A Cream From On High | UMass doc turns over skin care product to local order of monks
I don’t often feature businesses that do not make their products in Central Massachusetts, but I do make exceptions, and the folks who discovered, developed and sell Easeamine certainly warrant one of those exceptions.
First, the product itself is fascinating. Easeamine is a skin cream developed by University of Massachusetts Medical School's Dr. James Dobson. Dobson and his family are also part of the Teresian Carmelite family, a religious order with a monastery in Millbury.
The building blocks of Easeamine were developed by Dobson, who was studying heart damage in patients who have suffered a heart attack or other traumatic coronary episode.
But Dobson stumbled upon how the same compounds, called adenazine and which the body produces naturally, affect skin cells, and found that when used as a cream, it has a desirable effect on the skin.
Rather than turning the skin cream into a personal fortune, Dobson got the Teresian Carmelites an exclusive license, which UMass owns, to the product.
And it came at a perfect time.
Spiritual Strife
Brother Dennis-Anthony Wyrzykowski, the head of the Carmelite’s monastery in Millbury, explained that the order was facing some serious financial difficulties just a few years ago.
“We were living in Worcester, and financially, we were struggling,” he said. The order bought a piece of land in Paxton that is now being developed as a large wind farm, but the Carmelites donate 75 percent of the revenue generated by that land to the poor.
“We were still in a bind,” Wyrzkowski said. “We tried to get into making beer, and four days before closing, our deal (with Trappist monks in Belgium) fell through.”
It was just days after that disappointment that Wyrzkowski began negotiations with Dobson.
“No one had licensed the technology, so we got the exclusive license, and we selected people to help walk us through this,” he said.
But the Carmelites couldn’t afford to actually hire anyone. Fortunately, Boston law firm Edwards Angel agreed to work for the Carmelites on a pro bono basis and two other Carmelite community members, Paul Menard, the owner of Menard’s Auto Body in West Boylston, and Tim Carelli, a sales executive with Travers Printing in Gardner, stepped up to help.
Menard is now the president of Carmelite Works, the order’s for-profit business entity. Carelli acts as a sales executive, and Wyrzkowski is what in any for-profit firm would be considered the COO.
And it seems as if the stuff really works.
“It went from being tiny to global overnight,” Wyrzkowski said. It’s so good, in fact, that the Carmelites already have patent infringement cases in the works against large “cosmeseutical” companies.
For now, the Carmelites sell Easeamine only online. It costs about $65 per tube, which I’m told is a bargain compared to anything that can claim as much effectiveness.
The proceeds from sales of the cream, which is made on a contract basis by a firm with facilities in New Jersey and Texas, go toward the Teresian Carmelites’ mission of serving the “poor and marginalized.” And the order also gives generously to area nonprofits, many focused on education of the less fortunate.
Recently, the Carmelites began sending $10 from the sale of each tube to Haiti relief efforts.
“We went from mixing the product at a local compounding center to now dealing with a commercial manufacturer. It’s a business, but it’s a monastery, and you learn to go with that, and it works out,” Carelli said.
Got news for our Industrial Strength column? E-mail WBJ Managing Editor Matthew L. Brown at mbrown@wbjournal.com.
Watch as Brother Dennis and Paul Menard describe how Easeamine was created and how it's sold:
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