If there’s one person who’s not surprised that Ange Trahern, a Colorado native from the small town of Burlington, is CEO of her own skin care product company, it’s her mom. When Ange was just a kid and was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would answer, "a CEO!"
In March Trahern launched Bieux Skin ™, a line of bionatural skin care products that are free of fragrance, silicones, parabens and dyes, are non-comedogenic and hypo-allergenic. The first two products, a power lift and repair serum and a 24-hour treatment moisturizer, contain the elements that after nine years of experience in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries Trahern had determined were the best ingredients. "This is the first time I could create something exactly the way I felt it should be done," she says. "The product combines nature and science to work on two levels: instant visible cosmetic results and long-term clinical treatment benefits." The products infuse the skin to reduce aging effects, tighten it, boost collagen and moisturize.
Trahern loves the cosmeceutical industry for deeply personal reasons. When she was a freshman in college, studying business administration, she was involved in a serious auto accident that left her with severe scarring from underneath her right eye almost to the corner of her mouth. "Going through the healing process was very traumatic," she says. "Being a girl, trying to be accepted by a new group of peers, during these formative years when you’re trying to figure out what you want to do with your life, while having this big scar on my face, was awful. I had several significant plastic surgery procedures, and had to go through a healing process after each one, so it was literally years of healing and procedures."
Trahern decided to pursue a career in skin care because she felt it was a way she could make a difference in other women’s lives. She worked for nine years in the industry in product development and other roles, first with Cellex-C, where she played a key role in the development of products such as glominerals, and then on the pharmaceutical side for Kinerase, focusing on antiaging and acne products. She had been living in California, and with a desire to return to Colorado, decided it was time to take her passion for the industry to the next level by doing her own thing. To be successful, she says it’s important to be passionate about the field, be willing to constantly evolve and do research.
"It’s a beautiful industry," she says, "because the labs and chemists are constantly developing new technologies and new ingredients, new ways of doing things. Right now, the industry is taking a hard right turn toward natural skin care. Women want natural products and it’s important that brands listen to what women are saying because this is real. The desire to not put parabens on our skin or in our bodies is real.
"The next trend is that 80% of women will transition to natural products in the next two years. And the next trend after that is that women will expect results. Right now, women understand with a natural product, it’s good for them, and they’ll wait a little longer for results. But that level of patience isn’t going to last very long. Bieux Skin™ is prepared for that next trend shift because it gives you the clinical results you would expect from a pharmaceutical product. It’s the only product of its kind."
The launch has been exciting so far. Bieux Skin™ is sold nationwide at Sephora stores and online at Sephora.com, and the first week, it sold off the shelves of the Union Street and Union Square stores in San Francisco and New York City.
There’s a vast and rich array of natural ingredients on the scene now in skin care. For instance, a key ingredient in Bieux Skin’s™ power lift and repair serum is Gatuline, which is harvested from an isolated region of the Indian Ocean, and is credited with reducing the appearance of expression lines. Another purified marine extract, Pepha-Tight, also promises to tighten and help protect skin from oxidative damage. It’s almost as much fun to read about the ingredients in the products as it is to apply them.
No wonder mermaids look so good.
To check out Bieux Skin™ products, go to http://www.bieuxskin.com/. Ange Trahern will be giving product demonstrations and a gift with purchase at Sephora, One West Flat Iron Circle, Broomfield, CO 80021 on May 3 from 12 pm to 6 pm.