Corona company began with a bad visit to the dermatologist

Gloria J. Vanderlaan got sore skin after having some wrinkles removed, so she had a product developed that eased her pain. That led to TriDerma, a company whose products are sold in all 50 states and five foreign countries.

Twenty five years ago, Gloria J. Vanderlaan got a microdermabrasion, a non-surgical cosmetic procedure designed to remove facial wrinkles.

Vanderlaan, a residential real estate broker and former school teacher, wanted to give herself a birthday present, having just turned 50 years old.

The procedure did not turn out the way Vanderlaan expected.

She developed deep red blotches on her face, a routine part of the procedure that the dermatologist who worked on her did not tell her about in advance. Vanderlaan did not want to wait the eight weeks it would take for the problem to go away on its own.

“There wasn’t much they could do,” said Vanderlaan, who lived in San Luis Obispo at the time. “He said the one thing that might help would be to put some Crisco on my face, but I had cooked with Crisco and was very familiar with it. I wasn’t about to do that, even though it was very irritating. My skin itched and burned all the time.”

Rather than give up, Vanderlaan went to a chemist and told her she wanted to develop a treatment, one made entirely of natural products. That meant no cortisone, steroids or parabens – a group of preservatives often used in skincare products – and no ingredients derived at the expense of animals.

One month later, Vanderlaan and her chemist had developed Thermacream, a concoction that healed her skin. After the treatment – later known as Intense Fast Healing Cream – worked on several of her friends  – Vanderlaan realized there was a market for natural skin treatment products, and that she might be able to start her own business.

TriDerma, which started in June 1992, now has more than 125 products that are sold in all 50 states and in five foreign countries: Singapore, Hong Kong, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

Vanderlaan, who has grown the Corona-based company without taking on a single investor, its chief executive. Her granddaughter, Tess Fox, is its marketing director, having started working for the company when she was three years old, labeling bottles.

“My grandmother has been the one constant,” Fox said of TriDerma, which bills itself as “woman-owned and customer-approved” since the day it began. “She oversees the whole operation and she never misses a day of work.”

Anyone who takes an idea and turns it into a business that lasts 25 years has beaten long odds, said Mike Stull, a professor of entrepreneurship and director of the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship at Cal State San Bernardino.

Approximately 75 percent of all business start-ups in the United States last less than 10 years, Stull said.

“It’s incredibly difficult to start any business and make it work,” said Stull, who helps his students develop their own business models and become entrepreneurs. “Getting an idea isn’t the hard part. The hard part is putting something in place that will last.”

After her friends gave their thumbs up to Thermacream, Vanderlaan took the product to a swap meet in Nipomo, near San Luis Obispo, where she sold 10 jars.

That might have been the first sign that Thermacream could be a big success, said Fox, who last week received a “40 under 40” award from the Corona Chamber of Commerce, which recognizes outstanding young professionals in the city.

“That might not sound like much, but for a product that no one had ever heard of, it’s pretty good,” Fox said.

From there, Vanderlaan took her product anywhere she could find an audience: street fairs, medical trade, even horse shows. After awhile, she began getting enough reorders that she knew Thermacream could succeed.

“It was such a niche product, the hardest part was determining where and who to sell it to,” Vanderlaan said. “There wasn’t anything else on the market for specific skin healing, but I had to figure out how to market to the entire population.”

It took Vanderlaan 15 years to get her product to retail stores, having first sold it to various medical establishments, including health spas, plastic surgeons and medical equipment supply stores.

In 2007, Thermacream began appearing in pharmacies and small retail stores. Three years later, it made it to Target and Walmart, where it’s still on the shelf.

It was easier to get Thermacream on the shelves because it was made up of products already approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

“You don’t need a prescription,” Fox said. “If you need it you buy it over the counter.”

Vanderlaan calls herself “an entrepreneur at heart,” but said her time as a real estate broker ended up helping her run her own business.

“I think real estate taught me the most, because I learned to continually check on everything that was processing until it was completed,” Vanderlaan said. “It’s the same whether you’re selling a product or building a business: make it the best, give the customers more than they expect and deliver on time.”

TriDerma is now concentrating on getting into more foreign countries and improving its online sales and social marketing. It’s also scheduled to launch a second brand, Freedom Naturals, later this summer.

“The work never ends,” Vanderlaan said.