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46 May 2014 | beautystorebusiness.com that I know of that uses the exact same technology to normalize conditions of the hair, scalp and skin. What are some other technologies and marketing concepts you have pioneered in the beauty industry? We were the first company to introduce products for the external body using active vitamin C—specifically, L-ascorbic acid. In the early years, no one really believed vitamin C had any benefits for the external body. It was not until we demonstrated that we could use vitamin C along with other food-grade wellness ingredients to remove iron from the hair—which was our first patent—that people began to take note of the benefits. Logically, we were also the first com- pany to our knowledge that ever used the concept "antioxidant" to describe and market a class of products. It was seven years after we started marketing our products as antioxidant that my wife and I heard a television advertisement about antioxidants by Centrum vitamins. Sadly, the word "antioxidant" is now only a marketing term with no legal definition. We encourage the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to require a standard of proof that a product is in fact stopping or reversing oxidation in order to use the word "antioxidant." We have also been credited with pio- neering the wellness-treatment category in the salon/spa business. Treatments had been mostly associated with pouring animal or other hydrolyzed proteins on to the hair to replace protein and cover up the real problems. Malibu C has continued to lead research, educate professionals and formulate products that remove the cause of the problems and prevent more problems by managing the oxidation of the hair, scalp and skin using nature's approach with ingredients that are freshly activated by the user. Referencing back to my interest and studies in Instructional Systems Tech- nologies before the Internet existed, we might have been the first company in the beauty industry to use the World Wide Web to communicate, educate and motivate professionals and consum- ers. I am confident we were the first in the beauty business to build our own customized portal program for salons/ spas to be able to directly influence their clients and customers with customized content. There are thousands of sales consultants and salon professionals in the United States who first witnessed the Internet and World Wide Web in Malibu C sales and educational events. Many consumers are confused about whether a product that claims to have vitamin C actually possesses any ascorbic acid benefits. Would you please shed some light on this? The first products to compete with us, start- ing in the early 1990s, formulated vitamin C in an alcohol base because it extended the shelf life of the ascorbic acid. However, both leading brands of these serums are still in brown bottles, which hides the fact that ascorbic acid goes through about six stages, breaking down into sugar, so the formula turns to sugar and is no longer active. By the mid '90s, companies were introducing compounds such as ascorbyl palmitate, and today there are many compounds— including the most popular, magnesium ascorbyl phosphate—that claim to be vitamin C, when in fact they are not vitamin C. We were working with Hoffmann-La Roche, the leading supplier of ascorbic acid, in the 1980s. We started testing ascorbyl palmitate, a synthesized oil form of ascorbic acid, and found that it lost its "We were the first company to our knowledge that ever used the concept 'antioxidant' to describe and market a class of products." For more information about Malibu C, visit malibuc.com/info or contact director of global business development Trisha Rice, 800.622.7332, ext. 314. M a l i b u D r e a m s . i n d d 4 6 Malibu Dreams.indd 46 3 / 3 1 / 1 4 2 : 1 8 P M 3/31/14 2:18 PM