Verlinvest’s Cible Skin Bet Moves From Paris to Pharmacies

Verlinvest bought a little under 30 percent of Cible Skin on 8 February 2024, backing a Paris clinic brand built from skin-immunity research. The Brussels family-backed firm did not publish a price. The test of that cheque is a serum the brand says led French pharmacy sell-out in 2025, plus more than 40 U.S. clinics.

The wire copy treated the deal as another luxury skincare round. The founders sold a protocol: a Golden Triangle clinic, a patented immune complex, and a plan to copy that mix in France and China first.

Verlinvest Took a Stake Just Under 30 Percent

Cible Skin announced a significant minority investment from Verlinvest from Paris on 8 February 2024. French deal reporting at the time put the holding a little under 30 percent, with president Jean Ginefri and chief executive Dr. Raphaël Aknin remaining majority holders beside a handful of business angels. No dollar figure was released.

Verlinvest, founded in 1995, is an evergreen consumer investor with offices in Brussels, London, New York, Mumbai and Singapore. It does not run a fixed fund clock. Raphael Thiolon, a managing director, and Cécile Chevallier, a principal, led the relationship. Chevallier said the near-term work was digital, commercial and marketing muscle, plus the brand, the community and the staff.

It is rare in the beauty industry to find a brand like Cible Skin which combines a truly innovative product offering with a science-backed mission and phenomenal results that customers love.

Raphael Thiolon, Managing Director, Verlinvest, 8 February 2024 announcement

Ginefri said the money would speed France and China, the two core markets, while the firm studied the rest of Europe and America. Aknin, who chairs the scientific committee, said the two sides were aligned on research and product development from the first meeting. At the deal the line still counted 12 face products, conceived over five years and launched at the end of 2022 after a committee Aknin chairs reviewed data from 6,000 faces over three years.

Chevallier put the consumer pitch in two words the firm liked: uniqueness and experience. Those qualities, she said, show up in the products and in the treatments.

Faceland, Then Cible Skin Two Months Later

The Cible Skin cheque did not arrive in a vacuum. On 4 December 2023, two months earlier, Verlinvest took a majority stake in Faceland, a medical aesthetics chain then running 31 clinics in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. Faceland’s sales had risen more than 25 percent over the prior twelve months, to about 40 million euros in FY23. Co-founders Dr. Stijn Bauland and Ruud van de Handel stayed in charge. The plan was more clinics, by new sites and by deals.

Faceland sells accessible cosmetic medicine. Cible Skin sells a 6,460-square-foot flagship at 31 Rue François 1er in Paris’s eighth arrondissement, with machines from South Korea, Japan and Germany. Nothing in the public notes says the two brands will share a till or a treatment menu. The sequencing is the tell. In 66 days the same investor backed a volume clinic platform and a high-ticket immuno-cosmetic house.

The rest of the beauty book at the time sat in a different register. Purplle.com is an India marketplace. Through V3 Ventures, Verlinvest had already backed Berlin K-beauty brand Yepoda, French personalized supplement company Cuure, skincare creator Revea and deodorant brand Wild. Yepoda later closed a Series B led by Verlinvest in March 2025, citing 65 million euros of 2024 revenue and more than 1 million customers in France, Italy, Spain, the UK and Germany. Cible Skin is the French science-and-clinic piece of that spread, not a sister of Yepoda’s Sephora run.

Raphaël Aknin’s Path From Chemo Skin to Paris

Ginefri, a childhood friend of Aknin’s and a lawyer by training, and Aknin, a pharmacist who specialized in skin immunology, founded Cible Skin in 2015. The public story now also names Aknin’s father, Dr. Joël Aknin, a plastic surgeon the brand says spent more than 40 years on the quality of skin tissue. The company’s own history page presents the house as a father-and-son longevity lab, not a two-founder startup with a later scientific advisor.

Raphaël Aknin’s earlier work is the IP origin. He spent two years in Israel in immunology research and development at Immune Pharmaceuticals, then served as scientific director at an American biotech that tried to strengthen the skin of patients on chemotherapy. He has said that the same approach, used on healthy skin, produced an aesthetic effect he did not expect. He, Ginefri and Joël Aknin turned that observation into a cosmetics company.

The Paris site opened as a treatment house before the jars. A Japanese trade account dates the Golden Triangle location to June 2021. Retail products followed at the end of 2022. By the Verlinvest announcement, China was already live: the brand had launched there in March 2023 and, the firm said, was doing multi-million dollars of sales. The clinic, then called La Maison Cible Skin, sat at the center of the pitch. The company has cited a 2023 ranking of that clinic among the world’s best for anti-ageing treatments. Chevallier’s “experience” line was not a slogan about packaging. It was a claim about a room on Rue François 1er.

What the 1-LGVTY Complex Is Built to Do

The brand’s current name for the science is 1-LGVTY, a patented 1-LGVTY technology it says rejuvenates the biological age of the skin by acting on three cellular stresses at once: inflammatory, oxidative and microbiological. The US shop positions Skinbooster 1-LGVTY 7.5 percent as the daily corrector, made in France, vegan, 99 percent naturally derived, and certified for pregnancy and breastfeeding. A 30 ml bottle lists at $259, with an 11 ml trial at $99.

The supporting studies the company publishes are mostly human-skin explant models, not large independent trials. OxiProteomics is named for 2024 explant work. The brand also says 1-LGVTY research was presented at IFSCC 2025, and that more than 25 studies and 600 patients sit behind the line. Those are company figures. They are the dossier Verlinvest bought.

CLAIMED CHANGES IN EXPLANT MODELS

On people, the US product page cites an in-vivo cycle it says was run under dermatological and ophthalmological watch: redness down 22 percent in one hour, wrinkles down 52 percent at 28 days. A Japanese medical reporter who walked into the clinic in March 2026 came away with Aknin’s simpler frame, that skin longevity is a chronic-inflammation problem. That is the argument the cheque is funding. It is also the argument a reader still has to take largely on the house’s own explants and on a 28-day cosmetic study.

Pharmacies in France, Then Doctors in California

Ginefri’s two-market plan showed up on a calendar, not in a slogan. China e-commerce shops on Tmall, Xiaohongshu and Douyin opened in April 2024. On 21 May 2024 the brand named Chinese actor Xu Kai as its first ambassador and put him on livestreams, including a Double 11 broadcast that October. Fan accounts were still circulating those clips in 2026. The China route is a celebrity commerce funnel, not a second Rue François 1er.

HOW THE 2024 CHEQUE SHOWED UP IN MARKET

1. March 2023: Cible Skin launches in China and, by the February 2024 announcement, records multi-million dollars of sales there.
2. 8 February 2024: Verlinvest takes a large minority stake, a little under 30 percent, with terms undisclosed.
3. April 2024: Official shops open on Tmall, Xiaohongshu and Douyin.
4. 21 May 2024: Xu Kai is named first brand ambassador.
5. 2025: The US shop cites GERS pharmacy sell-out data ranking Skinbooster 1-LGVTY 7.5 percent No. 1 in average sales per pharmacy in France, and lists more than 40 U.S. clinics.
6. April 2025: Aknin says the line will arrive in Brazil in September 2025, sold only through selected dermatologists, plastic surgeons and aesthetic doctors.

The French pharmacy rank is the hardest commercial number attached to the bet. GERS tracks sell-out in participating pharmacies. The brand’s US shop is the source citing that 2025 ranking for the Skinbooster, and it is a rank of average sales per pharmacy, not a claim that Cible Skin is the largest skincare company in France. The same page says more than 20,000 clients use the line and that more than 40 dermatology and plastic surgery clinics in the United States carry the Skinbooster, naming Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, New York, Miami and Pasadena. Orders ship from a U.S. warehouse in two to five business days.

The partner map on the French site also lists clinics or pharmacies in Bulgaria, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore and China. In April 2026 Aknin appeared at a Newport Beach practice to introduce the line. The U.S. model looks like the Brazil plan: doctors first, then a direct site for people who cannot book a chair.

Ginefri Put 300 Million Euros on a Five-Year Clock

In the February 2024 release, Ginefri said the five-year aim was to become the market leader in luxury, science-backed cosmetics. After a Shanghai skin-center trip, he later put a number on the same horizon: sales of 300 million euros within five years, a mark he gave in March 2025. That is a founder target, not a reported run-rate. Verlinvest has not published Cible Skin revenue since the deal.

The product architecture has tightened around one complex. The Skinbooster is sold as the first step, morning and night, before other serums. The Paris site now calls itself a skin longevity clinic. The legal name on the French register was changed in February 2025 to Laboratoire de Longévité Cible Skin. The immuno-cosmetic language of 2024 did not disappear. It was folded into a longevity pitch that is easier to export to doctors in California and to livestreams in China.

THE BET IN FOUR FIGURES

• The stake: A little under 30 percent, closed 8 February 2024, price undisclosed.
• The flagship: 6,460 square feet at 31 Rue François 1er, Paris 8th.
• The pharmacy test: Skinbooster 1-LGVTY 7.5 percent, GERS 2025 average sales per pharmacy in France, as cited by the brand.
• The founder clock: 300 million euros of sales within five years, set by Ginefri in March 2025.

Faceland still looks like a different business, and Yepoda still looks like a different shelf. The Cible Skin wager is whether a chemo-lab immune protocol, a single Paris clinic and a 7.5 percent booster can be sold as skin longevity at pharmacy and doctor prices without a disclosed P&L. Ginefri and Aknin still hold the majority. Verlinvest still holds the patient capital. The 300 million euro mark is the scoreboard they chose.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Did Raphaël Aknin Work on Before Cible Skin?

He trained as a pharmacist, completed a cosmetics master’s in Lyon, then spent two years in immunology research and development at Immune Pharmaceuticals in Israel. He later worked as scientific director at an American biotech developing treatments to protect the skin of chemotherapy patients, the work the brand now cites as the root of its immune-complex patents.

Is Cible Skin Sold Only at the Paris Clinic?

No. In Paris the locator lists the clinic at 31 Rue François 1er plus pharmacies including Pharmacie Anglaise on the Champs-Élysées, La Grande Pharmacie du Bac, Pharmacie La Boétie Champs Elysées and Pharmacie du Triangle. The same directory also points to partner clinics or pharmacies in the United States, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore and China, and the US site sells the Skinbooster for home delivery.

Does Verlinvest Own Cible Skin Outright?

No. The February 2024 deal was a large minority, described at the time as a little under 30 percent. Ginefri and Aknin remained majority holders, with a small group of business angels still on the cap table. Verlinvest is a family-backed evergreen investor, founded in 1995, and said it would help with digital, commercial and marketing capacity rather than take operating control.

How Is Verlinvest’s Money Different From a Typical Buyout Fund?

Verlinvest does not raise outside fund cycles with a forced exit date. It recycles capital from earlier sales into new consumer, health and lifestyle holdings and can hold for decades. That structure is why a 2024 minority in a 12-product clinic brand can still be sitting beside a 2023 majority in a 31-clinic aesthetics chain without a published timetable for a sale.