Speaker 1:
Welcome to TD Cowen Insights, a space that brings leading thinkers together to share insights and ideas shaping the world around us. Join us as we converse with the top minds who are influencing our global sectors.
Oliver Chen:
Science-backed skincare, biotech meets personal care. It’s the future of beauty and glowing ahead. Welcome to the Retail Visionary Podcast series, a podcast about visionary ideas and people. My name’s Oliver Chen. I’m TD Cowen’s new platform retail and luxury analyst. In this episode, we explore AV Laboratories, a luxury longevity skincare brand pioneering science-backed innovations and molecular skincare. AV Laboratories is inspired by over 25 years of stem cell science. This brand merges cutting-edge biotechnology with indulgent skincare rituals. I’ve been using it regularly. I just sprayed some on right before this as well. Today we’re thrilled to feature AV Laboratories, co-founder and CEO, Ami Mezezi and Chief Marketing Officer Josh Smith. Aim is a molecular biologist and biotech entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in regenerative medicine and before launching AV Laboratories, he co-founded EvolveGene and led global biotech ventures focused on cell therapy, longevity and genetic research among others.
Also, joining us today is Josh Smith, Chief Marketing Officer of AV Labs. Josh is a seasoned brand builder. He spent 25 years across sectors including technology, auto, entertainment and beauty among others. He now leads growth and marketing at AV Labs. Ami and Josh, it’s such a pleasure being here with you. Thank you gentlemen for joining us on this podcast.
Ami Mezezi:
Yeah, thank you for having us.
Oliver Chen:
Ami. As a start, we’d love to hear your founding story of AV Laboratories and what differentiates your brand from other dermatological science-backed skincare brands.
Ami Mezezi:
Yeah, so as you said, I’m a molecular biologist and myself and some of the core team of AV Laboratories, Monica, and especially, we came from previously EvolveGene and LifeGlobal, and EvolveGene was a company in the genetic space, but LifeGlobal was a company in the regenerative medicine space. And what we did was we formulated and manufactured solutions to grow stem cells used for human cell therapies. And that work really led us to understand the complex molecular mechanisms and cell signaling processes that happen in these intricate cell types. When we exited LifeGlobal back in 2018, we looked around and said, what are we going to do next? And the skin care industry is one industry that really piqued our interest. And one of the reasons for that was a trend that we saw inside of skin care, which was moving away from… Not away, but from these ingredients like hyaluronic acid and seaweed extracts to really heavy biologics like exosomes and peptides and growth factors.
It was really a scientification of beauty and these were molecules, ingredients that we had worked with that we understood, we understood their effects on cells. And these are not benign molecules. These are things that have cell signaling effects, effects on gene expression. They’re really pharmaceutical grade ingredients. And we said, based on our work that we have, what we felt were solutions that could really apply into this new beauty trend. And also in ways that were safer in our estimation, and this is probably a topic we can get into a little further, but there’s potential downstream effects that people don’t really look at in the beauty of these molecules. So overall, we saw that there was a place for our expertise and knowledge, and that’s what led us, after we exit the company, to developing SOM3, which is the base ingredient that’s in every product of AVL. And SOM3 is a amino acid cocktail that empowers your cell and gives everything it needs from a molecular standpoint. So it’s really a metabolic nutrition.
Oliver Chen:
Yeah, I would say, Ami, what is the science behind your work? What would you say was the science behind what you learned and how you applied it to skin care to keep it simple?
Ami Mezezi:
So to us it’s about at the base level nutrition of the cells. And we found through our previous work at LifeGlobal that if you apply the correct amount of amino acids, vitamins, co-factors, and not just having them, but the right concentrations, and also making them bioavailable to the cells, doing things to them so that the cells can actually take them up. If you do those things, you don’t need a lot of the hardcore pharmaceutical grade biologics that are being included in skincare that have these potential downstream effects. And so it’s really a fully defined, so SOM3, it’s a fully defined molecular cocktail to provide cells with the nutrition that they need so that they’re empowered so that they can make the collagen, elastin NAD+ drive a lot of the molecular mechanisms that will help with anti-aging and prevent a lot of the downstream effects that happen as you age. So it’s really a proactive, not a reactive, solution.
Oliver Chen:
Okay. Tell us a story about EvolveGene and what you did there that really was a catalyst for discovering and producing SOM3.
Ami Mezezi:
So LifeGlobal, there’s two companies. So LifeGlobal, we made the solutions used to grow stem cells, so that was… You grow stem cells that are used for cell therapy purposes inside of these solutions. And you have to… When you do that, you have to figure out everything that’s needed in order for those cells to survive and thrive. And that’s what really gives you an understanding of the molecules that are needed by these cells and at the concentrations. And one thing that SOM3, so SOM3, was that there’s a technique we use called simplex optimization that’s really, it’s a really complicated term, but it’s a way of figuring out what cells need at the exact concentrations.
Oliver Chen:
Josh, turning to you, you’ve had a lot of experience across beauty brands. I mean, what makes SOM3 special and what sets AV Laboratories apart? What’s the story here?
Josh Smith:
Yeah, well, I think there’s a big gap right in the market between what consumers desire and what they’re willing to settle for. Traditionally with skin care, like Ami was saying, it’s reactive, right? You have a problem and then here’s a product that’s going to help solve that. We take a little bit of a different approach. We’ve really started to see in this convergence in the market of beauty, wellness and science, and people really want skin care that’s going to be with them for the long haul. And what’s I think so powerful about AVL and AVL SOM3 specifically is that it really helps fill that gap. It’s one of the first scientifically backed skin longevity products on the market that’s been tested, proven safe and efficacious for folks. So when we start thinking about product development and what we’re going to bring to the market. It’s very, very different with AVL, it’s really super simple routines.
We only have five products right now in our line, we are going to be launching a few more, but the routines are really approachable. You know that you’re mixing one, that longevity component which is going to feed your skin what it needs to thrive. So here’s one of the really interesting things is when you’re in your twenties and thirties, your skin renews about every 28 days. But when you become older, say in your fifties, that can be as long as 75 days.
So AVL SOM3, that patented technology, feeds your skin everything that it needs and what it does, this is the magic of it. And what’s so simple and powerful about it, is it empowers your skin to create collagen, which is the structure of your skin to create elastin, which gives your skin that elasticity and NAD+, which we all hear a lot about immediately lately, but it’s not something you can take topically. So AVL SOM3 actually empowers your skin to produce NAD+ naturally, and that’s really that energy that allows your skin to renew, restore itself. So it’s a completely different approach from traditional skin care, again, which is about treating a specific problem, where our products are designed for giving you products that you can use basically for a lifetime, whether you have different skin types, male, female, those things don’t really matter because on the cellular level we’re all more the same than we are different. So it’s really a unique approach to how skin care can come to life.
Oliver Chen:
And Josh, what is your hero product and key attributes of it in terms of how you’ve thought about this simple approach?
Josh Smith:
Sort of the hero skews for us is actually two, it’s the face serum and that’s something that you can use daily. All of our products have what we call a dual purpose formulation. So you’re getting AVL SOM3 across the entire product line, and then you’re getting a mix of clinical-grade actives. And here’s the beauty of it, is normally with a product you’re going to have one or two actives, but with face serum there’s 16 clinical-grade actives in there. We have a master formulator, Sylwia, who’s brilliant, and it’s basically a tapestry of all these actives. And they’re designed to work with your skin to target specific skin concerns. And as we all know, our skin is in a state of flux, right? It’s never static, so you’re always going to be exposed to a bunch of environmental factors. Pollution, dust, also seasonal, right? Going from cold to warm is going to have massive changes on your skin.
We also go through hormonal changes, whether that’s cyclical or whether that’s in different times of our lives. So the beauty of having a longevity-based product is that you’re getting all of those clinicals in one simple-to-use product. So that’s the beauty of the serum. And I also talk about face cream-like. Here’s another really interesting point. As scientists, when you’re talking about longevity skincare, people have to use the product, right? They have to use it daily. We know we’re going to see better results when people use it daily, but really when they start to use it over months and over years. So I always say we spent as much time developing the science of the product and we spent over five years developing AVL SOM3, but we also spend the same amount of time making sure that it feels great. When you come home, you want to put the moisturizer on. It’s so light, it feels so good, it’s something that you’re going to want to use every day. And we know that with prolonged use, you’re going to see prolonged results.
Oliver Chen:
Ami, why is it difficult for competitors to replicate AVL SOM3?
Ami Mezezi:
Yeah, so SOM3 is one of what we feel is one of the most advanced skin solutions available today. It was developed over five years of work, but really it was based on 20 years of science in the regenerative medicine space and work that we had done previously in some of the most sensitive cells used for cell therapy purposes. So it was developed using a method called simplex optimization, which is really a tool to figure out the exact concentration of nutrients and molecule cells need. And it’s a very complex mathematical tool that we had used previously and then applied to skin care for the first time ever. And it’s a really unique approach because it’s not adding any of these crazy biologics like exosomes or peptides or growth factors, but rather utilizing things like amino acids, co-factors, vitamins but the exact concentrations the cells need.
And we have found previously in our work that by just doing these things, you can have profound impacts on the cell without needing to include some of these biologics that could have downstream negative effects. We had 20 years of experience previously with LifeGlobal, and we have what I think an incredible team of scientists in the stem cell and regenerative medicine space. I think that there’s findings that we developed through our previous work that are obviously difficult to replicate, and I think that there’s nothing in our formula that is that I would say it’s a miracle cure, but it’s about the proportions and the concentrations, and that’s where that simplex optimization work came in. It’s about understanding at the smallest level what cells need and what they don’t need.
And it’s an approach that is unique, but also, as Josh was touching on, a little bit more benign than what I’d said previously is going on in the industry right now with a lot of these hardcore biological ingredients. And that’s not to say that we will not chase after some of those in the future, but to us, we’re approaching AVL as a biotech company and we feel that inherently all skin care companies have to act as biotech companies. You have to do the studies, you have to look at things at the molecular level, you have to test things at the cellular level, then you have to do all the testing at the in vivo level. You have to go through this gambit of testing and understanding and looking at everything doing the clinical trials. And until we feel that everything checks those boxes and also is safe, then we’ll include those.
Right now we feel comfortable with some through, we don’t feel comfortable with a lot of the other things that are being included, but we’re always innovating, we’re looking at formulas. I think that one thing I want to touch on that’s really unique about AVL also is the infrastructure of AVL. We established this as a biotech company, which means we manufacture the SOM3-based solution ourselves at our own FDA-registered facility that allows us to manufacture things at a high regulatory level and everything that we say is in there, is in there.
We do our own testing at our own molecular testing facility in Colorado, led by Dr. Kevin Flynn, our CSO, and then we do all the small testing in clinical testing ourselves also in Poland at our own facility. So I think from an infrastructure level, we established this as a biotech company and it’s going to operate as a biotech company. We don’t just go to a contract manufacturer, grab some solution, put it down to the market. We formulate everything as ourselves, we test everything ourselves, and we manufacture everything ourselves. And I think that that’s one advantage of AVL versus a lot of the competitors out there today.
Oliver Chen:
So Ami, that’s a great point. What does it mean to be a biotechnology company, Ami and Josh?
Ami Mezezi:
Yeah. I think to me, being a biotechnology company, as I said, is number one, doing the testing. Number two, the manufacturing, and number three, checking all those boxes that I mentioned. It’s about running clinical trials, having a team of scientists doing things at a high bar in terms of a regulatory bar. One thing about the skin care industry, it is the wild west. We come from a world of highly regulated medical devices in the regenerative medicine space. We can’t just put products in the market in that space. Once we think about them, we have to run them through the gambit of clinical testing and trials and molecular testing, in vitro testing, stability testing before we put them out. That doesn’t exist in the skin care world. No one’s feet is being held to the fire by regulatory agencies.
But to be a biotech company, we want to operate as if it is, we want to operate at the same level we were operating in the previous companies. And I think that in general, it’s that infrastructure and that operating at that high bar that makes you a biotech company. And then the other thing is the innovation aspect. You always want to be constantly innovating. We’re constantly testing new molecules, new formulas, new iterations of SOM3. I think AVL two years from now is not going to be the AVL you see today. It’s just we’re constantly looking to innovate and I think in general, that’s what makes you a biotech company and what we’re looking to be.
Josh Smith:
Yeah, just to add to that, I think being a biotech company in the skin care space is a choice, and it brings a really, really high burden that we basically put on ourselves. So the goal of the brand has always been very simple, right? It’s bring the best possible care for your skin. There’s currently no fountain of youth. We all wish there was, but the best approach to allow products like that to make it to market is using science. And that’s the path that we’ve always done. We’ve always followed the science. So for us, everything always starts on the molecular level. We really want to understand how the ingredients and the technology actually works, and we validate that. We have a molecular research center in Colorado, and that’s what Dr. Kevin Flynn runs as Ami was talking about earlier. From there, once that’s validated, then we start to actually make the products into the serums and creams that eventually come to the market.
And we validate that rather on the physiological level. So that’s doing the testing. We’ve tested our products on over 1300 people to prove their safety and efficacy. And then that last step is manufacturing. So very few skin care companies are going to own their own manufacturing facilities, but for us, the precision that has to go into the formulation of AVL SOM3 and every ingredient is actually double checked by two technicians to make sure that it’s exactly precise and in the right quantities, is all done in Canada. And this is integrated into the company, and this is what I was talking about. It’s that burden, it’s that rigor that goes into it. But for us, that’s the path that allows us to produce products that are going to be the most beneficial to consumers. So that scientific rigor combined with clinical testing, AI-driven insights, really allows us to deliver these formulas that aren’t just trendy, they’re scientifically precise and performance driven.
Oliver Chen:
Josh, on the testing aspect, what’s most important for us to know about in terms of what you do there? As you think about growth ahead, what’s important to you as well?
Josh Smith:
I mean, testing is key. The biggest thing for consumers when they come and they’re looking at a product is they’re taking a risk, right? They want to know that this product is going to work for them, so we want to meet them where they are. So we invested heavily right from the beginning in testing, and of course that starts on the molecular level. So tests in the lab to prove the efficacy of AVL SOM3, and then bringing that to bear on different folks so we can see how it works in the real world. At the end of the day, we see this as a generational brand. You can use it at different stages in your life when you’re younger and you haven’t seen the visible signs of aging yet, maybe in your twenties and thirties when you start to see that, even well into your fifties and sixties.
In addition to that, we’ve always thought of the brand as being multi-generation, meaning that for me personally, my son and daughter, my goal is someday that their kids use this brand and their kids’ kids use this brand. In other words, we’re trying to create a real long-term relationship with our consumers. And at the core of that is trust. So when people come to us, even now as a new brand, we want to let them know that we’re in this for the long haul. We’re doing the biological testing and advancements that Ami was talking about, but testing is the proof. It’s letting people know that we stand by the product and we’re delivering products to folks that are going to deliver real results. So it’s really, really important to the brand. It’s a founding pillar.
Oliver Chen:
And Ami, on SOM3 and simplex optimization. How do you intersect that with personalization and people’s potentially different needs based on who they are and their microbiomes?
Ami Mezezi:
Yeah, I think that personalization has always been in the medical space. An interesting word for me because the other company I co-founded actually was EvolveGene, and we were an early player in the genetic testing space. And genetics is a big part of personalization, obviously, but the issue with personalized medicine, it really never came. It’s never really bear fruits yet because it never reached its potential. I mean, what does personalization right now mean in the skin care space? It’s mostly just looking at skin type, right? Giving… If you have oily skin, take this product. If you have dry skin, take this product. I mean, true personalization would be taking a lot of the data inputs from your genetic markers, your microbiome markers, metabolic markers, and then giving you a personalized solution based on all of those inputs.
Are we there yet fully as an industry of personalized skin care, personalized medicine? No, but I think one thing that we wanted to do at AVL was, how do we bring true personalized skin care closer? I think that AI is a big part of that. I think SOM3 is also part of that. I mean, SOM3 is a sophisticated formula and it has a lot of actives in it that address a lot of skin concerns. But what we’d like to do in the future is personalize formulas for particular people using a lot of these inputs. As I said, we’re not there yet. We’re not there as an industry, we’re not there as a company, but something that we’re trying to achieve. And looking forward to.
Oliver Chen:
Ami, how is AV Laboratories using AI?
Ami Mezezi:
Yeah, great question, Oliver. Thank you. So the brand is found on empowering skin care, and one avenue I believe that AI will be particularly helpful in is unlocking personalization. And personalization currently in the skin care industry is mostly just tied to skin type. It’s very surface level, whether you have oily or dry skin and then just getting a particular product to address that. As someone who came from the gene therapy space and the genetic space, I mean, my background really is as a geneticist, it’s how do we apply AI to really making personalized skin care and healthcare in general a reality?
And when you look at that, it’s really taking things like your microbiome, genetic markers, metabolic markers, people’s health concerns in general, and then taking all of that data and using that to really create a true personalized solution. And the only way that that’s going to be possible is AI, and coming from the genetic testing space, pre-AI, it is this AI revolution that’s going to really help be able to bring all of these things together and make true personalized skin care a reality soon. And that’s something that AVL we hope to really help bring forward.
Oliver Chen:
So Ami, what has been the hardest part of AV Laboratories? It’s been an amazing journey, an entrepreneurial journey, and you’ve built an incredibly vertically integrated organization.
Ami Mezezi:
I think the hardest part really for us, it’s been a unique journey in that it’s different than anything we’ve done before. Like I said, we come from regenerative medicine, gene therapy. This is direct to consumer, it’s consumer facing. I think we’ve had to look at things in a different way. In some ways it’s been easier, like I talked about that regulatory journey. Those spaces are highly regulated. Most of my time in those spaces, in those previous companies, were spent dealing with regulatory issues. This is a lot different. So in some ways it’s been easier, but in other ways it’s been harder just because we’ve had to think and operate in a different space.
That’s where bringing someone Josh in has been incredibly helpful because as much of this is a clinical brand, we want it to be a luxury brand also. I think when we set out to create AVL, we wanted it to be a sexy science brand, not just like a boring science brand. I think that one thing about me and the other founders, we’re scientists, but at the same time we’re not your traditional scientist. So I think that we wanted the brand to represent us a little bit also. So I think from our perspective, it’s not really been the most difficult parts. I’ve not really been in terms of building this out, it’s been more about thinking in a new way.
Oliver Chen:
Josh, that leads to another topic. What are your thoughts on distribution and how you should think about direct to consumer relative to embracing the dermatological community?
Josh Smith:
Right now we’re a hundred percent D2C and bringing the product to consumers. And I think for us, what’s so interesting about this brand is because it’s so unique, it has that longevity component. It’s all about buying less products and using them more efficiently. That’s a story that these consumers haven’t heard yet. So unlocking that and walking them through that one step at a time is something that we’re really focused on. The best place to do that is a channel that we can control. So that’s why we’re really focused on D2C right now and developing that. We’ve had so much interest from derms and clinics about caring the product. They’re really curious about the technology. They’re really curious about it from a longevity point of view. They’re also interested in it for post-treatment. So using it along with say, a laser treatment or other treatments that you would get in a dermatological office. There’s a lot of interest there, but I think that’s something right now that we’re seeing, we dive into a little bit further down the road.
Oliver Chen:
Josh, we also talked about some great other topics, and I do another podcast on exosomes as well. What are exosomes and what is NAD+ for those who don’t know and how do they relate to AV laboratories or not?
Ami Mezezi:
So exosomes are vesicles. So lipid vesicles filled with signaling molecules and the released by cells to signal things to other cells. So they’re filled with a bunch of stuff. They’re filled with mRNAs, they’re filled with different type of RNAs, they’re filled with growth factors. The reason that they’re used is because, as I said, the tau cells communicate to one another. They release these things, other cells pick them up, and then the other cell does something in response to that. We don’t include exosomes in AVL products. It’s something that we’ve looked at. It’s something that we are very familiar with. We’ve investigated it and looked at exosomes in our previous companies. We have some concerns with exosomes in a number of ways. I think one, from a stability standpoint, whether or not that they are truly stable at room temperature and being shipped around in creams and cosmetic products, I’m not entirely sure on.
And the second is when I had this discussion earlier about biologics in the skincare space. Biologics are things that cause signaling events to happen in cells, they change gene expression, they cause the cell to do something. Exosomes fall into that category. I think that the idea today is that exosomes are inherently good and regenerative, and I don’t think that’s totally the case. I think that there could be some downstream negative effects of exosomes and people don’t really talk about that. I think that one thing for people to be aware that the way you get exosomes are you grow cells in a culture media. That’s something that we used to do in the previous company. And then after you grow them, the cells that are grown in this solution, they release these exosomes and then you pull that off and you filter it and you isolate them.
Exosomes are a snapshot of the cell at the moment that you took the exosomes from them. So if the cell was stressed because you weren’t culturing it properly or there was some issue with the media that you were growing it in, the exosomes aren’t necessarily probably the best to be taken from a stressed cell. So I mean, this is getting in the weeds, but overall, I think that there are potential downstream negative effects of exosomes that have to be investigated. I don’t think that they are inherently regenerative and always great as people claim them to be. Now, I think that there’s a lot of questions that have to be answered. I think that we aren’t comfortable including them in our solutions until we see a much greater risk reward skew and we see a lot more data to including them, and right now we don’t see that. We think that the way we go about it with the SOM3, it’s a much more safe and benign option and to us works just as well as exosomes.
Josh Smith:
Just to build on that, a lot of brands are trying to rush into this biotech clinical skincare space with lots of trendy ingredients, salmon DNA, exosomes, skin tallow, whatnot. But trust is really key to building long-term relationships with customers, but also building a stable long-term business that’s built on scientific rigor. So for us, we need to prove that efficacy and safety. It’s a promise that we have with our customers and the scientific validation with some of these more trendy ingredients just isn’t there yet for us.
Oliver Chen:
Okay. What about NAD+? What is that? What should we know about it? And is it part of your formula or not?
Ami Mezezi:
So we don’t have NAD+ in our formulas. NAD+ it’s a coat factor in cells used in a lot of different cell reactions. It’s part of the major cell metabolism cycle. And yes, NAD+, as you get older, it decreases. It’s taken on. It’s a huge buzzword now in the longevity and wellness space of everyone trying to increase NAD+. NAD+ by itself, it’s a large molecule. You can’t just give a cell NAD+. And because it’s too large, it won’t get into a cell. It’s too charged. So one thing we’ve done through our work with SOM3 is looked at whether or not SOM3 increases NAD+ in these dermal cells, in these fibroblasts and cells in general as they age. And what we found is that it does increase NAD+ without having to put in NAD+ directly, which won’t work. So in general, yeah, NAD+, it is important to look at. It’s important to increase because it does decrease with age, and I think that one thing, as I said that SOM3 does is increase NAD+.
Oliver Chen:
Yeah, longevity is such a key theme in discussion, Ami. Why does SOM3 enhance longevity?
Ami Mezezi:
Well, to me, we always have these discussions with Josh and the other team members of like, we are a clinical longevity brand. But the word longevity is… To me, it was always a loaded word today because it’s very buzzy. Everybody’s looking in the longevity wellness space. To me, longevity is about being proactive and not reactive. It’s not about, oh, I have redness, or I have this condition and find a product that’s going to work just to help that condition. It’s about giving yourself and your body what’s needed to prevent those things from arising. So it’s a longevity brand because I think that this is a proactive formula. It’s a proactive solution. It’s a sophisticated formula with… A lot of work went to it. There’s a lot of actives that address a lot of skin concerns. It addresses a lot of downstream concerns and preventing them from happening before they arise. So that’s to me, what longevity is and why this is a longevity brand because it’s a proactive, not a reactive solution.
Oliver Chen:
Josh, what about your current marketing strategy and how you’re thinking about customer acquisition spend? Skincare is competitive and requires a lot of trust and touch points.
Josh Smith:
It does, and I think that’s been one of the most difficult parts about this brand is because it hasn’t been done before where people haven’t seen longevity matched with this suite of actives. And solving skincare in a different way is really figuring out a way to tell that story to the consumer. What we found is that once people understand the technology and that they understand how it works, they want to come and they want to stay. And to us, that’s the most important part. So for us, it’s building that long-term relationship and getting people to understand how the technology works for their skin and bring them along for the long haul.
Oliver Chen:
Ami, you had tremendous innovations at LifeGlobal and EvolveGene. What learnings there really inspired you to innovate at AV Laboratories?
Ami Mezezi:
Yeah, so at LifeGlobal, we developed solutions used to grow stem cells that were used for cell therapy purposes. And when you develop these solutions, you have to house these cells in these solutions and these solutions have to contain everything, all the molecular nutrition needed for the cell to not only stay alive but really thrive so that it could be used for these downstream purposes. And we built at LifeGlobal, we really built a company that was one of the best in the world at doing this. And it was acquired back in 2018 for nine figures. And we had really a strong team of scientists and also manufacturing capabilities, so of developing these solutions. So what did this all do for us? It really gave us one insight into how cells work, the nutrition, and really the molecules that they need. And that applies directly to skin care because when you apply these solutions to your face and skin care, you’re really doing the same thing. You’re trying to give them the right nutrition, the right molecules needed for them to be healthy, to produce collagen, to produce elastin.
So after we sold the company, we looked around and identified skin care as a space where we could really apply our knowledge and our expertise. And we spent five years looking at dermal cells, fibroblasts, keratinocytes, the different skin types, looking at what they needed from a metabolic standpoint, from a nutrition standpoint, and really carefully crafting a sophisticated formula to give those cells everything it needs to be healthy, to produce the collagen, the elastin, increase NAD+, do all the things needed to really provide the anti-aging effects, provide the support needed for these cells as you age.
And we like, as I said, spent five years testing the formula, validating it, looking at it from a cell standpoint, does it do everything we say it does in the cell? And then testing it in 1400 people in clinical trials, both internal and external. So we did a lot of validation, a lot of work, but these formulas and SOM3 is really based on 20 years of previous work at LifeGlobal. So there’s a lot of thought and a lot of knowledge that goes into these, and we believe that it’s the most sophisticated formula for skin care.
Oliver Chen:
AMI, over the next three to five years, what are you most excited about and any closing remarks you may have as well?
Ami Mezezi:
Yeah, I think that, like I said, it’s the innovation aspect for us. I think that we’re excited about what we currently have out there, but I think we’re equally excited about the things that we’re working on. I think that we are working every day to bring the best possible solutions for skincare out there and the safest also. I think the safety, like I’ve touched on many points, it’s a big aspect for us. Like I said, we’re not just including the trendiest, hottest new ingredients just because we can make big claims and because they’re hot right now. I think for us, we don’t include things unless we really believe in them. But I think for me, what’s most exciting is I think that the trend of the scientification of beauty is happening. I think that everybody in this industry, is being forced to operate more as a biotech company. I think we fit into that space and I think that we can bring a lot into it. And I think that we have a lot to offer, and I believe that we will bring some of the best solutions out there.
So to us, the next three to five years is really rolling out the full product line, innovating the new solutions, and really progressing as the science progresses with AI and the way science is moving. Everything’s moving at light speed now. And I think that the intersection of skincare and regenerative medicine and science and AI, they’re all on the same road. They’re all leading the same path, and I think that we have to be very vigilant to really helping bring this intersection together. So we’re excited and I think there’s a lot of big things in store for AVL.
Oliver Chen:
Tommy and Josh, it’s been really fabulous to spend time with you. There’s so many themes here from optimization to thinking about what longevity really means and being proactive about skincare, as well as this unique vertically integrated approach, which integrates AI, clinical trials as well as sourcing, and then the efficacy of the product. It’s been a joy to learn more and also to use your product regularly. Thank you.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned for the next episode of TD Cowen Insights.
