Everyone loves a brand with a great origin story, and RFA Skincare is one of them. It started with a stubborn case of postpartum melasma and led to the creation of a cornucopia of products for every skin care concern.

“After pregnancy, I dealt with really bad melasma, which is a form of hyperpigmentation,” says RFA Skincare founder Racquel Frisella. “Being a skin specialist, it was disheartening. I felt really insecure about it.” None of the products on the market seemed to help, so as a Board Certified Aesthetic Nurse Practitioner, Frisella turned to what she’d learned in her 16 years of experience.

She started with a tried-and-true ingredient. “Kojic acid is something I’ve always used in practice, and it’s one of the best brighteners,” she says. “It’s one of the best ways to get rid of sun damage, pigmentation, and dark spots on the skin.” By experimenting with various forms and concentrations of kojic acid and adding various new ingredients to the mix, Frisella eventually cleared the melasma entirely.

That experience proved to be a pivotal one. “Going through that struggle made me even more passionate about skin care and finding the right ingredients for a cure because I went through it myself,” she says. “It’s exciting to be able to help other people through it, too.” She began building RFA Skincare, a brand whose initials stand for “Results for All.”

Frisella’s experience wading through the sea of products on the market showed her that for most people, trying to treat a skin care concern can be next to impossible. She wanted RFA to offer clean, medical-grade products that worked — and for customers to be able to get the kind of results they’d expect from a clinic without leaving their homes.

“Our mission is just to help people transform their skin,” she says. “So we believe in truly science-backed, medical-grade skin care.”

The formulation that lead the way for Frisella’s melasma being removed, became RFA’s Koji Clear Pads, a top-selling product that treats melasma, skin discoloration from sun damage, and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation. A quick skim through the RFA website reveals something for just about every other skin concern, too. Customers can find products to target acne, aging, rosacea, dryness, and more.

For those who want to keep their healthy skin healthy, it’s easy to shop by skin type. You can find products for oily, dry, and combination skin, as well as those specifically designed for mature skin, sensitive skin, or darker skin tones.

As a clinician, Frisella is constantly striving to help her patients achieve better results. And as the founder of RFA Skincare, her goal for the brand is similar. While Koji Clear Pads have since helped countless other people with hyperpigmentation, RFA has an even more powerful successor in the works.

Specifically, Frisella wanted to develop a safer, more accessible alternative to hydroquinone. Hydroquinone is an industry “gold standard” when it comes to skin lighteners, but it’s tightly regulated and has been linked to cancers and other serious, long-term effects. Even when it’s prescribed, hydroquinone can only be safely used for limited periods of time.

“I really wanted to bring resorcinol into it,” Frisella says of developing the brand’s new product. “It’s a brightener. It’s amazing. It’s used widely in Korea. There are three different kinds of resorcinol, and my scientists figured out how to blend all three together. We mixed it with our current kojic acid formula, and we got this pad to be just as efficacious, if not more so, than hydroquinone.”

Like Frisella herself, RFA Skincare is also focused on the importance of skin health education. The brand is about patient education just as much as it is about developing products that work. Frisella believes that patients shouldn’t have to visit an aesthetic practice to get beautiful skin — and they shouldn’t have to pay for a dermatology appointment to get quality advice.

“We have a blog on the site that’s packed with education, and I send a new blog out every single Friday,” she says. “Then we have a skin quiz tool. It’s not just your typical cookie-cutter quiz. It’s pulling the same logic that I use in practice to give people customized skin care routines. We also have a personalized tool for those patients who really want that one-on-one help. They can schedule a real-time video consultation with one of my skin clinicians, who are practicing nurses.”

When Racquel Frisella first encountered that seemingly incurable melasma, she couldn’t have known that it would lead her to where she is today. Thanks to RFA Skincare, more people than ever have discovered what it feels like to truly transform their skin.

Medical disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, please consult a medical professional or healthcare provider.