MILAN — Intercos Group’s founder and president Dario Ferrari has launched a new skin care brand, dubbed DF18+.
The entrepreneur, who built an empire supplying beauty products to multinationals and emerging brands for the past 50 years, has quietly introduced his personal venture. This is meant to be added to Intercos Group’s portfolio of more than 550 international clients.
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Made in Switzerland, the DF18+ lineup aims to simplify the skin care routine by offering high performance and technology through its plant-based formulations blending 18 active ingredients. These include patented technological actives, such as Allure Vita, Bionymph Peptide, Cell Pulse and Vita Freeze with antiaging properties, to name a few.
The company claims to be the first in the market to boast eight stem cell patented actives for skin care application as well as to source active ingredients from plant cell tissue and extracts via sustainable technology that minimizes natural impact, waste and water consumption.
The assortment includes six items that retail from $46 for the Halo Skintranslucent gel-like powder that can act as a primer, makeup base and fixing product to $168 for the Intensive Cream aimed at skin’s cellular rejuvenation.
Other products include the antiaging Original Serum, the hydrating and pore refining Velvet Serum, the brightening Silk Serum and the lifting and replumping Balm Serum. The full line comes in minimal white bottles, mostly available in a 30-ml. size.
The DF18+ brand already has an e-commerce platform and quietly opened a physical outpost in Milan’s tony Via Santo Spirito, which the company dubbed as its clubhouse.
Adorned with displays designed in collaboration with creative director JoAnn Tan and an original Andy Warhol flower series hailing from Ferrari’s private art collection, the flagship offers the full product assortment and services such as a skin analysis test enabling customers to assess their skin condition and personalize their beauty treatment. Aimed at monitoring the skin condition over time, the in-store device has dedicated programs for different areas and offers customized reports, statistics and images to visualize the progress before and after the DF18+ treatment. A skin analysis service is also offered remotely with an online test.
Ten years in the making, DF18+ was inspired by Ferrari’s mother, doctor Nadja Avalle. A cosmetic innovator and entrepreneur, she moved to Switzerland and started a career in cosmetic formulation, creating products for luxury brands. For one, she was a pioneer in repurposing flower residues from the perfume industry as raw materials for skin care in the ‘70s, and in 1979 she was elected president of IFCC, the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. In 1983, Avalle created CRB, a specialist in skin care development and manufacturing, which was acquired by Intercos Group in 2006.
According to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which first reported on the launch on Tuesday, DF18+ leverages technologies Intercos implemented with Arterra Bioscience through their joint venture Vitalab, which dates back to 2010 and is dedicated to the research and development of active ingredients and naturally-derived ingredients based on stem cells, plants and algae, among others.
Both Intercos Group and Arterra are listed on the Italian Bourse, with the former debuting on Euronext Milan last year, a few months after inking a five-year agreement with the University of Milano-Bicocca to jointly conduct scientific research on new raw materials, formulations and sustainable processes aimed at developing innovative beauty products.
In the first nine months of 2022 ended Sept. 30, Intercos Group’s revenues grew 23 percent to 597.1 million euros compared to the same period last year and were up 15 percent versus the same period in 2019. Overall last year the group had 673.7 million euros in revenues, up 11.1 percent versus 2020.
