2005-2007
The quest for excellence in anti-ageing skincare began for the No7 brand with the creation of a product that was ahead of its time: No7 Protect & Perfect Serum. At the time, serums containing high concentrations of anti-ageing ingredients were not well-known or understood outside specialist skincare circles, and at first the product struggled to find its niche. But the skincare experts at No7 had such confidence in the product and in its ability to deliver outstanding anti-ageing results that they took the bold, and at the time unheard of step of putting the product forward for testing in a way that no beauty product had previously been tested.
The experts at No7 approached Professor Griffiths, Foundation Professor of Dermatology at The University of Manchester and asked him to test the anti-ageing potential of No7 Protect & Perfect Serum with a clinical trial. Professor Griffiths was initially sceptical that any cosmetic beauty preparation could show genuine anti-ageing results, which made the results of the clinical trial he conducted even more remarkable.
Professor Griffiths’ clinical tests showed that No7 Protect & Perfect Serum helped boost levels of fibrillin, one of the key proteins of the skins elastic matrix, in a way that was thought could only be achieved by treatment with tretinoin (also known as trans-retinoic acid), a prescription-only treatment. It was the first time that the performance of a cosmetic product had been shown in this way.
Testing was carried out not in test tubes or petri dishes but on the photoaged forearms of women where Fibrillin is typically present in lower levels due to many years of sun exposure. By taking skin biopsies, levels of fibrillin could be assessed. These novel results were consistent with the anti-ageing appearance benefits seen from the serum in extensive consumer trials.
In March 2007 this research was reported on the BBC Horizon programme, ‘Professor Regan’s Beauty Handbook,’ and the response from viewers was instant and unprecedented. boots.com sold out of stock overnight; there was a significant sales increase on the day the programme aired. Boots stores across the UK were obliged to create waiting lists to manage the demand, while tubes of the serum began to appear on eBay, selling at three times the listed price of £17.
“In the Dermatology Department of The University of Manchester they’ve been researching [the gold-standard, prescription-only anti-ageing ingredient] tretinoin for years. They were convinced that no over the counter anti-ageing creams could match the effectiveness of tretinoin until they were asked to investigate an off the shelf product from Boots.”
BBC Horizon:
Professor Regan’s Beauty Notebook, 2007