How do you make your brand stand out when nearly all your competitors claim to be all-natural? In the case of David Stearn and Linda Mills, co-founders of Derma E in Simi Valley, it comes down to sticking to your thesis that Vitamin E is good for skin, and using new technology to enhance it. This past year the company pushed the innovation envelope by infusing its therapy body-care line with “full-spectrum” Vitamin E. According to Mills, when skincare and beauty products name Vitamin E as an ingredient, they usually contain tocopherols, or TCP, an organic chemical compound that produces Vitamin E. But Derma E’s intensive treatments are extracted from cranberry seeds and red palm oil to provide more complete antioxidant benefits, with a mixture of tocopherols and tocotrienols, another form of the vitamin, in order to provide alpha, beta, gamma and delta antioxidants for each form of the vitamin. “The body responds to bio-complexity in general, so it will better respond to a multi-dimensional substance than it would any uni-dimensional material,” Mills explained. Derma E purchases the cranberry seed oil and sustainably harvested red palm oil ingredients from a third-party supplier, and then the full-spectrum Vitamin E is later processed at the company’s manufacturing plant in Northridge. The new products have been a hit among consumers and experts, the company said. The line includes a $15 body balm, $13 body lotion and $8 hand crème. Derma E sells about 100 products total, and has its strongest presence at natural grocery chains such as Whole Foods, VitaminShoppe and Sprouts, but has entered markets such as Walgreen’s and Gelson’s in recent years. The company, which has been profitable since 1995 and has about 40 employees locally, has been in Simi Valley since 2003. Mills and Stearn did not disclose sales figures but said that the new line contributed to the company’s double-digit growth that it has experienced every year in the last 10 years. It moved to a larger 26,000-square-foot location on Ward Avenue earlier this summer. The new formula is one of the products that received high rankings from The Dermatology Review, an online publication that analyzes beauty and skincare ingredients. It commended Derma E for creating mostly organic products. Stearn and Mills said their marketing strategy relies on customers trying their products once and seeing the results. That has proven a competitive equalizer against larger companies in the natural beauty category, such as the Aveeno subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson Co. in New Jersey. – Stephanie Forshee
