Change Agent Jamie O’Banion’s Innovative New Facial Treatments
Ten years ago, Jamie O’Banion founded her first skincare brand, in collaboration with her dermatologist father, Dr. Terry James. Although the Organicare line was short-lived, its creator—a onetime model and a graduate of Brigham Young University—was not deterred from a career that had captivated her from an early age. “I started my MBA, or ‘master’s in beauty administration,’ before I had even finished elementary school, when my father became an owner in one of the top performance cosmetic labs in the country,” says the Dallas-based O’Banion. “I was absolutely enchanted by the idea that you could put something on someone’s skin and see a visible transformation. It was magic.”
As a teen, O’Banion traveled overseas with her father, visiting research and development facilities in Europe and Asia. And once she graduated from BYU, she worked in a product-development and marketing role with her father’s team of biochemists, helping them decipher customer needs, spot trends, and curate technology based on real skincare concerns she saw while modeling part-time. “I realized my entire life had prepared me to bring truth into the glossy world of beauty,” she says. “I spoke beauty as a second language, and it was time to break the glass and empower women.”
In 2011, O’Banion launched her brand Beauty Bioscience on HSN, highlighting a super-concentrated retinol treatment and setting the foundation for the 2016 introduction of her company’s GloPro microneedling tool. Designed to stimulate collagen and elastin production, the $199 at-home device was an overnight sensation: Within the first 12 minutes of going on sale on HSN, $4 million worth of GloPro devices sold, and later that year the network sold 22,000 units, or $4.4 million of the devices, in 22 hours.
The tool, which now can be outfitted with various attachment heads (for body, lips, you name it), features hundreds of tiny surgical steel needles that are manually rolled over the skin to jump-start rejuvenation and reduce the appearance of wrinkles, scars, and stretch marks. You’re meant to immediately follow with your serum and lotion of choice so that it absorbs most effectively. The company recently launched Core Collection, a complete skincare regimen to be used in tandem with the device, and the new Power Patch collection is a line of potent masks for face and body.
“Every product in our brand is a shining star, edited to use together seamlessly with the least amount of time investment possible,” says O’Banion who, as a mother of three, a wife, and the CEO of a $50 million business, has time only for the essentials. “We are about empowering women to dream big, live with gusto, and do it all.”
A self-described “huge advocate of female-founded businesses,” O’Banion notes that she has “a 98 percent female staff.” She recently hired Kelly St. John, a former vice president at Neiman Marcus, as Beauty Bioscience’s president, and she’s currently in the throes of writing a book about business, beauty, and life. “I find it incredibly important to share my thoughts now while I’m still in the trenches building this company. I want to share what I’m experiencing now, today, before it’s a newborn-fog memory down the road. It’s a time investment, but I owe it to future female entrepreneurs. If it helps one person avoid a mistake I made, it will have been time well spent.”
Related stories
Skincare Pro Victoria Tsai's Tips for Beauty On-the-Go and Staying Energized
Canyon Ranch Launches a New Aesthetics Program
La Prairie's New $1,200 Elixir Packs Both Beauty and Substance
