130 Business View - November 2014
ucts are sold in 87 countries through one of two major
brands – NeoStrata and Exuviance.
The NeoStrata brand is sold in the United States to
physicians, plastic surgeons and dermatologists, who
then sell to their patients. Outside the U.S., it is sold to
physicians in countries where physicians are permit-
ted to sell to patients, otherwise it’s detailed to physi-
cians by a sales force and prescribed for appropriate
patients.
The Exuviance brand is sold domestically through
spas, salons and specialty retailers, while outside the
U.S. it’s almost exclusively a salon-based business.
“We’re very fortunate in that we’re very well-diversi-
fied,” Steele said. “We’re so spread around the world
that, as a company, we still continued to grow through
(the global economic crisis), because as one part of
the world had trouble another part of the world was
doing fine. We’ve been able to consistently grow ev-
ery year because of that diversity. And, in the U.S., our
largest market, we have been benefitting from years
now of double-digit growth.”
Steele said only a handful of technologies have been
proven over time to drive and provide efficacy in skin
care. With regard to innovations in efficacy, there has
been little established competition for NeoStrata,
whose products are vetted in clinical studies at lead-
ing research centers. However, on the product side,
he said, a separation is made because competitors
spend a great deal of money on advertising and mar-
keting – a battlefield on which NeoStrata has neither
spent the time nor the resources to engage.
Instead, Steele said, the company chooses to sell its
products based upon superior efficacy and consumer
engagement, no matter how daunting a task that can
be when faced with competitors for whom image and
MANUFACTURING
