Valley-based Skin Actives Scientific, which for a dozen years has brought scientifically proven active ingredients to skin care products, is now expanding into hair growth enhancement using a suite of ingredients that encourage safe and sustainable growth and reduces loss of hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and beards.
The company recently completed trials on new products featuring Keratinocyte Growth Factor (KGF), a protein which binds with receptors to promote hair growth. The company has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Lincoln Fine Ingredients, a chemical distribution company based in Rhode Island, to make the ingredient available to larger manufacturers.
For its expansion into this new sector, Skin Actives turned to Chandler Innovations, the city’s business incubation and entrepreneurial development program. Funded by the city, Chandler Innovations offers free assistance to companies looking to start or scale up operations if the business or one of its principals resides in Chandler.
Chandler Innovations helped Skin Actives as it was recovering from a bubble in the skin care market in 2016. It also provided expertise on expanding the company – currently with more than $2 million in annual sales – into a new and potentially lucrative field of anti-aging hair care.
The bedrock of the company, founded in 2005 by Funtowicz and his mother, Hannah Sivak, has been rigorous scientific research. Sivak is a former biochemistry professor who has written more than 60 papers on biology, biochemistry and biotechnology.
Those same scientific standards were brought to bear on the hair care products. Studies show that 78 percent of participants who tested Skin Actives hair product had positive changes in the thickness or quality of their hair after using the product. Almost 80 percent showed improvement to their eyebrows and 93 percent saw improvement in the thickness or length of their eyelashes. Another trial saw an improvement in the weight, texture and thickness of beards.
