Onélogy Wants To Make Freeze-Dried Skincare The Next Big Thing In Beauty

For certain segments of the population, the concept of freeze drying conjures up astronaut ice cream that can last even if it’s stranded in space for years. But if you ask Parisian-born, New York City-based creative director and filmmaker Roxana Bazgoneh, it’s an advancement that can nudge skincare in a sustainable direction.

Bazgoneh’s fledgling skincare brand, Onélogy, soft-launched last year in direct-to-consumer distribution and at upscale New York City food, flower and personal care store Happier Grocery. It sells only one thing: 32-tablet blister packs called Megadose with freeze-dried tablets that are vehicles for tried-and-true serum ingredients like niacinamide, retinoid, peptides and alpha arbutin. Just dissolve the tablets with five to 10 drops of drinking water, a facial mist or water-based serum, and smooth their gel-like solution on.

What you won’t find in the tablets is frills, fragrance, dyes or animal-derived ingredients. Each tablet weighs a mere 1.4 grams, and Onélogy’s lightweight recyclable aluminum packaging and paper packaging contains no single-use plastic, tamping down on shipping weight and waste to limit carbon emissions. The brand estimates its products generate 80% greenhouse gases than typical skincare.

Bazgoneh, who’s worked on advertising campaigns for beauty heavyweights like MAC, L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, Revlon and La Mer, recognizes that Onélogy’s novel format may appeal most to a niche audience, and she’s OK with that. She says, “We have a product that is different, so we’re emphasizing that.”

Onélogy’s distribution strategy is omnichannel. On its website, Megadose is priced at $32 for a monthly subscription, 20% off its regular $40 price tag. Expanding the brand’s brick-and-mortar reach outside of Happier Grocer, it’s aiming for spas and international department stores that are venues for discovery.

Being bastions of beauty indulgence, spas may seem to be an odd pairing with a brand more focused on cutting carbon emissions than cultivating a luxurious experience, but Bazgoneh reports they’ve been very open to it. She says, “Because the format is so new, and there is this unique technology behind it, it’s been interesting for them to be able to introduce something really different to their clients.”

“We have a product that is different, so we’re emphasizing that.”

To win over accounts, Onélogy plays into performance as well as the planet. On its website, the brand highlights that liquid skincare can lose up to 50% of its efficacy in 60 days. Similar to astronaut ice cream, Megadose lasts for years, specifically six-plus years, without losing its effectiveness.

Onélogy has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from friends, family and companies in the transportation, technology and logistics sectors, including the primary fulfillment company for Amazon in Europe, with money set aside for sustainability-oriented ventures, according to Bazgoneh, who mentions Onélogy’s will be seeking funding again in the coming weeks.

She says, “We’re at the stage where we’re seeking new investment to finalize our production infrastructure, prepare to scale for bigger retailers next year and to support our customer acquisition efforts.”

Thanks to its international investor network, Onélogy expects to have a meaningful global retail presence in the first half of 2025. Bazgoneh says it plans to enter North Africa because it has investors in the region and France, where it’s produced at a pharmaceutical manufacturer that fashioned custom equipment for Onélogy’s skincare tablets. The brand has applied for a patent for a dried product that’s rehydrated for skincare usage. Through DTC, it’s available in both the United States and Europe. Its products are stored at and sent from warehouses in the South of France and New York.

“The goal is for Onélogy to have a complete offering for your skincare routine.”

Bazgoneh is relying on her experience as a former film director and creative director to tackle the challenge of new customer acquisition. She shies away from static images of Onélogy’s products and highlights their efficacy and travel friendliness. Bazgoneh acknowledges, “One of the biggest projects we’ve had over the past year has just been learning who our audience is.”

Onélogy’s early key performance indicators (KPIs) show fruitful signs: 50% of its customers are subscribers, and non-subscription customers typically purchase three times before switching to subscription. Repeat purchase rates are at about 50% month-over-month. On social media platforms like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, click-through rates are about 5% on average, and Bazgoneh shares that Onélogy’s return on advertising spend (ROAS) is “north of a 1.5 just for direct ad spend, not including repeat orders and subscriptions.”

Onélogy is on track to hit $300,000 in sales by the end of the year, its first full year in business, and Bazgoneh sees a clear route to profitability once the extensive equipment customization the company had to fund is in the rearview mirror. “Even though our production is hosted at our lab, we had to customize about half of it for the way we were creating the product because that’s not how it’s usually made, for example, in pharmaceutical applications,” says Bazgoneh. “There is a clear path to improve our COGS and margins as we grow.”

In the meantime, Bazgoneh is keeping her vision for Onélogy top of mind. She says, “The goal is for Onélogy to have a complete offering for your skincare routine.”