Aramore CEO Melisse Shaban is Building the Future of Skincare

Melissa Shaban has spent two decades watching science, biotechnology and consumer behavior slowly converge, and believes the beauty industry is finally ready for a new question: not how young can skin look tomorrow, but how well can it perform for decades?

This question is at the heart of it Aramoreperformance skincare brand Shaban leads as CEO. Built around pioneering NAD+ science, Aramore is positioned as a topical delivery system designed to support skin’s cellular health rather than following traditional anti-aging language. For Shabani, this difference is important.

“It’s a topical delivery system, so it falls into the skin care category,” Shaban said, “but really, what we’re doing is providing NAD+ precursors for overall cellular health and longevity, to help consumers live better in their skin every day for the long term.”

Consumers who once thought of wellness in terms of diet, exercise and supplements now increasingly recognize cellular health as part of the conversation. NAD+, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, is found in living cells and is involved in energy and cellular function. In beauty, the challenge has been turning the science into a story people can understand and everyday products they can actually use.

“NAD+ is not new to the medical or research community,” Shaban said. “Every living cell requires it; it’s what powers cellular renewal, maturation and turnover. The fact that these scientists were able to build a pathway to deliver a molecule down to the cellular level and get the body to progressively make its own NAD+ was fascinating to me and represented a real game changer in the way we think about aging and aging performance.”

This change is also a business bet. The skin care market is filled with brands that promise shine, firmness, blemish repair, radiance and smoother texture. Aramore is trying to stay away, arguing that the most interesting possibility is not just treating the surface, but helping the skin behave better over time.

“It’s not an easy story to tell, but we actually age from the inside out, not from the outside in,” said Shaban. “If we can keep our cells performing at their peak, those signs of aging are reduced. I believe that’s a powerful motivator worth building a brand around.”

Photo: Aramore

The language of longevity has become inevitable in wellness, but Shabani is careful not to treat it as a gentler rebranding of antiaging.

“I think the biggest misconception is that longevity is the new anti-aging, and it’s not,” she said.

“Anti-aging as an aspiration is frankly a bit silly, because if you’re not aging, you’re dead,” Shaban explained. “The concept of longevity is about how you age; how managing age gets you through the decades so you get the best of yourself for as long as possible. I’m in my 60s, I go to the gym four times a week, I eat well, I feel as strong as I’ve ever felt. It’s about effort, discipline, the right expectations down to a science and the right attitude.” rights.”

This philosophy comes at a time when consumers are more willing to associate beauty with long-term health.

“I see tremendous change in the women’s health space,” Shaban said. “People are realizing that NAD+ starts to deplete in your late twenties, hormones shift in your mid-to-late thirties, and as hormones deplete, your skin, hair and body all change. Hormone replacement therapy is top of mind. Diet has changed dramatically, especially in women; we understand now that protein is critical for muscle health, bone health is critical for long muscle health, and muscle health is critical. a truly transformative focus on how we age and how we manage that process.”

Aramore’s challenge is to translate a dense scientific premise into a brand that consumers can trust.

“Credibility comes from facts, and facts are not claims,” ​​she said. “Many brands make claims and imply things about their products that have no real backing. Real scientific credibility comes from clinical differentiation—skin biopsies, cell biopsies, in vitro and in vivo studies.”

The company’s differentiation is its actual distribution system. She describes NR as the gold standard precursor in the NAD+ space, but says it can’t be delivered to the skin, and ingesting it won’t get you there either. NMN, another popular precursor, she said, does not reach the cellular level in isolation.

“Our NAD+ complex was developed by a team of incredibly impressive minds in science from Harvard and MIT, and is clinically protected and demonstrates more NAD+ production in the basal layer of skin cells,” said Shaban.

This is the kind of claim that requires education, not just advertising. Shaban believes that consumers are more capable of understanding science than many brands assume, provided it is couched in human terms.

“On the education side, I think people actually understand the concept once you put it simply,” she said. “Once you can see the signs of aging, it’s much harder to reverse them. Prevention is the real opportunity here, and I think NAD+ will do for cellular skin health what sunscreen has done for aging: change our understanding of what’s actually worth protecting.”

Shaban estimates that when the brand started, less than 20% of consumers understood NAD+, while today that awareness may be closer to 30% to 35% when it comes to skin. The company has also gained significant momentum: Aramore was recently named to BeautyMatter’s prestigious NEXT50 list, as well as Glossy’s Best Wellness Startup last December, and Shaban said the brand has begun selling at Bloomingdale’s and Ulta.com.

“I’ve seen Aramore go from an extraordinary business to something more mainstream, and I’ve seen consumers develop real curiosity about NAD+ and want to understand its benefits,” she said.

For Shabani, the brand’s growth also reflects fatigue with complicated routines. The beauty industry has trained consumers to add product after product, but she believes the future may belong to fewer, more functional steps.

“You can use an NAD+ precursor, a retinol, a moisturizer and a sunscreen, and that’s really all your skin needs,” Shaban said. “At the very least, our NAD+ Cell Energizing Treatment is something everyone over 25 should be using to make skin cells perform at their peak.”

Shaban sees NAD+ as part of a broader future for cellular performance, with potential relevance to skin, scalp, hair, oral care, and the visible effects of major body changes, including weight loss associated with GLP-1 use.

“Our product increases the thickness of the skin barrier by over 10%, which is remarkable,” she said. “A healthy barrier keeps the good in and the bad out, and that’s critical to both the skin space and the health space.”

Shabani’s vision for Aramore is not to follow whatever ingredient is next in vogue, but simply to follow biology.

“I’d like to see Aramore at the forefront — in form, function and formats — of finding ways to deliver cellular performance and cellular health to all living things,” she said. “That’s the vision. Follow where the science takes us and keep building towards it.”

Melissa Shaban has spent two decades watching science, biotechnology and consumer behavior slowly converge, and believes the beauty industry is finally ready for a new question: not how young can skin look tomorrow, but how well can it perform for decades?

This question is at the heart of it Aramoreperformance skincare brand Shaban leads as CEO. Built around pioneering NAD+ science, Aramore is positioned as a topical delivery system designed to support skin’s cellular health rather than following traditional anti-aging language. For Shabani, this difference is important.

“It’s a topical delivery system, so it falls into the skin care category,” Shaban said, “but really, what we’re doing is providing NAD+ precursors for overall cellular health and longevity, to help consumers live better in their skin every day for the long term.”