We recently connected with Denice Duff and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Denice, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

I was just being a photographer and an actress and my husband is a musician and owned a marketing company. Ive always been obsessed with natural alternatives to all things beauty and health since I was 12yrs old. I was told to take accutane in my 20’s by my talent manager to control the very mild occasional breakout I would get and it ended up drying my sebaceous glads so bad that once I hit my 40’s I became very intent on doing something about it. Working with wholistic chemists I was able to get my dream face cream. I would give it as gifts but NEVER dreamed of making it a business My husband who always sees more in me than I do, urged me to start selling it.
He was able to build us a website, design the jars, and all the packaging and boring barcode trademark stuff. And I used my photography skills and love of social media to talk about it.
Since I was already sharing tips on facebook since 2010 when the iphone got a video camera. I was hooked.
SO when i had something to sell 8 yrs later, I had all my “early adopters” / customers.
My husband loves statistic and survey data and I love coming up with formulas. He does the purchasing and crunches numbers and I fight to make the next formula without cheap synthetic ingredients – even though it greatly affects our profit margin. Even using all glass packaging costs us 2-3 times more money. But its our baby and we get more excited selling something that we would want to buy and that has our high standards of highly concentrated actives. We have fought more since we started doing this company in 2018 than we have our entire marriage – We got married in 1989…so…uh..yea. Its not for the faint of heart. But its also wildly productive this way and fortualtely we are both very creative and enjoy each others company.

Denice, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

“Actress, turned Skincare Founder, Denice Duff took everything she learned from her 4 generations of Italian women and combined it with her years in front of Hollywood make-up artists and dermatologists to create a luxe line of results driven all natural skincare. “

Growing up in LA led me to a career as an actress, lots of commercials, some TV (From Matlock to CSI:Miami), a soap opera contract on The Young and the Restless, and just enough horror films to be invited to autograph conventions to meet fans. During this daily entrepreneurial hustle to get the next gig I decided to add Photographer and director to my resume so now days were filled directing music videos and photographing artists, businessmen and doctors, making them all look like celebrities, of course!. Faces became a huge fascination to me. I was looking at skin tone all day, seeing it up close in my lens and in photoshop. My personal skin care regime was simple and inspired by my sicilian great-grandmother who said “You healthy inside, then you healthy outside” My personal face cream was my “secret weapon”. It had simple edible ingredients.
I started getting pressured in a good way to sell this cream and as much as it was a childhood dream to make a living making people feel more alive, and confident, I didn’t realize I could also do that by selling “a thing” and not just by entertaining or photographing them. I had only ever sold ME. Now I’m selling a thing…..But I learned the two are not that dissimilar because the day I launched my Face Cream was just on my personal facebook page – I sold out.

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As the founder I want every beauty product I use to make my face feel something because then I know it’s DOING something. My mom was a single mom of the 70’s and a bit of a healthy hippie juicing carrots way back then! 😁

We know feeding our body healthy organic foods helps your gut and hormones to create a strong intestinal environment to fight off toxins. It’s the same with what you “feed your face”. 🌸🍃

Ive been feeding my body simple and natural foods. And your skin deserves that same respect.

As an actress and photographer glowing skin was very important to me. I realized I’ve always put healthy and simple foods IN my body to help keep sickness away so I created skincare where the formulas were more “avocado and spinach and less iceberg lettuce and hydrogenated oil”

You see, iceberg lettuce will not harm you, but it absolutely wont give your body the nutrition it needs to reach your health goals.
I want my skincare to work fast with nutrient dense formulas not watered down in microplastics
Our motto is: Using Mother Nature to Stop Father Time.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We were living in manhattan in a 740sq ft apt. Rent was $4500 a month. Once all the family and friends had purchased our cream we started using me and my husbands newsletter lists from our other businesses – my photogrpahy client lists of actors and agents and my husbands list of people who were interested in websites. We didnt care – we just needed to OUTFLOW. We knew we had to cast our net wider because its not the best products that get bought, its the BEST KNOWN product that gets bought. Then we had some celebrities who loves our products want to invest in our company. I was too nervous to take money from investors and friends for a brand new endeavor that I was just learning myself. I didnt want that pressure. And then sadly my mother passed in 2019 and left us a small home in a retirement community and though we were FAR from retired – in fact we were just beginning, we decided to leave the glamour of Manhattan and move to Clearwater Floirda . We were then able to afford to put money into facebook ads. This terrified me. In hindsight, we probably should have taken investor money as that would have helped our growth faster and the longer you stretch out your runway, the long it will take for you to lift off. Money definitely helps shorten that runway.
You need attention. Thats it. Thats the bottom line. Our problem was no one except 2000 wonderful customers, had ever heard of us. We realized we had to spend money to get attention. I had to hit social media morning noon and night.

So it was rice and beans and a super tight budget. The first week of doing this tripled our sales so we bought more advertising. Yikes! I told my husband– “don’t tell me how much we are spending, it stresses me out” . As an actress and photographer I never spent money like this to “book a gig”. But just like hitting your mark, and adjusting f-stops, ROA – (return on adspend) became yet another word in my vocabulary. I became addicted to taking care of all these new customers who soon became family to me.
We’re no longer a 2 person operation anymore and I do eat more than just rice and beans now
.But I do still write handwritten notes to our customers and answer the phone with customers to discuss their skin problems.
5 yrs in and we havent borrorwed any money but that doesnt mean that in the future for the next level of expansion we wont take a meeting ..because at least now we have a proven record of something that solves a problem for people with faces. And If I had to tell my younger self something while just starting this company I might say “Denice , hey be a little more In Your Face with your marking and asking for favors” There are people who can create and run something and there are those who want to be a part of in even if its just financial. It makes them feel included and a part of something meangful and their cash is energy – that’s why its called currency.

SO I would advise young entrepreneurs to ask for energy & help early and often on your journey…. and use social media – every platform you can get on. …START :)

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

Im all over social media and im not afraid to share my life on both my personal and business accounts. Our customers have become family – they have witnessed my sadness when my mom passed and they shared my joy at my childs wedding reception. They watch me shop for ingredients to create new formulas or healthy recipes I make up when the fridge is almost empty. I share finding a stray kitty and introducing it to my other cat. What does this have to do with skin care? Not much but its ME. (And that video got 22million views on Insta Reels…so there’s that) We also do educational newsletters on skincare and health and during special holidays like my birthday I will write an essay on the joy of aging and my personal outlook on it, coming from 5 generations of surviving Sicilian women. I write a special story on motherhood and what my mom did right for me and things that are funny and embarrassing and nostalgic. I get specific and personal. I live my life as transparent and honest as the formulas I create so why wouldn’t I want my potential customers to witness all of this with me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.inyourfaceskincare.com
• Instagram: @inyourfaceskincare
• Facebook: inyourfaceskincare
• Linkedin: inyourfaceskincare
• Twitter: inyourfaceskincare
• Youtube: InYourFaceSkincare
• Yelp: inyourfaceskincare

Image Credits
theres just one getty images – and im not sure of the group shot of Y and R but “Its courtesy of CBS” and the other shot of me on the soap was a screen shot of the TV…most of the other shot I did or my assistant