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Women grow business from ailment, target boomers
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
For the women behind L’Athene Inc., a Mount Pleasant-based cosme-ceutical company, the aging of the baby boomer generation is a prescription for golden business opportunities.
“This is a population that wants to look as young on the outside as it feels on the inside,” said L’Athene co-founder Lil Bogdan, a longtime registered nurse, of the customer-base that is fueling her company’s rapid growth.
“What’s interesting is that at the same time, they’re also very interested in being educated, particularly regarding natural solutions to their health and appearance concerns,” she added.
As it happened, long before they ever read a demographic study or drafted a business plan, Bogdan and her business partner, fellow registered nurse Nan Brown, were conjuring a commercial formulation that would meet both those needs.
“This generation was really the first to start reading the labels on foods and pay attention to those kinds of issues, which is exactly what we were doing when we came up with our first all-natural skin treatment,” Brown said.
Whether they were simply of like-mind with their generation or had impeccable timing, the results of finding their niche and it finding them are undeniable. Today the high-energy duo’s lotions, creams and anti-aging treatments sell in medical practitioners’ offices, exclusive spas, select Nordstrom stores and over the Internet at www.lathene.com.
What’s more, sales of the company’s 15 individual products rose 125% last year compared to 2004.
Not bad for a pair of Johns Hopkins University Hospital nurses who never dreamed of leaving health care behind to start a skin-care product company.
Even more surprising is that it all started with a search for a home remedy for dry patches on Brown’s hands.
“We were clinicians,” Bogdan laughed as she discussed the improbability of it all. “We didn’t know the first thing about starting a business, the legal requirements, the paper work and all that.”
Brown agreed, “This is a dream that really flew in the back door.”
So is this one of those rare instances where all the stars aligned for a pair of business novices?
Yes and no, Bogdan said. While good fortune played a hand, so too did a passion that grew exponentially with each successive step they took.
“It really has been a passion, and one I think (that) started the moment we saw results in Nan’s condition,” she explained. “There we were, seeing she’d gotten substantially better and thinking, ‘There must be other women out there who have these problems, who are sensitive to substances they’re exposed to on a daily basis.’”
During their nursing careers, Brown and Bogdan routinely worked with patients who had suffered the worst kinds of skin traumas, from burns to wounds to pressure sores. Working in that environment, they recognized that holistic approaches to these crises often brought better results than manufactured remedies.
Then Brown began to experience her own skin problems.
“Basically, I started to react to hospital chemicals, something that happens to many medical practitioners as they get older,” she said.
The two longtime friends began looking at the ingredients in natural skin care products, conducting research in their off-hours and effectively using Brown as the test subject.
Even given their backgrounds, Brown said, the experience was highly educational. They discovered that skin responds best to pure, potent, nutrient-rich natural preparations.
Even more eye opening was what it took to get these preparations to the marketplace. Although the business was founded in 1997, it wasn’t until 2002 that L’Athene became a presence on retail shelves.
“Basically, we talked to everyone we could about the skin-care industry and discovered that starting a business is about more than coming up with a product,” Brown said.
“As clinicians, the last thing we knew about was something like product distribution. We didn’t know the first thing about being a start-up.”
What they did know was that, in addition to their products, they also wanted to promote a systematic approach to skin care that was simple, easy to follow and supported by educational materials.
“From the start, the one thing we knew is we didn’t just want placement on a store’s shelves. We wanted to provide materials that really helped women take care of their skin,” Brown said. “It’s important for the customer to have ready access to written support material at the same time they are reaching for the product.”
Printed point of sales materials are now supplemented with an e-newsletter that currently has about 3,000 subscribers. Brown and Bogdan also travel extensively and provide local skin-care consultations.
Brown said the serendipity that accompanied founding L’Athene also played a significant role in the company’s move to Mount Pleasant 5 1/2 years ago.
“We came here on vacation and fell in love with the area, the people, the history and the quality of life,” she said. “So we moved, and since moving makes you reach out and be more resourceful, we figured that would be good for the business too.”
Recent developments include L’Athene’s products garnering the endorsement of Spirit of Women, a network of more than 180 hospitals, physicians and medical personnel.
But for now, they plan to expend most of their energies on expanding their hold on the boomer market.
“They’re us. We experience what they’re experiencing,” Brown said. “As a result, we feel very well-placed for growth in the years ahead,” she said.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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