David Moatazedi, president and chief executive officer of Evolus, spoke with Jenny B. High quality, editor in chief of Beauty Inc., to debate medical aesthetics. The category is recent to the WWD Beauty Inc. CEO Summit — as High quality nodded to the evolution and widening of the sweetness industry.

Moatazedi, who held multiple leadership positions within the medical aesthetics space, noted the rise and transformation of medical aesthetics — particularly neurotoxins — within the last 20 years. 

“This category has transformed — especially over the past five years — where this younger generation of Millennials or younger views it very in another way than their parents,” Moatazedi said. “The older generation was introduced to medical aesthetics through a conventional medical doctor route.”

Notably, there are greater than 30,000 medical aesthetic facilities within the U.S., which have emerged through medical spas, dermatology skincare centers and cosmetic surgery. Moatazedi said the extent of care has evolved so that getting a procedure has turn out to be more of an experience versus a health care provider’s visit.

“Consumers are actually booking their treatments the day of or the day before,” Moatazedi said. “They’re generally getting out and in of the office inside half an hour. So your entire experience has transformed from a medical procedure to what’s today viewed as a beauty treatment.”

Moatazedi said that younger generations are also rather more open to sharing their experiences with treatments like Jeuveau, the neurotoxin that Evolus launched five years ago. Also they are rather more aware of the importance of starting early and the benefits of using the products as a preventative to signs of age resembling wrinkles, he said.

Moatazedi noted that Evolus could be very different from its competitors. “When investors put money into us, generally they’re investing in biotech corporations — they don’t really understand the world of medical aesthetics. On the patron side, they give the impression of being at us as a beauty brand. We’re bridging a recent language that may change over time.”

Evolus calls itself a “performance beauty company” versus a pharmaceutical company — and has focused its efforts on the aesthetics segment of the business, moderately than the pharmaceutical uses of neurotoxins. That permits the corporate to be free from the restrictions that include medical use. 

The performance side of the corporate isn’t any different than pharmaceutical corporations relating to being FDA-approved and having lengthy development cycles. Evolus’ hallmark product Jeuveau is the fastest-growing aesthetic toxin with 12 percent of the market and was in development for six years and celebrated its fifth anniversary on the Beauty CEO Summit.

Moatazedi sees that the category does have a major stigma attached to it that it still has yet to beat. “The best way it began was about this beautification or overdoing it and that’s exactly what we’re attempting to go away from. There’s scientific underpinning behind prevention and aging gracefully. That’s starting earlier and doing it more naturally. It becomes a part of the broader beauty regimen. It’s not the one-solve; it’s a part of something broader.”