Launch Date: January 2023
Geography: Cambridge, England
Founder: Joanna Ellner, Founder + CEO
Executive Team: Bethany Harris, Digital Director
2026 Full Year Projected Revenue: $2M - $5M, according to industry estimates
Primary Category: Skincare
Funding: Family Office
Primary Distribution Channel: Prestige
Other Distribution Channels:
Key Retail Partners:
2026 Projected Offline Distribution Points: 58
The center of gravity has shifted, and Reome is where it has landed. For decades, the industry argued naturals against synthetics. It was the wrong debate. The answer was always biology. Reome is built on biotechnology, and it does not add more noise to your routine. It replaces it. Our edge is independence.
Rather than build on one proprietary ingredient and extend it format after format, we stay lab agnostic, working with many of the field's leading laboratories at once, keeping us at the apex of a fast-moving technology. We were the first brand to partner with San Diego's Debut, and hold relationships across the top five biotech labs in the world. We test our IP-owned formulas, independently, and clinically to prove their unparalleled performance. They perform at a level the category rarely achieves. Where the finest science-led luxury formulas carry 3% to 10% active load, ours reach 12% to 28%, at 2x or 3x times the potency, without compromising skin compatibility. We sit at the intersection of clean, luxury, and biotechnology. Yet Reome is, before anything else, a world. What people fall in love with is that world: the feel of a formula in the hand, the emotion it carries. The biotechnology lives within it.
Insights: Joanna Ellner, Founder + CEO
Why now and why you?
Why now? Biotechnology has reached the point where it can finally outperform both naturals and synthetics not in theory but in the bottle. The science is advancing at extraordinary speed, and the skin it serves has never been more shaped by modern life. The moment the category has been waiting for has arrived, and most of the industry is still formulating for the last one.
Why me? Because the biotech category has a blind spot. Most brands in it rush the brand, treating it as packaging for a single proprietary ingredient rather than a world worth stepping inside. I came to this from the opposite direction. Nearly two decades writing about skincare for the world's leading luxury fashion and beauty titles taught me exactly what they want and how to speak to them. My first-class degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and biomedicine lets me hold the science with equal confidence. I am fluent in both worlds, and that is rare. Reome is what happens when the brand is built with as much rigor as the formula: not an ingredient slapped on a generic bottle, but a world with science at its heart.
What fuels your competitive advantage?
Three things the rest of the category struggles to hold at once:
First, a lab-agnostic model. Rather than tie ourselves to one proprietary ingredient, we partner with many of the world's leading biotech laboratories at once, which keeps us at the apex of a technology moving at extraordinary speed and lets us bring new ingredients to market ahead of the field. We were the first brand to work with San Diego's Debut, and hold relationships across the top five labs in the world.
Second, proof you can feel. We formulate to potencies the category rarely attempts—two to three times the active ingredient load of standard luxury skincare formulas, verified through our own independent clinical testing on every final formula and delivered in sensorial textures that make the science a pleasure to use.
Third, and most rare, a founder fluent in both worlds. Nearly two decades writing about skincare for the world's leading luxury titles, paired with a degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and biomedicine, means Reome is built with as much rigor in the brand as in the science. Most biotech brands can engineer a formula. Few can build a world worth stepping inside. That is what compounds our advantage.
What’s your proudest accomplishment to date?
What I am most proud of is building Reome and bringing our first product, the Active Recovery Broth, to market through an exclusive launch with SpaceNK—all on a launch fund of just £100K ($125K).
Brands are not usually born on a budget that small. I grafted for it. I hustled, I worked day and night, and I made decisions most founders with so little to spend would never dare. Chief among them: I insisted on putting 20% of that fund into an independent clinical trial because proof was never going to be optional for Reome.
What I am proudest of is the formula itself. The Active Recovery Broth transforms and harmonizes the very structure of the skin, firming the barrier, supporting immediate and long-term hydration, and restoring skin's innate glow and bounce. It remains, to my mind, one of this generation's finest and most original skincare products. We built it with almost nothing, and it can stand up against anything.
What is the one thing you wish someone had told you?
That if you refuse the low-hanging fruit, growth in the right places takes time, and it takes more capital than you ever expect. It is a tried-and-true fact of this industry, yet every founder believes theirs will be the exception, that it will cost less and happen faster. It never does. Building authority the right way is slower and dearer than the easy route, but it is the only thing that lasts.
What would you tell your past self before starting this journey?
Trust the long game. Authority built slowly and organically is worth more than any shortcut, and the absence of a safety net is exactly what will sharpen your instincts. The nights will be long and the doubt will be loud, but the thing you are building is real. Keep your standards higher than your budget, and do not flinch.
What does success look like in the next 3-5 years?
Reome recognized as the defining name in biotech luxury skincare—not the biggest, but the most respected. Authority established in the US, presence across the world's finest prestige retailers, and a brand world the modern connoisseur genuinely wants to live inside. Commercial growth matters, but cultural relevance is the real measure. I want Reome to be spoken about as the brand that proved biotech could have a soul.
What's one industry trend that is overhyped, and what's being overlooked?
Overhyped: the single proprietary "miracle" ingredient, licensed once and rolled out across endless formats as though one molecule were a brand.
Overlooked: everything that determines whether that ingredient actually works. Potency, for one. The total active load of a formula tells you whether you are buying serious technology or mostly filler, yet almost no one discusses it. And delivery, for another. You can hold the finest ingredients in the world, but if they cannot pass through the stratum corneum and into the epidermis, they do very little for the skin. The mechanism of absorption matters as much as the molecule itself. Reome is built on exactly these unglamorous truths: high active weight, proven delivery, and the rigor to know the difference.
How do you think the industry needs to evolve?
Toward radical transparency. True luxury and science-led skincare should come with solid independent clinical data behind it, full stop. Brands should state the active ingredient weight in a formula, the mechanism by which those actives are delivered into the skin, and the molecular weight that determines whether they can penetrate at all. None of this is too technical for the customer anymore. These terms are becoming part of the modern skincare consumers’ vernacular, and they are using them to make smarter choices. It is time brands got ahead of that shift rather than hiding behind marketing. The ones that are open with this information will earn trust because they are giving people what they need to buy well. That is the standard Reome holds itself to, and the one I believe the whole category should move toward.
If you could wave a magic wand, what one wish would you make for your business?
That every woman who would love Reome could simply feel it once, the texture, the result, the world of it, without the barrier of discovery. We have grown almost entirely on word of mouth because the product converts belief on contact. My one wish is reach: to put Reome into the hands of the modern connoisseur everywhere and let the formulas do what they always do.
