New Brand Bejbiskin Wants To Be Your Everyday Skincare Acid Companion

For the longest time, Francesca Marino didn’t do too much homework before buying skincare products. “I’d just walk into a pharmacy and read product labels and packaging, and decide based on that,” she recalls. “I figured they had to be good for my skin or, at the very least, not be bad.”

The shopping process was quick and convenient, yet futile. The pharmacy skincare didn’t help Marino’s breakouts and large pores. In search of a solution, she turned to a chemical peel. The peel helped where the pharmacy skincare fell short, but what helped even more was the peel-performing aesthetician’s recommendations for products upgrading Marino’s regular skincare regimen.

“I ended up spending an absurd amount of money, but my skin was completely transformed. My breakouts totally stopped, my pores appeared smaller, and my skin was healthy and glowing,” she says. “I became obsessed with skincare then, this was probably around six years ago now, and I tried to find similar clinical-style products that were affordable. This was actually pretty hard to do.”

As she was hunting for affordable advanced skincare to maintain her results, Marino commiserated with her best friend Eva Seta. The pair, who attended University of Central Florida together and currently live on opposite coasts (Seta, associate communications director at the museum MOCA, resides in Los Angeles, and Marino is in Orlando), chatted about their experiences with products, and pored over online articles, Paula’s Choice founder Paula Begoun’s Beautypedia website, and skincare junkie posts on social media and in the Reddit community SkincareAddiction. They became well-versed in AHAs and BHAs.

“What we see out there is the rise in awareness of acids and more targeted products like those from Paula’s Choice, Drunk Elephant, Jordan Samuel and Stratia. With them having such a wide audience and opening up the market to these new targeted products, we see there is way more room to give the consumers more options.”

“After a few years of being very interested in skincare, we realized we could decode an ingredient list. We felt we could create a brand that had dynamic products with ingredients at effective levels that served a function and also had an appealing look,” says Seta, elaborating, “What we see out there is the rise in awareness of acids and more targeted products like those from Paula’s Choice, Drunk Elephant, Jordan Samuel and Stratia. With them having such a wide audience and opening up the market to these new targeted products, we see there is way more room to give the consumers more options.”

Seta and Marino are giving skincare super fans like themselves more targeted options with their new brand Bejbiskin, which is pronounced “baby skin” and intended for consumers pampering their skin as they would a baby’s skin. Liquid Exfoliant is at the heart of the brand’s initial three-item collection. Its formula has 7% glycolic acid, 3% lactic acid and 2% salicylic acid combined with skin soothers like aloe leaf juice, bisabolol, and neem and ginkgo biloba extract, antioxidants like great burdock root and green tea extracts, and the replenishers glycerin and sodium PCA. It avoids a host of ingredients that can be irritating, including alcohol, fragrance, and essential and citrus oils, and is made for daily application in a break from many chemical exfoliants that are weekly or biweekly steps.

After Acid Serum is Bejbiskin’s most unique product. It contains a blend of niacinamide, ceramides, peptides, hyaluronic acid and squalene to nourish the skin following the use of a chemical exfoliator, specifically Liquid Exfoliant. “Through our research in the Reddit community, a lot of people would say, ‘On no, I over-exfoliated, and my moisture barrier is burnt off. I’m very sensitive to my skincare routine,’” says Seta. “We created this serum to make sure you don’t damage your barrier. It’s a very concentrated serum to really help you heal and not dehydrate.”

“You can have an incredible serum that is comparable to serums four to five times the price. We don’t want to mark things up. We want to offer incredible formulas at accessible prices.”

Hydrating Spray Toner is the third product. It’s meant to be spritzed on the skin post-cleanser and pre-chemical exfoliant. Although the toner with aloe leaf juice, glycerin, sodium PCA, niacinamide, allantoin and hyaluronic acid has the simplest formula among Bejbiskin’s trio, the product wasn’t easy to perfect. Seta recounts testing iteration upon iteration to achieve an extremely fine mist. She says, “Not only are the ingredients great, but it creates a self-care moment to spray this beautiful mist on your face.”

Bejbiskin’s products are priced from $25 to $31. Seta says the pricing doesn’t factor in a retail margin, and the brand is sold exclusively through its site. She explains, “We stand side by side with someone like Paula’s Choice. She really taught us about ingredients and how formulas sometimes are very much marked up, and the value of the product doesn’t always reflect the value of the product formulation. You can have an incredible serum that is comparable to serums four to five times the price. We don’t want to mark things up. We want to offer incredible formulas at accessible prices.”

Seta and Marino believe accessible products don’t have to skimp on design. They tapped graphic designer Julia Luke to assist with a design concept that’s simultaneously bare and striking. Bottles feature the brand name in bold black and white against white and chartreuse. Seta says, “We looked at everything else on the market that we admire and thought, ‘How do we sit next to these other brands?’ We realized a lot of the bottles were very busy and had a lot of information. We felt that we could come across as transparent by putting only the necessities on the bottles.”

Later this year, Bejbiskin plans to release one to two additional products. Don’t expect the brand to churn out a conventional cream. Seta says, “We will continue to grow this niche of targeted, specific products. I don’t think we will ever create something that’s very standard.”