SUCCESS STORIES
Inspiring Tales of Startups,
Growth and Overcoming Hardships
BY CHRISTINA BUSWELL
JAN MARINI
Jan Marini Skin Research Inc. • San Jose, California
COMBINING BEAUTY AND SCIENCE
F
or Jan Marini, founder of Jan Marini Skin Research Inc.
(JMSR), every successful business starts with a clear
vision. “You need to envision what you want your business to be and what you want it to look like in five or 10 years,”
Marini says. When she founded JMSR in 1994, Marini envisioned
a skin-care company that delivers scientifically research-based
solutions across a broad spectrum of skin-care concerns.
To turn her vision into a reality, she made a bold move in
product distribution: She approached physicians instead of retailers to sell her products. It proved to be one of the company’s
most challenging yet rewarding strategies.
Early Challenges
“The practice of physicians dispensing [products] was not officially sanctioned and acceptance was at a much smaller rate than
it is today,” she says of the challenging early years. “Many doctors
were offended at being approached to sell skin-care products from
their practice. Medi-spas and the esthetics end of medicine were
both nowhere near as developed as they are today. Getting physicians to adopt a new and different way of doi