THE PARK PERFECTION STORY

In order to best tell you the Park Perfection story, we first need to introduce you to DermWarehouse and the family behind both businesses.

Stefanie Parks is the CEO of DermWarehouse, one of the largest dermatologist owned skincare sites in the United States. It’s always been a dream of Stefanie’s to launch her own skincare line with her family. Her dad, Dr. Parks, happens to be a dermatologist and the Co-Founder of DermWarehouse [Meet Dr. Parks].

After successfully selling hundreds of thousands of products from other brands to customers throughout the U.S., Stefanie and Dr. Parks (aka Dad) knew it was time to launch their own line of products.

Park Perfection was born based on customer and patient feedback combined with a family history where skincare was ingrained into Stefanie’s DNA at a young age. We’ll let Stefanie tell the rest of the story. 

It’s all in the Family

Growing up as the daughter of a dermatologist, I was always surrounded by skin care. In my family, sunscreen was without a doubt our #1 product and our house was always stocked up. Growing up around skin care also made me more curious about ingredients and different product types. I also loved seeing the way people reacted to my dad. People were always asking him for advice about products and their skin concerns, and I was fascinated by the recommendations he would make and how anxious his patients were to take his advice. I came to learn that when you found a product that worked for someone, it could literally be life changing. Whether he was helping them clear up their acne, alleviate eczema or extremely dry/itchy skin, grow their thinning hair back, lighten up dark spots or sun damage, or eliminate a few of those pesky wrinkles, helping someone clear up their skin is like I said, life changing. Helping people solve these issues is what really got me hooked on skin care. This is what I wanted to do, however, I didn’t start doing it with Park Perfection. 

Leading Up to Park Perfection

As you know, my dad is a dermatologist. He’s been practicing in Columbus, Ohio since 1986 and skin care has always been a big part of our family. In 2010 my brother, Jason, and I started a digital marketing agency, The Media Captain, which he still runs. After working with more and more eCommerce clients, in 2015, Jason and I decided to start our own. Our dad always sold about 5 skin care brands in his office and we thought it would be a great idea to sell these online. We knew from experience how much people cared about skin care and having access to sell these brands because of our dad, it seemed like a perfect fit. Enter DermWarehouse. DermWarehouse launched in 2016 with about 15 brands and now, we sell over 100 and we’re one of the largest dermatologist owned eCommerce skin care companies in the U.S. 

Read more about the DermWarehouse story HERE.

The Big Idea

I run the day to day operations of DermWarehouse (along with an amazing team) and over the years, I’ve spoken to thousands of customers about their skin concerns and what they like or dislike about the products they use. I’ve also had the opportunity to try hundreds of products myself from the top brands out there. After practicing dermatology for 30 years, my dad also has had quite the experience talking to patients and testing out products. We would always share the feedback we were hearing as well as products we love. We began to realize that there were many commonalities in what people wanted in their skin care and what they thought the market was lacking. We heard the same praises, complaints, and requests time and time again. I asked my dad if he thought we could create our own products based on what we were hearing and experiencing first hand. Knowing what we’d been able to do with DermWarehouse and having a dermatologist on board, we were both confident that we could. My brother Jason came up with the name Park Perfection when we told him about our idea, and the rest is history.

Our First Product – Instant Eye Lift

Once we decided that we were going to launch our own skin care line, there was a ton of work to be done. In addition to choosing a name, building a website, and designing our branding, the most important step was creating our first product. 

A contact of ours from DermWarehouse was instrumental in guiding us through the process and she put us in touch with a lab in California that would help us with the product creation process. We had a good idea of what we wanted our first product to do based on our customer and patient feedback. We wanted an eye product that instantly diminished the appearance of lines, puffiness, and dark circles around the eyes. The key to this product though was that we wanted it to not only work instantly, but also have great long term benefits. We didn’t sell any products with instant results on DermWarehouse, so we thought this would be a great addition for that site as well. We did know of some similar products on the market, but the instant effects of similar products were so drying that they actually damaged skin over time. We made sure to include hydrating ingredients that had long term benefits for the whole eye area. Our dad was instrumental in building the ingredient list with our manufacturer and getting through all the product testing. 

Once we nailed down the formula, there was still a ton of work to be done. Read more HERE about the process of launching Instant Eye Lift and the Park Perfection Brand!

Synergy Between Businesses

Aside from the great product we were launching and the fact that we’re a dermatologist-developed line, the real beauty of Park Perfection is the synergy that exists between Park Perfection, DermWarehouse. and our 3PL business, Taylor Station Logistics. Before launching Park Perfection, we spent 5 years growing our DermWarehouse customer base. We had thousands of thousands of customers who trusted our guidance when it came to skin care AND got to know our family over the years. I’ll never forget the day we sent out our very first email blast about Instant Eye Lift to our DW customers. The orders started rolling in, and this is when I knew we had something very special on our hands. We then started sending out samples of Instant Eye Lift with every order and now, Instant Eye Lift is one of our top 5 selling products on the whole DermWarehouse site.

What’s Next

As soon as we launched Instant Eye Lift, it was time to start thinking about our next products. We envisioned that Park Perfection would be a whole line of products based on feedback of customers and patients, plus our own experience with the products we’ve sold over the years. We’ve come to learn that the process of creating a new product takes a lot of time. Between developing the perfect formula, testing the formula, finding our vendors for packaging, creating artwork, getting in all the ingredients, and finally actually manufacturing the product, there are a lot of steps. At the time of writing, our next launch will be a lash enhancing serum, followed by a sunscreen (a Parks family necessity!!), moisturizer, cleanser, and primer. In the meantime, we’re working tirelessly to promote our product and hopefully launch in some amazing new retailers. 

Growing up around skin care, I couldn’t have ever imagined a better or more exciting career path for myself. Between getting to develop exciting new products that help our customers and patients and working with family, I couldn’t be happier or more excited about what’s to come for Park Perfection!