More Than Skin Deep
In an audacious career change, Brian Oh ‘02 left law and bet everything on a dream at the intersection of science, nature and modern life
BY IAN ALDRICH
More than a decade on, Brian Oh ’02 still remembers the impossibly long workdays as he worked to get his startup, VENN Skincare, off the ground. Marketing director, accountant, sales rep, legal head, chief executive — there was no role he didn’t assume. The only time Oh found sustained rest was on the flights between his home in Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea, where VENN’s research lab is based.
“It was difficult,” Oh says. “But the advice that successful entrepreneurs kept telling me was to never quit. There will be hardships, you’ll hit what feels like the bottom, but don’t stop. So I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
Oh had certainly mortgaged much to launch his vision. For six years, the Duke University School of Law alum had worked as a successful attorney, first in New York’s financial industry at White & Case and Akin Gump, and then in Silicon Valley for the techoriented firm Fenwick & West. It was in this mix of booming startups and daring founders that Oh’s own entrepreneurial spirit took hold.
In 2015, Oh met Dr. Kevin Mun, a nuclear physicist-turned-chemist and one of South Korea’s leading skincare specialists, who had spent more than a decade researching technologies, ingredients and formulations for the skincare industry. At the core of Mun’s work was the idea that skincare could be both simpler and more effective through advances in ingredient optimization and delivery science. Mun’s research led to a streamlined approach that resonated with Oh, whose commitment to a daily skincare routine began in childhood, when his mother introduced him to his first set of products.
“In Korean culture, skincare routine is very important,” Oh says. “But I was on the extreme side. When I moved to California, I had 90 products. My friends couldn’t believe it.”
In Mun’s work, Oh saw something bigger than just a solution for himself. At the core of VENN is what Oh calls its “supercharged engine” — patented delivery systems designed to optimize and effectively transport active ingredients into the skin with greater efficiency than conventional formulations.
Oh understood the potential of Mun’s work. In 2016, he quit his law practice, sold his apartment and poured every cent he had into launching VENN with his co-founder. It was audacious and bold — even those closest to Oh couldn’t come to terms with his career change.
“They didn’t really understand what I was trying to do,” Oh says. “They thought I was just trying to create a skincare company, but really what I was trying to do was to build this valuable IP and create innovative products. But I knew it was going to take time.”
Armed with its own in-house research and development lab — a rarity in the skincare industry — the company debuted its first product in late 2017. Over the next several years, VENN inched forward, making hay at specialty trade shows and through individual boutique shops.
The company’s first major break came in 2019, when Oh inked a deal with Neiman Marcus to sell VENN’s growing line of products at the retailer’s new store in Manhattan. A year later, VENN signed on with the British retailers Net-A-Porter and Harvey Nichols, followed by an even larger deal with Canyon Ranch Wellness Resorts.
Today, VENN offers more than 25 retail and professional products, and its treatment lineup can be found at boutique stores, medical clinics and luxury destination spas around the United States and in 27 other countries. VENN has never aimed for the mass market (a 1.7 fluid-ounce bottle of one product retails for $210), but to read the reviews of VENN’s products is to see the validation of Oh’s vision.
Not that Oh has time to bask in his success. He continues to shuttle between Los Angeles, where VENN is based, and Seoul, home to the company’s research wing and where Oh resides. He also still wears many hats as he pushes the limits of what the future may hold, both for VENN and himself — and others. Influenced by his Christian faith, Oh sees the success of what he’s built as something to share and is especially drawn to working with children. Someday, he hopes to build a grant foundation that can aid programs that work with youth across Asia. He traces that desire to serve the greater good to his time in chapel at St. Paul’s.
“Each morning and at every evening choir practice [at St. Paul’s], I found myself praying, and those moments shaped me,” he says. “That practice of prayer and reliance on faith has continued to guide me and remains central to who I am. It also influences my ultimate vision for what I hope to build beyond my company — a foundation that supports disadvantaged children in discovering the same kind of vision and hope I was fortunate to find, and to contribute to missionary work around the world, especially those serving in the most difficult and dangerous places.”
More long work days are ahead for Oh but that, it seems, is just how he likes it.