Who Owns Nu Skin?

Blake Roney, Sandie Tillotson, Steve Lund, and Nedra Roney founded Nu Skin in Provo, Utah, in 1984, launching with a personal care line sold through person-to-person marketing. The founding premise was product quality above the multi-level marketing era's norm, with "all of the good, none of the bad" as its formulation tagline.

The company grew through the late 1980s and early 1990s into one of the largest direct sellers in beauty, going public on the NYSE in 1996. International expansion, particularly into Asian markets where direct selling culturally fit, made Asia the revenue center it remains. The 1998 acquisition of Pharmanex added nutritional supplements, creating the beauty-plus-wellness dual category structure that defines the business.

The 2009 launch of ageLOC, a platform positioned around gene-expression-informed anti-aging science, gave Nu Skin a technology-framed hero product line spanning skincare, devices, and supplements. The ageLOC Lumispa, Galvanic Spa, and WellSpa devices created a hardware-plus-consumables revenue model unusual in beauty.

Regulatory scrutiny has been structural to the sector. The FTC settlement in the 1990s required disclosure changes, China fined the company in 2014 for violating direct selling rules, and a 2016 SEC settlement charged Nu Skin with bribing a Chinese charity to influence regulators. The company restructured its China business and compensation practices in response.

Under Napierski the company has pursued the Nu Vision 2025 strategy built around affiliate-powered social commerce and the Rhyz ecosystem. The January 2025 sale of Mavely, the social commerce platform acquired in 2021, trimmed the Rhyz portfolio. Fiscal 2025 revenue was $1.485 billion, down 14.3 percent, reflecting continued pressure on the core direct selling model.