A former corporate beauty executive walked away from the world’s number-one medical-grade skincare brand because she refused to accept the trade-off the industry kept selling her. The result is Phyto AOX Facial Oil N°10.
By Greg Rollett, Grommet
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It was late. The workday had ended hours earlier, and Ewelina Aiossa was sitting at her vanity in Ramsey, New Jersey, staring at two small groupings of bottles. On one side sat the medical-grade formulas she had spent her corporate career helping to shape, the ones she knew worked. On the other side sat the clean, plant-based oils and serums she actually wanted to use, the ones that smelled beautiful and felt indulgent, but barely moved the needle on her skin. That night, she did what most of us have quietly done at one point or another. She applied both. She layered them, one on top of the other, hoping, in her own words, that “they’d cancel each other out.”
They did not. What they did, instead, was surface the frustration that had been building in her for years.
The Vanity, The Two Jars, and the Cancellation Theory
Ewelina is not the kind of person who arrives at a skincare revelation by accident. Before she became a maker, she was a corporate beauty executive, shaping strategy, leading marketing teams, and building global brands for some of the industry’s biggest players, including the world’s number-one medical-grade skincare brand. She had sat in the rooms. She had listened to the dermatologists. She had watched consumers chase the same elusive thing she was chasing herself.
I felt boxed in. The medical-grade products I had access to as a beauty executive worked, but they were often harsh, overloaded with synthetics, and didn’t feel good to use. On the flip side, many ‘clean’ or natural products looked beautiful on a shelf but underdelivered on performance.Ewelina Aiossa, founder of TOPICAL SKIN
The cancellation-theory night was not the start of TOPICAL SKIN, but it was the moment the gap between the two sides of her vanity stopped being a professional observation and became a personal provocation. She thought, she recalls, “there has to be a better way. Why couldn’t I have a single product that delivered dermatologist-level efficacy but with clean, safe, plant-based ingredients I felt good about putting on my skin?” That was the seed.
A Corporate Exec With a Private Conviction
What surprises people about Ewelina’s background is how much of the beauty industry she had already seen before she decided to build something of her own. She started out at a beauty contract manufacturer and private label company, the kind of behind-the-scenes operation where the bones of the industry are built. She moved through the professional channel. She eventually led marketing for some of the biggest names in the business. She presented concepts to physician advisory board members and high-level executives. She speaks, even now, with the careful vocabulary of someone who knows a clinical study from a claim.
All of which is to say, when she decided to leave the safety of the corporate world, she did not do so naively. She did it because she had spent enough time inside the system to see exactly where its seams were.
Her observation, distilled, is simple. Modern skin is not coping with modern life. Pollution, blue light, lack of sleep, emotional fatigue, all of it shows up on the face. Industry-speak calls this collection of external stressors the exposome, and most clean beauty products were never designed to defend against it. So Ewelina built a technology that was.
Ten Oils, One Bottle
She calls it Exposome Defense Technology, and it sits at the heart of Phyto AOX Facial Oil N°10. The N°10 in the name is not a number for the sake of elegance. It refers, literally, to the ten globally sourced oils inside the bottle, including holy basil, frankincense, baobab, bakuchiol, rosehip, and tsubaki. Those oils are stabilized by an antioxidant network of lutein, quercetin, and green tea polyphenols, and rounded out by adaptogenic extracts of rosemary, turmeric, and chamomile.
The first prototype was not that. The first prototype was simpler, a smaller botanical blend focused on a handful of oils known for their antioxidant and barrier-supporting properties. The texture, she says, felt “less refined.” Through an iterative process involving multiple reformulations and stability testing, she worked closely with chemists to perfect the balance, tuning for absorption, glow, and the signature silky finish. Exposome Defense Technology was layered in afterward, once she was confident the sensory experience held up.
I had to overcome issues around transparency, the risk of greenwashing, and finding trusted partners who could help create a product that truly delivered on its promises.
The finished oil is the rare thing Ewelina had been looking for at her own vanity. A single bottle that works like the medical-grade products she had spent her career respecting, and feels like the clean, luxurious oils she had always wanted to reach for.
The Neighbor, the Rash, and the Two-Day Turnaround
The first person outside her home to test it was her neighbor, a patient prototype-taker who was willing to live with imperfect early versions. She loved the texture. She loved the way the oil softened fine lines and improved radiance. Then something happened that turned a quiet endorsement into a story Ewelina still repeats.
Her neighbor developed a stubborn rash on her neck, caused by a reaction to an oral medication. Hydrocortisone, the usual default, did not help. Out of options and running low on trust in the cabinet, she kept applying the face oil, working whatever she had left across her face, neck, and chest. Within two days, the rash had visibly minimized.
“She was so impressed that she asked for more samples and couldn’t wait for the product to be commercialized,” Ewelina remembers. It was the kind of result that you cannot plan for in a stability test. It was the product telling its own story.
A Husband Who Saw It First
Before the neighbor, before the reformulations, before TOPICAL SKIN had a name, there was one person who believed. Her husband traveled with her to industry conferences and tradeshows. He listened to her talk about formulas, technologies, clinical studies, and ingredients. He watched her present concepts to physician advisory boards.
He saw in me what I had not yet seen myself, a gifted, passionate skincare geek capable of creating award-winning formulas and building a brand based on deep insights.Ewelina Aiossa
That belief, she says, propelled the vision forward.
What Success Looks Like Now
TOPICAL SKIN launched on Grommet on October 16, 2025. Ewelina defines success as a shift in how customers relate to their own skin, a trust built through transparency and performance, and the slow construction of a community that refuses to choose between clean and clinical. On the hard days, she leans on her immediate family and on the feedback that lands in her inbox at exactly the right moment.
She will tell you that the layering episode at her vanity was not really about two jars. It was about refusing to accept a trade-off the industry had been selling for decades. Phyto AOX Facial Oil N°10 is what happens when someone with a corporate executive’s discipline and a maker’s stubbornness finally stops accepting it.
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