New Beauty Ingredient Enderma Looks Past Aloe Messaging

Photo © iStockphoto.com/lubilub

In a new offering for the beauty market, Improve USA (Anaheim, CA) debuted its Aloe vera–derived Enderma ingredient at the recent SupplySide West trade show. Designed for topical use in skincare products that could come in tube or pump packaging, Enderma may “increase moisture retention, improve elasticity, and decrease the appearance of wrinkles in the skin,” according to Improve USA, a subsidiary of Pharmachem Laboratories (Kearny, NJ).

Interestingly enough, while Enderma is an aloe derivative, Improve USA is not actually trying to market it based on its aloe-ness. With Aloe vera now appearing in everything from bedsheets to blue jeans, its perceived value as a powerful health ingredient has been diluted by such frequent and offhand use on the market, explained Peter Hafermann, president of Improve USA.

“If you said to somebody, ‘aloe does this,’ they would probably say, ‘I don’t believe it’,” Hafermann told Nutritional Outlook, explaining how the ingredient may have become too ubiquitous for its own good. What’s more, in many of the products where aloe is used, the actual amount of aloe may be too small to have any actual health effect-further undermining the stock consumers place in the ingredient.

“So we’re taking a different approach,” Hafermann explained. “Rather than going and talking about aloe very qualitatively, let’s come up with some real results so that when we go to the market, we can have a real ingredient push with the science to support it and really help the customers formulate the product right.” To that end, Enderma will be positioned as a proprietary, scientifically supported ingredient in its own right, rather than as another aloe ingredient for the beauty market.

In a recent unpublished pilot study, 10 healthy women aged 18–65 were asked to apply a moisturizer with Enderma to one side of their faces for seven days. On the opposite side of the face, the women were asked to apply a non-Enderma moisturizer. Researchers found that after seven days of application, the facial skin on the Enderma side of the face presented with 28% fewer wrinkles, 67% more moisture, and 31% more elasticity, compared to baseline, based on Corneometry measurements, Cutometer measurements, digital photography, and expert visual assessments.

The launch of Enderma is also noteworthy because most of Improve USA’s business is centered around aloe for ingestible applications. While it does offer other topical aloe ingredients, none of them have been marketed with the same approach the firm is taking to Enderma, according to Hafermann.

Read more:

What’s Next for Aloe Drinks?

Prop 65 Listing May Not Apply to Existing U.S. Aloe Products

U.S. Herbal Supplement Sales Climb 7.5% in 2015

Michael Crane
Associate Editor
Nutritional Outlook Magazine
michael.crane@ubm.com