Thank you everyone for joining today's webinar. We're really excited to have you join us. Before I officially kick it off, I want to just reiterate, please ask questions throughout the discussion. Utilize the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen, and we will facilitate and address those at the conclusion. I would now like to turn this over to Forrest Family Office's CEO, Steven Goldstein.
Thank you, Callie. Thank you everyone for joining us today. We greatly appreciate you taking time out of your day to be with us. We have a fantastic panel, featuring Rich Schumacher, CEO of Pressure Bio, and Dr. Adrienne Denese, who's a world-famous doctor, QVC personality, and maker of some of the best skincare products and healthcare products in the world. We are more than honored and happy to have her. I want everyone to understand this opportunity and the story comprehensively. Actually, what I wanna do, Rich, if you don't mind, is can you just give everyone just two minutes on Pressure Bio, what you do, the Mariana Trench, the whole thing, and then, you know, how you came to make this base product that Dr. Adrienne Denese is now utilizing.
Steven, I've been asked to do some tough things in my life, but for me to give that in two minutes is impossible.
Fair enough. Too bad.
Pressure BioSciences, we are a manufacturer of equipment. We sell our equipment all over the world to a number of different industries, primarily in the biopharma industry. All of our equipment has one thing in common. It all runs and utilizes the amazing force called pressure. Pressure is just one amazing force of nature. It moves at the speed of sound, so basically we think about it as being instantaneous. It can be turned on and off, like you turn a light switch, a light on and off with a switch. It's never really been used in the areas that we use it now, because of the ability to do it safely is, of course, paramount.
We figured out how to do it safely, and we've been working in the area of pressure now for about 12 years. The types of pressure we go to are not the pressures you think about when you're filling up your tire at 32 or 34 PSI. It's not even the type of pressure if you have a vise at home and you're turning the vise at about 500 PSI. We're talking about pressures that are equal to or greater than the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the ocean in the world, in the Pacific Rim. It's about 7 mi deep. Imagine us having this webinar down at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 7 mi of ocean on us.
We'd have about 16,500-17,000 pounds per square inch or PSI. We at Pressure BioSciences and our instruments can start out at a few thousand PSI, but our normal instruments that we have almost 400 of these instruments around the world, they go to about 45,000 pounds per square inch on a routine basis. We have other instruments that go to 60,000-90,000 pounds per square inch. What we're talking about here is a brand new instrument, a brand new technology that we call UltraShear Technology. Right now we're using it at 45,000 or 2.5 times the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, very safely, exquisitely controllable. We're very sure that it's a safe method.
We've done multiple studies, but we also know that pressure is just an amazing force that needs to be harnessed, and we've learned how to harness it. We're gonna talk about a story with Dr. Denese and how we think that we can take her unbelievably good products that are already there and maybe make them better using pressure.
One of your biggest faults is that you're humble. I know you don't like to talk about this, but just so people understand, you initially started the company supplying product to the pharmaceutical industry. Can you just quickly tell us who you're supplying to, if you can, because there's some amazing, like, some of the best names in the world, and what you're supplying just there. Then we're gonna go into what you're bringing to Dr. Denese.
We have a technology called PCT, Pressure Cycling Technology. That's where we started, Steve, as you know. It's based upon having a pressure chamber in an instrument and then using that pressure chamber to allow the scientists to have a much better, a much more exquisite way to break open cells. All the good stuff is in or on the cell. I was a scientist at Harvard Med School for 13 years, and as a scientist, I was taught to open up a cell by beating the living heck out of the cell. That's not good because you can modify, change some of those incredible macromolecules, the DNA, RNA, protein, and lipids that are gonna come up with the new drugs and the new preventive strategies and the new vaccines.
You wanna be very careful on how you're breaking open cells. Those cells can be human, animal, plant. They can be bacteria, viruses, et cetera. We have a pressure chamber. We dial in the pressure, and the scientists will know that for breaking open an HIV virus, it takes 17,000 pounds per square inch. For breaking open a hepatitis virus, it might take 45,000 pounds. They learn this doing trial and error and by publishing papers and looking at what other people are doing. We have instruments about 350-400 of these pressure instruments, Pressure Cycling Technology instruments. We have some of the top labs in the world, both in academia and government and in industry.
Our, you know, our customers are the FBI, the FDA, the CDC, the Karolinska Institute, the Paul Ehrlich Institute. We have customers that are in industry, Merck, Pfizer, Monsanto, Bristol Myers Squibb, and many other great companies out there. We have a number of academic institutions, Harvard and Stanford and UCLA, and many others that we have. Again, over 350 customers.
Fantastic.
and instruments around the world.
Thank you. Now, can you talk about what you're doing for Dr. Denese and, you know, what you've created for her?
Well, the instruments that we have can be used for a number of things. We were developing a technology. We wanted a $1 million grant from the NIH for developing an instrument that could be used to break open cells to release DNA, and not just release DNA, but be able to release DNA and cut it at certain segments, which is very important. We were successful in developing a prototype and doing this, but it came to be that it would cost millions and millions of dollars and many, many years to get this to market. There's already some very good instruments on the market. One of our people, Dr. Ed Ting, is a pioneer in the area of bringing high pressure into food, making food safer.
He said, "You know, I think this might have a play in the food industry." Long and short, we talked with Dr. Balasubramaniam at Ohio State, who's a world-renowned high-pressure person in the food industry, and we worked out a deal. We have a consortium now where we're bringing a whole new instrument called a UST or Ultra Shear Technology to do something different. It's not breaking cells to get out those macromolecules. It's basically, I guess the easiest way to say is, we're killing the old paradigm that we've been taught all of our lives that oil and water don't mix. Well, they do mix when you use Ultra Shear Technology. We've developed a method by combining very, very high pressure and very intense shearing or cutting, putting them together, and honestly, we think one plus one equals ten.
The bottom line here is that why you want oil and water to mix? Because they're called emulsions when you take two liquids that don't go together well. Think about your salad dressing. Think about your raspberry vinaigrette. What do you do? I asked Steven the first time I met you a few years ago, "What do you do?" And you said, "I take it and I shake it like crazy." Why? To mix it up. Then you put it on your salad. Theoretically, using our method, you would put the vinaigrette through our system, and the oil and water and others would all mix together and never separate out. Therefore, you have a more flavorful salad dressing and something that should actually taste better because it's all mixed.
We're mixing oil and water.
Well, it gives you higher parts per million, right? Therefore, it's like completely combined.
Well, you're taking it to where I'm sure that Dr. Denese is gonna talk about. You're taking it to a level where emulsions are mixtures, but the best emulsion for some products out there is called a nano-emulsion, where you actually take the oil and you break that oil. Think about that oil being broken down into 1 billion tiny little nano-sized oil droplets, and that if you have what we call an active ingredient, maybe that ingredient is, maybe it's curcumin, maybe it's astaxanthin, maybe it's vitamin D3, maybe it's CBD.
If it's in that oil, what you wanna do in order to absorb it better is break the oil down, not into drops, but into a billion droplets that spread the active ingredients so that the body can absorb it much easier, much better, and have a better absorption, therefore, we call it a better bioavailability. That's what UltraShear does, and that's what brought us to Dr. Denese.
Amazing. Dr. Denese, I wanna ask you all about how you're utilizing Rich's technology. Before I get there, I just think it's so impressive and so interesting, if you wouldn't mind sharing your origin story. I mean, you are an immigrant to America and.
Yes.
You know, if you could go all the way back to the beginning there. It is so impressive. I would love for you to tell everyone about yourself.
Well, I'm honored that you ask. I love to talk about myself. I'm just kidding. Anyway, I was born in Hungary. I was born under socialist regime. When I was about 18, I began to feel that, well, I better get out of here. This is very oppressive. I was always very strong academically. I actually got a PhD when I was 23 years old. Two days later, I left to the United States. I left with $40 in my pocket. I figured that's a lot of money. I'll make it somehow. I'll be fine. I had a one-way plane ticket and $40, and I had a pen pal in America that I was hoping that maybe I can, he can help me. I ended.
I landed at JFK, and it turned out that the taxi fare was more than $40. That sort of took the wind out of my sails. Nevertheless, a few years later, I actually entered Weill Cornell Medicine. I got a full-
Cornell.
Scholarship. Cornell, Weill Cornell Medicine. Got a full scholarship. I did really, really well on the MCAT and on all the pre-med courses. As you know, I'm really strong academically.
Can I ask you a question?
Oh, yes.
In Hungary, what did you get your PhD in?
In neuroscience.
Nurse? Wow, okay. Okay, and then you went to medical school.
Went to medical school. Actually, before I got to medical school, I was working as a postdoctoral fellow based on my PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard Medical School. It wasn't an unreasonable request of myself that, "Well, gee, let's go to medical school." I got into Cornell, full scholarship, and I absolutely loved it, thrived on it. By the time I finished medical school, I felt I was older than I should be. My classmates were several years younger. I decided, "Well, let's do something in anti-aging medicine. Wouldn't that be interesting? And wouldn't that be very popular?" That's exactly what happened. Right after medical school, finished the residency, and I opened up a private practice. Everyone told me that, "You're out of your mind.
You can't just open a practice and succeed. It just doesn't happen that way." I said, "Let me try, let me try." Within a few months, the New York Times was in my waiting room. They wanted to write an article about the anti-aging methods that I was employing for my patients. I was in the Sunday Times all of a sudden. This was in 1998. At that time, everyone read the New York Times on Sunday. That was a very big deal. After that, many television appearances. I began to make skincare products because customers were asking, and I said, "Well, why not?
My question for you is, so you were already administering or giving your patients in your clinic certain skincare products, and then you decided to, you know, really make a business out of it?
Yes. That's exactly what happened. Yes. Initially, I was doing injectables. I was doing human growth hormone administration, various other natural hormone replacement for women, for men. Then they kept asking, "Well, let's do something for my skin." I said, "All right. Let's find the best of science, and let's perfect that." That's how I got started. Within a few six months or so after manufacturing a few products, all of a sudden QVC shows up and says, "Well, Dr. Denese, why don't you come and sell something?" You see, I was terrified because the idea of being on television in front of millions and millions of people, but somehow I got over it. I got there, and we sold out.
They invited me again, and we sold out, and we sold out.
Wow.
A huge success. You know, in like four years, I was up to $54 million. That was gross.
Wow.
It just became an explosive success. Unfortunately, I had to abandon the practice because there's only so much you can do.
Who would blame you? $54 million.
You just have to. That's how it was. Now I'm coming up to 20 years on QVC. In fact, in a few weeks, in December, we're gonna have a huge 20-year anniversary.
Oh, congratulations. That's amazing.
A half a million steady customers, and I am very happy to tell you that I have the highest customer rating among all competitive brands, and I have the highest rebuy rate, the highest repurchase rate.
Wow. Yes, sir.
In fact, about 70% of our sales take place while I'm not even on television. Just regular customers sign up for automatic shipment, and they are just with us forever.
Mm-hmm.
To me, that is a testimony to the strength of the brand because I wouldn't have 70% of returning customers at all times over the decades.
Yeah. No, listen, sell-through. We do a lot of due diligence on a lot of consumer companies, and a 70% sell-through rate is, you know, incredible.
It's a 70% automatic shipment.
Oh, it's even better than.
Automatic.
Okay.
70% of our income-
Yeah.
automatic shipments. That's
Right.
Very big.
Right.
Otherwise, I have a 100% sell-through rate most of the time with QVC. Like, today, recently, they ordered $1 million from us. I'm presenting that particular batch on Friday, and then on Sunday, and on Tuesday, and I'm expected to sell out of it in three sessions, maybe four. We'll see what happens.
Wow.
I'm very excited about that. The products are extremely popular, and as I said, very, very high customer rating and very high loyalty, customer loyalty in terms of auto-shipment. That's my
What is your guiding principle when you think about your customers?
Oh, number one most important thing, the product has to work. I make my products really expensively. I have my active ingredients at unusually high levels as compared to my competition because when it touches her skin, that's your moment of truth. If it works for her, if she loves it, she's with you. If not.
Right.
Return, you get whatever. Get lost, doctor. That doesn't happen. It's the quality of the product. It's the amount of active ingredients. I am obsessed with very high percentage of active ingredients. Even if it costs a little more, it is so well worth it because you sell the product once, and that's it, and they will be with you forever.
That's amazing. Yeah.
For that reason, the product has to sing. It just has to be extraordinary. I have clinical studies on everything. I have most of everything that we do. But the formulations are my own. I have my own in-house chemist. She develops it for us. Everything that we sell is clinically tested and clinically proven. We have befores and afters, amazing befores and afters. Very strong clinical results like, for instance, a 198% increase in hydration in 15 minutes. That's my number one bestseller. It's just the way it is. It's all about the ingredients, all about efficacy. That's how I was so interested in Pressure BioSciences because I saw an incredible opportunity to be able to take lipid-soluble raw material, active ingredients, and nanosize it.
We multiply the efficacy of the product. We multiply the surface availability of the active ingredients by-
It's really the density, right? It's the density of the active ingredient. It's in the mole-
Yes. It's basically the surface. Once you nanosize an active ingredient, the surface grows exponentially.
Right.
All the molecules will be able to attach to a much larger surface regarding the skin, but they are able to actually permeate much better into the skin and exert a far greater efficacy. It was a no-brainer. When I realized that this can be done, I became very excited. I contacted Rich, and in fact, we already brought our two most important, most efficacious raw material, which is a retinoid product and a lipid-soluble vitamin C. Both of them are lipid soluble. Both of them are not easy for the skin to raise up. With this method, I think it's going to be exponentially better.
That's amazing. That's fantastic. What is the plan for this product line? You know, I guess you're gonna sell it on QVC ultimately. How long is it gonna take?
Well, very quickly. Products sell very quickly. We make a batch, and we sell through it within a very short time usually. Like, I just had a show middle of September, and the entire inventory was sold out. There were seven different products, and the whole value was about maybe $3 million. All of it was gone. Once we put something in the market, we are very successful in being able to sell it. We already sent the raw materials. They and Rich's company are already processing it. As soon as it comes back, we incorporate it into the already existing products, see how it mixes.
We are going to clinically test it, or as always, we look at before and after photographs, look at the numbers as to what the clinical testing will give us. We'll introduce it as a unique approach to increasing the efficacy of active ingredients. It will be.
Great.
-unique
Let me ask you. Just talk a little bit about the testing, if you don't mind. Like, you know, how many-
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Yeah.
The testing is an independent agent. It's a clinical testing lab. I'm using AMA, but there are a couple of them in the country that are very reliable, highly reputable. The minimum number of patients you have to supply is 20. Actually, they are the ones who are identifying and calling in the patients. The entire testing takes place in their hands. The minimum number of subjects is 25. It's a very expensive proposition, but it's well worth it to us. For us, if the testing doesn't come out right, we abandon the product and we remake it. Now, this never happened.
Got it.
Let me tell you, this would be my plan if ever it happens that the product comes back only so-so.
Right.
That never happened. We already know. You know, as a doctor, you just have a good understanding of the skin and what the mechanism of action of the various active ingredients is and how far you can go. As a doctor, I am much more daring with the amount of active ingredients because I've tried it on my patients, they were fine, and I know that the higher the active ingredient, the better the results. Of course, within a certain limit. You have to understand those limits.
With, with the-
It requires third-party testing. It's instrumental, typically, in fact always, instruments that are able to assess how tight your skin is, very delicate. You can tell if there is a 20%, 30% increase in the tightness of the skin, a very big deal. It measures moisture, and of course, the before and after photographs are the most telling, and that's what pulls the attention on QVC, my before and afters are simply amazing.
Dr. Denese, asking for a friend, do men use it?
Oh, yes, of course. Yes. Yes, men use it, too. It is a great success. As a matter of fact, I have a few products which are very, would be very appropriate for a man.
Rich, when Dr. Denese approached you, I mean, what did you think? Then also, how did you decide on, you know, which base materials you were gonna work with first?
The choices are hers. Dr. Denese is the expert in skincare. We're not. We're experts in high pressure. We do a lot of things with high pressure. It took us years to find some things out. You gotta know your limits. I know nothing. You can tell. Look at me. I know nothing about skincare.
Yeah.
You have to ask.
You don't have to comment. As I look at this Zoom and I look at this picture, I'm going, "I've got to do something here," you know?
Oh, Rich, you know.
But-
It's just all those years of you being a Patriot fan. That's what happens. Anyway, go on.
Yeah. To think I'm only 24 years old and I look like that.
Exactly.
It's tough.
Exactly.
Anyway, I knew of Dr. Denese. I'm not someone that-
When you made the new UltraShear, did you think of skincare as, like, a possible-
No.
No? Wait, what was the original intent for UltraShear? Food, I guess you could say.
Food and beverage.
Right.
We have a consortium where we're equal partners with Ohio State University.
Right.
Ohio State University has a College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
Right.
It's extremely well-known, extremely well-regarded. They have a 40- or 60-thousand-sq ft lab down in the basement of the college, where new equipment is brought in from manufacturers all over the country, all over the world, in fact. They do occasionally a show and tell, and we actually have a show and tell coming up on November third. I've been looking forward to this for several years, where we have an instrument at Ohio State that they're using, and they are inviting. They're. They know everybody and everybody knows them, so they're inviting some powerhouse beverage companies to come in, and it'll be a one-day seminar with some short talks and then some demonstrations on our on the equipment. This is equipment that has a place in the beverage industry for sure.
Think about all of the things that.
Are you using UltraShear for the milk at Starbucks? Is that UltraShear or is that the other technology?
We're not. No. UltraShear has not been released. Our first product.
Okay.
which is a CBD-infused product, is gonna be released this month. You asked how I was doing. You know, it's been building up. The crescendo's been building up to October, and we're on target to make our first product that's been processed with UltraShear. Again, there are two things that happen here. One is that we believe we can make products that have never really been made before because we're able to break the oil that contains that active ingredient down to a nano level and therefore make it much more available. It's more stable. It can be stable for much longer period of time. It becomes effectively water-soluble. It isn't really technically water-soluble, but effectively it's water-soluble. But most important, it becomes much more bioavailable. The science is there.
The science has been generating the data for years and years that the best way to get an active ingredient out of oil is to make it into a nano-emulsion. I have to admit that I learned all of this, 5, 6 years ago when we decided that we weren't gonna go into the business of building this instrument, this shearing instrument for DNA. We looked into the food and beverage industry, and I started learning a lot about emulsions and about emulsions that are in beverages. You think about all of the things that you have, whether it's in beverage or pharmaceuticals, and you either do it instinctively or it says on the side, "Shake well before using." Why does it say, "Shake well before using," including pharmaceuticals?
You get that little compound, and it says right there, "Shake well before using." You're shaking because it's an emulsion. It's separating out. If you don't shake it well, and if you don't mix it, you might be getting just the water part and not the drug part or not the beneficial active ingredient part. Imagine taking, if you take 250 milligrams of aspirin and you take three of them, imagine only getting 25 milligrams out of each one instead of 250. Your headache's never gonna go away.
Right.
That's what happens when you have an emulsion and it's not a nano-emulsion. You're getting a very small part of that active ingredient. As an example, CBD, 'cause we've started to learn a lot about the CBD. This is the non-psychoactive part of the cannabis plant. This is the part, can't get you high, but it's been shown to have a lot of potential of very good effects, whether it's sleeping, appetite, pain, whatever. There are a lot of people that claim that it's worked for them for X, Y, and Z. I have family members who have told me that it works for them for X, Y, and Z. CBD often doesn't work for people because most of the CBD out on the market is not a nano-emulsion. Dr. Denese-
Yep.
The thing about Dr. Denese is she's not just a brilliant businesswoman, she's a brilliant scientist. She brings science into her products. That's so different than most of the people that we run into. They're business people, and they wanna know how much can we make? How quickly can we get on the market? What's the margin we can have here? She said when I met her, "Can you really make things nano-sized? Can you really make them so they become more bioavailable?" Quite a different discussion with someone I just met than what it usually is.
That's impressive, Dr. Denese. That's all I have to say, really.
She does.
Dr. Denese, how did you learn about Rich's technology?
Oh, it was through a friend, actually.
Mm-hmm.
It was through a third party. It was a human being who introduced us. I wasn't exposed to it on the internet, for instance.
That person was smart enough to know.
Exactly. That it would be very relevant, and he was absolutely right.
Absolutely.
And-
Since that time.
I was just gonna ask. Sorry.
Since that time, the introduction, it's grown so big in my mind in terms of what we can do together. It's awesome and it's awe-inspiring. It makes me not wanna go to bed at night, or if I go to bed and get a few hours sleep, get up in the morning and get to work because we can do things that Dr.
Dr. Denese has wanted to do. She's told me for years to make things more bioavailable, to allow the benefits of. She talks about all these active ingredients, and she knows what's best for skincare, but it doesn't matter how good that active ingredient is, if it gets flushed out of the system or flushed off the skin and never gets in to apply benefit to the person.
Right.
She understands that. That's what brought us together.
Exactly. It's one of the great possibilities that Rich and I were recently contemplating was my customers are aging women, frankly. That's really most of them. Love them dearly, and we all are losing our hair as we grow older. This is really, really well-known. They have been asking me so many times, "Dr. Denese, do something about it. Give me a serum. Give me something that can prevent my age-associated hair loss." Finally, with the UltraShear technology, we could be there. We would be able to offer them something truly meaningful because especially when it comes to the scalp, these hair follicles, as they grow older, they kind of become passive. They lose their energy source. Some of the mitochondria dies out.
They are just not producing anymore, and they are not able to hold on to hair as well as they used to. Through nanotechnology, they would be able to get the right ingredients to revitalize these hair follicles and stimulate growth and the ability to be able to hold on to.
You're gonna use Rich's technology to cure baldness? Are you saying you're gonna use Rich's technology to cure baldness? I mean, is that what you're saying?
Well, not so much baldness, but age-related hair loss. If somebody's completely bald, most of the time their hair follicles are already collapsed, and they are not retrievable. When somebody is entering the stage of, "Oh, I'm losing a lot of hair," it's visible. "Dr. Denese, what do I do?" We can still step in because the hair follicles in that case are still alive. If you stimulate them, if you give them the vitamin C, retinoid, if you give them, there are certain mushroom extracts that are very stimulating, astaxanthin, various anti-inflammatories, you can revitalize the function of those. We could not-
Would that work for men also?
For men too. Men have a hormonal reason also for losing hair, so that would be an additional ingredient that they would have to get. For women, revitalizing the hair follicles would be fairly straightforward. I think that would be a really exciting possibility, and it would be really a first time when we can give something that's truly meaningful.
You guys are going after this market. I mean, are you testing it now or?
Yes. We haven't started to test it yet, but we are putting the formulation together.
We met, we signed our deal about a month ago, six weeks ago, and we've had two meetings over Zoom with my technical staff. I can't add much to that, but I enjoy it because I love the science, as you know, as being an ex-scientist. I love the science. We said, "Dr. Denese, what is it that you want the most? You're the expert here. What is it?" I said that, you know, there was a guy many years ago named Will Rogers, and Will Rogers' most famous saying was.
Got it.
I never met a man I didn't like. I said to Dr. Denese, "We've never met an active ingredient in oil we didn't like.
Got it.
We've nano-emulsified curcumin and astaxanthin, the world's most potent antioxidant. We've nano-emulsified vitamins. We've nano-emulsified retinol, which is in many cosmetics. We've nano-emulsified prednisone, because when I had a rash a couple years ago, the dermatologist gave me the prednisone and said, "Make sure that you put plenty on." I said, "Really?" He goes, "Yeah, yeah. I want you to rub it on really hard and put plenty on. Copious amounts." I knew what he was saying is that it's oil-based, and it's not gonna be absorbed well through the skin, so overapply it. Well, we've successfully nano-emulsified prednisone.
Wow.
In this case, we asked Dr. Denese what was driving her the most crazy. You know, what does she really want? She knows that the benefits of retinol and the benefits of vitamin C are clearly there, except that certainly the water-soluble vitamin C is not being absorbed at all. Even the oil or lipid solubles are not being absorbed well enough. On her list of 30 things, the top two were the vitamin C lipid-soluble construct. Make it more nano so that it can go through the skin better and also the same with retinol.
Then we said, "Well, okay, these are products that we think we can do pretty quickly and maybe even have them in products at some point next year." You know, it is really possible, but 2023. Then I asked her, "What is it that's driving you that's maybe longer term, that doesn't exist now, that you get requests for?" As she mentioned, the number one thing she said is from her customers, and she has, do you mind if I say how many?
Half.
Doctor?
Yes, the half a million approximately.
500,000 customers, yes. She's got a built-in base there.
Yes.
The thing that they're asking the most is, "What can you do about my hair loss?" You know, "Can you come up with something?" One of the things that she mentioned during that first meeting, and we decided on the second meeting, is I think that we got a winner here, fellas and people at PBI, the team. I think we got a winner because we know what should work. We also know that if you don't get it to the follicle, if you don't get it through the skin, through the scalp, it could be the best in the world, it's not gonna work. We believe that we have a method.
We have reason to believe, we have scientific reason to believe, we have anecdotal reason to believe, that we can get through skin better than anything that's been out there before. Dr. Denese knows that. We said, "Yeah, that's a winner because, let's get the material into the site where it has to be to do the benefit," and it's a win-win-win.
That's incredible. I feel bad because we have a ton of audience questions, and I think because of Dr. Denese and QVC and all that, we should give them some priority. Callie, do you mind coming back on and taking control for these questions?
Absolutely. In addition to skincare, and this question is gonna go to you, Rich, what other applications are there for nanoemulsions?
Skincare is a big market, and it wasn't high on our list until Dr. Denese called and said, "Rick, let's work together." Now it is high on our list, but the highest on our list is we know in business if there's a problem and you can solve it, you've got a winner. There is a huge problem in getting supplements, nutrients, nutraceuticals, whether it's in skincare or some other area, could be in pharmaceuticals, to be absorbed and to become bioavailable. Our first three products, we already have signed contracts, are gonna be in the area of CBD. Again, non-psychoactive part of the cannabis, of the hemp. It'll all come from hemp because there is a huge
I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to that say, "No, I've tried CBD, it doesn't work." I know why it doesn't work. Most likely why it doesn't work is because you're not getting enough of it to be bioavailable. There's a huge problem, and we have a lot of data and a lot of information, and some of it we can't talk about other than saying we have it. Some of it will become public down the road in peer-reviewed journal articles and in other places. We have a lot of data that says we can fix the problem. We can take CBD and take it from where it is probably 5%-20% bioavailable and increase that to a much higher number. That's...
Our first area's gonna be in CBD. With Dr. Denese, we have moved skincare up to a very high level. In fact, it is pretty much equally as important to us right now as CBD.
Now, may I add one more thing, Rick? You mentioned it to me earlier, that you would be able to preserve milk. For how long with your method?
Well, we got two $1 million grants. The first one was NIH to look at DNA. The second one was from the Department of Agriculture, which we're very thankful to them. They gave us through Ohio State. We applied and got almost $1 million from them to use UltraShear. What they wanted to do was take a look at dairy products, starting with milk. You know, milk, as we know, is pasteurized, which means that we get 5-10 days at most before it goes sour. It's not been cleaned of all the bacteria. It's been pasteurized. It's been brought down to a low level. But imagine if.
There is milk that you can put on the shelf, and this is heat-treated milk. There is nothing worse for proteins than heat. Heat destroys flavor and structure and everything else. They wanted to find a non-thermal way of preserving milk. We applied, we won $1 million. This is what started UltraShear. We're still talking to milk companies, and the idea is to make milk that can be put on a shelf, let it last for six months or longer, but when you take it off the shelf and you drink it tastes like fresh milk. Because the heat-treated milk does not taste like fresh milk. Some people use a little bit in their coffee, but that's all they can take. Our goal is to have a pressure-treated milk so that we reduce the bacteria.
In fact, get rid of the bacteria, put it on the shelf, and leave it there for six months and then, or longer, ship it into disaster sites. You don't have to have refrigeration.
That's-
That's a very big part.
Yeah, huge. I would say that's revolutionary just by itself. This is remarkable, to be able to the savings, the convenience, the lack of refrigeration, the ability to preserve the milk in a palatable form.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
there are quite a few questions here that are kind of all under one umbrella, and it's about using the high pressure to improve products and the profit margin because you theoretically can use less.
Yes.
How is that going to affect Dr. Denese, you know, your products?
Yes. It's a brilliant question, and comes from a businessman. It's very smart. Because I didn't think of it, but actually, I did, but I kind of brushed off your thought, but you are correct. We would be able to save vast amounts of money. The retinoid, for instance, I am paying $12,000—no, more than that. Like $13,000, $14,000 a kilo, one kilo. So if I could cut that back to one third or 10% even, it is realistic. We would be able to use a lot less. We would be able to save a lot. For me, you know, and my guiding completely blindsided principle is make it better, make it better, make it better. If we can make it cheaper, that would be excellent too. I think we can do it at the same time.
Yeah.
Keep saving. Yes, that's the bottom line.
If I can jump in.
Sure.
Add to what Dr. Denese said. It is definitely something that we believe that, and it's been shown over and over and over again, that if you make a true nano-emulsion, and we do. We think we have the best in the world right now. Not to say that somebody's not gonna sneak up on us sometime in the future, but we spent many millions of dollars and six years developing this method. We have seven issued patents. We know that we have a method to make long-term stable, effectively water-soluble, highly bioavailable nano-emulsions. When someone buys a nano-emulsion from us, it's a true nano-emulsion. I say that because there's a lot of pretenders out there.
I bought, we've bought six or seven nano-emulsion CBD in on and off of Amazon and other places, and none of them work. They all just didn't go when we put them in water. They all coagulated. They weren't nano-emulsions. You put ours in the water, it disappears. We know that it's more powerful. We know that you can use less and get the same. Someone asked me yesterday, and they said, "Okay, what's more important here? Use the same and have more in there, so maybe you get a better effect. Or use less and have the same effect as you have now, but save a lot of money." I looked at them and I said, "Actually, it's probably in the middle." You know, you can have your cake and eat it too.
There's enough difference here that you could use less, but still have a much better effect and then pass the savings on. Dr. Denese is one of the few business people in the world I've met who I believe would pass the savings on to the customer. Most of the companies would say that it just does have more money, more profit. Dr. Denese, if she used less and got a better effect still than what she has now, she would pass those savings on because that's what drives her.
Well, that is very true. For me, it's all about the visible difference that I want to create, because that's what brings loyalty, that's what builds the brand. This is really the best way. It's not advertising, it's delivering visible changes to your skin. That's the key.
Thank you.
That's my principle in the way that I build this company. Yeah.
Dr. Denese, how many of your products are currently or will be using this nanoemulsification?
Well, quite a few. The most important, the most effective product, maybe six of them, would be using these ingredients.
Okay, great.
These are my lead products. They have the greatest impact on the skin. They have the best before and after photographs.
Great. Thank you. Rick, does Dr. Denese have an exclusive on this technology, or could it and will it be available to other skincare companies as well? At the moment, we have an agreement. It's not an exclusive agreement, but I told her this week that we enjoy working with her. We're learning a lot from her. We said, we're not gonna go find another skincare company now. Maybe we decide down the road that she wants to have an exclusive and work out a deal where it's exclusive, but she doesn't have to worry about the short-term because we're learning so much from her. This is a dream come true for us.
We're a small company coming out with a brand-new technology that we think ultimately will change the world. We really believe it will change the world. There are thousands of emulsions out there in all different areas. At this point in time, we're gonna work with Dr. Denese in skincare. Even though she hasn't got one in writing, she does have, for the time being, an exclusive. We're not gonna sign a deal with another cosmetic or skincare company. We have so many other companies. I don't think a day goes by where we don't get a call from somebody in some area. It's not just in the CBD area, it's also in the supplement area and in the vitamin area. We're getting phone calls.
We've got our hands full, so we wanna work with her exclusively. Look, she's a brilliant person, a brilliant business person, a scientist, which we really enjoy. She's got 500,000 customers. She's well-known throughout the world. We would be crazy to not wanna work with her exclusively, at least certainly right now. We'd be crazy not to do that.
Thank you.
Yes. Is PBIO selling the UltraShear technology to Dr. Denese or licensing it and taking a royalty on future sales? We're what we call tolling at the moment. We set up the instrument. We will be running the sample. First of all, you have to do the testing. Fingers crossed, it works fine. She already has terrific products, but we think we can make them even better. Imagine that. Taking the, as good as they are now, imagine making them better. But that's what we think we can, and that's what she thinks we can do. If that happens for at least the next year, we'll be making the raw material here in the Boston area.
We'll be shipping it to her bottler, and her bottler will be putting it into her own cosmetics. It is basically an arm's length vendor-customer relationship, but we're gonna go beyond that because when we start talking about hair and hair restoration and having a way to keep hair from falling out, those products are gonna be products that we're gonna develop jointly. That's a different deal. That's not a vendor-customer relationship. That's a true partnership. Dr. Denese has been kind enough and multiple times to call us her partner, and that name has been thrown out so many times. I have to tell you, we are her partner and she is our partner.
It's gonna come to fruition when we talk about the hair restoration and the hair loss products, because it's her scientific prowess, her scientific mind, and our ability to put these things into nano form to make 1 + 1 = 10. When we do, we've already talked about this, we will share equally in, let's just call it the profits. We'll share equally because it'll be a joint partnership.
Yes, I am completely on board with Rich's presentation. I'm very grateful and very honored to be able to join forces with you. In fact, I have independent corroboration as to the power of the shear technology. There is a certain university, I cannot reveal what they are, very prominent academic institution. I cannot tell you the name. They studied various nano-emulsions, CBD nano-emulsions, coming from different companies, one of them was Rich's. I spoke to the professor who ran the study. He's publishing it shortly, and at that point we know who he is. He revealed that to his great dismay, Rich's was better. Rich's CBD nano-emulsion was even superior to his own, and then others were just not even in the same league. I was very pleased to hear that.
This was the time when we decided that we're going to work together. This was a wonderful independent collaboration of my gut feeling, my intuition as to that this is a very good thing.
That's great. We have time for one last, because there's just again, a few questions, many questions coming in about the hair loss market.
Yes.
I think, you know, how big is this market and when do you see this coming to market?
Wow. I would say we probably would need a year, maybe a little less. We will have to run extensive studies. We need to have good befores and afters. That takes time. We have to give it about two months to be able to see a visible change in the scalp. I would say a year, maybe a little over a year. The marketing approach is already given. The QVC, they would be eager to put this on air, and I know that could sell really a great deal of this product. That would be easier part. The market itself is vast. It has to be many $ billion. Forgive me, I didn't.
Actually, I
You probably did. Yes.
Dr. Adrienne Denese, I looked it up just before we got on the air and it says about $14 billion.
Yeah.
market and growing. It's a huge market.
Yes.
If you wanted to release something like this, who better to be your partner than Dr. Denese SkinScience? Who better to help you develop it and then to release it with 500,000 customers, most of them women, and many of them might be losing hair and looking for something. I think everyone knows by now, Dr. Denese does not release a product unless it is superb quality. It won't go out unless it's superb quality. If it's superb quality, as she says, it sells and they come back again and again. We're just delighted to.
Rick.
As a small company, it's exciting for us to work with someone like Dr. Denese.
Rick.
Thanks.
Before everyone jumps off, are you public? Is it a public company?
We are publicly traded.
What's the ticker symbol?
We're traded on the OTC, but we're on the OTCQB, which is the top 10% of the OTC or so.
What's the symbol?
Our symbol is PBIO, like pressure bio.
PBIO.
PBIO. Yes, we're publicly traded. As you know, I've started three prior publicly traded companies that were worth about $1 billion. We've done this before. I've done it before. Dr. Denese has done it before. We have two groups that I'm gonna say know what they're doing in their areas and they're coming together to make something that's gonna be super exciting.
Great.
Well, thank you everyone. Thank you for joining us. Steven or Rich, if you have any final words before we close out, now would be the time to do it. Before we go there, I just wanna point out for everyone in the audience, if you want a direct connection, everyone out there has my email address. Please email me. I'm happy to connect you to PBIO and/or any questions or if you have additional questions, I can connect you to the panel. Again, I'll turn it back over to you guys. Thank you.
Well, I just want to say thank you so much, both of you. Dr. Denese, we're honored to have you.
Thank you.
You were incredibly intelligent, and I wish you all the luck in the world in your partnership with Rick. I know you have this big sale coming up on QVC, so when should everybody tune in? When should they tune in?
Friday night between 9:00 P.M. and 11:00 P.M. Saturday and Sunday morning between 9:00 A.M. and 11:00 A.M. Tuesday also at nighttime between 9:00 P.M. and 11:00 P.M.
Super. Well, thank you. Rick, any last thoughts here?
No, I appreciate. You know, Steven, you and Callie and I talked about this potential a year ago, but it wasn't until a month or two ago that Dr. Denese and I got together and said, "Yeah, let's do it." It's come true. It's actually bigger than I thought because I wasn't even thinking about hair loss until she mentioned it in our meeting a couple of weeks ago. When I went home and I thought about it, I go, "That's our job, is to make it more penetrable into the skin, into the scalp." Wow. Her job is to make the formula that works. No, it's exciting times for us.
Yeah. Listen, congratulations on your partnership. You know, there's no more dedicated CEO than you are, Rich, so.
Thank you.
I applaud everything that you've done. Once again, Dr. Denese, thank you so much, and everybody have a great day. Really appreciate you being here with us today.
I'm honored and very happy to be here. Thank you very much for your time.
All right. Take care.
Thanks.
Great job.
Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.
Thanks, everybody.
Have a great day. Bye-bye.