
Adsorb Beauty Is Poised To Ride The J-Beauty Wave Into Luxury Retail
Sometimes beauty and beauty products are found in the strangest places. Adsorb Beauty, for example, originates in ostrich eggs, which Japanese scientists plumb to retrieve antibodies powerful enough to fight free radicals and a host of other ills. The skincare brand has arrived in the U.S. courtesy of BioBoutique Beauty Lab, a company led by beauty industry veteran Tom Winarick, who also helms Luxury Lab LLC, owner of vintage-inspired line Doll Face Beauty. “I was enthralled by the super unique technology, and I just thought the opportunity and the timing were absolutely right,” he says of his decision to distribute Adsorb domestically. “We believe the K-Beauty wave crested last year, and the next spotlight in Asia is Japan.” Beauty Independent asked Winarick to elaborate on the rise of Japanese skincare, the skincare segment more generally, his professional background, what’s wrong with prestige retail and the advantage of outsourcing.
Your family has a long history in the beauty industry. Tell us about it.
I am a third-generation beauty entrepreneur. My grandfather was a barber who immigrated to the U.S. from Russia and later created a hair tonic which became an iconic product. It was sold in every barbershop in America. It’s called Jeris. He was a real rags-to-riches story. From that product and brand, my father expanded the company into multichannel, multi-products and multi-brands. I have been on the creation side and the management side working for other notable brands and, now, I’ve found a fabulous opportunity to apply my skills.

Did you want to enter the beauty business?
No choice, lovingly so. I accompanied my dad to the office. I worked summers in the warehouse and, as I got older, I worked in different departments within the business. Then, it was a natural transition into the beauty business.
How did your career progress?
My background has primarily been in color cosmetics. I worked as an employee and also as a consultant for several brands, including Peter Thomas Roth, Physician’s Formula and Revlon. I had a stint as president and CEO of Palladio Beauty Group, which is owned by a private equity firm. I worked there for two years. The entrepreneurial spirit was stronger in me than a corporate spirit. We had owned Doll Face as a family prior to me joining Palladio. My wife and my son ran that business while I was running Palladio.
What did you plan to do after Palladio?
I was going to focus 100% of my time on Doll Face and, then, this opportunity came around to partner with a Japanese company called Zeal Cosmetics to launch Adsorb. I had met the company through mutual contacts, and we had kept in touch for four years. After I left Palladio, they approached me more seriously, and I was available to do it.

Why do you think J-Beauty is on the upswing?
K-Beauty is made up of super trendy items. There is no dominant brand in it. K-Beauty became the brand. At K-Beauty sections in stores, there’s a grouping of kitschy products. There’s no equity in that. If you look at the Japanese market, skincare is so revered there. It’s built on trust and legacy. Korea is primary an export-driven economy. They keep cranking out things that are cute. In Japan, it’s the opposite. In beauty, they are not export-driven, and they are much more concerned about addressing the needs of the Japanese consumer. It’s a much longer-term view. I’m not knocking K-Beauty because we are very inspired by it, especially at Doll Face. I believe personally that the long-term view of skincare is the future.
How did Adsorb come to be?
The founder of the business is Osamu Maeda. He’s a 40-year-old biotech entrepreneur from Japan who had discovered in journals that research was being done at the University of Osaka by a professor who specialized in avian studies. What was found through his studies was that the yolks of the eggs of the ostrich contain a tremendous concentration of antibodies.
Why ostriches? Ostriches are the closest living relative to the dinosaur. They are one of the oldest animals in the animal kingdom. They have survived for generations and generations. Their evolution hasn’t advanced like others because they haven’t needed it to because their immune systems are so strong. It’s all due to the high concentration of antibodies in their systems.
The professor found that you could extract the antibodies from the yolks of unfertilized ostrich eggs and, once he found that, Osamu Maeda entered to figure out what to do with them. The beauty end of it is an offshoot of medical research that’s being done at the University of Osaka and the Japanese Science Technology Agency. The antibodies are being studied to fight the flu, viruses like Ebola and Zika, and even cancer.
Maeda said, “While the medical research is going on, why can’t they work on skin?” If you have a cold, your body develops natural antibodies, but that doesn’t happen on your skin topically. The concept here is that free radicals are created on the surface of your skin whether from pollution or the sun that help cause premature aging, and the antibodies applied topically counteract that. If you think about it in terms of a video game, it’s like Pac-Man eating up the antigens. We combine that technology with multiple ingredients and delivery systems depending on the product. It’s really a preventative skincare regimen.
When you were in discussion with Zeal Cosmetics about bringing Adsorb to the U.S., what were the considerations?
Of course, timing is everything. We felt the building of interest in Japanese products and the respect for quality in Japan. We spent the last year tooling strategies to make this brand work in the U.S. How do we interpret and explain the technology for the U.S. market? We needed to stick to what the brand and technology represent. It’s been a year of strategizing and planning.

Is Adsorb in the U.S. positioned differently from how it’s positioned in Japan?
Adsorb Beauty in Japan is the number-one professional skincare brand in spas, salons, medi spas, dermatologists’ office and what they call aesthetican salons, which are skin clinics. It doesn’t sell at retail in Japan. Here, we are going a different route. We are going into traditional luxury retail. The luxury retail consumer has more of their pocketbook to spend. It’s not an inexpensive product. The demographics for it are probably a little bit older as it has more of a preventative technology. It’s really for anyone, but the response has been stronger from the 30-and-up range.
Pretend we’re a retailer. Give us the quick pitch on Adsorb.
It will add a completely unique layer to your skincare department. It’s based on antibody technology, which is derived from the healthcare field and effectively protects your skin against premature aging. The technology is globally-patented and only available through us. It’s sponsored by the University of Osaka and the Japanese Science Technology Agency. Also, J-Beauty is the new K-Beauty.
Is the packaging different here than in Japan?
Only to the extent of the legal specifications and requirements. We wanted to maintain the authenticity of the brand, so we are never going to print English boxes. We are now putting a label on the packaging panel with pertinent legal information in English. You can look at a global brand like Shiseido, and I am not sure if U.S. consumers really identifies it much as a Japanese brand. We really want that message to be crystal clear.

How many products are there?
In Japan, there are 11, but we have just launched three to start in the U.S. We wanted to simplify the process so people would get comfortable with the technology and, as brand awareness grows, we will increase the range. The hero product is called Moisture Essence Serum. It has the highest concentration of antibodies in it. It also contains hyaluronic acid and a ceramide delivery system. It retails at $140.
Do you feel that consumers now are willing to pay higher prices for skincare?
We just did the Neiman Marcus Indie Beauty Expo event in Costa Mesa and, based on our experience with it, I will resoundingly say yes. We have seen very little resistance to price. We saw virtually unknown brands with $580 creams, and they sold. There’s a belief that, the more expensive a product is, the more effective it has to be. In the luxury market, there isn’t resistance to price provided the product technology or the founder story is compelling.
What’s your take on how department stores are faring?
The challenge for luxury retailers is they have primarily older consumers. Obviously, they have lost ground to Sephora, Ulta and Bluemercury as a destination for young consumers. I’ve had a few luxury merchants tell me their biggest challenge today is [finding the answer to the question], how do we get that consumer back through our doors? The traditional counter is not inviting to the new beauty consumer. I think it’s still intimidating, but I’m not sure most of the brands work in open-sell either. It’s up to the retailer to find the right formula.

What’s the beauty department of the future going to look like?
It has to involve more retail-tainment. It needs to be more animated and inviting. It needs to include a lot of opportunities to play. When you look at retailers like Sephora or Riley Rose, you see all the play stations. It’s all about attracting the consumer to touch and feel, and look in the mirror without being bombarded with sales associates, although I have the ultimate respect for sales associates. The store has to be a source of adventure. The traditional counter and tester unit is just not cutting it anymore.
What’s the biggest obstacle you face to making Adsorb successful in the U.S. market?
It’s definitely communicating the technology, and that’s something we are working on. We’re in the initial stages of doing it, and we know what the next phase could look like. Now, we are focused on social media and traditional PR. I’m not convinced our consumer is as Instagram-driven as the consumer for a brand like Doll Face. Having said that, for our website, we do generate a lot of leads from Instagram. Back in the day, you’d say, “I’m spending $10 million in print advertising, and we are going to cross our fingers and hope for the best.” Now, you can see when something drops whether it’s working. It gives you the opportunity to play and experiment.
In our second phase, we are going to do some niche media directed toward the luxury market. We are also going to do a lot of sampling. We need to get the product in people’s hands so they can feel it. The formulas are spectacular. Japanese formulas are very light, tactile and absorb quickly. The issue is communicating the effectiveness of the technology.
What’s so difficult about communicating to consumers?
It’s explaining the technology in key words that the consumer is going to relate to and that will make them want to learn more. It’s not a simple story. People hear hyaluronic acid, and they know it’s a moisturizer. When they hear vitamin C, they understand it’s brightening. When they hear antibodies, what do they know? The technology demands storytelling, and the whole ostrich topic is a story onto itself. We have our own farm outside of Osaka with 300 ostriches. An ostrich lays up to 100 eggs a year. We don’t take all the eggs. It’s a very selective process they use, and it’s a sustainable resource. Each egg yolk produces up to 5,000 pieces of product.

What goes into a productive sampling program?
When consumers go to a store, buy something and get samples of other things, a lot of times those samples just go in the drawer. The best and most effective sampling programs are ones the consumer is invested in, even if they’re buying samples at amazing costs, which we are losing money on in paying for. You aren’t going to get as many people requesting them, but you are going to get a stronger response because you will get someone who’s really interested in the technology. If you look at starter kits sold in stores near cashiers, those aren’t cheap, but they get the product to people who have a vested interest in it.
Prestige skincare sales have been on the rise, even outpacing makeup. How do you think the momentum can be maintained?
It’s up to the luxury skincare community to keep innovating. One of our successes at the Neiman Marcus event is the fact that we are so unique. When we had the opportunity to tell the Neiman Marcus customer about it, even if they didn’t buy the product, they were completely enthralled by the concept. Innovation is driven by the manufacturers, but it’s up to the retailers to welcome products that aren’t necessarily from major brands. You have to have the destination brands, but you also have to constantly have what’s new.
You’ve worked at both beauty startups and corporate environments. What’s a stumbling block that you’ve seen startups encounter?
One of the biggest stumbling blocks is underfunding. We are funded well from Japan. I was very careful to check that before I got involved. Many, many a great idea is killed by the fact that it’s underfunded. I had several chats with brands at the Neiman Marcus in Costa Mesa, and they were asking, “How do you get capital?” That’s a very hard thing. If you have capital, it doesn’t change the fact that you have to make the right decisions, but you can make different decisions.

What’s your goal for the first year that Adsorb is in the U.S.?
This year, we’d like to secure our first retail partner. From the Neiman Marcus event, we’ve seen that it works, and that gives us the confidence to move forward and engage a retail partner. We have a few different irons in the fire right now. We have made a commitment to investing everything back in the brand for the first couple of years.
What are long-term goals for the brand?
International distribution as well as U.S. distribution. I have a lot of great contacts internationally and a background in building international distribution. We have had some preliminary discussions with retailers and e-tailers abroad that we can possible move on in year two or three or maybe even sooner.
What’s your daily work life like?
We are up early because of our interaction with Asia. We talk two to three times a week in the early morning and, then, I go to the office. From there, it’s a constant flow of conference calls. The majority of our business is outsourced. I’ve become a big believer in the saying, “You are what you are, and you ain’t want you ain’t.” I rather focus on what we are and contract out what we ain’t. Therefore, logistics and social media are contracted out. We work closely with a creative team in L.A. for graphics, packaging and the website. Sales are handled by us internally.

Your son has followed you into the beauty business, right?
Yes, my son Josh is in the business now, and that makes four generations in this business. It just gets in your blood. I believe that there are lots of faster ways to make money, but the beauty business is constantly evolving, and it gets you up every morning to see what’s new and what’s going on in the world. There’s a lot of innovation, and that keeps my blood pumping.
After college, my son went to work at Ralph Lauren for a number of years in marketing. It was really great training, but he decided the corporate life was not for him. It was my wish that he go somewhere else and learn things on his own first, but we always talked about the beauty business around him, and it seeped in.
Would you invest in other brands besides Doll Face and Adsorb?
I get approached by people about buying and investing in other brands, but, between Doll Face and Bio Boutique, we have a world of opportunity in front of us, and we want to service them properly.
What trend do you notice is percolating in skincare?
Biotech is where it’s at long term. Natural and organic is great, but it’s for a separate consumer, someone very concerned about not only what they put inside their bodies, but outside as well. In general, I think you’re going to see a big crossover between wellness and skincare, and a lot of that will come from the biotech field.
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