growth).
All the growth was done via DTC, and mainly through influencers (this is a tricky channel). But you can’t solely live online if you're going to build a sustainable, predictable business, as it's too volatile. We needed additional legs to the stool. In March 2023, we introduced and started testing our omnichannel strategy with various B2B channels to get a proof of concept. By the end of the year, we had it figured out (packaging, marketing material, displays, etc.). Our focus would be specialty retail, embracing our natural fit as the prestige leader in the silicone beauty category. The year 2024 has been all about scaling this channel and developing the relationships in order to scale effectively. Dermaclara’s audience has transformed from an original audience of 80% stretch mark and mommy treatments, to a now 90/10 split, with 90% of our business being anchored in the anti-aging beauty space. We call this a win!
The brand really started to become its own living organism. Utilizing our channel strategy and customer base, we were able to figure out our golden circle and the four pillars that make us who we are. Discover the missing piece in your skincare puzzle by unlocking your skin’s true potential with advanced silicone technology—because even the smallest addition can lead to extraordinary results.
Skincare done naked.
We found our way into the beauty industry not by competing but living alongside other products. We are “the new Step 2” in your skincare routine. While everyone focuses on topical, the first layer of the skin, we choose to look within and draw moisture through all layers of the demis (where the damage is done) to create a 360-degree approach to healthier, more radiant skin.
Everyone at Dermaclara owns a stake in the business. Why have you structured the company in this way?
By allotting each of our team members equity in the brand, we’ve ensured each of our team members has a cognitive bias for action, essentially shedding procrastination behaviors in favor of decisive action. We’ve found this to be an effective form of encouraging more self-management. \We believe this structure leads to more favorable outcomes in terms of managing risk and ensuring alignment of our company’s goals, creating a very unique business culture focused on success and pressing forward even in difficult market conditions. For lack of a better term, our team “Really gives a Damn.” We are a small team of seven owners, meaning even our creative department knows how to pick-and-pack an order, with all team members pitching in to help other departments ad hoc.
How has the business been funded to date?
Self-funded (credit cards, all profits put back in, lean team) until 2022. In 2022, a $500,000 line of credit; we did a friends and family raise in 2023 for $1 million. Since then, we have been utilizing shopify loans and are now working on a second round, but still not a series A to help us scale up our B2B and specialty retail channel (going for another $1 million to $1.5 million).
What did the development look like for the patent-pending Occlusion Patches the brand is built upon?
We needed a patch that could be universal, work on all different parts of the body; this led us to the heart-shaped patch (design patent), which can work on the decollete, butt, legs, back, arms, etc., as the heart shape allows the patch to fit to the contours of anyone's body, as well as use them as puzzle pieces allowing people to use more than one patch to cover a bigger surface.
The market had been inundated with patches as a form factor in skincare. What makes the Dermaclara Occlusion Patches different?
Dermaclara patches use multiple types of proprietary 100% medical grade silicone stemming only from global leaders in the silicone space. Dermaclara patches use no glue, tape, adhesive, nor other product. to ensure the product remains attached to the skin, allowing a 100% clean occlusion experience. Dermaclara patches remain attached to the skin for 15 minutes up to nine hours (depending on the patch), allowing for optimal occlusion therapy benefits. Dermaclara patches are clinically proven (third-party tested by bioscreen) to help reduce fine lines, wrinkles, stretch marks, skin marks, and overall increase hydration to the skin.
Dermaclara patches treat skin from the inside out, essentially tricking the dermis into healing itself, allowing a holistic, innovative approach to solving the aging dilemma. Once used, each Occlusion Patch is able to be cleansed with our proprietary Patch Prep Cleaner, allowing each patch to be reused a minimum of 30 times—a clear differentiator between us and other patches on the market.
One of the claims you make about the product is that it delivers a natural solution for scar removal and stretch mark treatment. Can you unpack the science and the clinical substantiation?
Absolutely. To best understand how the Dermaclara Scar Patch treats scars, its’ best to understand how scars form in the first place. Either from a medical surgery or some sort of trauma taking place on the dermis, scars are caused by the release of a protein (collagen) to repair the wound. Once skin damage reaches a certain point, the collagen’s synthesis metabolism loses it normal restraint and control, remaining in a state of overactivity. Excessive collagen exudation leads to the overproduction of collagen fibers, leading to the formation of a scar at the ‘healed trauma site’.
The Dermaclara Scar Patch has a high content of isomeric collagen making it a great fit bio-compatibility wise, allowing the patch to adhere to scar tissue without the need for other dressings nor adhesives. Using these patches allows the below effects to take place:
The brand has expanded beyond the hero patch products. What is your strategy in building out the product architecture?
Dermaclara is and always will be anOcclusion Patch brand first. That being said, the audience, alongside its high repurchase rate, has come to rely on Dermaclara to be a trusted source in solving today’s skin problems. Taking that into account, we are focused on a “hero-SKUonly” assortment of formulas dedicated to providing the next puzzle piece and solving that next question of what our core customer is searching for in terms of effective skin solutions. We only produce products that compete if not out-perform competitors in the space. We are only interested in filling skincare white space.
An excellent example is our Daily Restorative Oil, released in late 2023. This item sold out in less than 10 days on our site. Our Daily Restorative oil is full of good-for-you’s such as sea buckthorn, locking in additional moisture to the skin, alongside the trending ingredient bakuchiol, nature’s natural alternative to retinoids. Dermaclara uses our customer database of over 1 million, asking customers directly what they’re searching for next. We take our customers’ feedback and formulate new products with a hero-only philosophy and approach to innovative skincare, proud to be found in the competitive skincare regimen space.
At a time when the cost of customer acquisition online is prohibitive, you have built a very profitable DTC business. What's your secret sauce?
My early DTC experience was conceived during my Manscaped days. Customer acquisition costs always fluctuate. There is certainly more attention today on paid media strategies and their respectives return assumptions, measurement, and control while remaining extremely nimble and agile. There really is no secret sauce. The data will tell the story; one just has to be paying attention to the story unfolding. Each channel serves a purpose in our customers journey, and through daily data analysis, we can allocate our budget accordingly. We run a daily P&L across all the media channels so we know exactly where we are everyday; this allows for rapid changes or pushes to be made daily. If needed, we can stop the burn or scale up by the flip of a switch with this much visibility. This P&L is our bible, and we live every day through it. At Dermaclara, we manage every detail in real time including listening and reacting to customer feedback while continuing to fine tune all our DTC strategies and channels.
The brand has started expanding offline. What is your distribution strategy and where are you seeing traction?
Like we did with online, we looked for opportunities for entry in this space that would be less competitive and highly impactful for everyone.
Dermaclara is a prestige medical grade silicone patch brand, and we align ourselves with like-minded retail partners. We will continue expanding across both the prestige spa and retail channels in the US, with different distribution strategies for each market.
One of the initial challenges of the occlusion skin business was having to re-educate a customer that had previously never heard of occlusion therapy and how it relates to the skin, let alone medical grade silicone skin patches. Dermaclara uses the spa channel as both a recession-proof audience, while simultaneously solving our education challenge to further develop and foster Dermaclara’s growth.
The spa channel provides an expert-led audience who can educate the customer on a deeper level about the benefits of occlusion therapy. The average customer spends over an hour with their esthetician, and during that time, the esthetician is able to both explain and deliver the benefits found with our Occlusion Patches, helping to standardize our messaging of “the new Step 2.” We’ve found that our customer trusts their esthetician with providing the most up-to-date trending skincare treatments, leading to the introduction of our Occlusion Patches to their everyday skin routine, and more importantly, their lifestyle.
By partnering with just under 150 spa partners, Dermaclara has been able to successfully educate customers on the benefits of occlusion therapy by being incorporated directly into spa treatments. Our spa partners in return have seen their re-booking rate and spa add-ons both increase respectively after introducing Dermaclara to their spa, earning us the designation of a Marriott preferred vendor and proud partner of Vail Resorts.
This has led to increased awareness about occlusion therapy, which is a win for the entire silicone beauty space. Dermaclara also continues its successful expansion in the prestige retailer space, securing full distribution at Von Maur, with upcoming launches at both Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie in fall 2024. It’s important to note this growth all took place in roughly 16 months, with the Dermaclara retail/omnichannel kicking off in March 2023.
Dermaclara is excited to launch our fall 2024 assortment and looking forward to an even more aggressive outlook for 2025.
What next for Dermaclara?
Build the team, global expansion, Americas, EU, UAE, and other territories. We are looking to own the SILICONEBEAUTY movement and be the gold standard of patches that anyone ever thinks about when wanting to add reusable patches to their skincare routine. We have only scratched the surface and have much more to do. We are actively seeking funding to grow the team, scale our new channels, and continue and expand ownership of the SILICONEBEAUTY movement.
