For 20 years after getting pregnant, Cherry Jia tried everything to fade the dark patches on her face. After giving birth to her son, she had , a caused by hormonal fluctuations during pregnancy. Since the late '90s, she'd tried over-the-counter products, topical prescriptions, and in-office procedures like laser treatments, with little to no improvement.
Even her husband's products didn't work for her. Jack Jia founded Musely Marketplace, an online beauty company that recruited over 3,000 brands and used influencers (or "muses") to promote the products through the platform. The treatments they sold for dark spots had no effect on her skin.
The site launched to much fanfare, but based on feedback from Cherry, some customers, and the influencers who worked for Musely at the time, "that's where we also start to realize a lot of these products that actually don't work," Jack Jia told Business Insider. It struck him that hundreds of the products sold on his marketplace used the same few corporate manufacturers with "nearly identical creams and formulas," he said, making them about as effective as "scented water." Jia asked Dr.
Marie Jhin, a dermatologist he'd hired to help curate the products, to give him the inside scoop: Is there anything you can buy over the counter that's broadly effective for most people? No, Jhin said. "If you want something that works, you have to go prescription." He heard the same thing from Musely's other advisors, Lori Bush, the former president and CE.