The History of Proactiv

Doctors Katie Rodan and Kathy Fields met during their dermatology residency at Stanford in the 1980s. They bonded over a shared love of fashion and stayed friends after each joining separate, all-male dermatology practices in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1989, Rodan came up with the idea of creating the type of acne product she wished she could prescribe to patients. She called Fields, who was also frustrated by the lack of new acne treatments. (At the time, drug companies saw the acne treatment market as too small to justify funding the required research. This meant that the market was mostly filled with spot treatments, most of which used very harsh chemicals.) Rodan and Fields wanted to create an acne treatment that could be applied to the whole face. They enlisted the advice of friends and family, including Rodan’s husband, Amnon, who had an MBA from Harvard. They hired a cosmetic chemist and began work on creating a brand-new acne treatment together. Rodan’s friend was a market researcher and she helped them test the new product. It wasn’t a hit — testers thought the product smelled bad and felt unpleasant on the skin. In response, Rodan and Fields reworked the formula, often having business discussions in Rodan’s kitchen on nights and weekends. They kept their plans quiet, worried about their idea being stolen or their professional reputations being harmed. In 1993, they pitched their new product, which they had decided to call Proactiv, to Neutrogena. A year later, the president of Neutrogena suggested that they sell via infomercials, which had recently become common in the wake of FCC regulation changes in the ‘80s. The women considered these commercials unsavory and were disappointed. After being officially turned down by Neutrogena, the two learned that Rodan’s mother had met a relative of the cofounder of the infomercial company Guthy-Renker. She made an introduction and despite their initial objections, Rodan and Fields decided to license Proactiv to the company in 1995, after having spent $30,000 of their own funds on development over the last five years. Sold on a subscription basis through Guthy-Renker, Proactiv quickly became a best-seller and became famous for its many celebrity sponsors, the first of which was Judith Light. (Later, Jessica Simpson, Alicia Keys, and Julienne Hough all appeared as spokespeople for the brand, among many other celebrities.) In 2007, the first Proactiv kiosks were placed in malls, allowing consumers to purchase the product in person for the first time. In 2010, an updated formula containing micro-crystal benzoyl peroxide was released and in 2013, the brand released Proactiv+, a line of acne-fighting, anti-aging skin care products. In 2017, ProactiveMD launched; it notably contained the first new over-the-counter acne-fighting ingredient to be released in the past 30 years, adapalene. Today, while it is sometimes criticized for being too harsh on skin, Proactiv remains one of the most well-known skin care brands created for acne-prone skin.