Bescher Beauty founder Renee Alyce on how an island discovery inspired her skincare
A waitlist of 30,000 eager customers. Sellout success in just four days. Before and after pictures showing dramatic skin improvements.
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A waitlist of 30,000 eager customers. Sellout success in just four days. Before and after pictures showing dramatic skin improvements.
Since it launched in 2019, beauty brand Bescher Beauty has been a skyrocketing success, but the key to its popularity isn’t something most Aussies would be expecting.
In just three and half years Bescher Beauty has built up a cult following of customers who are “hooked” on the company’s hero ingredient, sea cucumber collagen, yes, you read that correctly, and its ability to transform skin.
Shoppers are “absolutely in love” with Bescher Beauty’s ability to calm skin and reduce redness, saying it is a “game changer” for anyone who struggles with sensitivity.
It started with the Sea Cucumber Collagen Regeneration Serum, followed by Sea Cucumber Collagen Anti-Ageing Cream after customers requested it. It has since gotten over 1600 five-star reviews.
By popular demand, Bescher has now finally launched a cleanser. With a 30,000 waitlist, the product sold out in only three days.
Now available to preorder, shoppers can get their hands on the best-selling buy that promises to leave the skin clean, hydrated, and visibly glowing.
“These products are unbelievable. My skin is so clear and blemish free. Fine lines have faded and my skin has a nice dewy hue,” a happy shopper raved, leaving a five-star review.
“Love them notice such a difference in my skin,” another added.
The Sea Cucumber Collagen Anti-Ageing Cream in particular has beauty lovers in a frenzy for its “age-defying magic”.
“This cream actually works! There is a definite incredible difference in the look and feel of my skin. I only buy this now!” a reviewer posted.
Another wrote, “I’ve been using this Bescher product for over a year now and I’m extremely happy with the way my skin is so much more smoother and my fine lines are disappearing.”
Another popular product is the Sea Cucumber Collagen Glow Toner which also includes AHAs, hyaluronic acid, lilly pilly and willow bark extract to “renew your natural glow”.
“Very impressed” customers haven’t stopped raving about the toner, saying it not only leaves skin “refreshed” and “lovely” feeling but also shrinks pores.
‘I felt like people were judging me’
For founder Renee Alyce, the journey to discovering the healing and glow-inducing powers of sea cucumber collagen happened due to her own skin struggles.
“I started from a young age applying heavy foundation, from when I was like 12-years-old,” the Gold Coast woman, now 35, told news.com.au.
“I grew up surfing and I would even put foundation on before I got in the ocean because I was too scared to come out of the surf, I felt like people were judging me.”
The Bescher Beauty founder has sensitive, fair skin that flared up with eczema around her nose and mouth, as well as breakouts.
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Her skin issues continued in her twenties when Renee moved to a remote island in Fiji.
“Because I have fair, sensitive skin when I was living on the island it was really, really harsh,” she recalled.
“The Fijian sun, there was lots of insects – I was literally hunted by insects all the time and those insect bites would get infected.”
‘It was out of this world’
During Renee’s time in Fiji she became close friends with the island’s residents, who shared the natural remedies they relied upon to treat skin aliments. One of these was sea cucumbers, a sea invertebrate that’s a popular seafood dish in Asian and Pacific countries.
“They ate it and they also put the inside lining of the skin -which is 90 per cent collagen and one of the highest forms of collagen,” Renee said.
“They would fish for it, eat half of it, put the skins straight onto wounds.”
Struggling with a skin infection that she had contracted because of the lack of fresh running water on the island, Renee decided to try out the sea cucumber’s collagen for herself.
She placed the sea cucumber’s collagen-rich skin lining on a cut on her hand and then her face, soon experiencing the “incredible” effects.
“It heated up but then it cooled, and heated up and cooled. It had this tingly feeling, it was out of this world,” she said.
“I left it on my skin for about an hour and then I took it off … it had definitely soothed (the sores), it felt really nice. It felt less irritated and the redness had improved.”
The moment “completely blew my mind”, Renee said, and stuck with her in the years that followed.
‘I became obsessed with it’
She returned to Australia in 2018 and began working as a porter at a casino on the Gold Coast.
“I decided to start life again,” Renee said. “(I) left the island with nothing.”
Her experience with sea cucumber collagen was still a “light bulb moment that never left my mind” and she “slowly started fulfilling my dream”.
“I just had this idea and I became obsessed with it,” Renee said.
She enlisted the help of a leading compounding pharmacist to create a product using sea cucumber collagen to see if it would work, creating a prototype of what would eventually be Bescher Beauty’s first product.
“It was the Sea Cucumber Collagen Regeneration Serum,” Renee said.
“It faded my pigmentation … and it really just helped soothe these old wounds … old sores and texture of my skin from the days of the island and being exposed to all the harsh elements.”
It took just two months for Renee’s skin to improve and then another month for something momentous to happen.
“After three months I just stopped wearing foundation and it was just crazy,” she said.
“I remember walking outside of the house with no foundation and thinking, ‘oh my god’ … I never thought I would be able to leave the house without foundation.”
‘Sold out within four days’
In February Bescher Beauty launched its Sea Cucumber Collagen Blemish Defence Serum to 30,000 eager customers.
“We had a huge waiting list,” Renee said. “We launched and sold out within four days, it was absolutely insane.”
Bescher Beauty has been a financial success increasing its revenue four to five times year on year. But Renee is most proud of the company’s ability to help people like her who struggle with sensitivity and skin aliments.
“I started the business at my mum’s house, out of a bedroom,” she said.
“I’ve grown from working out of the bedroom to having the most incredible team and they’re very much the backbone of the company.”
Want more beauty content? Find out which skincare product Trinny Woodall “couldn’t live without”, as well as how one woman’s “huge” hair problem led to a $100 million collagen empire.
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