TheIndustry.beauty Awards Winners' Interview: Marc Elrick, founder & CEO, Byoma

In this series, TheIndustry.beauty continues to celebrate the achievements of the winning brands from TheIndustry.beauty Awards 2025 through a collection of dedicated interviews.

With the Awards dedicated to 'The Innovators' of the industry, we set out to uncover the forward-thinking strategies behind their success. From our winners, we discover everything from the importance of innovation and the trends influencing the next wave of beauty to the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the sector today.

Launched in 2022, Byoma is a British skincare brand committed to simplifying skincare by prioritising skin barrier health through science-backed formulations. The brand has quickly gained recognition for its approachable pricing, playful packaging, and strong, consistent presence on social media.

Founder and CEO Marc Elrick tells us about his approach to identifying gaps in the market and transforming those insights into products that resonate with consumers. He also shares the story behind the brand’s TheIndustry.beauty-award-winning product, weighs in on the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the beauty sector today, and explains how Byoma continues to maintain its position as an industry leader.

What are the core values that drive Byoma and how are they reflected in the business?

Byoma was built to address a crisis in skincare and meet true consumer needs. Our mission is to empower people to make smart, informed, and educated choices. We believe the key to healthy skin is a healthy skin barrier. Skin health is our north star - a subject we are passionate about and dedicated to. With Byoma, you don’t need to sacrifice the long-term health of your skin to see instant, visible results.

We also believe efficacy is the new luxury, and quality shouldn’t be determined by price. We aim to deliver accessible and affordable formulas centred around skin health, combined with proven efficacy, to all.

What’s your approach to identifying gaps in the market, and how do you transform those insights into successful, consumer-loved products?

Barrier care is core to skin health, and we seek to elevate the category with cutting-edge innovation while staying culturally relevant. The modern-day consumer is ever-changing, and we adapt our strategy to meet them where they are. We formulate our innovations with a combination of familiar, hero skincare ingredients while also introducing new and exciting textures and tech stories - elevating everything through clinical credibility.

We use this qualitative and quantitative clinical and consumer data to hone our marketing strategy, taking an "edutaining" approach to our brand communications to make our science more digestible and relatable for our community.

Byoma has built a strong reputation for delivering high-quality skincare at accessible price points. How do you strike the balance between affordability and product efficacy?

The skincare landscape was divided: dermatological brands on one end -simple and gentle but not offering targeted results - and clinical brands on the other end - formulated with high-strength, potent actives. But due to a lack of accessible education and misinformation on social media, it was too easy for consumers to misuse products, often causing more harm than good. Every element of Byoma was intentionally built to address every consumer concern and need that we identified.

What we’re doing is building something that didn’t previously exist. We’re giving consumers barrier-strengthening formulations that are clinically proven to protect the skin barrier while also delivering targeted results through intentionally chosen actives - providing transformational results without skin barrier disruption. With Byoma, consumers no longer have to choose. You don’t need to sacrifice the long-term health of your skin to see instant, visible results. Byoma is shaping the future of beauty with science-backed, clinically active, and clinically effective skincare.

The Nourishing Body Oil won at TheIndustry.beauty Awards. In your view, what set this product apart and resonated most with the judges (and wider consumers generally)?

This restorative, antioxidant-rich body oil illuminates and hydrates while helping to protect the skin barrier from the first use. The ultra-lightweight oil is fast-absorbing, leaving skin visibly nourished. It’s formulated with our Barrier Lipid Complex, Jojoba, and Seabuckthorn Oils to visibly improve skin texture while protecting and maintaining skin barrier health. Think instantly glowing, radiant results for all skin types - without the greasiness you’d expect from an oil. It’s also clinically proven to reduce flakiness and dry, textured skin by 85%, maintain and protect skin barrier function, and support skin hydration.

What was the significance of winning the New Product: Bath & Body (Mass) award for the Nourishing Body Oil?

Winning the New Product: Bath & Body (Mass) Award for our Nourishing Body Oil was a huge moment for us. It validated all the hard work our incredible team put into creating a product that truly delivers.

Can you share some insights into the development process behind the body oil?

We believe that efficacy is the new luxury and that high-performance products should be accessible to everyone. We noticed that many of the bestselling body oils on the market were inaccessible to consumers from a price perspective. We wanted to create something that felt luxurious to apply but was also clinically validated - and that’s exactly what we did!

What were the key priorities you focused on to ensure the product delivered on performance and overall user experience?

Our level of internal and external testing protocols is highly unusual, even for major international brands. We know brands tend to focus on clinical testing for headline claims. What we’re doing differently is ensuring that all aspects of skin health are clinically evaluated. We conduct two independently tested and evaluated studies per product, ensuring products function as they are marketed while also being skin barrier-friendly. This commitment to testing is exceptional for a brand of this age.

All products receive HRIPT, Capsaicin testing for sensitivity, and TEWL testing, showing how much we care about overall skin health. We run the most rigorous skin tolerance studies available (21-day HRIPT on leave-on products and ROAT on rinse-off products), testing on at least 100 people, with 50% identifying as having sensitive skin. Formula efficacy then comes into play, with investment in hydration, brightening, and skin texture testing, to name just a few. This approach truly balances clinical efficacy with our focus on skin barrier health.

What do you think are the biggest opportunities and challenges in the beauty sector today?

At Byoma, we like to view challenges as opportunities and feel we best set ourselves up for success by remaining laser-focused on these six pillars:

• Purpose - We know who we are and what we stand for.
• Performance - You can have the best people but the wrong culture. Culture is everything. Process supports this – we have implemented the right process and controls in place to help our people thrive.
• People - I only hire people that are smarter and better than me, but who can also demonstrate that they can take this business to the next level.
• Product - Product is everything. In fact, we spend more money on clinical testing than on influencers!
• Partnership - We have to meet the consumer where they are. This goes back to knowing your customer and building a partnership strategy that ultimately works for them, because they are who we all work for.
• Passion - If you don't love it, don't do it. I love this industry, and I'm passionate about shaping it - that is what drives me. None of this matters if you don't have passion!

What trends are influencing the next wave of innovation in beauty?

We’re closely watching how consumer attitudes are evolving, especially with a growing awareness that sun damage is the leading cause of visible skin aging. We're seeing increased interest in "prejuvenation," particularly among Gen Z consumers. This shift toward early prevention is something we’re excited about, and we see it driving demand for smarter, more user-friendly formats - in suncare and beyond.

How does Byoma maintain its position as a leader in the beauty industry? What strategies are critical to staying ahead of competitors and meeting consumer demand?​

Maintaining our position as a leader within the industry is all about driving innovative initiatives. We have partnered with our external scientific advisor, Stewart Long, to set up our own clinical testing lab at our HQ in Glasgow. This means we can now provide real-time clinical data to manufacturers and labs at every iteration. We’re now in clinic, running clinicals almost every week!

We also launched our Smart Skin Scan AI tool as part of our inaugural Skin Barrier Awareness Month last year, which came to life as a direct response to the problem of younger consumers using skincare that was simply too harsh for their skin.

Supercharging our brand’s mission to help educate everyone to make smart, informed choices within skincare, we were happy to partner with the global AI/AR company Revieve to develop a fully branded digital skincare diagnostic service powered by AI technology that can be used anytime, anywhere. This means that, regardless of age, anyone can receive personalised recommendations tailored to their unique skin type. We implemented an age metric as part of this, which ensures we are responsibly educating young consumers and making sure they’re not using skincare that is too harsh!

TheIndustry.beauty Innovators Awards is back for 2026 to recognise beauty brands and retailers who are pushing boundaries and driving positive change. 

This time, we have a new home: The Nobu Hotel, London Portman Square. We’ve added more categories to celebrate all of the achievements of our beloved beauty industry, including ‘iconic product categories’ as we recognise innovation doesn’t just come from new products.

We’ve also launched a new SUPER EARLY BIRD RATE, letting you save £100 on each entry!

ENTER NOW AND BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE.

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