Navigating the Changing World of Physician-Dispensed Skincare

Dr. Grant Stevens

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Technology of Beauty. Where I have the opportunity to interview the movers and shakers of the beauty business, and today is no exception. Today I have the opportunity to interview Amber Edwards, who's come all the way up here from down in the San Diego area, right?

Amber Edwards

Laguna Beach.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Laguna Beach. Terrific. And I've known Amber for years. Amber's at Alastin, recently acquired by Galderma. And first welcome, Amber. Thank you for coming up and appearing on the show.

Amber Edwards

Thank you for having me. I feel honored that I've officially made it to mover and shaker status.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Absolutely. Thank you. You are now, what is your new title now that Galderma has taken over Alastin?

Amber Edwards

Sure. My title is Global Head of Alastin. Yeah, we are in very rapid growth trajectory mode and that will include some international expansion. Dr. Fleming Ørnskov, who you know well, yes asked me to step up into a role to be able to oversee that growth, which of course includes also just working very closely with the other Galderma business units to make sure that we're maximizing every growth opportunity that there.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Terrific, and we're gonna get to that. Okay? But first, I want to get to know you a little better, and I know our viewers and listeners would like to also. So let's start with an easy one. Where did you grow up?

Amber Edwards

That is not an easy one. It's probably the hardest question. Because I'm a came from a military family.

Okay. So I am an army brat. Moved around. I think I'm on my 18th place. Wow. So my family is all spread out all over the world but have lived everywhere. I've lived throughout the us, lived in Korea, lived in London. I consider New York City kind of home because I made it my home. It was the first place I chose Okay.

To say this is my home. Basically I've spent off and on the last 20 years pretty much with New York as my home.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay. Where'd you go to school?

Amber Edwards

University of Arizona. I'm a wildcat.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah. I'm a duck. I know. You're, I know you are. We've got a little problem there, but I'm gonna try to ignore it.

Okay, so after you finished your degree in Arizona what came next?

Amber Edwards

I became a sales rep with Park Davis Pharmaceuticals. Ah. So that was my entrance into the pharmaceutical space. Soon, a couple years later, it was acquired by Pfizer. Yes. And that's how I ended up in New York for the first time.

So Pfizer actually moved me to New York. I had started as a sales rep working in diabetes, cardiovascular disease hypertension, and then in my marketing role at Pfizer in new. worked across, again, women's healthcare anxiety and depression arthritis and pain, which, and I only bring that up because I think one of the great things about my history and my background is I've really made a point to work in a bunch of different lateral moves in different disease states different kinds of functions.

And I think that's just been really insightful to get to know different patient types, different disease states, different physician types. So that's a...

Dr. Grant Stevens

And you carry that experience with you. So when did you get into the aesthetic type arena?

Amber Edwards

In 2004. Okay. I received a call from Liana Wood.

I'm not sure if you ever knew Liana, but she was in the early days of Botox cosmetic. And she knew of me through a friend of a friend and said, look, I'm looking for someone to to lead Botox cosmetic marketing. And have heard all about you think you'd be a great fit you get to move to California

And she convinced me to come out interviewed with Bob Ratigan. Yes. Who I know you know very well. Absolutely. Bob became a mentor to me. I have to give him so much credit for so much of what I learned about marketing, but they ultimately brought me out to Allergan in 2004. So that was the entrance into aesthetics for me.

Dr. Grant Stevens

This is fantastic. So you worked with Bob?

Amber Edwards

Bob, yes.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Under David Pyatt?

Amber Edwards

Yes. With David Pyatt. Best CEO of all time.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Agreed. And you rolled out Botox?

Amber Edwards

Yes. And launched Juvederm not too long after.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I did not know that about you. That is fantastic. Back in, like I tell my residents and fellows that aesthetics is like the Yahtzee game.

You just shake it up and there's company one and then company two. It's the same guy. Same people. So I did not know that.

Amber Edwards

But a lot of us have roots.

Dr. Grant Stevens

You worked with Brad — yes. A lot of Allegan roots. Yep. And Bob's been on the show, Bob Ratigan, who's the CEO of Merz and he's a dear friend as okay. Yeah. How long did you work at Allergan? We'll start with that.

Amber Edwards

I was at Allergan about 10 years in total, but I did have some different roles within Allergan. I moved over to the ophthalmology side for a while. Okay. So I led Restasis dry eye, for about three years. And then in 2015, they actually sent me over to.

and I lived in London and I was the VP for international for all of aesthetics. So at that point had the opportunity to launch Juvederm in China, spent some time some And that's when you lived in London? Yes. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So we had, I had responsibility for everything XUS. For aesthetics. So it was a phenomenal opportunity to get to know different, again cultures different regulatory and legal, implications across the world.

Spent some time in Saudi Arabia, which was probably my most fascinating time. Actually sat at the table of the Saudi FDA arguing something for one of our products, one point. Really great experience have, I would encourage anybody out there if you have the opportunity, and you can from a personal perspective, go live abroad.

Do it. You learn so much.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So how many years were you out of the US then?

Amber Edwards

Three years. Yeah. 2015 to 18.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Out of curiosity. because you were with Allergan, OUS. Philippe. Did you work with Philippe during that time? Philippe. And how about Endicott?

Amber Edwards

Oh yeah. Oh yes. We all, it's one big family that we all...

Dr. Grant Stevens

I'm trying to get David Endicott on the program. Philippe's been on, of course. You know that? Yep. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so then what brought you back?

Amber Edwards

2018 came, I think the company was going through a lot of changes and I felt like I was ready to, I'd been at these big companies, Pfizer and Allergan, and I felt like I wanted the challenge of a startup.

I wanted the challenge of something small, that I, and wanted to test my own, what can I do right? And see if I could actually build and establish and grow something. And I had the opportunity, I had met Chris Spooner with Sinclair Pharma over in Europe, and he was looking for someone to take the helm of running the us organization to launch Sinclair in the us.

Okay. So Sinclair had a one product approved at that point, which was. Silhouette Insta Lift, which is a thread. Yes. But the bigger goal was to launch their bio stimulating filler. Okay. And that's really why, I took the role cuz I was incredibly excited to launch that filler in the us.

The FDA was not quite so easy with that, but the biggest thing that happened was covid. So we were, I had a team of about 30 people. I think that's one of the first times I met you was at a meeting, things were taking off, the product was doing well. We had our momentum just going.

And I'll never forget, I think it was March 6th, 2020 got the phone call saying it's just not the right time for us to invest in the us. And it was very painful. In hindsight, they were correct. clearly. But that was hard. It's, I felt like I was letting a lot of people down, I had a big team of people who were looking to me to help make this happen.

And outta my control, but still, disappointing. Definitely. Definitely. I get the, getting kicked in the stomach once in a while in your career is probably a good thing for some humility. You learn a lot, you learn a lot of empathy. And then you pick up the pieces and sometimes better things happen, which is what happened.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's right. So when did you get the call from Diane or whoever called?

Amber Edwards

Immediately. Immediately. Yeah, immediately.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I remember meeting incidentally when we talked about the threads, Sinclair. Yeah. I remember the table where I met you

Amber Edwards

Octane. Yeah. We were both sitting in the back.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, that's right. And I remember it. And then Covid hit. It did. And then next thing I heard, six weeks later you were with Alastin .

Amber Edwards

Exactly. Things happen. So I had become, I had two very dear friends from my Allergan days Elizabeth Sandoval and Lynn Saleo, both were on the board of directors for Alastin.

And so they knew that I was out in California. I had come out to California. Really just thinking I'd ride out Covid, for a couple of months, from New York and they mentioned that, hey there's a CCO position open. The company's at a point where it's really scaling up and they felt like I'd be the right person to come in and help take it to the next level clearly.

The foundation and the brilliance of Alastin was already in place, but to help it grow and take it to the next level. And so I think Elizabeth called Diane, Diane Goosetree, the CEO, former CEO just as of recently. Yes. But she she called me and I think what really got me hooked, was speaking with Alan Widgerow, who you know very well. And at first I was like, skincare, I'm not gonna do skincare. Skincare is all smoke and mirrors. And then I met Alan and you saw the science and I that's exactly, you talked to him and the passion is so infectious. and you hear about his history and wound healing.

And how he's brought that, all of that science and true, practical, everything he did as a plastic surgeon, he's brought it to this product line and I was sold.

Dr. Grant Stevens

We have that in common because I remember the day I met Alan at a meeting in a little tiny booth tucked way far away.

When their sales would just it was like 2 million. It was nothing. It was like six years before the exit. And he showed me the histology. And frankly, I called BS on it. I thought, no way. But he's an. as and so we did some histology ourselves and did a little split face on me and some others

And that's when I realized, yeah, we did split face with Halo. Okay. And with with with the nectar on one side and another product not to be named and inert product. And it was remarkable. That the, I healed faster on the side with the trihex peptide or the nectar. And then I did it on a number of patients and some staff, and then took some biopsies on me and I realized that Alan, it wasn't bs, it was real.

Amber Edwards

So you tried to prove him wrong and you couldn't.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, because I'm skeptical. Yeah, of course. And I know there's Photoshop and various things, and I thought. I don't know. These claims about restructuring fibroblasts and new collagen and new Alastin and all. They were pretty heady claims, right?

And they didn't really have a long track record and then a hundred percent growth year after year. And you entered what year of the company or what was your 2020. 2020. So you were at the helm there and you doubled the grow, you doubled the revenue each year you were there. That's amazing to me.

And more importantly, look at the people's lives you impacted. It's just an amazing Yeah. Product. And I'm not trying to sell anyone on, it's already been bought by Galderma, but it's on my face right now and every day it's on my.

Amber Edwards

Yeah. I think that's what comes across so loud and clear what this brand is.

It's not, it's the passion for this is so authentic. We have so many people on a regular basis. We hear physicians speaking about it on the podiums at conferences, and I'll reach out to my team and say, Hey who are we working with him? And they'll say, no. Like we, he just loves it.

He's actually talking about it because he really loves it. Yeah. So it's great.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, it is very infectious. There's no question. Once you get on the Alastin line, it is hard to shake it. There's so many fabulous products. We could spend the rest of the show. Yeah. Just talking about the products.

But rather than do that, can you tell me about what's happening now with Eola? Now the Alastin is going to go global, which before it was all us. And now you're gonna go global. Are you gonna hit the whole globe? Or how are you gonna do that? Who are you gonna target first and share question the future of Alastin with us?

Amber Edwards

Definitely, the history of Alastin, what's put us on the map is the credibility with physicians, right? And procedure space. So that's really the area. Our founders had a phenomenal foresight to say, Hey, nobody's in this peri procedure space. Let's get in there and let's do something really spectacular here.

And so that's where our roots are. That's where our credibility is. And as I think about what markets we're gonna go to, and I have hired a head of international which is great. She's leading the pathway there. But there's really three things that we're looking. First and foremost, I wanna go to markets where physician dispensed is allowed.

There are many countries where physicians are not allowed to sell product for profit. Many, in fact, one of Galderma's strongest markets, Brazil physicians are not allowed to sell. So we actually can't go in with this business model. Not to say we won't go there eventually, but I'm prioritizing markets where we can launch exactly the same way that we did in the us.

We wanna get in, we wanna work with partners like laser companies. We wanna partner with our, injectable friends over on the other side of Galderma. And make sure that we go there first. Second regulatory, we're of course going through all of the ingredient checks and that's right.

The good news is we're good to go there. So that's not gonna hold us back. And then of course, market size. I will tell you, without giving too much information away, if you think about the English speaking markets, okay. That's follow a similar business model that the US does, that's where we're focused.

And we did actually launch in Canada. At the end of 2020. So that was our first international market. I re I recall that really easier. I recall that. Yeah. Yeah. And that's been, they've done unbelievably well, I think have exceeded we have a distributor there right now. But, they've done, they've been a fantastic partner and have done a great job a lot with the help of Dr. Jean Caruthers. Who you've also had on the show, she and our dear friend, I think she sought out Alan and said, I've heard about this. I need to try it. Fell in love with it and similar to you has just been an incredible cheerleader and ambassador for it.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And we love Jean. She's best, doesn't get better. Okay, how about South America, Central America? Are you gonna go to non-English speaking countries at all?

Amber Edwards

We will definitely. So Asia is the, by far, the biggest from a, pure market size and financial perspective? The JPAC region, is by far the biggest. I think the, China of course, and Japan is the second biggest outside of the US and then China, it's the next biggest market for skincare.

So I think there's a phenomenal opportunity. But I'm looking at where Galderma has a strong presence, south America. I'd love to get to eventually, but we do have to look at some potentially different business models at that point. Do you go more through a digital presence? Do you go through more of a retail presence If doctors can't sell it?

Yeah, and I'm just cautious about that because at the end of the day, My number one partner is the healthcare provider. And I wanna make sure that we're always first and foremost doing what we can to support providers. So that's a, that becomes a delicate topic for me. I wanna focus first.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, that's a slippery slope. If you start putting that in CVS or the, drug stores across the country, the world, it's gonna come across the oceans back and the physicians are gonna lose their ability to distribute it.

Amber Edwards

Yeah. So something I'm very conscious of, and we'll be careful, with whatever approach we take, but that would be a ways away. I'm gonna focus on the markets where we can stay physician dispensed first.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Excellent. As a physician I appreciate that. And I know you are doing online sales because I participate in that.

Amber Edwards

Yes. Through Alastin.com and where we really try to support healthcare providers. Again, there is through microsites, which I know you have. And we've had, we have a lot of accounts who have, it's become a fantastic, just passive, income on the side. They don't have to do anything, we launched this when Covid hit right at the beginning of Covid, set up microsites. At that point it was about 2,500 accounts.

Yeah. It was brilliant. But, every account we have on board gets a micro. Basically a customized url, that can go on your website. And so patients, your patients can purchase. Alastin. Really the idea being to replenish, we want them to get their first supply when they come in and get a procedure.

Okay. But we want them for convenience reasons to be able to get a replenishment or perhaps try some new products that you may not have in practice, but the doctor gets the credit for it.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I love that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now. I wanna touch on a few product lines for let's talk sunscreens. Tell us a little bit about where you're at now with your sunscreens and where you may be headed, if you can share that.

Amber Edwards

Yeah, absolutely. First, just if I could take a step back Okay. On the portfolio as a whole, we are, one of the things that I think makes us a little different than other brands is we do not want to have 50 or 60 SKUs.

We just don't, thankfully, feedback, right? Yeah. We always get the feedback, it can be so overwhelming. It's very confusing, not only for patients, but even for staff, oh yeah. You have so many SKUs. So we have under, we have fewer than 20 products right now, and I would really like to keep it that way.

So we are, constantly thinking about let's not launch something unless it's, unless it has a great deal of innovation behind it, we have the scientific story behind it. We don't want Me too product. Don't need to waste our time with that. We've tried to focus only on those truly innovative products.

We do have two sunscreens. And I will tell you they are unbelievably popular as hydrogen. Yeah. I think hydrogen has led the way to a lot of women no longer wearing foundation , because you wear hydrogen, it gives a beautiful glow. And it's really a universal glow.

It's not a specific color, it just has a glow to it that just helps to make the skin a little look a little bit more even a little bit more sunkissed and and has incredible protection. In addition to that, we have one of our newer products. So in the fall, about a year ago now, almost a year ago, we launched our sensitive skin line.

We wanted to have a cleanser and a moisturizer that would. Even more appropriate immediately post-procedure. So a cream-based cleanser and then an ultra light moisturizer. And at the same time we launched Silk Shield, which is our un tinted sunscreen that literally feels like silk. It feels like no other sunscreen.

You put it on your hand and immediately. Absorbs, it just feels silky smooth, doesn't leave any sticky, tacky residue. But a again, just a, it's been a huge hit for us. Our sensitive skin line is, it's about 200% over our forecast. It is blown our expectations so that those products are great.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I remember when I was first exposed to it and on a commercial basis up in Santa Barbara. And I, the number of men that we have now on that Silk Shield is quite phenomenal. And even on the hydrogen, I have it on right this moment. Do you have hydrogen on right now? Oh, always. Oh, every day. Aaron has replaced your foundation with hydrogen.

I have it on my whole face right now. Yeah, exactly. So it's not just for women, that's for sure. And it just blends right into your skin.

Amber Edwards

It does. It's been a great gateway, I think for some younger patients, we've, we see a lot of younger consumers who are not quite getting procedures yet.

Who love hydrogen, they fall in love with that. It's a good price point as well. And then, once we get them into our email system, we are talking about procedures. We're talking about see your doctor, we're talking about the whole procedure line and helping to guide them, hopefully helping them to get into the doctor's office.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That kinda reminds me of the drug dealer model.

Amber Edwards

Right? Give 'em a little teaser and then yeah, yank 'em in.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So you ventured into body treatments. Yes, we have. And you have two and you started with transform. Yeah, transform. Tell us a little bit about Transform and then let's go to this, the next one too.

Amber Edwards

Yeah. Cuz we have two product launches this year. And then one more coming. Oh, I didn't know about that. That I, I know and I'm deciding how much I'm gonna tell you right now. So Transform was our first body product. And the the origin was again, thinking about procedures.

Everything was about how do we complement enhance and accelerate recovery from procedures. And we had great success with the face. And clearly cool sculpting and other types of body sculpting procedures that I think it's the fastest, it might be the fastest growing area. Especially since covid.

I think a lot of people body contouring, a little bit of covid weight and everybody wants the body contouring right now. And transform Alan again from our R&D as well as John Garruto, our brilliant formulator. Really thought about how can we create a body product that can actually get in and speed up the autophagy process.

The procedure itself is gonna kill the fat cells. Can we create a topical that will get in and penetrate the skin to actually help move out those dead fat cells faster so that you can see your results quicker? And once again, the data, that the work that they did, Alan, as a rule, every product that we launch goes through first, gene expression.

So through the labs we look at what's upregulated, what's downregulated, which ingredients work most synergistically together, then it goes into histology, as you mentioned. We have a lot of people who've volunteered a lot of biopsies, I think over the years. And then third is an actual clinical trial.

So we try to cover all those bases to make sure we get really solid data and with transform, we did that. And then very exciting, I mentioned that Dr. Jean Caru. Wanted to get involved with Transform, but for a different purpose. She was putting it on her forearms and said she just could not believe that she was seeing the crepiness start to go away in her skin.

And so more recently I would say, almost half of our sales now for transform are purely for crepey skin. We have some new data looking above the knees. You know those areas that, that get crepey skin are arms.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah. The elbows. Yep. Absolutely. And knees. I have patients, we put everyone on it.

Amber Edwards

Yes. Absolutely No question. So since then, that's been a great success. I think it's our third top selling product. Consistently. Yeah it's great. Alan is a plastic surgeon and he has a passion for working with plastic surgeons, and there has not ever been a product that was really meant to go with surgery.

And. We're constantly asked for bigger sizes of nectar, bigger sizes of enhance, which we didn't talk about, but we'll get to enhance, we'll get to enhance for bruising and swelling, right? , and then transform for speeding up the accelerating the result process. And Alan had this idea, he called me up and said, what if we took transform nectar and enhance?

We took the best of each of those, the best ingredients, the trihex platform, plus some of the other ChromaFADE technology for bruising. And then I added in some scar prevention, additional ingredients. And we put this all into one product and we meant, we put it out there specifically to support plastic surgeons for their patients to start using, few weeks pre-surgery, ideally body surgeries like the abdominalplasties, liposuction, all of that. And then they use it for, four to six weeks afterwards to help, again, reduce the risk of scarring, help with that swelling, all the edema that you get. And he had this idea, and so we created and launched Reform and Repair.

It's our only product that stands out as a dark blue product. Everything else is white. Launched that back. We did some early experience as you were part of at the end of last year, and then did a full-blown launch in. Yeah. So yeah, the first of its kind and we're still getting the word out about that. It's reaching a different audience.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yes, indeed. We're putting all of our patients on it ahead of surgery, breast surgery, body surgery and then afterwards, as you mentioned, four to six weeks. And it does make a difference. Dr. Cassis, Lori Cassis in Chicago did some beautiful research to confirm that along with Alan's preliminary research.

Amber Edwards

Yeah. Absolutely. We've had some converts, some plastic surgeons who I swear would never use skincare, they swore I will, I'm a surgeon. I will never do skincare. We've converted.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Indeed and I'm one of them. There you go. Now you mentioned Enhance and now you're with Galderma. So why don't we talk a little bit what Enhance is and how you can partner up with the injectables of Galderma. So let everyone know about Enhance.

Amber Edwards

Perfect. So Enhance was launched a few years. I think right at the beginning, I believe it was at the very beginning of Covid, just predated me and enhance was really brought to market once again because we wanted to support procedures. And what's the most, popular procedure by far?

Any kind of injectable whether it's neuromodulators or fillers, but in particular, we know with fillers, especially in some sensitive areas like the lips, the tear. Bruising is very prevalent, even with the best of injectors, right? Correct. If somebody is prone to bruise, they're gonna bruise.

And so we launched enhanced to be able to essentially help with the bruising and swelling immediately. So it comes in a smaller tube. It has a great little cool tip applicator, that feels really good when you put it right on, right after a procedure. And it the results are incredible.

It just helps to alleviate that bruising much quicker than if, if there was nothing at all. So that yeah, that's been a great, and it's, it had a lot to do with our partnerships with Galderma. So yes, we were just acquired back in January of this year. But the partnership with Galderma actually started several years ago.

We started doing some collaborations with them, and a great example was when they launched Kysse, right? Yes. When Restylane Kysse launched they had the idea to create a great little giveaway bag that included enhance in it. Yes. And so we, since then we've done two or three partnerships with them a year, various collaborations, not only for an enhance and Kysse, but also with Sculptura, with Dysport.

Different things that we can do just to show. We think we're very synergistic. We work with a lot of the same physicians, it's the same patient population. We have, a lot of the same values and just culture and how we work together. And it was a great fit. So I think when it came time for Fleming to think about expanding their portfolio and coming into the premium physician-dispensed, skincare world, it just made sense. We were the perfect partner for them.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I couldn't agree. So I noticed you brought your crystal ball today. Can you look into it and tell our listeners and our watchers at. What over the next three to five to even 10 years in the aesthetics business. Yeah. You've been in it long enough and you're at the helm here of the fastest growing skincare line in the aesthetic space if not all skincare what are we gonna be looking at in the years to come?

Amber Edwards

Yeah, I think a number of things. One on the product side, and I'll speak to skincare, I think people want natural, they want efficacy. I think. Have to demand as consumers and physicians, we have to demand more evidence to support claims. There's a lot of fad and buzzy words out there all the time that are not proven, and we need to demand that evidence.

We also need to, as a manufacturer like Galderma, we need to make sure that we commit to delivering that, that evidence as well. And we've done that recently with some, even just daily products. We launched HA Immerse in March. Which is a fantastic product with a proprietary peptide. Octa peptide 45, which helps the endogenous production of hyaluronic acid.

And we all know the importance of HA, right? Just it's a naturally incurring ingredient, but we need to keep the skin hydrated. We also have another product coming in a couple of months, which I can tell you what I'll say right now. It's the one area that we're constantly asked to address because currently there is no good skincare product that addresses this area.

By the time this airs, I think we'll actually be in the market. So I will let you know that we're getting into the pigment space. Oh, and we have a game changer. We have it a game changer. I love it. There is, we will be a topical, that actually we actually had the guts to go head to head against hydroquinone.

Which people just don't do, we went up against 4% hydroquinone. And our goal was to be as good. Not only were we as good as, but in some measures we were superior. I love it. So it is a game changer. It is a product that can be used for the long term as opposed to hydroquinone, as, which you can only use for a short period, has a lot of adverse events. And we finally, I think we almost launched. a pigment product a few years ago before I came on board. That's true. And they didn't have good data, so made the decision not to launch it, but now we have the game changer.

So that's my point about what's coming in the future is products with evidence, right? To support the claims. But the other big thing I think that we all, as manufacturers and physicians providers have to recognize is, yes, we might be on the other side of Covid, but things are not normal.

The world has changed, and I think our patient and consumer has changed especially younger generations, right? One, we've all learned that you can be very effective and productive remote. So I think digital, reaching people through digital channels is more important than ever because a lot of people are not going back into the office.

A lot of people have learned to take information digitally. Even the conferences right now, Always have amazing faculty, but participation from non-faculty, just participants. Is low. Yes. So I think we all need to realize that it's a lot of in-person meetings, but we could be doing a lot more remote.

We have just launched on August 8th, we launched a long awaited learning management system. A full digital platform where we now have about 10 modules that we can support. And this came, we kept hearing our physicians say turnover is at an all-time high. Are you finding that keeping staff right now is incredibly difficult, this great resignation? A lot of people just don't wanna work, and so there's always new staff members coming into the practice. So we started investing about a year and a half ago in creating a very comprehensive online. education platform. And so now with any of our physician partners, we can provide and you can choose what level of watch you wanna have to see if they finish the whole module, what they score, all of that.

But or you can choose just to let them take it on their own time. But we have modules for general skincare as well as all of our products, as well as even some business things like microsites, right? So I think we have to learn how to communicate and work with people. In a way that's more digital and more remote.

And and then the second piece of that is people want convenience. They want things at their fingertips and they want things convenient. I think we all have a challenge. All providers and manufacturers have a challenge ahead of us to figure out how can we deliver quality care with efficacy, with evidence, but in a way that's gonna be very accessible and convenient for patients.

And I don't know what the answer to that is yet, I don't have my crystal balls. Not that. But I do know that we can't just be status quo. We can't do the, we can't do things the way that we always have. We have to recognize and accept that the world has changed.

Dr. Grant Stevens

You're absolutely right and I look forward to you solving those issues, and having you back on the program in three to five years, and we'll look and see how you have solved those problems.

But those are issues before all of us. In the office and out. I want to thank Amber Edwards for being with us today. Thank you very much. Thank you. We've learned a ton and I can't wait to see you at the next meeting. I know you're going to the meetings and I'll be there and I'll be seeing you.

And I want to thank all of you for joining us today, once again on the technology of beauty. And as you just saw, I had the opportunity to interview the movers and shakers of the beauty business, and Amber is no exception. Thank you very much. Safe travels. It's my pleasure. You take care.