Beauty Pie founder Marcia Kilgore thought she’d seen it all in skincare. Then she dared a master cosmetic chemist to load an already state-of-the-art Swiss skin-longevity serum with spicules. Here, she tells the story.
I don’t say things like ‘this made me sit up’ lightly - partly because I’ve been formulating skincare for 30 years, and partly because there is already enough hyperbole in beauty to power a small European nation.
The good news? Skincare really has improved. Twenty-five years ago if you had an acne-riddled forehead, the only place you could turn was a Christine Valmy Camphor Clay mask (pink, very drying, scented of school hallway disinfectant).
Now we have excellent micro-encapsulated retinoids and oil-reducing Niacinamide Drops, Vitamin C and Peptides and Keratolytic enzymes. We have GGA to extend our telomeres, and LED masks for our faces, necks, hands and heads. And of course - we have Hyaluronic Acid - even if most people pronounce it ‘hydraulic’, which is really not at all as sexy.
In fact, my skin looks so good after a good night’s sleep with the right ‘layers’ in place, that I have become a little bit blasé, so it’s pretty rare for something to arrive at the lab and make me think: Oh, hello.
And then I tried spicules.
Everybody’s DM-ing us about the ‘tingling’
Let’s not pretend you won’t feel spicules working. Technically, they are tiny, needle-like particles taken from marine sponges. I knew the technology and understood the theory. I’d just never put a strong spicule serum on my own face.
So please note: When you put a spicule serum on YOUR face, there will probably be a distinct prickling sensation. Not Home Alone aftershave prickling, more accidentally pressed your face gently up against an electric socket prickling. You may think to yourself: ‘What on earth is that?’
In fact, that prickling feeling itself is solving one annoying skincare engineering problem: you can formulate with a Formula One grid of brilliant actives, but the skin barrier is really good at keeping them ‘out’. Spicules are like Deliveroo for those actives.
Plus you also ‘feel something’, which is a kind of cue to remind you to use it. Because the best skincare in the world has an efficacy of zero if it sits untouched in your bathroom cupboard like the jade roller we all bought and used twice in 2021.
We developed Youthbomb Intense with one of the best skincare labs in Switzerland and essentially asked them: how far can we push the active ingredients in this formula if we amplify them with spicules?
The answer? Quite far. There’s a lot going on in this bottle. There are Exosomes, Growth Factors and RejuveNAD, plus added Eterwell Youth at 3% to help improve skin texture, Reforcyl at 2% to help support the skin barrier and improve elasticity, and Immunight at 1% for redness reduction.
And then we hired an external user-testing house, and the results came in.
Up to 11 years younger-appearing skin in 8 weeks.*
Also:
✅ Skin up to 49% firmer.
✅ Wrinkles reduced by up to 20%
✅ Skin lifted by up to 25% in four weeks.*
Not 98% of people saying they felt moisturized. Or 92% of people feeling like they’d put a serum on. No. Skin up to 49% firmer. (Of course these kinds of numbers will make me reopen the report and check I’ve read it correctly. Which I did.)
