04 July 2026
Discover how childhood travels with her father, scientific curiosity, and years of research inspired founder Ulli Haslacher to invent Climate-Smart® Skincare.
"Climate changes everything. We have to adapt."
Those are the words I remember hearing from my father throughout my childhood.
At the time, I thought he was talking about industrial coatings.
I never imagined those words would one day inspire the world's first patented Climate-Smart® Skincare.
It All Began with My Father
People often ask me where the idea for Pour Moi came from.
Most assume it started in a laboratory.
It didn't.
It began many decades before skincare ever entered my life.
I grew up in Austria, where my father, Robert Strouhal, was one of Europe's early pioneers in powder coating. Beginning in the late 1960s, he helped introduce and advance what was then a revolutionary coating technology across Europe. As General Manager of TIGER Coatings, he dedicated his career to researching, educating, and expanding the use of powder coating throughout Europe, eventually becoming one of the industry's most respected leaders and serving as President of CEPE's Powder Coating Sector, the European organization representing the coatings industry.
This was long before the internet.
Knowledge wasn't shared through websites or social media. It spread because experts traveled, exchanged ideas, published technical papers, spoke at conferences, and worked together to solve problems. My father devoted his life to doing exactly that, helping shape an industry whose impact is still felt today.
As a family, we traveled the world with him.
While many children remember family vacations, I remember watching my father study, observe, and teach.
Whether we were in humid coastal regions, dry deserts, snowy mountains, busy cities, or high-altitude environments, he was always studying how climate affected performance.
Heat.
Humidity.
Salt air.
Altitude.
Pollution.
UV exposure.
Every environment created different challenges.
Every challenge required a different solution.
Without realizing it, I was learning how innovators think.
My father taught me that the environment isn't simply the backdrop.
It is one of the most important variables.
Those lessons would stay with me forever.
A Question No One Could Answer
Years later, I moved to the United States and built my career in the beauty and wellness industry.
I had the privilege of working alongside some of the most respected names in skincare, including renowned Beverly Hills dermatologist Dr. Harold Lancer, as well as leading beauty brands and physicians.
I was surrounded by experts.
Yet I had a question no one could answer.
No matter where I traveled, my skin changed.
The products I loved in California suddenly weren't enough in Colorado.
Products that felt perfect in Arizona became too rich in Florida.
Cold climates left my skin tight.
Dry climates dehydrated it.
Humid climates changed everything again.
I tried everything.
Prescription skincare.
Luxury skincare.
Products for dry skin.
Products for oily skin.
Nothing explained why my skin could look healthy one week and completely different the next simply because I had traveled.
The more I searched for answers, the more convinced I became that something was missing.
So I started keeping a journal.
Every trip.
Every city.
Every season.
Every climate.
I carefully documented how my skin responded.
I wasn't trying to invent anything.
I simply wanted to understand why.
Looking back, that journal became the first research notebook for what would eventually become Pour Moi.
A few years later, another chapter of my life would change everything.
I had the privilege of co-founding a breast health awareness company with my dear friend Olivia Newton-John—the beloved Grease actress, Grammy Award-winning singer, and passionate cancer advocate.
Together, we traveled extensively across the United States and around the world, promoting breast health, encouraging early detection, and raising funds for cancer awareness.
At one of the cancer research symposia we attended, researchers presented some of the newest findings related to skin and skin cancer.
Among them were early published studies suggesting that the skin barrier itself changes and functions differently under different environmental conditions.
The moment I saw that research, everything clicked.
Instantly, I was transported back to my childhood.
I could hear my father's voice.
"Climate changes everything. We have to adapt."
Suddenly, I realized that what he had spent his career demonstrating with industrial materials was also true for our skin.
It wasn't just my skin that was changing.
It was everyone's.
Climate doesn't simply change how skin feels.
Climate changes how skin functions.
In that moment, I knew the beauty industry had been asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking,
"What's the best moisturizer for dry skin?"
We should have been asking,
"What does skin need in this environment?"
That single realization became the beginning of Pour Moi.
Building Something That Didn't Exist
If climate changes the way skin functions, then skincare should adapt.
That sounds obvious today.
Fifteen years ago, it wasn't.
Working alongside scientists at one of France's leading skincare laboratories, we didn't set out to create another moisturizer for dry skin or another cream for oily skin.
Those products already existed.
I wanted to solve a problem no one else was trying to solve.
Starting with a blank sheet of paper, we spent more than a decade engineering adaptive, biomimetic formulations that could work together as an integrated system. Each formulation was designed to be compatible with the others, allowing them to be intelligently rotated as environmental conditions change while continuously supporting the skin's barrier function.
It proved far more difficult than creating a traditional moisturizer.
Every formula had to respond to the changing needs of the skin barrier as climate changed.
Thousands of ingredients were evaluated.
Countless formulations were created and tested.
Hundreds were rejected.
Years of research eventually resulted in the world's first patented Climate-Smart® Skincare technology.
Today, Pour Moi holds multiple international patents protecting this new approach to skincare. Our innovations have been recognized by TIME and Popular Science as Innovations of the Year, and our patented Climate-Smart® technology is published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, making the science behind our invention part of the permanent scientific record.
Even more rewarding is seeing how dermatological research has evolved.
More than twenty years after I first encountered those early studies, research from leading institutions around the world continues to confirm what inspired our work from the beginning: climate profoundly influences skin barrier function, hydration, inflammation, sensitivity, and aging.
Today, the science has caught up with what first inspired Pour Moi more than a decade ago.
Science with a Purpose
I've always believed science should solve real problems.
Every innovation at Pour Moi begins with a simple question.
How do we help skin adapt instead of simply react?
How do we strengthen the skin barrier rather than temporarily masking dryness?
How do we help people protect their skin from today's environmental challenges—from changing climates to increasing pollution and wildfire smoke?
Those questions continue to guide everything we do.
Our mission has never been to create more skincare.
It's been to create smarter skincare.
Honoring My Father's Legacy
Looking back, I realize that Climate-Smart® Skincare is, in many ways, a continuation of my father's way of thinking.
When I pursued patents for this technology, I was asked to explain how I arrived at an idea no one in the skincare industry had pursued before.
The answer wasn't found in cosmetics alone.
It began decades earlier, traveling beside a man whose life's work was understanding how different environments affect performance.
He studied industrial materials.
I study skin.
Different industries.
The same question.
How does the environment change performance?
My father helped advance an industry by teaching engineers and manufacturers to think differently about the world around them.
My hope is that Climate-Smart® Skincare will inspire the beauty industry to do the same.
This story is my way of honoring my father—an innovator, educator, pioneer, and visionary whose contributions helped shape an industry before the digital age preserved every achievement.
His legacy lives on every day at Pour Moi.
Looking Forward
When I introduced Climate-Smart® Skincare, many people thought the idea was too different.
Today, climate has become one of the biggest conversations in dermatology and skin science.
Researchers around the world are studying how environmental conditions influence skin health, barrier function, sensitivity, and aging—confirming what inspired my journey years ago.
Looking back, I'm grateful I trusted my curiosity.
One childhood spent traveling the world became one question.
One question became years of observations.
Those observations became scientific research.
That research became patented technology.
And that technology became a company dedicated to helping people care for their skin in an entirely new way.
Because your skin doesn't live in a laboratory.
It lives in the real world.
And your skincare should be smart enough to live there, too.
Dedicated to my father, Robert Strouhal. You taught me to observe before I searched for answers. You taught me that every environment creates different challenges—and the greatest innovations adapt. Climate-Smart Skincare is, in many ways, your legacy living on through mine. Thank you for giving me the curiosity to see the world differently.
Continue Reading:
Decoding Climate Adaptive Skincare for High-Humidity Summers
Redefining Dry Skin: Face Moisturizer for Low Humidity Days
The Science of Climate-Smart Skincare
