Photo by Joseph A. Garcia / Star staff Erica Joesten fills sample bottles of Chellá Skin Firming Serum at the company's Camarillo headquarters. The Chellá product line is available at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills and at spas and hotel resorts.

Joseph A. Garcia / Star staff Chellá Professional Skin Care of Camarillo produces and markets a line of 16 products for skin care.

Chellá employees Carmen Alvarenga, left, Maria Diosdado and Gloria Medina put the finishing touches on sample bottles at the company's Camarillo facility.

jmintz@VenturaCountyStar.com

Calabasas resident Chris Kolodziejski wanted to sell more than "hope in a bottle."

He looked at the fiercely competitive, multibillion-dollar skin-care industry crowded with beauty aids and skin creams, and knew he could offer something different.

The former starting tight end for the Pittsburgh Steelers was an unlikely candidate to start a skin-care company.

When he started seeing wrinkles in the mirror, he spent six months with chemists and researchers, trying to find a solution that would "reverse the aging process."

He founded Chellá Professional Skin Care, a Camarillo-based company, in 2003. Revenue for the small startup rose 65 percent in 2007 from last year, and Kolodziejski expects the company to become profitable by the second quarter this year.

Chellá products are available at about 50 locations across the country, including Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, spas and hotel resorts. Retail sales represent 52 percent of its sales, an increase of 65 percent from 2006. The company's Internet sales represent 48 percent of its business, and jumped 40 percent from 2006.

Sales of skin-care products have shot up in recent years, its growth fueled by an aging baby boomer population and an increasing emphasis on looking young. The skin-care industry was valued at $2.3 billion in 2007, up 10 percent from $2.1 billion in 2005, according to Mintel International Group, a market research firm in Chicago.

Products contain peptides

Kolodziejski said he decided to start the company after learning about a breakthrough involving peptides, amino acid chains that can send signals to the skin's existing collagen and elastin cells that increase production of those cells, which in turn thickens skin and visibly reduces fine lines and wrinkles. Chellá was one of the first companies to embrace peptides, he said.

"When I got into the business, I had to know that there were active ingredients that really worked," he said. "I couldn't just sell hope in a bottle."

Kolodziejski, 46, says he knows firsthand that the products are working.

"I looked a lot older five years ago than I do today," he said. "I had a very weathered face from sun damage."

Fitness trainer and nutrition consultant Beverley Loyd of Northridge tried at least a dozen types of anti-aging skin-care products before she found Chellá. She noticed within a few weeks of using Chellá that the depth and length of her wrinkles were dramatically improved, she said.

"I thought, Wow, this must be too good to be true,' " she said. After a month, she asked Kolodziejski, "What the heck do you have in these products?"

Loyd has been using the products for three years. She said she believes the products do reverse the aging process: "Otherwise, I wouldn't have been on it this long," she said.

The products aren't cheap, ranging in price from about $35 for toners and cleansers to $110 for "Evening Crema." But topical treatments appeal to the mainstream because they're a lot cheaper and certainly less invasive than Botox or plastic surgery. Loyd said she thinks of it as an investment.

"With a good skin-care line, you're always going to pay a little more. If you want something cheap, you're going to get something cheap," she said.

Praise from a consultant

As a spa consultant, Wendy Rahier said, she's tried "everything out there," and said she's been impressed with Chellá for its simplicity and for its "instantaneous" results.

"The average spa-goer in today's society really wants simplicity," said Rahier, who lives in Utah. "They like the idea of not being overwhelmed with 26 different products."

The entire Chellá line is 16 products. In addition to the Chellá Anti-Aging System Skin Care, Chellá offers a micro-exfoliating cleanser, skin firming serum, moisturizers, masks and lotions. Two sunscreens are expected for release by May 2008. Kolodziejski describes the sunscreens as revolutionary, because the chemicals typically found in sunscreens are completely encapsulated in silk proteins. This helps prevent skin irritation because the chemicals never touch the skin.

The company is headquartered at a 5,000-square-foot building on Calle San Pablo in Camarillo, and works with two contract labs in Newbury Park and Corona. Chellá owns the formulas, and the labs manufacture to the company's specifications. The company has 15 sales representatives and five employees.

Customers find it refreshing that nearly all of the ingredients are natural and straightforward, Kolodziejski said.

"We're not a caviar extract ... We're not a pig placenta. We're not an avocado dill sauce," he said. "We use clinically-proven peptides."

On the Net:

www.chella.com