For Ju Rhyu, no skin problem is too trivial for a solution.
When the Hero Cosmetics founder set out in 2017 to make hydrocolloid pimple patches mainstream in the U.S. after trying them while living in South Korea, she hadn’t yet decided just how far into the skin care category she wanted to go.
Six years, an acquisition and 1 billion hydrocolloid patches sold later, Rhyu is looking to leverage the success of the brand’s OG Mighty Patch into a comprehensive problem-solving portfolio.
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“Anyone that has any kind of skin issue — we want them to come to Hero for a solution,” said Rhyu, who sold the brand to Church & Dwight in 2022 for $630 million. Rhyu has retained her chief executive officer title, but said the business “is more run by Church & Dwight right now, and I have a slightly new role, which is more of that founder role — it’s a bit more consultative.”
In the year since Hero’s acquisition, the brand has expanded outside of the U.S. for the first time, launching in Canada, Australia, the U.K. and its first French pharmacy — Pharmacie du Palais Royal in Paris.
“We’re leveraging Church & Dwight’s infrastructure and key markets where they have a distributor presence and distributor networks,” said Rhyu, noting Mexico and the Middle East are up next. “In the Middle East, there are [other] patch products, so we know there’s a demand there; in Mexico there’s an incredible opportunity because there is nothing there — it’s a white space.”
The brand is also expanding in U.S. retail, having entered Walmart in July and 4,500 CVS Pharmacy doors in the spring, bringing Hero’s total U.S. door count to 16,000. “Each time we launch at a new retailer, it unlocks a whole new audience for us,” said Rhyu, adding that 70 percent of consumers enter the brand through a Mighty Patch product, and 60 percent of them will go on to try another product within the portfolio.
“Our strategy is focusing on patch products as an acquisition engine, then we can cross-sell and help consumers create that Hero regimen,” Rhyu said.
This week, Hero launched Mighty Patch Forehead, an offshoot of its full-face Might Patch which debuted last year. “We were getting a lot of feedback of, ‘I love this product but I’d love to have one just for chin or for forehead,’ so forehead was the next logical step for us because that T-zone area is where many tend to break out,” Rhyu said.
After debuting a retinol and an eye cream this year, Hero will enter the balm category for the first time in 2024 with two stock keeping units. “One will be more cleansing oriented and the other, more moisturizing oriented,” said Rhyu, who did not specify sales expectations for the launches but in 2022 reported the brand was on track to do $140 million in sales, up from $100 million the previous year.
“I believe this brand can exist beyond acne; our next goal is to be the leader in functional skin solutions,” Rhyu said. “As a team, we’re always talking about, ‘How high is high? Where’s the limit?’ — so far, we don’t see it.”