The company behind the blockbuster acne fighter, Mighty Patch, was launched in 2017 with a single product sold exclusively on Amazon. It was inspired by similar patches Ju Rhyu had seen while living in Korea. Ju struggled with breakouts herself, and when she tried a patch and saw how well they worked, she was inspired to tailor a patch for the U.S. market. So, while the product wasn’t new, Ju recognized a niche to be filled.

Over the next five years, Ju and her co-founders—brothers Dwight and Andy Lee—grew Mighty Patch from a niche product to a cosmetics industry sensation. Seemingly overnight, teens and young adults across America and all over social media could be seen proudly wearing patches on their faces. The Mighty Patch became so successful that in 2022 Hero Cosmetics sold for $630 million. And today, Hero is the number one selling acne treatment brand in the United States.

This episode was produced by Chris Maccini with music by Ramtin Arablouei and Sam Paulson.

Edited by Andrea Bruce, with research from Olivia Rockeman.

Our engineers were Gilly Moon and Robert Rodriguez.

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