Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica (Formula Botanica)

This year Lorraine and Gemma attended the In-Cosmetics Global 2018 exhibition in Amsterdam. In-Cosmetics is now in its 27^th year and is billed as the leading event for personal care ingredients. The exhibition aims to bring together ingredients suppliers with product manufacturers with a focus on networking and building relationships.

With around 780 exhibitors and 9000 visitors, to say that In-Cosmetics was jam-packed, busy and a tad overwhelming at times would be an understatement. However, the weather in Amsterdam was glorious, Lorraine and Gemma got to hang out and speak to loads of people in the industry and most importantly we got to see our students and graduates and hear what they had to say about their experiences at In-Cosmetics.

The event is typically dominated by the mainstream cosmetics industry with little focus on the green and natural beauty movement, but we were pleasantly surprised at what we learnt during our two days at In-Cosmetics.

Lorraine came up with the idea of creating a trend report summarising what we saw at the In-Cosmetics exhibition and how these trends tie into what we are doing with the green beauty industry so obviously Gemma thought ‘let’s do a podcast about it’. In this podcast you will learn about the top ten trends that we saw at In-Cosmetics Global exhibition.

In this podcast you will learn:

1. Lorraine & Gemma's top 10 beauty trends for 2018 (and beyond), based on what's happening in the mainstream cosmetics industry, as well as our discussions with Mintel.
2. How indie beauty brands can use this information to storm ahead in the industry by making their formulations with natural ingredients while still hitting all the latest trends.
3. Our thoughts on In-Cosmetics Global 2018 in Amsterdam and why you should attend, if you're interested in where the green beauty industry is headed.

Our Top 10 Beauty Trends for 2018:

1. The Unicorn trend is influencing ingredients suppliers to design ingredients that work for people wanting to formulate with glittery, sparkly and holographic style products.
2. Gels are becoming a massive formulation trend. There were so many different sorts of gels at In-Cosmetics, such as gel emulsions and gel balms. Gels can be hard to make for natural formulators but they are in high demand and were a major trend.
3. Skin yoghurts such as after-sun, cooling and moisturising yoghurts were a massive theme and we saw many examples of interesting and innovative formulations based on the concept of a yoghurt for the skin.
4. The continued search for the elusive, natural, botanical extract: there were loads and loads of botanical extracts around with a key trend being on locally sourced botanical extracts. These were all touted as the new ‘wow’ ingredients and we provide plenty of examples in the podcast.
5. Sustainability and how ingredients suppliers are keen to embrace the concept in their business but in reality, they could not back up their claims of sustainability in a real way. We feel that indie brands are really leading the way in this area.
6. Athleisure is taking off as the cosmetics industry is copying what's happening in wellness trends. We see a great opportunity to develop some very innovative niches for indie brands using the Athleisure trend.
7. Genderless products and ranges are on the rise and we saw numerous ranges formulating and designing ranges that are not driven by the rigid gender binaries but embrace the concept of gender fluidity.
8. Anti-blue light pollution: the market is developing actives that can cater for anti-blue light pollution and there are some great suppliers who are designing ingredients for this trend which is getting bigger and is here to stay.
9. DIY skincare: Consumers are driving the desire for beauty regimes that can be personalized and put together by the consumer to address unique individual skincare needs.
10. Skin microbiome: This is a hot topic in the industry right now and Mintel had it listed as a key trend. There are brands that are formulating skincare that is sensitive to the skin microbiome.

The brands, speakers and blog posts we refer to throughout this podcast can be found here:

• Honest Beauty Talks - DIY Unicorn Balm
• Herbal Earth
• Malee Natural Science
• The Soap Co
• Anti-pollution skincare
• Zero-waste beauty
• Content Beauty & Wellbeing
• Old Faithful

We hope you enjoyed our latest podcast on the top 10 beauty trends for 2018 (and beyond), based on our recent visit to In-Cosmetics Global 2018 in Amsterdam. If you have any feedback or suggestions for us please don’t hesitate to get in contact.

Please share, subscribe and review on iTunes

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Did you know that the age of minimalist skincare had dawned in the beauty market? But is our desire to do more for our skin with less really filtering down to our habits as beauty consumers? Can we resist the allure of new products with their promises and claims?

Just ask yourself how many beauty products are on your bathroom shelves? If you've 16 and counting then you are in good company as that is the average number of beauty products women use daily. A glance at the social media 'shelfies' shows just how much we are in love with having a range of cosmetics. But, there are two sides to the story of how we consume beauty products.

The beauty industry is one of the world's most unsustainable as its business model is driven by its need to constantly bring new products to market. As beauty consumers we therefore need to take a long hard look at whether we need a latest, new, improved or wonder product. Perhaps one product can multitask and save us the need for more. And we need to ask if the products we use are truly essential for our skin health and our well being?

In this episode, host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier, a passionate advocate of less is more and a biologist and chartered environmentalist, discusses with colleague Ana Green how both the beauty industry and beauty consumers must share responsibility for making the industry more sustainable.

From our purchasing habits and our hoarding of products to how the industry is geared for profit, this Green Beauty Conversation explores the meaning of 'essential' in beauty consumerism today.

In this episode on minimalist skincare, you will hear:

• About the difference between essential, functional, pleasurable and minimalist skincare;
• How essential means different things to different people and that one person's 'essential' may be irrelevant to another beauty consumer so there can be no standard defining essential;
• How consumers have difficulty navigating the swathes of new beauty products with their new ingredients and efficacy claims;
• That while the beauty industry is looking at packaging and recycling in its quest to be more sustainable, it has largely refused to address its age-old business model which requires it to make more and encourage consumers to buy more, thereby depleting world resources; and how
• Big beauty brands should be encouraged to share their findings in areas such as sustainable packaging with smaller brands and indie beauty so the gains made for the environment are multiplied.

Key take-outs include:

• Don't be led into thinking that affordably priced, single ingredient skincare is necessarily the ideal. You may end up buying more low-priced, single focus products.
• The layering of multiple, single focus skincare products, especially those not designed to work together, can have a detrimental effect on the skin, impairing its natural barrier. Over exfoliation and damage from over use of Retinol are two examples often cited on social media these days.
• Beauty consumers should aim to reduce consumption by buying fewer, longer-lasting products and choosing multipurpose products with fewer (essential) ingredients and by ensuring they finish a product before buying more. Hoarding shelfies of product should not be an option.
• Minimalist skincare habits start at home. Consumers need to think mindfully about what they really need and change their cosmetic usage and pare back their needs well before they get to the point of purchase (when shiny new products are there to tempt them!).

Further Reading

In the podcast, Loraine mentioned two industry report that make interesting further reading on the beauty industry, its business model and sustainability: The Ecodesign Research by L’Oréal and the British Beauty Council, Courage to Change report

What if the beauty industry could be completely sustainable?

This week on Green Beauty Conversations, we explore the circular biorefinery model, a revolutionary approach that's redefining how cosmetic ingredients are sourced and utilised.

Join Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist and CEO of Formula Botanica, as she delves into the innovative practices of ingredient suppliers turning raw materials into zero-waste treasures. Discover how this model not only minimises waste but also maximises the potential of every plant, setting new standards for eco-friendly beauty. 

Tune in to learn how you can support brands leading the way in sustainable beauty.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

When was the last time you read a beauty brand’s sustainability report? If your answer is "never," you’re not alone.

Sustainability reports are often buried on company websites, obscured by glossy marketing materials that feel more like a promotional brochure than a genuine disclosure of progress.

But what if you could look behind the curtain and examine what these brands are really doing for the planet? Now you can.

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, host Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist, and CEO of Formula Botanica, dives deep into the truth behind beauty brand sustainability reports. Tune in now.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

With the sheer number of hair and beauty trade shows around the globe these days, you might feel intimidated by the prospect of exhibiting at one, especially if you're new to the beauty industry. You know the score; you sign up for the details months in advance but when the time comes, you feel you either can't afford it or that your business isn't at the right stage to benefit from attending.

Beautypreneurs face overwhelm in terms of the sheer effort and financial outlay required to get prepared and ready to make the most of trade shows. But, as you'll find out in this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, there are innumerable spin-off benefits that go way beyond making sales.

Our guest Paula Francis is co-founder, along with her mother Cherry, of SuperFoodLx, a vegan, natural hair and skincare brand offering personal care products as well as nutritional supplements. Podcast host Gemma met Paula earlier this year at a fair, as it happens; Beauty Exchange organised by Enterprise Nation.

Paula's professionalism in managing her brand at the show prompted us to find out more about how beauty brands  make the most of these events and, in particular, learn her own secrets for success. We guarantee this is an episode no beauty entrepreneur should miss.  

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Why starting small by taking a stand at a local farmers' market or school fair can be a great way to gain confidence and not break the bank;
• The invaluable customer and market research you gain into your products by doing live, face-to-face beauty trade shows;
• The networking opportunities in the spirit of cooperation - rather than competition - that trade fairs foster among new beauty brands;
• How beauty trade shows help you develop fast the skills you need in retail and sales to build a business; and
• How those first customers at beauty shows can turn into repeat business and help boost online sales.

Paula however doesn't stop at discussing trade shows. She offers a wealth of insights into starting a beauty brand.

The key takeouts of this episode on the value of attending beauty trade shows:

• Exhibitions and shows put you out there as a new beautypreneur and get you to scrutinise yourself and work out where your strengths lie. These situations put pressure on you and can be great self learning opportunities.
• Be personal in your approach to customers but don't take their honest feedback personally; they are seeing you as a brand, not a founder. Listen to their comments carefully.
• Use this customer feedback to drive your business forwards and to work out where and how to improve, for example, product formulas or branding.
• Meet, greet and treat your last trade show customer of the day as you would the first. Remember, they are finding out about you for the first time even if you've been on your feet saying the same thing for 6 hours.
• Research and ask fellow entrepreneurs which shows worked for them. But, don't see any beauty trade show as a complete waste of time or cash as there are lessons to learn and valuable feedback to gain from almost every face-to-face event.

Find out more about SuperFoodsLx here:

SuperFoodLx website.
SuperFoodLx on Instagram.
SuperFoodLx on Facebook.
SuperFoodLx on Twitter.
SuperFoodLx on Pinterest.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Sustainable beauty can seem a mission impossible. Whether appraoching it as a beauty consumer or indie beauty brand, we can get dragged into a complex and depressing world of carbon emissions and waste recycling and despair that we can ever do the right thing for the planet.

But, as we heard in the previous episode with Anisha Gupta of Bluebird Climate, sustainable beauty can be accessible to all and need not be costly, complex nor confusing. Bluebird's fascinating impact assessment tool for beauty brands and rather cool - yes, we can apply that word to sustainability - website widget puts a positive spin on the matter.

In this Green Beauty Opinion episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier explains the many reasons we have to be positive about embracing sustainable beauty. Let's call this episode a look on the bright side of the future of beauty. Forgot about overwhelm and start being overjoyed that we live in the era that will see sustainability go mainstream.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website. 

What is CBD skincare? If we'd told you even a year or two ago that CBD skincare is related to cannabis, it's likely to have triggered an automatic association with scheduled drugs. However, today, certain bio-active compounds, or cannabinoids, found within both cannabis and its relative hemp are being used not only in medicine but also far more recently as legitimate, active ingredients in high-performance skincare.

In brief, cannabis itself is scheduled as an illegal drug in most western countries although as recently as October 2018, it was legalised in Canada for recreational use. It has hit the news in the UK in particular this autumn with the case of a boy with epilepsy who was denied legal use of cannabis oil to ease his symptoms. It seems timely then to look into the rising trend of cannabinoids in skincare formulations.

The main psychoactive part of cannabis is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is one of just under 500 known compounds in the plant, including at least 65 other cannabinoids. Another group of cannabinoids however do not contain the psychoactive elements; these are cannabidiol (CBD) and it is these compounds that have been subject to cosmetic science research for their anti-ageing and other beneficial properties.

The journey of how cannabinoids came to be regarded as botanical compounds of huge interest to the beauty industry is of course a complex one. To help unpack the virtues of hemp cannabinoids in CBD skincare, we invited Samir Juneja of CBD of London, the UK's first luxury CBD skincare brand to Green Beauty Conversations.

Launched early in 2018, CBD of London is pioneering CBD ingredients in luxury skincare and has had coverage in major UK magazines such as Tatler, GQ and Vogue. But, as Samir says, there's a lot of education on CBD skincare to do yet for high street retailers to engage. This is why we invited CBD of London to the podcast to spread the true information on CBD skincare.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• The science behind CBD and its differences from THC, the psychoactive cannabinoid compounds;
• How the human body has its own cannabinoids, which act as receptors to topically-applied CBD;
• The powerful benefits of CBD in anti-ageing, anti-pollution and anti-inflammatory cosmetic products;
• How CBD is extracted from hemp and the pros of certain methods of extraction, like super-critical CO2; and
• Why CBD, while a trending new ingredient, is still misunderstood.

Key take-outs from this episode include:

• It can take time to build a brand using new, unknown ingredients, especially those with connotations or a legacy of use in other ways. However, pioneering does bring its rewards as you have near-on first-mover advantage;
• Make time to educate your audiences and customers on the power of your ingredients, pointing out the positives and benefits; take every opportunity to speak to them using blog posts and social media to the maximum;
• Make the science behind your ingredients accessible and understandable. Remember people can research online but also find misinformation, so be transparent and helpful.
• Think carefully about your branding and brand positioning, as these are key to giving the right impression of your product offer. CBD overcame the cannabis connotations by creating a visually-appealing and high-end offer communicated consistently across its website, packaging and other collateral.

Find out more about CBD of London, its story and about CBD skincare science here:

CBD of London website.
CBD of London on Instagram.
CBD of London on Facebook.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

It seems that barely a week goes by without beauty industry headlines covering the latest Asian beauty trends or the meteoric growth of the cosmetics' spending in Asia, including also the rise of the natural beauty market. Cosmetics Business commented in early 2019 that online beauty sales were set to help Asia-Pacific outpace North America as global cosmetics' leader: "Growing e-commerce and online shopping will shift the country leading the biggest beauty spends and change the nation of 'beauty obsessed". While Cosmetics Design Asia noted that the demand for premium and prestige global beauty brands, particularly in China, is continuing apace in line with the growth of disposable income and the rise of a middle class traveling internationally.

These headlines tend to focus on the success of mainstream, premium global cosmetics' giants like the Estee Lauders and L'Oréals of this world, but there are signs that the natural beauty market in Asia is gaining foothold.

Our guest in this episode of Green Beauty Conversations gives us fascinating insider insights into the natural cosmetics' market in Asia and dispels the myth that the business opportunities are only for large multinational brands.

Allie Rooke studied Chinese at university and then spent nearly a decade living and working in Asia for luxury brands Chanel, L'Oréal and Burberry before setting up her consultancy Clean Beauty Asia. Allie focuses on helping natural and indie beauty brands gain the know-how, confidence, strategies and cultural savviness to grasp the business opportunities this region offers. Her key message is not to be scared of setting your sights on selling in the Asian beauty market.

"Don’t be scared of Asia and especially don't feel it’s all about big brands. Don't be put off because they are not English-speaking markets. There is absolutely an indie beauty market in Asia Pacific, and when a new beauty idea, trend or product does grow, it can grow fast and explode."

If you have aspirations to retail your beauty brand in Asia, our interview with Allie will give you a good feel for what's required to succeed in the dynamic, vast and diverse beauty markets the region offers; and importantly, what is going on behind those headlines.

In this episode on the natural beauty market in Asia, you'll hear about:

• The diversity of markets and consumers across the Asia-Pacific region and how each market lends itself to different brand propositions and positioning. For example, China offers huge potential to prestige brand, while Singapore and Taiwan are more price sensitive;
• Why distributors in the region are key brand allies and can be powerful advocates for your brand but why you need to be actively involved in brand building in local Asian markets as well;
• The importance of being established and sufficiently known in your own home markets before expecting to make it in Asia. Typically, Asian consumers like to check out a new brand online and feel they can trust it, even if they are keen to embrace the new experiences and products international indie beauty brands can offer;
• Why you need to understand the social media scene in your chosen Asian market as both beauty brands and influencers are big on key Asian platforms and run sophisticated set-ups. Again, start out getting known on social media in your home markets as Asian consumers comb these platforms for 'the next big thing' as well.

Key take-outs include:

• Asian consumers are often more interested in the safety of a product than whether it's sustainable or not. They need the information to judge whether they trust a new brand, and this is all the more so for indie, natural brands. Ensure transparency in all your communcations, media collateral, marketing and social media aimed at Asian markets.
• Don't leap into signing an exclusive distributorship that spans several Asian countries. The region's diversity means that few distributors will truly have the ability to support your brand sufficiently in multiple markets.
• You can sell to Chinese consumers and avoid the issue of animal testing. Hong Kong's Freeport status offers one route to gaining access to Chinese customers who flock to the autonomous territory which is a major shopping destination. In addition, you can sell online to the Chinese mainland using fulfillment warehouses in Hong Kong.
• To get to know more about Asia-Pacific customers and consumer habits, especially those of the Chinese, start by understanding Asian consumer behaviour in your home market. See if you can find out where, for example, Chinese tourists like to shop and what they seek out. Even a local Chinese community can be an ambassador for your products in Asian markets.

Find out more about Clean Beauty Asia
Allie’s Get Ready for Asia Masterclass is a comprehensive 9-module course. It is designed to provide all you need to know to get your Asia business dreams off the ground. It will save you hours of research and equip you for more effective and powerful conversations with potential distributors, retailers and other partners - you want to be fully prepared to avoid pitfalls. Use this special code ASIAN-SUCCESS to claim 15% off the Get Ready for Asia Masterclass if you sign up before the 20th of September, subject to availability of places.

Clean Beauty Asia website.
Clean Beauty Asia on Facebook.
Clean Beauty Asia on Instagram.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on: Facebook. Twitter; and on Instagram.

We recently came across a New York Times article on the risks of making 100% natural claims in food and beauty. The article in question drew attention to the fact that there has been a spate of lawsuits against natural and organic skincare brands and retailers (particularly in the US).

These lawsuits came about largely as a result of there being no legal definition of the word natural.  They specifically targeted brands who made claims about being 100% natural, all natural or having ‘all-natural ingredients’.

The reason why we found this topic so thought-provoking, is because it showcases how much confusion there is around the term natural and the problems it causes in the green beauty sector. We discussed this topic in our podcast on What does natural skincare mean? and addressed the fact that the definition of natural can take on very different meanings depending on who you talk to.

This confusion and lack of clarity over the word natural is ripe for exploitation as well as misrepresentation. Now imagine expanding that term further to include 'all-natural' or 100% natural, and you see why so many consumers are confused.

In this podcast you will learn:

1. What the recent spate of lawsuits against natural brands and retailers could mean for the green beauty industry moving forward.
2. Some examples of recent lawsuits and what the issues were with their claims.
3. Why some of the 100% natural claims made by natural skincare brands are problematic

Key takeaways:

1. Recent lawsuits that targeted brands for using synthetic preservatives are fuelling fear around the safe use of preservatives.
2. Always make sure you examine the marketing terminology you are using when you sell your products.
3. Before you start selling or marketing, define what natural means to you.
4. Some law firms are ‘robo-filing’ almost identical lawsuits, which may start to spill over to the green beauty sector.

We felt that it was important to openly discuss this issue within our community and talk about what steps a green beauty brand can take to protect its business. We have seen lawsuits start to spill over from the food industry into the natural beauty industry, so we feel this is an important topic that indie formulators need to discuss openly and honestly.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few misnomers and myths that circulate within the green beauty sector (Listen to: Are you looking for chemical-free cosmetics?). It is important for us as a community to work at questioning what they are, to determine if they are misleading and to assess if they open up the industry to further litigation.

We hope that you find this episode interesting and thought provoking and please do get in touch if you have any feedback.

Please share, subscribe and review on iTunes

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Climate neutral is one of the hottest trending terms in the beauty industry at the moment.

But, claiming carbon or climate neutrality is a massive undertaking which is why beauty brands that are investing in ways to reduce their carbon footprint tend to work on offsetting instead.

When we came across a non-profit entity set up to help companies devise a road map to become climate neutral, we were enthusiastic about its mission but also sceptical about how this would be possible.

At Formula Botanica, we praise any efforts indie beauty brands take to incorporate sustainability into their business. But what does it mean to become climate neutral? What's involved? And how do you know a brand is doing the right thing?

To shed light on carbon neutrality and its application to the beauty business, podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier spoke to Austin Whitman, CEO of non-profit Climate Neutral.

Founded in 2019, Climate Neutral is a new certification scheme helping businesses in every sector become certified to its standards.

With Lorraine a chartered environmentalist and biologist, this episode of Green Beauty Conversations drills right down into the grey areas about how we measure our carbon footprint and asks how small, indie beauty brands can hope to make sense of it.

This episode demystifies carbon footprints and inspires beauty brands of whatever size or stage in business to start their own journeys to climate neutrality.

Our guest in this episode is Dr Terence Chung, visionary co-founder of FRUU Cosmetics, which is a company dedicated to turning sustainable ingredients, particularly “wonky fruits” or byproducts from the juicing and agricultural industries, into natural cosmetics.

In conversation with Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier, Terence not only shares the remarkable journey of FRUU, but also provides valuable insights into the company’s total commitment to sustainability.

In this episode, we unravel the complexities and triumphs of incorporating unconventional ingredients into cosmetics, and gain a deep understanding of the challenges that accompany this innovative approach. Join us for an insightful conversation that promises to unveil the hidden potential within these often underestimated ingredients, promising a paradigm shift in the way we perceive beauty and sustainability.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Knowing how to price your skincare products is one of the most important factors in getting a viable beauty business off the ground. You're passionate about natural skincare formulation, but are you guilty of shirking the numbers? It's all too easy to get our heads in the pot enjoying making skincare but forget the nuts and bolts of running and growing a business, such as profit, retail and wholesale margins.

Spreadsheets not just formulae sheets should be your number one priority once you've decided to make a serious business out of your skincare products.

To help talk you through the numbers and how to factor enough wiggle room into your margins, we welcome a familiar face in the skincare business world, Melinda Coss. A several times entrepreneur and pioneer in the natural beauty industry, and experienced skincare business mentor, Melinda walks us through the most important things to think about in pricing skincare products. She takes us from working out the unit cost of products to the percentages retailers and distributors might expect and which you have to factor in.

We don't speak accounting jargon but we do recommend hitting replay so you can take down notes as Melinda packs in a lot of advice for new skincare entrepreneurs. This episode is a goldmine if you're currently doing back of the envelope or worse, finger in the wind accounting in working out how to price your skincare products.

So get your notebook open, and dust off your ability to do percentages. However, don't worry as you're in good company; Melinda has run and sold several successful businesses and says that with some help, savvy and willingness to learn, the number crunching can become second nature.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why working out your reasons for wanting to run a skincare business are key to understanding what profits you wish to make, or, simply put, why your mindset makes your market;
• How your branding and your brand's positioning in the market are critical to determining how to price your products at a level that meets consumer expectations;
• Why natural and organic skincare is rarely cheap;
• How a 'time and motion' analysis of every cost aspects of your activities in producing products will give you the insights on which to base pricing; and
• Find out how and when it makes sense to run discounts and other incentives like 'buy one, get on free', or to offer free shipping.

Melinda doesn't talk in abstract terms. She runs through some ballpark percentages that you should be aiming for when working out how to price skincare products and gives examples of other key facts and figures you need to know to run a business.

Key takeouts about how to price your skincare products include:

• Take time to work out what you wish or need to earn from your business in its first year. On that basis, you can make the financial and production forecasts required;
• Work out in minute detail your unit costs, not forgetting to factor in your hourly rate and everything relating to packaging down to the sellotape!
• Then, add on 70% and you'll arrive at your base trade costs. After that, add on 7% for contingencies so you ensure you have some leeway for costs you've not envisaged up front; and
• Remember that your figures are your most important tool. Business is about making money whatever the passion that lies behind it.

More on Melinda Coss

Find out more about Melinda Coss's Ultimate Skincare Business Masterclass, a six-month programme which starts in January 2019. It covers not only the financial aspects of your skincare business, but also takes you through an intensive training programme to get your business dream from paper to reality. Use the Formula Botanica affiliate link entering the code Hello Success to claim £500 off the Skincare Group Masterclass if you book before the 6th of November, subject to availability of places.

Melinda Coss website.
Melinda Coss Skincare Mastermind on Facebook.
Melinda Coss on Twitter.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

We dive into the amazing and inspiring journey of Formula Botanica graduate Debbie Alger, who is the founder and lead skincare formulator of Canada-based skincare company Birch Babe. Her story is one of the most extraordinary we’ve come across of a hobbyist formulator turned professional beauty entrepreneur.

Debbie’s passion for clean beauty and sustainable practices led her to embark on a 6-month solo hike from Patagonia to Chile, ultimately inspiring the creation of Birch Babe.

From humble beginnings as a DIY formulator, Debbie, with the help of her daughters, has transformed Birch Babe into a thriving natural skincare company offering over 50 products.

Join us as we explore her entrepreneurial journey, which she embarked on in her 60s, and the key lessons she learned along the way.

Want to feel inspired? You will be. Settle in for today’s interview with Debbie from Birch Babe.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

What if you could turn your passion into a thriving business and create a career you truly love? That’s exactly what Anna Boiardi, founder of AnnaB Cosmetics did.

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist, and CEO of Formula Botanica welcomes Anna Boiardi, founder of Italian natural skincare brand AnnaB Cosmetics.

Anna shares her remarkable journey from crime journalist to indie beauty entrepreneur. She opens up about starting her brand from the ground up, the challenges she faced along the way, and how staying true to her values became the cornerstone of her success.

If you’ve ever wondered how to turn your passion into a business, this episode is for you!

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

In our last episode, host Lorraine Dallmeier had a fascinating discussion with Joel Tasche, Founder of CleanHub, on the beauty industry’s sustainability challenges, in particular its commitment to reducing its reliance on plastic, which as we know, has a huge carbon footprint.

Building on that conversation, today’s episode takes a close look into a groundbreaking report in late 2023 by the Carbon Trust, provocatively titled “Greenhouse Gloss – Is the beauty industry’s commitment to tackling climate change more than skin deep?” If you missed Lorraine's conversation with Joel Tasche, be sure to catch up, as it sets the stage for her exploration in this Green Beauty Opinion of the beauty industry’s damning environmental impact.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Imagine a beauty brand that transforms lives from the ground up.

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine Dallmeier sits down with Rahama Wright, the visionary founder of Shea Yeleen.

Discover how this innovative brand is dedicated to social impact and sustainability by creating fair-wage jobs for women-owned shea butter cooperatives in Ghana.

Tune in now to discover how beauty can be a force for good.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

May Lindstrom, CEO and founder of cult LA-based indie beauty brand that carries her name, mother of two young children, and partner in business with her CFO husband, joined us for a remarkable episode of Green Beauty Conversations.

If you know May Lindstrom, the chances are it is through her brand's fabulously coloured Blue Cocoon Beauty Balm Concentrate; a product that has seen many a copy-cat. This episode of Green Beauty Conversations only touches on this hero product because it is the truly unique, quiet and mindful way May Lindstrom has built her business that caught our attention.

In some ways, May's personal journey to starting 'May Lindstrom the brand' resonates with many founders in the indie, natural beauty space. She has hypersensitive skin and spent her childhood to early twenties desperately seeking ways to alleviate a raft of skin problems triggered by using synthetic ingredients in mainstream personal care.

But, this is where May Lindstrom's backstory parts ways with other indie beauty founders. A childhood amidst nature and parents who taught her to see magic in the great outdoors, gave May her lasting sense of responsibility to humanity and nature.

Her formative experiences and deeply-rooted personal philosophies drove the brand at start up, and still do today even as it has reached iconic status. Interestingly, May, ever a creative child, became an art student, model and make-up artist but had once set her sights on becoming a chef with her own restaurant. May is not called 'The Skin Chef' for nothing.

Her products are renowned for their high-quality, ethically- and sustainably-sourced ingredients. May takes obsessive care in sourcing natural botanical cosmetic ingredients directly from trusted, vetted farmers and other suppliers just as if she were cooking with them and nourishing her own family from within.

In this podcast, host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier reveals the May Lindstom behind her now celebrity status to discover a truly atypical, indie beauty brand founder. May puts sourcing the highest quality ingredients before growth and people most certainly before profit, is unphased by copy-cat products and will pull out of big retailers even when profitable if they can't support her brand in line with her high standards.

As she says, with each product having her name on it, May Lindstrom is still a very personal business with all the good times and the difficulties that come with keeping things relatively small in a very big, profit-driven industry. Listen in for a chance to hear how May Lindstrom founder and brand thrive by bucking the beauty industry normal.

In this episode with May Lindstrom, you will hear:

• How in formulating for her own skin issues and for individual clients with severe skin problems gave May her expertise in ingredients and how to make products effective, but that skincare needs also and as importantly to be sensorial, magical and beautiful and take you to a different space.
• Why May deliberately formulated a capsule collection beauty range rather than felt pressured to continually release new products. 'Choice can be paralysing', May says. A multitasking, smaller range is also in line with the current minimalism trend in skincare.
• Why your customer's opinion comes first. Listen directly to clients about what they like or don't in a formula and reformulate to respond to their needs. Do this rather than pump out new stock to suit retailers (who often don't have the systems in place to sell your current stock well before its Best Before dates anyway!).
• How May Lindstrom retains complete control over her company to ensure they own the entire manufacturing process. 'Ingredient integrity' is of paramount importance to indie beauty brands if they wish to differentiate. Outsourcing means you often lose control over the provenance of your ingredients and you won't know how they went from seed to skincare.
• Why May doesn't like to focus on categories such as 'green', 'clean' beauty. Her philosophy is to make skincare with kindness that connects people to themselves and helps them find their own kind of beautiful. This approach underpins all her formulations.

Key take-outs include:

• If you think of sustainability as just packaging, you are so far behind! May Lindstrom ensures every aspect of the company seeks to operate sustainably; by paying a living wage (and in line Los Angeles rates); hand selecting ingredient suppliers and farmers who run ethical, sustainable businesses; and drilling down into the provenance of every component in their operations.
• A successful beauty business needs to change lives, not just turn a profit. Ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing, and if it lifts others up either changing their skin and/or changing their relationship with their skin.
• Any brand can create good skincare, but to differentiate itself it needs compassion, commitment and courage to think differently. May Lindstrom is growing direct-to-consumer business in preference to expanding into more retailers as it wishes to keep greater control of its values and and product quality at the point of sale.
• Copycat brands and products are unlikely to be a threat if you work to establish your credentials as an ethical brand. Products may be copied but you alone own your founding philosophy as an indie beauty brand.

Discover May Lindstrom:

Website: maylindstrom.com Instagram: @maylindstromskin

In the latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations, we delve into the “science washing” that is rife in the beauty industry. This term, akin to its near neighbour “greenwashing”, refers to the use of scientific jargon to mask pseudoscientific ideas.

Last week, podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier, CEO of Formula Botanica, explored the nuances of so-called “medical-grade skincare” with Ana Green, Education Manager at Formula Botanica. They unpacked its role as a marketing term, and how its hype often misleads consumers about the quality and real efficacy of skincare products.

In this opinion episode, Lorraine unravels the broader implications of scientism or “science washing” in the beauty industry.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

I was sitting quietly at my desk, head-down, getting on with my work (as all good working-from-home employees should do) when I received a message from Formula Botanica's Director Lorraine: ‘Two of our graduates from Daughter of the Soil are on Dragons' Den right now! You need to watch it.’

I stopped what I was doing right away, tuned in and watched Hellen Lawuo-Meena and Maria Magembe from Daughter of the Soil pitch to the Dragons. (For our readers/listeners who aren't in the UK - Dragons' Den is the UK's version of Shark Tank where entrepreneurs pitch to a panel of 'dragons' to raise funding for their business). It was nail biting and the entire Formula Botanica team was rooting for them.

After watching their epic performance, I said to Lorraine: "we need to interview these two very inspiring women". We were so proud of them and what they had achieved so far and we really wanted to share their story with the rest of our community.

Daughter of the Soil is a UK-based African Heritage natural beauty brand with a simple philosophy – to give back to the earth and communities celebrating the natural treasures within our rich soils. Their pledge is to make a real difference to the lives and future of African rural women in Africa – providing them with an ability to earn a sustainable and protected income.

Hellen and Maria's brand goes full circle - it showcases some of Africa’s most unique and treasured ingredients so that women can look supremely beautiful on the outside – and it helps them to support the communities who give those treasures to us, so that they can harness their power and beauty from the inside too, and give something back.

In this podcast you will:

• Hear how Maria and Hellen came up with the name and inspiration for their brand (SPOILER: it’s a great story. Like, really great).
• Find out how they started working together.
• Hear what REALLY happened on Dragon’s Den and how they supported each other through the entire process.
• Learn the ethos and values behind the Daughter of the Soil brand.
• Find out what it's like growing a natural African Heritage brand and why Hellen and Maria see such a huge gap in the market.

Visit Daughter of the Soil online:

• Daughter of the Soil website
• Daughter of the Soil on Facebook
• Daughter of the Soil on Instagram
• Daughter of the Soil on Twitter

We hope you enjoyed listening to the interview with Daughter of the Soil founders Hellen and Maria as much as we did. Maybe you now feel brave enough to dare Dragon’s Den or a similar programme in your country?

We hope that you enjoyed listening to this episode and please get in touch with us if you have any question or comments.

Please share, subscribe and review on iTunes

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

As we watch indie beauty brands crushing it on Instagram with amazing eye candy images and gathering tribes into the tens of thousands, we may think that kind of brand visibility is an impossible dream for our own beauty businesses.

While it does, of course, take hard graft to get that kind of brand awareness, you can go far if you know from the start how to define, style and build your brand on strong foundations. Our guest in this episode of Green Beauty Conversations offers some invaluable advice and practical to-do's on branding a beauty business for success.

Joining us is professional photographer and branding guru Briena Sash, founder of Wellness Stock Shop, which is an extensive resource of stock photos tailored to the needs of the natural beauty and wellness industry.

Briena has joined us for a branding webinar in the past at Formula Botanica, but here, for the first time, she shares three key branding exercises to work through before you rush out to hire a graphic designer or talk logos!

Listen in and then download the workbook Briena has kindly shared with us and put your new insights to work. Even if your brand is up and running, there is plenty here to help you hone your beauty branding strategies for greater success.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• How both visual and emotional elements combine to form the essential building blocks for branding a beauty business.
• Why you need to invest up front, as early as you can, in defining and styling your brand.
• But why you need also to dig deep and map your brand voice yourself before hiring a graphic or brand designer.
• About how branding is never static, and why you need to revise, refresh and rethink your branding periodically.

Briena shares three practical exercises in the Branding Workbook accompanying this episode.  We recommend you take your time working through it.

Key take-aways from this podcast include:

• Successful beauty brands are those that connect with their customers and audiences on an emotional level.
• Visual branding - from the fonts you use to your Instagram images and packaging - derive from and support your brand voice. They are powerful, but they aren't the first things to start with in a branding exercise.
• Branding a beauty business is more about developing a lifestyle people enjoy or aspire to!
• Think of your brand as a personality: what kind of person is it, and what kind of people would be attracted to chatting with it?
• Above all, think of your customers and potential customers. What are their needs and how do your products solve their issues, light their fire and inspire them?

Find the Wellness Stock Shop:

Wellness Stock Shop website
Wellness Stock Shop on Instagram
Wellness Stock Shop on Facebook
Wellness Stock Shop on Pinterest

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Wild harvesting plants as cosmetic ingredients sounds idyllic. It conjures up visions of nature's botanical bounty going straight into beauty product formulations, barely processed or adulterated by human hand, and carefully selected from woodlands, hedgerows, forests, mountains and moors.

Wild harvesting is certainly a marketer's dream. You will no doubt have seen beauty products sporting 'wild harvested' labels and brands mentioning on their packaging and websites that their products include wild-harvested botanicals.

But harvesting any plant, whether a commercial crop or a wild plant, has an environmental impact.

Wild harvesting may sound the ultimate way to source natural beauty ingredients, but how do we as consumers know if the wild harvesting of precious botanicals isn't leaving its own damaging footprint on the planet? Wild harvesting could turn out to be a far cry from the sustainable image it portrays.

To help unpack the truth about wild harvesting, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier invited Emily King, business engagement officer in the secretariat of the FairWild Foundation, on the show.

FairWild is a non-profit initiative with the mission to secure a fair and sustainable future for wild plant resources and people.

Listen in to hear just how wild harvesting can be a real force for sustainable good - for planet, plants and people - if managed the right way.

In this first ever Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast, our Business & Relationship Manager Gemma interviews our Director Lorraine to run through the 4 shades of natural that we compiled in order to try and clarify some of the confusion around the use of the term ‘natural’. Listen to our podcast to answer the question “what does natural skincare mean?”

We met Jo Chidley, beauty entrepreneur and founder of Beauty Kitchen, effective, natural, and sustainable beauty, almost a year ago and have been stalking her ever since to give us some airtime.  We are so excited to have caught up with her in her busy schedule running a multi-million turnover business from her native Scotland.

Jo has won multiple industry awards, including the Natwest Everywoman Award in the Brand of the Future Category and was recognised as one of the 10 most influential people in Natural Beauty in the UK. She’s been featured in the likes of ELLE, Woman & Home magazine and BBC News and is a founding member of the Global Advisory Board for Sustainable & Natural Cosmetics. Jo was voted Nr 2 in the 2018 Who’s Who of Natural Beauty.

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Jo takes us back to her early days in the beauty business, and talks us through her start-up strategies and how she grew from small beginnings to where Beauty Kitchen is today.

We realised talking to Jo that while some connections and opportunities come through sheer luck, there are many others that are out there for the taking, if you know when and where to look for them.  These include free business advice and numerous sources of funding.

Jo and her husband knew they wanted to start a sustainable beauty business and spotted a gap in the sustainable, natural beauty market between the "fun of Lush and the efficacy of Neal's Yard", as Jo describes their niche.

However, even though hugely successful now, Beauty Kitchen started small and took its time to thrash out that market niche and point of difference.  Jo tells us that her big break came in a rushed, rather impromptu but nonetheless very cleverly pitched 10-minutes to a retail buyer over a coffee in Starbucks. The beauty entrepreneur has to know how to plan and yet be super calm and flexible at a moment's notice to make the most of golden opportunities.

Listen to Jo's experience, infectious energy and sound advice and you'll gain invaluable inside tips from a seasoned beauty entrepreneur.

In this episode, you'll gain beauty entrepreneur tips including:

• Don't rush your market research and the ground work needed to map your business model.
• Early sales at markets and fairs might seem a time waste but realise that the feedback you get and the resilience you gain personally from these experiences can help you define a better business and products later on.
• You need to be curious and do your research and have your antenna tuned to funding and networking opportunities.  There are more funds out there for start-ups that you might think, from free business advice to grants.
• Use your gut feeling too. If you have a product ready for market, but your 6th sense and market research is telling you it's not quite the right time for it to be understood, hold back. Start slowly but surely educating your market first and then try again.
• If your product or business doesn't succeed in its early days, learn to "fail fast, fail cheaply and move on and learn from it".  A wise entrepreneur knows to cut their losses, be strengthened by the experience and save their energy to start again, differently.

Key take-out from this episode on becoming a beauty entrepreneur are:

• One opportunity often leads to another. Once you've gained one pot of funding, won one small award or some seed funding, you start to get noticed and to notice other sources of business know-how and start-up funding available to you at low or even no cost.
• Retailers, bank managers, and other entities you might wish to approach as you build your business are generally time poor. Try scripting out standard one-, three- and five-minute pitches that say everything important for your audience to know. Edit these pitches for different audiences.
• Getting hands-on and showing how your products work and how they differentiate themselves can do more than words on Powerpoint slides sometimes. So, get creative with your approaches to third parties.
• Seek out networking events and communities with like-minded businesses; someone will no doubt have had your issues and be able to offer mutual help.
• Sustainable business is not a trend but a new way of doing business. See how you can implement sustainable business practices transparently and ethically into your processes and products, whether in terms of packaging or moves to zero waste.
• Do what you can when you can. Small transparent steps are better than rushing and then not being able to deliver on promise.

In this episode, Jo mentions several funding entities and other resources:

Entrepreneur Handbook - a complete list and guide to small business funding in the UK.

Entrepreneurial Spark - accelerator, intrapreneur and mindset enabler organisation and network.

Startup Grind - global community of entrepreneurs.

Find out more about Jo Chidley and Beauty Kitchen, the brand and her story here:

Beauty Kitchen website.
Beauty Kitchen on Instagram.
Beauty Kitchen on Facebook.
Beauty Kitchen on Youtube.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on: Facebook. Twitter; and on Instagram.

It is hard to imagine that beauty influencers barely existed a decade ago. Now though, hundreds of thousands of influencers take to social media platforms each day to talk about the latest beauty launches and offer their opinion on the promise and performance of products.

Those who dominate social media are as influential and competitive as ever, and perfecting their presences on TikTok, which is the platform of the moment. Few influencers make a full-time living on social media, but all have one thing in common: their attraction to shiny new beauty products to test and talk about.

But, with new products comes a tidal wave of samples as well as tens of thousands of units of unrelated, often unsolicited promotional merchandise which big cosmetics' brands think will influence the influencers. As we discussed in our recent episode with responsible beauty retailer Credo, samples' packaging is mostly not recyclable and comes laden with plastic.

In this episode, podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier discusses the business model of influencers with the school's Education Manager, Ana Green. Ana, once a beauty blogger herself, has valuable insights into influencer and brand relations and suggests how both parties can foster a more sustainable beauty industry as they partner to promote products.

Have you ever wondered how a cosmetic formulator innovates and creates new formulations? What is it like to formulate? How does the creative process work?

In this episode of The Green Beauty Conversations podcast we delve in to the mind of a cosmetic formulator and explore the processes involved in creating new and innovative products. We speak to Timi Racz, Formula Botanica's Head of Research and Development about the formulation process. Whether you are a new or experienced formulator, this fascinating insight in to the formulation process can help you develop your own formulas and skills.

More on this topic - Episode 37: Do you need to be a Cosmetic Chemist to Formulate Skincare?

In this Podcast you will:

• Hear Lorraine Dallmeier Formula Botanica CEO and Timi Racz the Head of Research and development at Formula botanica discuss what a formulator does.
• Learn the three stage process for creating a formula: Preparation, Perfecting the formula, testing and feedback.
• Understand the most important aspects of the formulation and how to adapt your formulation process.

Key Takeaways Include:

• Formulators are very creative people as is the process of creating new products.
• Preparation is a key phase in creating a formula which includes researching ingredients.
• Formulas require many different trials before they are ready for sale, it is not an instant process.
• Feedback on your formulations is key, ideally through focus groups to get a wide variety of opinions.
• Indie brands are leading the way in producing inspiring and creative products and the formulation process is a key aspect of this.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show.

Should vegan beauty brands be run by vegans? That is the question we tackle in this episode of the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, the podcast that challenges you to change the way you think about the way you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations.

Veganism is on the rise

Interest in veganism has increased seven-fold in the last five years according to Google trends. And as part of that rise, cosmetics represents the fastest growing sector in brands gaining the vegan trademark, where the indie beauty sector sees a great opportunity to appeal to the ever-growing vegan community. But should beauty brand founders be vegan in order to make and sell vegan cosmetics? If you’re making and selling cosmetics, should you walk the walk as well as talking the talk? 

In this episode we speak to three people with an interest in veganism. Firstly we speak to Louisa Sales, a Beauty Therapist currently working in the beauty industry training other professionals, who is also a passionate vegan. Louisa believes that brands using veganism in their marketing should be founded and run by people who live and support a vegan lifestyle. Next we speak to Abigail Stevens, Trademark manager at the Vegan Society who established the definition of veganism. The Vegan Society certifies individual products as vegan and enables brands to carry their trademark. Our last guest is Claire Michalski of the certification Vegan Founded, an organisation that certifies brands as vegan based on their ethical choices and those of their founders. Vegan Founded controversially posted on their Facebook page that supporting meat eating brand founders could be supporting the meat industry and prefers to give their support to brands who are founded and run by vegans. 

In this Podcast you will:

• Hear different and sometimes controversial answers to the question: Do you need to be Vegan to make vegan cosmetics? Directly from experts in the field.
• Get an understanding of some of the complexities that exist when it comes to marketing or certifying your cosmetics as vegan.
• Explore the current vegan beauty market and how it is changing.

Key takeaways include:

• The ethics of veganism can be complex and individual. Brands need to be aware of the claims they are making and what they might mean to their customers.
• Veganism isn't just about cutting out certain food groups, it is a lifestyle. Attention to detail and authenticity is key for brands making ethical claims for their products.
• Some vegan consumers feel disillusioned that brands are jumping on the vegan beauty bandwagon for money making, rather than ethical purposes. This has potential to impact brands, especially with the rise of call out culture on social media.
• The rise in choice in the vegan beauty market is viewed as a whole as a positive for people who have a vegan lifestyle and presents opportunities for brand founders whose ethics align with the vegan movement.

Find out more about our Podcast guests:

The Vegan Society Website

Vegan Founded Website

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show.

We're all familiar with seeing the words probiotic on everyday foods like yoghurts, but in the past few years skincare products are sporting similar labels and the beauty industry is abuzz with talk of skin microbiome skincare. You may have seen pro-, pre- and even post-biotic skincare products and wondered what they are and what they do for our skin. We came across all three microbiome skincare products trending at the 2019 edition of industry fair In-Cosmetics Global.

A microbiome is defined as the entire colony of micro-organisms that live inside or outside the human body. Our skin biome is composed of micro-organisms ranging from bacteria, fungi and viruses to mites. This gathering of micro-organisms doesn't sound too appealing. After all, cosmetics aren't manufactured (usually) with the intention of containing live, active bacteria, which is why they are regulated and must pass stringent microbial challenge tests to be placed legally on the market.

In this podcast, we hear about how scientific research into the skin biome is revealing the important role a healthy, micro-organism colony plays in maintaining the overall wellness and balance of our skin. We hear also about how our overuse of traditional personal care products is partly to blame for disrupting the skin's balanced pH. Anti-bacterial cosmetic products contribute to stripping away our skin's microbiome - including the so-called friendly bacteria - which is a first line of defence for our largest organ, skin, and our body as a whole.

Our podcast guest Jasmina Aganovic is a chemical and biological engineer, alumni of MIT and co-founder of Mother Dirt, a skincare company whose tagline is 'rethinking clean'. Mother Dirt, a spin-off from AO Biome, a world-leading, clinical-stage microbiome company, was born out of research aimed at finding a scientific answer to the question: "Why are we cleaner than ever, have more products than ever, and yet a growing number of us have sensitivities, allergies, and other skin issues?".

Mother Dirt's hero product - AO+ Mist - contains a live culture of a specific bacteria that has been clinically proven to restore clarity and balance to skin within four weeks. Jasmina explains that even though their science showed that 'rethinking clean' was indeed the way to go, Mother Dirt faced almost insurmountable challenges in getting AO+ Mist to market. The beauty industry, from manufacturers to distribution networks and retailers, isn't geared up to handle cosmetic products with live cultures requiring refrigeration. It is used to dealing with long shelf-life products.

Listening to Jasmina, you'll learn to sort the facts from the fiction in skin microbiome skincare. You'll also hear about never giving up if you have a sound, revolutionising beauty concept to bring to the market - even if it flies in the face of received industry wisdom! 

In this episode on skin microbiome skincare, you'll hear about:

• How Mother Dirt is challenging the traditional, perceived notions of healthy skin and personal care products and what that means for the beauty industry;
• Why not all bacteria are bad and what damage the accepted norms of eradicating and sterilising bacteria can do to skin;
• How dirt, literally soil, contains bacteria that can in fact help alleviate skincare issues such as inflammation and hyper dryness; and
• Why skin microbiome skincare products need to be backed by sound science not hyperbole.

Key take-outs include:

• If you are bringing a new cosmetic concept to market, be prepared to educate your market, including your partners such as potential retailers and distributors on the product, its needs and how to sell it to consumers.
• A totally new-concept skincare product might be best served selling direct to consumer to start with.
• Do your market research and, if you can, run your products through focus groups to hone your positioning and messaging. Being a first mover comes with a price but there are rewards.
• If your product is niche but has no specific consumer niche, you will need to work hard to think through how to position it in the market and about its branding and brand story. On the other hand, there are advantages to be had from cutting across traditional marketing silos. Get to understand your early-adopter customers and gauge their responses to help guide you in your marketing and retail choices.

Find out more about Mother Dirt and the science behind its skin microbiome skincare:

Mother Dirt website.
Mother Dirt on Facebook.
Mother Dirt on Instagram.
Mother Dirt on Youtube.
Mother Dirt on Twitter.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on: Facebook. Twitter; and on Instagram.

There are few corners of formulating beauty that are left untouched. We’ve seen just about every possible formulation category covered on this podcast alone. We’ve heard about carbon neutral, waterless beauty, and clean, green and blue beauty, along with net zero and zero waste and more.

But, until our previous episode, with haircare brand entrepreneur founders of Climaplex, we had not come across a cosmetics business actively formulating to protect us from the myriad effects of climate change. Not only is Climaplex doing right by the planet by formulating to ethical, sustainable principles, their haircare products are designed to tackle multiple effects of the fluctuating, and ever more extreme environmental conditions on our hair and scalp.

In this Green Beauty opinion short, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier asks if formulating to protect our skin, body and hair from the ravages of climate change could become the norm – in fact, a new gold standard in cosmetic formulation.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

In this short Green Beauty Opinion, Lorraine challenges us to act now to change the status quo on the discrimination women of colour face every day. Whatever our platform, we all have a chance to alter the narrative that has dominated society's view of ideals in beauty for hundreds of years.

Inclusivity and diversity are words easily slipped into beauty industry discourse. While progress has been made there is a long way to go to erase societal conditioning about Black, Brown and other non-European/Caucasian skin tones.

Change needs all voices to participate and all of us to act if the beauty industry is to drill down into why and how it not just historically, but also today still excludes people.

If we all use our platforms, whatever they may be and however widespread our communities, we can help break the bias the beauty industry perpetuates against people of colour. Not using our voices to effect change would be to do a disservice to them.

Lorraine mentions just three of numerous, glaring and deep-rooted examples of where diversity in the beauty industry is found lacking: beauty product design; marketing and advertising language; and beauty imagery.

In conclusion, Lorraine challenges us all to think about how we can use our platforms, whether in the workplace, socially, as indie beauty advocates, on social media or elsewhere, to call out the inequalities.

How will you use your platform as you move forward?

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion in which Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier picks up on an important issue raised in the previous episode on carbon neutral beauty in her interview with the co-founders of BYBI Beauty.

BYBI’s Elsie Rutterford and Dominika Minorovic said that to date, the time, effort and money spent on developing BYBI as a truly sustainable brand was not making a mark on consumer consciousness as a key reason to choose their brand’s products.

Is sustainability not such a big issue for consumers after all?

Lorraine quotes several leading opinion polls conducted in the past few years that tell a different story showing consumers are keen to buy from brands that put sustainability at the heart of their business.

Lorraine points out that there is a clear mismatch between what consumers say they are doing or wish to do and what they are actually doing at the point of purchase.

They are simply not voting with their wallets and choosing brands that embed sustainability in their DNA. Why is this?

Some polls show that consumers don’t know how to tell if a brand or product is sustainable. So does the blame lie with the brands or the consumers?

This grey area of responsibility blurs the action needed now which is for us all to reduce our consumption and go out of our way to question the brands we buy from.

With greenwashing still rife - as we have heard in our episodes on waterless beauty and biodegradablity - we all as consumers need to take the responsibility for sustainability and not lay the blame elsewhere.

Listen in for a thought-provoking five minutes that challenges us to be the voice of change and integrity, making the beauty industry better and more sustainable.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Circularity and recyclability are often-misunderstood concepts in the beauty industry. Last week, we explored the potential of upcycled beauty ingredients with Harry McIlwraith of the Upcycled Beauty Company.

Building on that enlightening discussion in this week’s opinion episode, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier tackles a crucial question: What really defines a circular beauty product, and how does it differ from mere recyclability?

Tune in as we unravel the misconceptions and confront greenwashing in the beauty sector.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

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Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Have you ever wondered what the word ‘parfum’ or ‘fragrance’ on your cosmetic labels really means? If so, you're not alone.

This tiny term, often found at the end of ingredient lists, can hide many sins, leaving consumers in the dark about what they're truly applying to their skin. 

In this week's episode of Green Beauty Conversations,  Lorraine Dallmeier, CEO of Formula Botanica, welcomes Ashlee Posner, CEO of Lucent Labs and founder of State of Change. Ashlee is on a mission to disrupt the fragrance industry and bring full ingredient transparency to every product we use.

Listen now as Lorraine and Ashlee explore the future of fragrance.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion in the run up to International Women’s Day 2022 (IWD). In this opinion short, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier follows up on the previous podcast on the role of indie beauty in empowering a new generation of women entrepreneurs. 

Lorraine reflects on why female entrepreneurship is so valuable in our societies. Against a backdrop of the pandemic, which according to the NGO Oxfam cost women in 2020 alone some 64 million jobs and $800bn in revenue worldwide, women now have even greater need to be included at parity in economic, social and political life. 

Goal 5 of the UN’s Sustainability Agenda recognises that gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but also key to fostering a sustainable, peaceful and prosperous world.

Women’s equal representation in all spheres of life helps improve the overall well-being of society. Women’s greater participation also helps educate societies, alleviate poverty and reduce environmental destruction. 

Above all, women’s entrepreneurship and women in leadership roles lift other women up, showing them what is possible to be and do. Women can further empower women, lifting all boats on a rising tide.

This is something we have seen time and again at Formula Botanica where our graduate and student indie beauty entrepreneurs not only lead by example, but also actively share know-how, give of their time and support those following in their footsteps. 

We need to reevaluate what we mean by entrepreneurship and see its value lying not just in the ability to create wealth, but also in contributing positively to society. And it is in this sphere that female entrepreneurship has shown it has a major role to play. 

Lorraine urges us to participate in International Women’s Day and to be the change we seek. Join in, share your actions via social media and strike the IWD #breakthebiaspose.  

Listen in for a thought-provoking opinion that challenges us to be the voice of change and integrity, making the beauty industry better and more sustainable.

Are you ready to make 2025 your year? If so, today's episode of Green Beauty Conversations is for you.

Join Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist, and CEO of Formula Botanica, as she reveals the steps to unlock your full potential and create the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Stop waiting for the "perfect moment" to launch your beauty brand or create your own skincare or haircare products. Tune in now to discover the actionable steps you can take today to turn your dreams into reality and make 2025 your year.

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Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Is innovation slowing down in the beauty industry? And if so, what's behind it?

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist, and CEO of Formula Botanica teams up with Ana Green, Formula Botanica's Education Manager, to reveal the reasons behind the industry's innovation draught.

Join Lorraine and Ana as they explore how indie brands are changing the beauty industry with bold new ideas and innovative formulations while the giants of the industry struggle to keep up.

If you’re curious about the future of beauty and why indie brands are taking centre stage, this episode is for you.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

We all know the saying:”your hands really show your age”. Your grandmother or mother may have told you to take care of your hands and to protect them, not just your face, from the damage caused by UV exposure and other environmental stressors.

Wearing gloves while doing housework may be your mantra already, but listen up. If you love caring for your hands and are in love with the perfection and durability of gel manicures, you may be exposing the skin on your hands to UV damage.

Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Candice Quinn, who is the Founder of MANISAFE, a multi-award-winning small business with a mission to make gel manicures kinder to hands’ skin.

MANISAFE created a collection of fashion-statement, UV-protective gel manicure gloves designed to protect the skin on your hands from the harmful UV light emitted by nail lamps to cure gel polish. Candice’s aim is to save hand skin from damage in all situations – including their beautifying.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

The thought of selling beauty products on Amazon either gets indie beauty brands excited or in a tailspin. The behemoth of e-tailing may be our go-to place to shop for everything these days, yet for all our familiarity with it as consumers, many new beauty brand entrepreneurs find Amazon an impenetrable platform and beyond their grasp.

A few years ago, the mantra used to be 'if you're not on social media, you don't exist'. However, our guest in this episode of Green Beauty Conversations would be more likely to say 'if you're not on Amazon, you don't exist'. Marc Bonn, senior account manager at Expert Edge a London-based, digital consultancy focused on Amazon retailing, generously gives us a tip-packed hour of practical advice in this episode on the whys and wherefores of selling your beauty products on Amazon.

If there is one single, valuable piece of advice to come away with from our interview with Marc, it is that it's never too early in your beauty brand's life to get selling on Amazon. If you don't stake your claim on your retail space on Amazon, the chances are that in time, middlemen will be selling your products and will probably not present them in line with your brand values and positioning.

Marc admits that Amazon has its own particular e-tailing eco-system and that brands need to adopt a totally different approach to selling there compared to dealing with regular online, or off-line stores. However, he says that the benefits of potential reach and volumes can outweigh the costs involved in that initial learning curve.

Even as we start to see Amazon selling its own brand beauty products on its platform, the opportunities are there for new brands. In many respects, Amazon presents smaller brands with a level playing field vis a vis established names, so long as indie brands learn how to work the Amazon system. Plus, beauty brands need to be on Amazon even if just for PR purposes, rather than ramping up sales.

In this episode on selling your beauty products on Amazon, you'll hear about:

• Why getting on Amazon early in your brand's retail life is ideal as you will learn the ropes and also protect your brand from erosion by middlemen reselling your products on Amazon.
• Amazon's three selling options and learn which is best for you: seller accounts, which are ideal for new entrants and where you, the merchant, fulfill deliveries; seller status but where orders are fulfilled by Amazon (FBA); and vendor status, which Amazon itself fulfills and which includes the bonus of attracting Prime customers.
• How Amazon's lowest price-match mechanism works and why it isn't something to fear as a small or indie brand.
• The key aspects of your seller's page to focus on such as quality product imagery, optimised Amazon SEO and well-honed content.

Key take-outs from our chat with Marc Bonn include:

• Details of how Amazon helps smaller, niche beauty brands on its platform with initiatives such as its 'Launchpad', and its Indie Beauty and Luxury Beauty zones.
• Why you may need expert help in listing your brand and products on Amazon successfully as even what seem like simple issues such as choosing relevant retail categories or keywords can be make or break.
• Why you need an advertising strategy and to promote branded adverts to ensure you make the most of the platform and counter the big, established names in beauty.
• Why Amazon is useful to have a presence on even if you don't have sales as a main aim; remember, consumers  will often search on Amazon to read about your brand and check prices even if completing a purchase in high-street stores. Amazon may be a PR tool for you instead.

Find out more about Expert Edge consultancy and how it can help beauty brands sell on Amazon:

Expert Edge website.
Expert Edge on LinkedIn.
Expert Edge on Twitter.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on: Facebook. Twitter; and on Instagram.

Sustainable beauty is sometimes seen as a subset of clean, green, natural beauty and more, however the single word sustainable hides a very complex set of questions and definitions. What is sustainable to one beauty brand, may not be for another.

So when a beauty retailer sets out to attract and sell only sustainable beauty brands, it challenges itself to define sustainability and sort out the pseudo sustainable from those beauty brands blazing a trail in the field.

Green Beauty Conversations podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Jazmin Alvarez, founder of New York-based clean beauty retailer Pretty Well Beauty about her drive to showcase the best sustainable, clean beauty indie brands about. Pretty Well Beauty already stocks one Formula Botanica graduate brand.

Rarely do you find a clean beauty brand that isn't passionate also about reducing its environmental footprint and in promoting sustainability. But just how do you go about vetting beauty brands' credentials and finding out about their journeys to sustainability?

This is the mission Jazmin set herself when she launched Pretty Well Beauty. And as a 14-year veteran of a parallel sector, fashion, before setting up her pioneering retail enterprise, Jazmin is well attuned to the issues of sustainability - or its lack - in the beauty world.

In this episode, Jazmin explains her views and definition of sustainability and talks about the mutual and beneficial relationship sustainable retailers can build with indie brands who together are dedicated to paying more than lip service to sustainability.

One of the questions we are most often asked at Formula Botanica is whether it's worth hiring a designer to help with branding your beauty business. With start-up beauty brands pressed for cash flow and with the proliferation of free or low-cost design apps and programs, it's tempting to think we can do it all ourselves.

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, we answer most of those FAQs, and hope to clarify why and when you might wish to outsource to a designer. We go behind the scenes of a typical branding process to talk you through what you can expect from a graphic designer or branding agency, and how best to work with them in smooth collaboration.

Our guest is Nancy Poller founder of Aligned Design Co, which is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs with their branding from initial discovery phases to fully-fledged visual interpretation. Nancy has a long-held passion for the beauty sector, having, as she admits, spent hours trawling the aisles of Space NK and top department store cosmetic counters. She has developed a keen eye for what's trending and shares some good advice on how to stand out from the pack of competitors.

Nancy kindly shares her Workbook on Brand Discovery, which might prove food for thought before you hire a designer. It helps you dig deep into what your brand stands for and is a mini version of Aligned Design's Client Discovery process.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• The ingredients of brand identity;
• The latest trends in beauty branding and why it might not be a good idea to follow them;
• Why your competitors are a great resource in helping you define your brand;
• How to decide on which brand designer to hire, whether freelancer or an agency; and
• What to expect when collaborating with a designer in branding your beauty business.

Key take-aways from this episode on branding your beauty business include:

• What part of the branding process you can do yourself, and what is best outsourced;
• Why you need to budget for a professionally-designed logo, even if they look simple and easy to do yourself;
• Why and how your branding contributes to defining your tribe and your business vibe; and
• Understanding that your branding is meant first and foremost to resonate with your customers and retail partners.

For more gems from Nancy on how to go about branding your beauty business, find Aligned Design Co here:

Aligned Design Co website
Aligned Design Co on Instagram
Aligned Design Co on Facebook
Aligned Design Co on Twitter
Nancy Poller on Pinterest

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Have you ever wondered where your favourite beauty products are made?

We spend a lot of time worrying about the provenance of our ingredients, but we never discuss the manufacturing facilities where cosmetics are produced.

What are these buildings like? Are they created with eco-design principles in mind? How do they handle waste or water management?

These discussions are happening behind the scenes in the beauty industry, but they're certainly not out in the open.

That's why, in our latest episode of the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, we dive into the world of sustainable cosmetic manufacturing in the beauty industry. Podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier welcomes Nishit Dedhia, co-founder of KAIN Cosmeceuticals and Formula Botanica graduate.

In this insightful interview, you're going to learn how KAIN Cosmeceuticals is leading the charge in creating eco-friendly beauty products with its state-of-the-art green manufacturing facility in Mumbai, India.

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Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Beauty shoppers are clamouring for green packaging and sustainable beauty. The industry is coming out with innovative packaging made from recycled plastics that themselves can be recycled. So isn’t this a positive landscape and a happier space for the beauty industry to be in than a few years ago? If only sustainable beauty packaging were so simple.

In this Green Beauty Opinion, Formula Botanica CEO, Chartered Environmentalist and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier praises the strides the beauty industry is making on sustainable packaging, but also unearths the truth about how much is recycled. Consumers still know little about what our beauty packaging is made of and where it ends up in its afterlife.

In this opinion short, Lorraine explains that while we are becoming familiar with acronyms for plastics, like post-consumer recycled PET plastics, and are better at deciphering recycling symbols, the reality is that very little plastic waste is recycled. Plastics are still shipped from rich countries across the world to be dumped in open landfills. Ultimately, much ends up polluting the oceans.

Innovative packaging solutions are well and good, but are let down by a recycling infrastructure that can’t close the loop and sustain a circular economy.

Lorraine’s challenge to all of us engaged in beauty, whether as shoppers or industry insiders, is to start having more conversations about the environmental harm of beauty packaging.

Whether indie founder or mainstream big beauty business, we need to tell our customers just what our packaging is made of and how to recycle it. Make our customers lives easier by making videos on how to recycle that airless pump bottle, for example. As shoppers, we must be prepared to ask beauty brands how to recycle and reuse their packaging, whatever it is made of, and pile the pressure on them to respond with clarity.

While R&D is coming up with the next closed-loop, circular economy packaging, we can start having an immediate impact by simply having conversations and educating each other. And remembering that because innovative sustainable packaging can be recycled, it doesn’t mean it will be.

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion in which Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier asks if by using trending terms like 'waterless', the beauty industry is shying away from the very real challenges of sustainability. 

Waterless is on the beauty industry’s lips, and follows on from concepts like carbon neutral and biodegradable beauty, skinimalism, beauty miles and more. But, waterless is a particularly irritating term as behind the scenes every beauty product leaves a water footprint, large or small.

Waterless is no doubt used by well-meaning beauty brands keen to do the right thing for the environment. But, as Lorraine argues, by heralding the latest concept as yet another definitive blueprint for sustainability, the beauty industry is glossing over issues and avoiding the elephant in the room: its inherently unsustainable model of rampant economic growth built on finite resources.

Latching on to single concepts deflects attention from the far more challenging blueprint for sustainability the industry needs to adopt.

Lorraine invites us all to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk in our drive for beauty industry sustainability.

Listen in for a thought-provoking five minutes that challenges us to be the voice of change and integrity, making the beauty industry better and more sustainable.

Reducing plastic in the packaging of personal care products is high on the agenda of many mainstream cosmetics’ firms, but are microplastics in cosmetics getting the same attention? Even if a brand’s packaging is plastic free, the product inside may not be. What goes into the bottle – the formulations we slather on each day – are literally riddled with micro- and nanoplastics. Shocked? So were we.

We have covered the issues of post-consumer plastics, biodegradability and zero waste in the past. But plastic in outer packaging is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the use of plastic in the cosmetics’ industry.

An estimated 9 out of 10 mainstream personal care products may contain microplastics. These figures aren’t plucked from thin air. They come from the Plastic Soup Foundation, a single-issue environmental organisation working to stop plastic pollution at its source. The Foundation conducted scientific research into its database of over 7,000 cosmetics from 10 big brands and concluded that microplastics were present in 87% of the products analysed.

The environmental and human health impacts of these hidden plastics are now the subject not only of research, but also of proposed EU legislation. As we discover in this episode, intentionally-added microplastics are contentious and the very mention of their restriction or outright ban has seen push back from the mainstream cosmetics industry.

To unpack the data from the charged debate, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Madhuri Prabhakar, project leader and campaigner of the Beat the Microbead (BTMB) campaign by the Plastic Soup Foundation. Listen in for some shocking revelations about plastics in cosmetic formulations.

Finding cosmetic ingredients is one of the first challenges every indie formulator faces. After all, we want our ingredients to be natural, sustainable, efficacious and, ideally, available in small Minimum Order Quantities (MOQs).

However, the big wide world of cosmetic ingredient suppliers has not set itself up to cater for indie beauty. Suppliers generally don't realise that today’s indie formulators may become tomorrow’s industry giants.

We've a good many of our graduate brands at Formula Botanica which have grown large and fast and are now taking overseas markets by storm. 

So, how do indie beauty brands find and source the innovative, plant-based ingredients that will set them apart and help them formulate effective products and grow remarkable brands?

In this episode, podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Timo von Bargen of Covalo, a comprehensive search platform that connects beauty brands with over 40K suppliers.

Covalo offers access to a huge ecosystem of cosmetic ingredients as well as listings of suppliers of packaging, and services such as contract manufacturing, formulation, regulatory compliance and testing. These are all areas of the beauty supply chain and business that small indie brands have to grapple with.

But how do they find their way through the thousands of possible solutions and ingredients?

We encourage you to listen in for some very useful advice and tips to help you on your formulating journey.

Gender-neutral skincare is a buzz term right now, but it wasn't four years ago when Grigore Madikians started making skincare in his kitchen in California.

We're all familiar with this US State's pioneering environmental protection. California and green credentials go hand in hand. However, even in a place as eco-friendly as California, it still takes hard graft to enter the market with a sustainable, organic, vegan and gender-neutral skincare brand.

When Grigore Madikians first started spending most of his spare time away from his day job making natural skincare, even those close to him were sceptical. Many didn't consider skincare a 'manly' enough business. Now, they are among his most loyal and supportive customers and his brand Gaffer & Child is retailing in one of Los Angeles' hippest stores.

Grigore's vision wasn't for a men-only range; he wanted to create a gender-neutral skincare brand that works for every age group and is kind to the planet. With the slogan 'Conscious skincare for mindful living', it was quite some mission!

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, we chat to Grigore about his Californian dream and discover a new breed of heritage brand.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

• The fascinating back story of a green-living founder and brand.
• How a natural skincare brand can buck niches and appeal across genders and generations.
• Why multipurpose products could be the most environmentally-friendly skincare options.
• Why we don't need to wash our faces every day!
• The rise of the new heritage brand.

Grigore gives us invaluable insights into building a skincare brand that bucks the trend. The key take-aways from this episode:

• Don't be afraid to follow your dream for a new life or business; just do it if you believe it.
• Being brave enough to buck trends.  Going against the grain can be truly liberating.
• Self care is not about vanity, but is part of your general approach to health and wellness.
• Real men take care of themselves too.
• Just start doing what you can to make your brand and business sustainable. Take the steps you can when you can.
• Don't be afraid to change your brand messages to ensure you attract your target audience and customers.

You can discover Gaffer & Child retailing in the United States and join it online here:

Gaffer & Child Website

Gaffer & Child on Instagram

Gaffer & Child on Twitter

Gaffer & Child on Facebook

Gaffer and Child are offer the exclusive opportunity to purchase their products with 40% discount. Simple the enter the code FB40 at the checkout to claim your discount.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Have you ever felt isolated due to a beauty concern, thinking you're the only one struggling? This episode of the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, hosted by Lorraine Dallmeier, delves into the myths and realities surrounding beauty standards.

It highlights the silence and stigma around female hair loss, challenges the negative perceptions of hyperpigmentation and cellulite, and advocates for a broader representation of beauty across the industry.

By sharing high-profile stories and calling for more diversity in beauty narratives, the episode encourages a celebration of humanity's diverse appearances, emphasising that our differences are not abnormalities, but facets of our collective beauty.

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It is hard to imagine today with organic-certified beauty products readily available a time when launching a high-performance organic skincare brand would have required the founder to make the market, educating customers to the benefits of organic beauty.

Now, barely a week passes without us hearing of a big brand in the personal care industry buying up clean, green, organic beauty brands as well as creating their own ranges on the naturals' spectrum. However, we might not know just how difficult it was for organic brands entering the market a couple of decades ago when their voices and valid claims would fall on deaf ears.

Our guest in this episode, serial wellness entrepreneur Karen Behnke, took a leap of faith back in 2004 to start a high-performance organic skincare brand under the name 'Juice Beauty'. Now a highly-acclaimed international beauty brand, Juice Beauty offers award-winning skincare and make-up products that meet rigorous USA organic regulations.

Karen's declared mission at the outset was to create high-performance organic skincare with scientifically-proven efficacy that was also backed by solid eco values. She found herself in the early noughties pitching Juice Beauty against an industry largely sceptical of natural and organic products' ability to match, let alone exceed the benefits of traditional personal care products whose formulas were composed largely of synthetic ingredients.

As an exemplar for emerging, organic beauty brands, Karen talks us through the secrets of success in building and growing a truly high-performance organic skincare brand. She explains that it is as important as ever, if not more so, to stay true to your declared, transparent mission and ensure you create truly high-performance organic skincare products that do deliver on promise.

In this episode on high-performance organic skincare, you'll find out about:

• Why it's best not to rush your products to market. Dedicating budget, time and effort to creating something innovative can be key to your brand's point of difference in the market.
• Why efficacy is the holy grail of high-performance organic skincare if you wish to grow your beauty business and gain loyal customers in the increasingly crowded naturals' sector.
• Why budgeting for scientific tests to prove any efficacy claims your formulations offer can be the most important decision you make in starting an organic skincare brand.
• Formulating high-performance skincare is also about creating the right emotional and sensual consumer experiences. How a cream, for example, glides on - the 'slip' - is just one criterion that customers will review your products' performance on.
• Why transparency in how and where you source ingredients - from field to supplier  - gives you more control over your supply chain, valuable insights into the provenance of your organic products and messages that can empower your brand.

Key take-outs include:

• Science-led innovation helps you stay ahead in the organic beauty sector.
• Be aware that any organic, vegan, or other business claims will be investigated, so ensure you have a declared mission statement and principles guiding your business from the start.
• Decide which certification and/or claims are more important to your mission - whether vegan, sustainability, ethical business and so on - and be prepared to go the extra mile to ensure your brand adheres rigorously to your mission.
• Consumers are very demanding these days so understand the implications of any 'way of life' you or your brand project in your marketing messages.

You might like to see some of our other podcasts and articles on aspects of sourcing and formulating with high-performance organic skincare ingredients, including:

Sourcing sustainable organic skincare ingredients (podcast with Jem Skelding of Naissance)
How to research cosmetic ingredients for organic skincare
How to make a high-performance vitamin E serum
The benefits of vitamin C in high-performance skincare

Find out more about Juice Beauty, its range of high-performance organic skincare products and make-up and its commitment to sustainable, organic practices:

Juice Beauty website.
Juice Beauty on Facebook.
Juice Beauty on Instagram.
Juice Beauty on Twitter.
Juice Beauty on Youtube.
Juice Beauty on Pinterest.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

In this episode, we’re delving into an issue that lies not only at the heart of the green beauty industry, but one that we raise in our conversations time and again on this podcast – sustainability and tackling plastic waste.

When we come across innovative answers and practical solutions to help reduce plastic waste in the beauty industry that are also within reach of small, indie beauty businesses, we are keen to explore them and spread the word about how they deliver on their promise.

Podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier is joined by Dr Suvi Haimi, CEO and Co-founder of Sulapac, a pioneering company based in Finland that is on a mission to replace conventional plastic with sustainable alternatives.

We’re proud to say that some of our graduate beauty founders and brands are already using Sulapac’s packaging and contributing to a plastic-free future in the beauty industry.

If you wish to follow their lead, we encourage you to listen in to our interview with Suvi as we explore the innovative ways Sulapac is combating plastic waste and contributing to a greener planet.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

You've heard of green beauty, you've heard of clean beauty, but have you ever heard of blue beauty? In the last 12 months, the beauty industry has started to talk more about environmental sustainability and one of the new terms that has emerged during this period is blue beauty.

Formula Botanica aims to bring you the latest topics and conversations in the beauty industry, so our Green Beauty Conversations podcast (or should we say 'blue' beauty conversations?) today brings you the low-down on blue beauty, how it differs to green beauty and why beauty brands should be thinking about their environmental footprint and giving back to the environment.

In this latest podcast episode, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier interviews Jeannie Jarnot, who is on a mission to deliver beauty you can trust, one Hero product at a time and wants to make clean beauty the rule rather than the exception.

The complexity of navigating cosmetic ingredients only fueled her passion to make it simple to discover safe, effective and luxurious skincare. Today, as the founder of Beauty Heroes, Jeannie brings a lifetime of beauty, wellness and ritual to her company and her customers, delivering healthy beauty through the thrill of discovery.

What is Blue Beauty?

As you'll learn in this podcast episode, Jeannie has defined blue beauty as "green beauty with benefits". Blue beauty brands are those who aim to have an environmental benefit - not simply offsetting their impacts, or donating to charities that align with their ethos, but actually doing the hard work and looking at how they themselves can put back resources into the environment.

Of course achieving that lofty goal will be challenging for any beauty brand, because it will involve looking very closely at a brand’s ingredient sourcing strategy, packaging choices, manufacturing processes and the rest of their supply chain. The only way to have a positive environmental impact is either through putting back into the environment, perhaps by sequestering carbon through the ingredients farmed for your formulations, or through offsetting, which as we discussed in our recent podcast on whether beauty brands can ever be carbon neutral, is not a panacea as it is simply a component of your overall environmental strategy and it ultimately isn’t the answer.

Nonetheless, regardless of whether we call it blue beauty, green beauty, teal beauty, or verdant beauty, we hope you’ll agree that it’s refreshing to hear tales of beauty brands around the world who aim to have an environmental benefit.

Listen to Lorraine and Jeannie as they discuss the topic of blue beauty. 

In this podcast, you will:

• Find out how Beauty Heroes and Jeannie Jarnot define blue beauty as part of their Project Blue Beauty
• Learn how the concept of blue beauty goes beyond brands who aim to make sustainable formulations that don't impact our oceans and waterways
• Hear examples of indie beauty brands around the world undertaking environmental initiatives
• Learn how indie beauty brands should incorporate sustainability reporting into their communications strategy

Key takeaways include:

• Consumers are setting the bar higher now and expect beauty brands to embrace environmental sustainability.
• Being an environmentally sustainable indie beauty brand is challenging, as it involves small brands telling their story and delving deep into who they are and how they operate.
• Reporting on your sustainability initiatives involves having a two-way conversation and trying to change your customers' hearts and minds.
• Simply paying to offset your environmental impacts is not enough. Beauty brands need to go much deeper.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Welcome to the 200th episode of Green Beauty Conversations in which we celebrate not just this milestone, but also six years of thought-provoking dialogues in the world of clean beauty.

Join Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier as she marks the occasion with her reflections on the profound changes witnessed in the green beauty landscape since the inception of this podcast.

Listen in for a journey that charts the change through Green Beauty Conversations’ episodes, and delves into the shifts, challenges and triumphs that have defined the evolution of the beauty industry.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

In this episode, we dive deep, almost literally, into the oceans with a look at how our seas can be a sustainable source of beauty ingredients. Podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Matthew Perkins, the founder of Macro Oceans to learn how regeneratively-farmed seaweed is turned into eco-friendly cosmetics.

Macro Oceans, a technology company based in California, developed a unique zero-waste system that uses 100% of the seaweed. The company recently launched its first cosmetic product – a powerful bioactive providing excellent hydration for skincare and haircare products.

Don’t miss this insightful conversation exploring the future of sustainable beauty and the transformative power of seaweed in cosmetics.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Fossil fuel-free beauty - haven’t we covered this one before on Green Beauty Conversations? Not in its new form. Fossil fuel-free is yet another distinct claim we’ve seen popping up on cosmetics’ labels. You’d be right to think it's familiar as on this podcast we have delved into related claims of carbon-neutral, zero-waste and climate-neutral, along with a host of topics open to greenwashing such as waterless, green, clean and blue beauty.

However, while it may overlap with those other terms, we realised that fossil fuel-free beauty needs its own episode in order for us to unpack its meaning.

Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier is joined by School Education Manager Ana Green to shed light on exactly what fossil fuel-free beauty is and why it may be among the most confusing and misleading terms yet applied to beauty products. Listen in to decide for yourself if fossil fuel-free is a claim too far.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website. 

Are your beauty products putting plants under threat? 

As the beauty industry continues to boom, it’s time to confront an uncomfortable truth: our insatiable demand for cosmetic ingredients is driving some of the world's most cherished plant species to the brink of extinction.

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist, and CEO of Formula Botanica, uncovers the hidden costs of our beauty habits and the urgent need for change.

Listen now to find out how you can make a meaningful impact and support a more sustainable future for beauty.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Elizabeth Arden is one of the most iconic figures in the beauty industry, known for building a global empire from modest beginnings. Her remarkable journey is a testament to vision, innovation, and determination—and surprisingly mirrors the path of many modern-day indie beauty entrepreneurs.

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist and CEO of Formula Botanica, sits down with Professor Stacy Cordery to explore the life of this pioneering entrepreneur.

Tune in now for an inspiring conversation you won't want to miss! And for a deeper dive into Elizabeth Arden's extraordinary story, make sure to grab a copy of Stacy's book, "Becoming Elizabeth Arden: The Woman Behind the Global Beauty Empire."

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Discover how seaweed, beauty's most regenerative ingredient, is tackling the industry's sustainability challenges and paving the way for a greener future. 

Join Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist, and CEO of Formula Botanica as she chats with Catarina Ricca, Business Development Manager at Ínclita Seaweed Solutions. Together, they explore how seaweed is revolutionising sustainable beauty with its rapid growth, bioactive compounds, and eco-friendly benefits.

Tune in to this episode of Green Beauty Conversations to uncover the secrets of seaweed-based innovations that can transform your skincare and cosmetics formulations.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Formula Botanica students and graduates are unsurprisingly mainly women, so we decided in this Green Beauty Conversation to focus unapologetically on women's health and well being; also because we're still in our designated Women's Month of March as we hit the airwaves.

In this episode, we talk to Natasha Richardson, herbalist, women's health expert and founder of Forage Botanicals, a business aimed specifically at helping women alleviate and manage the stress and symptoms of period pain and other menstrual cycle issues through health coaching, education and herbal products.

Host Gemma met Natasha at Stylist Live, one of the UK's main beauty events of the year, where Forage Botanicals had a stand and thought it would be fascinating to catch up with her for several reason relating both to women's health and building a small, niche business.

This podcast gives us also another chance to celebrate women's achievements in business as we extend the tenets of International Women's Day throughout this month. Natasha started her herbalist coaching and product company straight out of university and explains how she refocused her business from pure coaching and custom services to an online course and multiple products so she could reach and help more women. She has some great insights into crowd funding which has been the main source of her funding.

Expect some frank and open chat as Natasha and Gemma home in on the taboos women still face in discussing menstrual issues both with friends and medical experts. We tackle issues that are usually spoken about in hushed tones, dealt with alone and often meet a stonewalled silence from regular medical services.

In this episode on women's health and small niche business, you'll hear about:

• How passion for a specific niche, such as in Natasha's case women's menstrual health, can be an incredible force and driver for a small business;
• Why it makes sense to shift the focus of your business from creating custom products and offering one-to-one services to including a product range to help you scale up faster and also serve a lot more customers;
• How products and services that address sensitive issues that people perhaps feel far more comfortable searching for answers to online can be a useful business niche to consider;
• And conversely, why you may come across some harsh critics in online fora and social media if you openly address issues that some feel uncomfortable being aired and discussed. Stay strong, be honest and transparent and serve your tribe who will look to you as an expert in your niche to guide them; and why
• Going to events to meet target customers face-to-face helps generate ideas and insights into which products to bring to market.

Key take-outs from Natasha on crowdfunding your niche business include:

• Just do it rather than procrastinate!
• Not all advice on how to go about crowdfunding 'the right way' will fit your needs or necessarily work for you. Be guided by your own personality, passion and purpose;
• You don't necessarily need to have investors and offer products all lined up in advance of launching a crowdfunding campaign; Natasha used her regular products and even sold them for more on her crowdfunding pitch page than on her site (explaining the extra cash was for a donation);
• Work out a figure you need to raise crowdfunding, and then double it! You will always need more than the minimum viable amount as there will be hidden costs like PR and marketing you will have forgotten to factor in; and
• Make your campaign about one specific, identifiable goal as investors need clarity and transparency - Natasha raised funding for a new product - her Moon Time Belly Balm - that she wanted to bring to market.

Find out more about Forage Botanicals and Natasha's Women's Health education, coaching and products:

Forage Botanicals' website.
Forage Botanicals on Facebook.
Forage Botanicals on Instagram.
Forage Botanicals on Twitter.
Forage Botanicals podcast archives.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Imagine a beauty industry that gives back more to the environment than it takes. That’s the crux of this week’s Green Beauty Opinion in which podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier explores the concept of regenerative beauty.

This revolutionary approach isn't just about reducing beauty’s environmental impact; it's about actively enriching our planet, starting with the soil beneath our feet.

With a focus on fostering biodiversity, enhancing ecosystems and challenging the beauty industry to shift to truly regenerative practices, this episode is a call to action. But will regen beauty just be more greenwashing? Listen now to find out.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Natural formulation may seem a new sector of the beauty industry today – barely 20 years old – but it was there long before the dawn of mainstream commercial cosmetics. Its roots lie in thousands of years of home formulation, herbology and traditional and folkloristic medicine with recipes handed down by word of mouth across generations.

If you love the thought of being involved in an exciting, modern natural beauty movement that is part of the great continuum of ancient knowledge of the power of plants, then you will want to listen to this guest episode.

Formula CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Dr Jenelle Kim, a 9th-generation master herbologist, doctor of traditional Oriental medicine, best-selling author, cosmetics formulator and wellness expert, who shares her rich heritage of plants of East Asia. Dr Kim has woven plants into her life and her career, and they are the powerhouses in her performance cosmetics. If you want to hear exactly what it means to infuse your ancestor’s knowledge into the formulations you create, join us for a fascinating story.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

Ever heard of #UnderconsumptionCore? If you’re active on social media, chances are you have!

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine Dallmeier—Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist, and CEO of Formula Botanica—takes a deep dive into the latest underconsumption movement.

Discover how the "less is more" philosophy is making waves on TikTok and challenging conventional consumerism. Join Lorraine as she encourages you to rethink your shopping habits and urges beauty brands to promote mindful consumption.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Our last podcast episode on the sustainability of using tropical ingredients in our cosmetics raised the issue of transparency in supply chains. 

In this Green Beauty Opinion, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier examines one solution to this lack of transparency; going local.

Should indie formulators seek to source their ingredients as close to their homes and labs as possible? What implications and advantages are there in doing so? Is it more sustainable to go local than shipping ingredients across the world?

Lorraine points out that supply chains are hard to unravel. We have very little information on an ingredient apart from its safety data sheet (SDS), which says nothing about sustainability apart from mentioning the toxicity of a material. We can't know for certain if any ingredient, local or not, is a sustainable option.

For example, a particular seaweed ended up crossing country borders five times as it was shipped in and out during its processing into a cosmetic ingredient. Would it still qualify as a local and more sustainable ingredient?

Going local in your sourcing of ingredients can however hold out hope for indie beauty formulators keen to be sustainable.

Formula Botanica has always stressed indie formulators should build strong relations with reliable suppliers. If they are local, then you can have even greater chance of making this a success. With strong ties, comes a flow of information, insights and advantages, such as greater quality control and brand differentiation.

Lorraine points to her podcast interviews with international beauty brand founders May Lindstrom,  and Sarah Brown of Pai Skincare who both said that that keeping manufacturing in-house and using trusted, mostly local suppliers had given their brands an edge in quality and transparency. By going local you can also infuse your brand with your heritage and with personal meaning.

Every little we can do to help drive sustainability in our formulations and brands is worth it. Going local may not be the complete answer, but by doing so, indie beauty can start to make a sustainable difference and avoid those murky supply chains.

‘Robert Tisserand has just joined our Facebook group’, Lorraine messaged me excitedly. ‘The Robert Tisserand?’ I replied. ‘YES, THE Robert Tisserand’.

This was an exciting moment for us at Formula Botanica. As organic cosmetic formulators, Robert Tisserand’s seminal work on essential oil safety had been a staple resource for Formula Botanica for years and his research into essential oils are highly regarded and respected within our wider community.

Last year Lorraine and I were able to arrange a meeting with Robert in London and we kept a steady dialogue flowing since then.  When he agreed to be a guest on the podcast we were thrilled and we were determined to make the most out of this opportunity and share it with as many of you as possible.

Robert Tisserand is an expert in aromatherapy and essential oil research.

In this podcast you will learn:

1. Why essential oil safety is an issue and why he decided to write his book ‘Essential Oil Safety’ back in 1995.
2. Some of the issues with the EU guidelines and what the current research on essential oils shows in terms of allergens in citrus oils and why his safety guidance differs.
3. Some examples of why safety guidelines are necessary and why essential oil safety is still such an important topic and worthy of our attention.
4. The benefits of using essential oils in cosmetic formulation.

Key takeaways:

1. Get Robert’s opinion on the recent lavender and tea tree oil controversy where recent research suggested that both oils were hormone disruptors.
2. Why you should research essential oils carefully when using them in skincare or haircare formulations and why some research can be considered scare-mongering.
3. Why legislation continues to be a challenge, why it is likely that it will increase in the coming years and how this relates to safety.

To help people make informed decisions about essential oil usage, The Tisserand Institute has launched a six-part, certified Essential Oil Safety Masterclass with Robert Tisserand. Follow the link to register. Registration is only open until the 12^th of April so make sure you act quickly to take advantage of this great course.

You can find out more about Robert and The Tisserand Institute by following the links below:

• Tisserand Institute website
• Tisserand Institute on Facebook
• Tisserand Institute on Instagram
• Tisserand Institute on Twitter

We hope you enjoyed hearing Robert talk about essential oil safety and what it means to him. As usual if you have any feedback or suggestions for us please don’t hesitate to get in contact.

Please share, subscribe and review on iTunes

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

Eryca Freemantle joins Green Beauty Conversations to take us through her life's work championing diversity in the beauty industry. Her career literally started out by accident and led her on a mission to help shape the lives of women of all skin tones working in the beauty industry. 

From her own experiences in an empowering career in makeup artistry to stars and celebrities, Eryca has created a movement and platform that is a force for others.

Formula Botanica CEO, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier caught up with Eryca Freemantle to discuss how her powerful personal story became a catalyst for her motivational, inclusive platform E.A.T.O.W - Embracing All Tones of WoMen - with the capital 'M' denoting the inclusion of men too.

E.A.T.O.W. offers mentoring, courses, coaching and business strategy as well as runs a Make-up Artist of the Year Award. Eryca is proof that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, 'Accident is the greatest of all inventors'.

From starting with nothing to traveling the world as makeup artist to stars and celebrities such as singers Seal, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson and later as an advisor to the London College of Fashion and the UK's Prince's Trust, Eryca is a life force and inspiration for the beauty industry; and a women of her time, helping others in her sector embrace the diversity the industry sorely needs.

Big beauty has spent well over a century using fear-mongering to marketing its products to us. Even if today it is more sophisticated in its methods and use of media, the mainstream industry is still telling us we are not good enough or beautiful enough. In effect, it is telling us it’s not alright to embrace and celebrate our unique, inherent beauty and the normal part and parcel of being human – ageing.

But, there are some in the beauty industry daring to ditch this messaging and give voice to a different way of looking at beauty; one that celebrates us as we are and makes us feel good in our own skin without using negative messaging to make us buy their products.

In this green beauty opinion, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier explains how indie beauty formulators and entrepreneurs are helping dismantle decades of big beauty’s domination of the beauty narrative. Lorraine concludes with a clarion call for more of us to learn to formulate and change the industry for the better.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

Imagine the human microbiome as a planet with millions, and possibly billions, of microorganisms living in harmony to protect their host - our skin and scalp. Incredibly, one square centimetre of our skin, depending on the part of the body, could have that number of microbes living on it.

We are in early days of scientific research on the skin's microbiome and its function in maintaining the health of our skin and body. How then is it possible to have cosmetics sporting labels that say their formulations are microbiome friendly?

Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier dives into the mysterious and magical world of our skin's microbiome. Her guest is Leo Salvi, a chemist, qualified safety assessor for cosmetics and the Co-Founder and Head of Science at Kind to Biome® which provides a scientifically-validated methodology to back up microbiome-gentle claims for beauty products.

Will microbiome-friendly cosmetics be the next big industry trend? Listen in to discover and make your mind up.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

Retail shelves are full of haircare products aimed at repairing our hair. Too dry, too greasy, dandruff, split ends, issues with frizz, more curl or less curl required, or shine and gloss needed? Every product promises hair nirvana to encourage us to buy. But, if we’re honest, many products may not work, or work as described.

So, when podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier received a press release from a new haircare brand saying its products were formulated to combat the effects of climate change on our hair, she was sceptical, but also curious to find out more.

The brand, Climaplex, has serious credentials. Its co-founders are industry veterans with several decades’ experience in the consumer and professional haircare and cosmetics manufacturing industries. They had invested in clinical development and trials run by a leading EU university to prove the climate change-haircare link and the efficacy of their products.

In this episode, Lorraine talks to guests Simon Ostler, a renowned hairdresser, haircare brand pioneer and former industry executive and Giannantonio Negretti, head of a leading, international cosmetics manufacturing group to hear first hand how this new category of climate change cosmetics came into being. And, importantly, how Climaplex is committed to resolving our climate-change-created hair and scalp issues honestly, holistically and sustainably.

To learn more about this episode, Lorraine's guests, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

Is the beauty industry finally adopting the notion of ageless beauty rather than using the term 'anti-ageing'? The misnomer 'anti-ageing' has been viewed as politically incorrect for quite some time. If our guest in this episode of Green Beauty Conversations has her way, it will be a thing of the past sooner rather than later.

Kari Gran, founder of Kari Gran skincare, which she runs with business partner Lisa Strain, has developed commonsense natural skincare products that talk about skin health and vitality as part of a more holistic way of living; with no mention of age groups or anti-ageing. Kari Gran says that many of us when faced with a constant barrage of talk about anti-ageing feel shamed into not doing our best to look younger, or at least holding back the visible signs of time on our skin. She counterpoints this beauty industry accepted norm by saying that the conversation should shift to focus on the fact that our lifestyles play a major role in how we look and feel at any age:

"If there were a single miracle, time-defying product, there wouldn't be the thousands of other skincare products out there on the market. At Kari Gran, we talk about the bigger, holistic picture. I can’t sell something without being honest about it. Skincare products can't work in isolation on their own."

Kari Gran knows all about skincare products hyping up promise and yet under delivering. Kari battled with autoimmune illnesses throughout her life until she started to really scrutinise food and personal care product labels and make significant changes to her diet and personal care routine.

Kari Gran skincare was born out of real necessity when Kari needed to take control of her health and move to natural skincare as a way to alleviate the acute dryness of her skin and reduce her exposure to certain chemicals. She realised that talk of anti-ageing was irrelevant and that what mattered above all else was looking and feeling good in your own skin rather than be stressed about age.

With Trust Pilot reviews from customers aged anywhere from their 40s to 70s saying how they love the way Kari Gran products make them feel - not just look - it's clear that people, if not the traditional beauty industry, are quite happy to embrace and live life to the full at every age.

Podcast host Gemma and Kari Gran have a wide-ranging discussion about the need for transparency and honesty in the beauty industry and for commonsense language using terms like ageless beauty to replace the dominant discourse on women's ageing, menopause and beauty.

In this episode on ageless beauty, you'll hear about:

• Why honesty in your skincare brand and product messaging is vital especially these days when customers are more aware of the value of an all-round feeling of wellness and won't believe anti-ageing claims.
• How products aimed less at fads and so-called trends and more at promoting simple, easy-to-grasp beauty routines such as cleanse, hydrate and protect may be more appealing to consumers.
• How you can move the conversation and create a point of difference for your skincare brand not by disrupting necessarily, but by appealing to consumers' commonsense.
• Why not all your target customers are fixated about their beauty routine - nor their age - and how that impacts your beauty brand's positioning.

Key take-outs include:

• Think about putting Trust Pilot or similar third-party review apps on your sales' website. They might seem a risk as you can't edit or block reviews, only reply to them, but consumers will value your level of honesty and in return, you gain a valuable, ongoing 'focus group' for your products.
• Realise that much of the higher echelons of the mainstream cosmetics' industry is dominated by men - in management and in the cosmetic labs. Their legacy, while valid and informed, has also created in part a normalised discourse about women's beauty, which suggests, among other things, that women should constantly seek products to 'turn back the clock' in order to feel good about themselves.
• Just like ageing, other times in women's lives such as childbirth and menopause aren't 'trends' to be addressed by cosmetics' products. There are of course products that have a place in helping issues such as dry skin or alleviate signs of stretch marks but they should be marketed not as products to 'fix' issues that are in fact all part of life's normal passage.
• Be aware we are still mostly presented with a stereotypical view of how we should look and feel at various stages in our life, whether when turning 40, having children or passing through menopause. Ageless beauty eschews this view.
• Kari took Formula Botanica's Skincare Expert Program whose courses were instructive in helping her not only formulate advanced products but also deep dive into the well-being that is possible using natural, organic skincare ingredients. It is vital to take a cue from Kari's approach and celebrate naturals for their unique benefits rather than use negative claims or scaremongering in your brand's marketing. For inspiration, see also some of our other graduates' brands.

Find out more about Kari Gran, the brand and founder:

Kari Gran website.
Kari Gran on Facebook.
Kari Gran on Instagram.
Kari Gran on Youtube.
Kari Gran on Twitter.
Kari Gran on Pinterest.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on: Facebook. Twitter; and on Instagram.

AI is being leveraged by the beauty sector to help increase productivity, reduce costs, automate task and improve decision-making. In last week’s guest episode, Lorraine heard how AI was impacting the beauty industry and what can be expected of this powerful technology in the future.

Taking a cue from her interviewee, Lorraine decided to take up the challenge of seeing how capable one commonly-used AI tool – tech darling ChatGPT – is of formulation. Could it help, for example, formulate a solid facial serum bar with vitamin C?

In this opinion episode Lorraine walks us through her experiment with ChatGPT, which went through a number of stages before ending with a stunning conclusion.

Listen in to find out if AI is able to formulate skincare successfully despite lacking that essential ingredient - “human-ness” - the Formula Botanica and indie beauty community bring to the equation.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

For decades, the dominant portrayal of beauty has been through the lens of white and lighter skin tones. Beauty editorials, advertising and marketing - and of course product formulation - has typically failed to represent, let alone understand the needs of Black and darker skin.

Well-intentioned and long overdue conversations are going on in the industry about diversity and inclusivity. And there are some breakthroughs with product ranges such as Rihanna's Fenty Beauty which caters to all skin tones.

However, women of colour are still facing the daily challenge of finding beauty products, information and salon practitioners who understand their skin's needs. Behind the words and celebrity product lines lies the reality of beauty counters and salons that are lagging behind and unable to cater to those with darker skin tones.

Podcast guest Dija Ayodele has made it her life's work to educate the industry and advocate for all types of beauty products to be  accessible and relevant to women of colour. Simply put, Dija Ayodele is making Black skincare matter.

A successful practising aesthetician, Dija is a champion and pioneer of black and darker skincare and beauty and she has plenty to say about the gaps in beauty industry education when it comes to understanding the needs of women of colour.

Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Dija about her work and her book 'Black Skin: The Definitive Skincare Guide' which was published in late 2021 and is already receiving international acclaim.

Seaweed is an amazing, multipurpose marine plant. It offers a habitat for marine life of all shapes and sizes, grows and regenerates quickly and has a magical way of helping heal the ocean by absorbing harmful ingredients washed into our oceans by large scale manufacturing and farming. In the context of the global climate crisis, this is highly encouraging.

However, human activity has a nasty way of interfering with the planet’s finely-balanced eco-system and also affects what nature intended for seaweed. Take for example sargassum seaweed, which, as a result of excessive nutrients being flushed into the ocean, creates massive algal blooms every year that bring with them their own destructive ecological and economic problems.

In 2020, an innovative team of entrepreneurs and STEM experts started to investigate what consumer products could be made from sargassum. Fast forward a year and they became the world’s leading developer of ultra-regenerative, plant-based biomaterials from seaweed. In 2021, they brought to market the world’s first all-natural, sustainable, plant-based emulsifier for cosmetic use and it has taken the beauty industry by storm.

In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Geoff Chapin, CEO and co-founder of Carbonwave on his inspiration behind the business of upcycling seaweed. If you are interested in hearing more about this amazing marine-based functional cosmetic ingredient, you don’t want to miss this exciting conversation about a field of cosmetic research that is taking the industry by storm.

If you are a regular listener to Green Beauty Conversations, you will have heard Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier and guests tackle numerous aspects of sustainable beauty. Circular, biodegradable, waterless, carbon and climate neutral, net zero and a gamut of other issues has come under the spotlight in our podcast conversations.

Tackling the issues by examining the various certification schemes and looking at case studies one by one may, however, lead us to forget the bigger picture - and overlook some uncomfortable truths.

Today's global cosmetics' industry is inherently unsustainable if it continues with its age-old model of economic growth. Business as usual with the production of billions of units of consumer products each year that still mostly end up in landfill, enter waterways and pollute the oceans is not an option if we wish to halt the planet's degradation and reverse climate change.

In this green beauty opinion, Lorraine, who is also a Chartered Environmentalist and biologist, dares to talk about the elephant in the room - the need for the half-a-trillion US$ beauty industry to take drastic measures to change its behaviour. Infinite growth with finite resources has to end.

Lorraine puts forward her four-pillar blueprint for a sustainable beauty industry that may come at a price to business as usual, but is critical if we are to address the crises humankind has inflicted on the planet.

Listen in for some hard talk on the big issues and be inspired to act now, whether indie or large-scale beauty business, to take responsibility for, and to play your part in building a sustainable future for the industry and the planet.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Happy New Year and welcome to 2024! As we step into this brand new year, full of hope and opportunities, let's dive into the exciting world of green beauty formulation. As CEO of the award-winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica, and your podcast host, I am here to guide you through formulating not just your skincare products, but your entire year.

Reflecting on last week's episode in which we discussed the evolving dynamics in green beauty with visionary skincare entrepreneur April Gargiulo, the founder of acclaimed brand Vintner's Daughter, I want to focus here on how you can channel your own aspirations into tangible goals for 2024.

Whether you're dreaming of starting a new beauty brand, exploring new botanical ingredients, or wanting to take your existing business to new heights, this episode will help you set the foundations for a fulfilling year ahead in the world of green beauty. Listen in to formulate your best in 2024.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

Biodegradable is a common label today on consumer packaging but what exactly does it mean? After all, everything can biodegrade over time, although it might take thousands of years. And while we tend to focus on the biodegradability of packaging, there is also the matter of the product itself.

What happens to the expired face creams we dollop into our household waste bins or the hair conditioners that wash away with the shower water? 

This podcast digs deep into this most complex of concepts. We weren't surprised to discover that biodegradable lacks a rigid definition, that it is easily confused with composting - a related but different process - and that even many giants in the beauty industry fail to provide clear facts about just how their packaging and products are biodegradable.

Biodegradable is yet another grey area for beauty consumers. After this episode, we're sure you will be asking questions about the biodegradable labels you come across and demand to know more. But would your best policy be to simply reduce the amount of beauty products you consume?

Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier, a chartered environmentalist and biologist talks to colleague Ana Green, who is Formula Botanica’s Deputy Education Manager and has for many years been taking a long hard look at the environmental impacts of the beauty industry and its packaging.

Together, they put a definition to this term and explain the complexities of breaking down a cosmetic formulation and its packaging in the environment.

Waterless beauty is on everyone's lips these days and waterless products are being touted as a key pillar of the beauty industry's drive for sustainability. 

But, as with most beauty industry buzzwords, the term waterless has the potential to be hype, hot air and just another case of greenwashing.

In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier, a biologist and chartered environmentalist, is joined by colleague and deputy education manager Ana Green to unpack the waterless beauty trend.

Listen in for a reality check on the meaning of waterless. Does it have substance or it is just another beauty industry marketing term that doesn't stand scrutiny?

In this episode on waterless beauty, you will hear:

• How the term waterless has gone from meaning simply anhydrous products and then more concentrated solid products to being equated firmly with sustainability.
• About the 4 key reasons waterless beauty products have captured consumers' hearts and minds.
• How a beauty product may have a totally waterless formulation, but will inevitably leave a water footprint throughout its life cycle.
• Why waterless beauty can be considered window dressing and that the sustainability issues facing the beauty industry are far more nuanced.

Key take-outs include:

• Waterless skincare in the true sense of anhydrous products has plenty to offer beauty consumers. 
• Water plays an important role in skincare products. An optimal beauty routine would involve hydrating the skin topically with water-based products which can also impart water-soluble, active ingredients.
• It is misleading to use waterless to imply a product is automatically a more sustainable option. Instead, the beauty industry should be talking about 'water-responsible' beauty and practices.

Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier starts the year sharing the message that cosmetic formulation is within everyone's reach.

In this opinion short, Lorraine says history shows us that homemade cosmetics were in fact the norm from ancient times until the early 20th century.

Then, a change happened when marketing, branding and big business took over convincing us that only cosmetics made in industry labs were valid, safe and effective. This is ironic since many now household international cosmetics' brands were in fact  started by women pioneers from their kitchens.

Now, Formula Botanica and its 14,000-plus community of student formulators and graduates - hundreds already with their own  successful indie beauty brands - are busting this industry myth.

Everyone can be empowered to formulate their own skincare and has a right to learn formulation and discover what goes on under the lid of mainstream products. The indie beauty movement of skincare entrepreneurs is on the cusp of something big.

Listen in to hear how a skill reclaimed is shaking up the mainstream cosmetics' industry. Green Beauty Opinions challenge you to be the voice of change making the beauty industry better, more transparent and sustainable.

Solid cosmetics are growing in popularity in line with our desire for less-is-more skincare and to do right by the planet. They can be multiuse, potentially use less water in their manufacture, strip out water as a “filler” in their formulation, and may not need preservatives. As they are waterless, they can be less weighty to ship thanks to their minimal packaging.

For all their virtues however, solid formulations are often seen as fun, cheap and disposable and not attractive enough to deliver high-performance skincare. We may think of them as glorified bars of soap.

However, there are innovative, forward-thinking cosmetics brands that are daring to reframe solid formulations to appeal to a more luxury beauty market.

When we heard of the brand SBTRCT, we knew we had to find out their secret of making solid beauty not just the norm, but the luxury norm too.

In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to SBTRCT founder Ben Grace about his mission to disrupt the beauty industry and show us that anything is possible; even a facial serum bar perhaps.

As we go to air with this episode of Green Beauty Conversations in early 2022, the predictions are that frosted eye shadows, glittery nail art and luminescent blushers are going to be big trends this year.

Adopting the hashtag #Y2K, a new generation of beauty consumers is exploring makeup trends of the 1980s to the millennium, and rediscovering the allure and bold shimmer of mica minerals in cosmetics.

But, all that glitters in the cosmetics’ world is not gold. Behind those shimmering cosmetics lies a mineral mining industry that in some parts of the world relies on artisan and small-scale miners who are living in poverty and often have to put their children to work to have any chance of supporting their families.

How can natural formulators or beauty consumers know where their mica comes from and the conditions in which it is mined? What about the environmental as well human health and welfare impact of mica mining in parts of the world that are well out of sight of the global cosmetics industry? What can we do to source and buy cosmetics using ethically-mined mica?

In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier – a chartered environmentalist with a passion for digging deep on unsustainable and exploitative practices in the beauty industry – talks to Olivier Dubourdieu, Project Manager at the Responsible Mica Initiative to find some answers to these questions.

Influencers have an exciting opportunity given their reach and reputations to change hearts and minds of beauty consumers. Imagine influencer product reviews mentioning how easy it is to refill packaging or that a beauty brand has gone plastic free or is working towards zero waste or carbon negative goals?

In the last episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier discussed the world of the beauty influencer with School Education Manager Ana Green and questioned whether influencers were talking about, let alone talking up, beauty brands’ sustainability.

One key thing hit home in that episode: the power and great responsibility beauty influencers have. In a recent survey, some 49% of shoppers interviewed said they relied on  recommendations of vlogggers, YouTubers, bloggers and social media influencers in making purchases, viewing their opinions as they would those of trusted friends.

In this short Green Beauty Opinion, Lorraine proposes how influencers can use their platforms responsibly to drive home the message that sustainable beauty should be the norm, not the exception in the industry.

Influencers are not going to stop covering new product launches, but they could do more to challenge brands about their sustainability credentials and include this information in their regular content. In this way, they will influence consumers to make sustainable choices and to ask their own questions of brands. Changing the beauty industry is a collective job that we all need to participate in.

Lorraine’s challenge to influencers is to embrace their power and harness it to promote a more sustainable beauty industry. In doing so, influencers could have more influence than they perhaps realise and make positive, lasting change to the beauty industry.

If sustainability is to make headway in the beauty industry, it is future generations who will be shaping it and seeing it through. So, how are generations like Gen Z thinking about sustainabilty in the cosmetics industry, both as beauty shoppers and future formulators?

In this episode, Lorraine interviews Riley Cowen who is a graduate student of ISIPCA, a Paris-based institute for post-graduate studies in perfume, cosmetics products and food flavour formulation. Riley has insights into both the marketing and business side of the industry as well as cosmetic science and product development. At 22, she brings a unique perspective as a young industry insider on Genz Z’s take on sustainability in the beauty industry.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

Welcome to our Green Beauty Opinion on biodegradable beauty. 

In our five-minute opinion pieces, Formula Botanica CEO, chartered environmentalist and biologist Lorraine Dallmeier voices her thoughts on key issues facing the beauty industry and sets us a challenge to make the sector a better place. 

Commenting on the topic of biodegradable beauty, Lorraine says that the industry isn't yet leading the conversation on the issue.

Despite all the noise about biodegradability, it is shocking how little information there is on how the beauty industry is embracing it. Having a 'biodegradable' label on products and packaging can hide the environmental impacts of production; for instance, the use of resource-heavy industrial composting plants. 

Lorraine acknowledges that some big beauty brands are investing in biodegradability but says that many claims are not backed up. And how can indie beauty brands hope to join the biodegradable movement? 

Are bioplastics the answer? What about the use of child labour in producing green packaging options? Should the change start with consumers buying less? And what about circular beauty's prospects?

Not every solution is clear-cut and consumers are left in the dark.  

Listen in for a thought-provoking five minutes that challenges us to be the voice of change and integrity, making the beauty industry better and more sustainable.

Google raw beauty for a definition and you'll find it described as "stark and powerfully impressive" and the possessing qualities that fire up the senses. This is about raw beauty describing physical appearance. Raw beauty is also used to talk about outer radiance derived from inner wellness and often linked to a wholesome diet rich in raw, natural foods. So where does raw beauty skincare fit in?

Raw beauty skincare can be bundled up with on-trend beauty descriptors such as clean beauty, green beauty and even blue beauty. It is a subset of these natural beauty categories but takes a unique approach to formulation which starts at the beginning of a product's lifecycle with the sourcing of ingredients.

Our podcast guest in this episode. Nadine Artemis, founder of Living Libations, has spent the past 25 years making raw beauty her life's mission. To Nadine, raw beauty is more than about the practicalities of handling natural ingredients and issues such as their temperature or the manufacturing processes involved. Those are just the first, but far from only aspects she considers when sourcing natural skincare ingredients.

For Nadine and Living Libations, raw beauty harks back to the ancients' understanding of the life essences of plants. Living Libation's philosophy is about using raw natural ingredients in synergy with our body by drawing on the innate power of natural carrier oils and essential oils. Nadine calls her line 'pure renegade'; two decades ago when Nadine pioneered the idea of minimally-processed ingredients in skincare as a way to boost our natural radiance, her ideas bucked the trend - and still do in a world now abuzz with talk of pure, natural and organic beauty.

In this podcast interview with Nadine, Formula Botanica CEO and host Lorraine Dallmeier drills into the nuances of raw beauty and its role in a cosmetics industry driven by expectations of high-performance skincare. This episode certainly dispels the myths about raw beauty cosmetics as DIY skincare. Raw beauty is an exciting, complex journey into the benefits of botanicals and perhaps also a philosophy for natural skincare.

In this episode on raw beauty, you will:

• Find out the differences between raw beauty and natural, pure, clean and green beauty.
• Discover why raw beauty is as much a philosophy of how we interact with the natural world as a beauty niche.
• Learn that using raw beauty is about creating a symbiotic relation between what goes on the skin and what is going on in the skin; in the skin biome, for example.
• Hear how the potency of plants was known to the ancients and that current-day raw beauty philosophy harks back to the theories of Essentialism and Vitalism which proposed that botanical, organic matter has unique, innate, vibrant qualities.
• Learn why raw beauty is far more than simply about the temperature, handling, processing and manufacture of natural ingredients.

Key take-aways include:

• How raw beauty goes to another level in using pure ingredients. For instance, raw beauty formulations will include botanical oils that are not only cold-pressed and sustainably sourced, but also not rendered 'joyless' through processes such as bleaching, winterising (a form of refining) and de-odourising.
• How raw beauty is formulated to work with what the mainstream cosmetic industry might see as limitations - such as the shorter shelf life of its products. It sees the benefit in ingredients that are fresher and more nutritious for the skin and rejects those that are processed and refined to artificially extend their shelf life or iron out variations in their scent, feel and properties.
• Understanding that raw beauty as a business relies on the formulator-founder developing a sixth sense for ingredients like essential oil and carrier oils. They also need to build strong, long-lasting relations with ethical supplies of quality ingredients to ensure they can source the ingredients at their most pristine.

We all love getting something for free. How many times have you shopped for a new cosmetic product and been rewarded for your purchase with a bundle of free beauty samples?

Some of the sachets popped into your bag or mailer box might have nothing at all to do with eye cream, cleanser or serum you just bought. But does it matter when we love receiving those little sachets of samples for free?

This podcast episode focuses on these tiny beauty products which are in fact staggeringly wasteful. Each year, the beauty industry creates 122bn units of sample sachets, most of which have no clear-cut way of being recycled.

In all likelihood, we consumers don’t need them, don’t use them and certainly wouldn’t like them if we knew that those free gifts have no happy end of life and go on to do untold harm to the planet.

Joining Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier to tackle the topic of planet-toxic beauty samples is guest Mia Davis, VP Sustainability and Impact at Credo Beauty, which is the largest clean beauty retailer in the US.

Mia, a committed, career environmentalist, created the Credo Clean Standard, including the retailer’s ambitious and forward-thinking Sustainable Packaging Guidelines.

When Lorraine learned of Credo’s bold step last year of announcing it was no longer providing beauty samples, she knew that something seismic was happening in the industry.

So who better to have on the podcast to talk about changing habits of the beauty industry’s lifetime than Mia Davis, who has set not just Credo but also the wider industry the challenge of culling samples for good?

This Green Beauty Conversations episode sees the Formula Botanica team report on the top beauty trends 2019 as seen at In-Cosmetics Global held this year in Paris in early April. In-Cosmetics is one of the beauty industry's key calendar events, and is a vast gathering of all branches of the cosmetics' sector and is open to both trade and the public.

The Formula Botanica team comprising School Director Lorraine, Education Manager Timi and Business and Relationship Manager Gemma spread out among the vast exhibition halls to cover as many niche and sectoral beauty zones, workshops, supplier stands and talks as possible to give us a rounded and hot-off-the-press perspective on the top beauty trends for 2019.

Formula Botanica also garnered a prestigious slot at the event; Lorraine was invited to give a keynote presentation and chose to tackle the traditional polarisation of synthetics vs naturals in a keynote entitled 'Challenging the assumptions of naturals in cosmetics'.

Comparing notes and looking back to previous editions of In-Cosmetics, this podcast sees the team dive into some 10 top beauty trends; some evolving still; some contentious; some fascinating; and most all three at once!

The trends we focus on include: formulation and ingredient innovations; the industry's focus on the skin's microbiome; water-reduced and waterless beauty; sustainability; greenwashing; food's influence on cosmetics; and bewildering and less than transparent new terms that cropped up such as 'sub-zero waste'.

One theme that stood out throughout In-Cosmetics was how indie has gone mainstream; a fact acknowledged by In-Cosmetics 2019 as this was the first fair that included a dedicated Indie Beauty Trail.

We came across around 50 Formula Botanica graduates and students at In-Cosmetics and would encourage more of you to attend next year's fair in Barcelona. Our team offer advice on how to make the most of In-Cosmetics, which can be an overwhelming experience.

Listen in, be inspired and discover how to include the top beauty trends 2019 in your formulations and brands.

In this episode, you'll find out about how:

• A new breed of emulsifiers is giving rise to innovative products with transformational textures and dual purposes. We discovered incredible 'jelly' textures that turn into powders and creams, as well as thick cleansers that turn to foaming products.
• Food-inspired cosmetics are hitting the market big time and catching attention with names borrowed from food products. Examples include: Body Vinegar, and Face Chutney.
• Cosmetic products aimed at helping protect and nurture the skin's microbiome are on the rise and forking into three branches of functional products using pre-, pro- and post-biotic ingredients. We're curious to discover more about the underlying science behind their claims.
• More suppliers are gaining certification (Ecocert, Cosmos etc) for their ingredients. This should make life easier for formulators and brands seeking certification of their end products.
• Simplicity is the new ace card for formulators. We saw a noticeable absence of suppliers and cosmetics' brands promoting the latest exotic ingredients and far more emphasis on 'less is more' and locally supplied is better; and
• How greenwashing is still rife but masquerading in different guises. For example, products claiming sustainable credentials not because of their inherent ingredients or recyclable packaging, but because they donate to green or ethical projects.

Key take-outs on how to make the most of In-Cosmetics as an indie brand include:

• To avoid overwhelm at the vast In-Cosmetics fair over three days, plan well in advance which zones to visit and book workshops and talks before you go. You can do this on the In-Cosmetics' website. Register for free to get updates.
• Before you go, buddy up with fellow Formula Botanica graduates and students on our online classroom or Skincare Entrepreneur Mastermind Facebook groups. Together you can cover more bases and feel less intimidated especially if it's your first big beauty trade fair.
• Don't be worried about representing a small, indie beauty brand. We found suppliers this year far more willing and helpful to the indie sector than in the past. Suppliers were eager to talk about smaller MOQs (minimum order quantities) and seemed to have geared up to the indie sector's needs.
• Do try to attend some formulation workshops as you will learn a lot about how to work with new, innovative ingredients like emulsifiers.
• Do visit the Sensory Bar and any other innovation zones even if a lot of the products showcased are not natural. You can gain invaluable insights into upcoming trends from mainstream cosmetic brands which can open your eyes to possibilities in your natural formulating.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

If you thought solid shampoo bars were a recent trend, you should listen to our latest Green Beauty Conversation with Akua Wood who is the founder of Sheabutter Cottage, a pioneering business that supplies natural haircare ingredients as well as skincare and haircare products. Akua's solid shampoo bars have been best sellers in her online store almost since she started out in the early 2000s.

Ghanaian-born Akua arrived in the UK in 1994 and it was while her daughters were very young that she launched her first business, Cioccolatina, after finding a lack of natural haircare and skincare products suited to her needs. Recalling her childhood, her father's kitchen remedies and her grandmother's cocoa farm, Akua realised that her native Ghana was a fantastic place to source the pure oils and butters she needed.

Cioccolatina was rebranded as Sheabutter Cottage as the supply side of Akua's business grew fast out of the necessity of sourcing larger amounts of the natural ingredients she needed for her own products. The business grew fast but Akua kept the word 'cottage' in the name to reflect her origins as a founder-led business, and also to tally with her ethics which see her sourcing directly from small-scale Ghanaian farmers.

Continuing our focus in February on organic, natural haircare formulation, we chat to Akua about the incredible properties of raw, unrefined natural haircare ingredients and bust the myth that natural haircare ingredients are more complex, and difficult to source and work with. Never was there a better time to explore the depth and breadth of haircare ingredients available to the natural formulator.

In this episode, you'll gain insights into natural haircare ingredients and formulating, including:

• Be curious and adventurous in your haircare formulations as consumers are looking for innovative ingredient combinations - Sheabutter Cottage catches the eye with its use of black molasses in one of its best-selling shampoo bars.
• First, work out what haircare issue you are trying to resolve and then focus closely on ingredient properties to work out what best addresses your customers' needs;
• Don't for one minute think that natural haircare products take a back seat to skincare; there's a large untapped market waiting for customised haircare solutions;
• Haircare is a diverse market with myriad niches as products can tackle not just issues like oiliness or dry hair but can address also various hair textures and external factors affecting hair manageability.
• Essentially, formulating for haircare is parallel to formulating skincare products; the same formulating techniques are used.

Key take-outs from this episode include advice on running an ethical business:

• Akua started her first business with two, pre-school age children at home and with no outside financing. She believes that it is possible to start small and grow organically if you work within your means and do what you can when you can.
• Running an ethical business sourcing direct from growers rather than from middlemen suppliers has its challenges but is a very powerful message to put out. Today, consumers are scrutinising the values and ethics of retail businesses they purchase from.
• Don't feel you need to run a huge business to contribute in some small way to charities that tally with your business ethics. Sheabutter Cottage contributed first by buying direct from farmers, and now helps in a very personal and life-changing way in Ghana by sponsoring teaching assistance for individual autistic children.
• Again, it's a case of doing what you can, and when you can afford it, and remembering also that even small steps towards running your business more ethically can make a difference to lives.

If you are interested in learning more about starting and running an ethical natural organic skin or haircare business, listen also to our podcast with Anju Rupal of Abhati Suisse.

You might also be interested in finding out about the Formula Botanica Diploma in Organic Haircare Formulation which is open for enrolment twice a year.

Find out more about Sheabutter Cottage and its range of unrefined natural ingredients here:

Sheabutter Cottage website.
Sheabutter Cottage on Instagram.
Sheabutter Cottage on Facebook.
Sheabutter Cottage on Twitter.
Sheabutter Cottage on YouTube.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations. We tackle topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers.

In today’s In Conversation with Formula Botanica podcast episode, we are talking carbon neutral beauty and the environmental impacts of the beauty industry. This is a big topic, but with the rise of conscious consumerism it’s also a topic that we need to be talking about. We ask: Can a Beauty Brand ever be Carbon Neutral?

Sustainability is a really key topic for many indie beauty brands, but how easy is it to be truly sustainable and what steps do brands need to take? In this podcast we answer the burning questions our community had on the topic of carbon neutral beauty and sustainability.

Carbon Neutral Beauty vs Beauty Miles

Carbon footprint is one aspect of overall sustainability. In our previous podcast episode we tackled the topic of Beauty Miles, which feeds in to the topic of carbon neutral beauty and covers how far your ingredients and finished product travel and how to calculate that environmental impact. Read more - Episode 48: Do you know your Beauty Miles?

In this Podcast you will:

• Learn how carbon output for beauty products impacts their sustainability.
• Understand different ways that we can reduce or offset carbon emissions.
• Be challenged to think about some of the different ways you could tackle your carbon emissions if you run a beauty business.

Key Takeaways Include:

• Brands often rely on offsetting carbon rather than reducing their carbon output. We believe both of these measures have an important role to play in reducing environmental impact.
• Brands of any size can take measures to assess and reduce their carbon footprints and aim for carbon neutrality.
• In the age of conscious consumerism, customers are keen to hear from brands about what they are doing to reduce their environmental impact.

What do you think? Is it feasible for indie brands to be carbon neutral? How can smaller beauty brands stay ahead of the big players, who are now setting big sustainability targets and publicly declaring them? Can indie brands lead the whole beauty industry in terms of sustainability or is this too big a burden for small businesses? Whatever your views on this controversial topic, I want you to join the debate and leave us a comment on our social channels. The Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you so come and tell us your views.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show.Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on: Facebook. Twitter; and on Instagram.

This Green Beauty Opinion airs just before Black Friday; the day on which the world experiences a retail rush. With Black Friday now extending to a week – even a month – of heavy discounted prices on everything from big-ticket tech items to small business beauty products, we asked in our previous episode whether we – as beauty consumers and indie beauty businesses – should participate in Black Friday, and if so, in what way.

The fact remains that Black Friday is a day indie beauty businesses too can make significant sales and reach out to customers with interesting offers. But, are they being heard in the noise of Black Friday mega deals from mainstream brands?

In this opinion short, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier explains why natural indie brands have a lot to offer beauty shoppers and dispels the myth that only the cosmetics' conglomerates can create high-performance skincare.

Listen in to discover why small, natural indie beauty businesses and their products deserve our support all year round and not just on Black Friday. 

In this episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine Dallmeier, CEO of Formula Botanica, welcomes Priscilla Rolvers, founder of the Green Cosmetics Revolution to discuss the new EU Greenwashing Directive.

Pretty soon, any beauty brand making eco-friendly claims in the European Union might want to start looking over their shoulder if they haven’t got the evidence to back up their sustainability claims. 

Earlier this year in 2024, the European Parliament officially approved a new greenwashing directive, requiring member states – that’s the 27 countries currently in the European Union - to introduce stricter rules surrounding the use of environmental claims by companies.

This means that beauty brands operating in those 27 countries will also fall under this requirement.

You can say goodbye to eco-friendly claims around non-recyclable packaging, or claims around environmental benefits that don’t exist, or biodegradability claims for ingredients or packaging that can only be broken down in big industrial processing facilities or – and this is a big one – claims of carbon neutrality that are solely based on buying offsets.

Listen now as Lorraine and Priscilla explore the ban's impact on sustainable beauty's future.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

Today, we are seeing a rise in so-called medical-grade skincare and liberal use of the word “clinical” to describe brands and formulations. In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier is joined by colleague School Education Manager Ana Green to delve into the controversial world of medical-grade skincare, and explore the intricacies of this term and its implications.

Ana sheds light on the marketing strategies behind the medical-grade term and unravels whether there’s substance behind the claims of cosmetic formulations penetrating deeper with higher levels of actives.

Is medical grade just a marketing term to ensure brands do exclusive sales deals and attach luxury price tags to their products? Listen in for the big reveal on medical-grade cosmetics.

FREE FORMULATION RESOURCES

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

The story of green beauty in Africa is simply not shouted about. The natural cosmetics' world is familiar with African ingredients in their raw state, such as that mainstay of anhydrous formulations shea butter or newer oils on the market such as baobab and moringa.

But what do we know about African green beauty entrepreneurs who view their native ingredients as an integral part of their cultural heritage and who are pioneering beauty brands within their continent?

They are not only working with the raw natural ingredients their forebears did, but they are also creating innovative, high-performance cosmetics from their native, plant-based resources.

The world just doesn't hear much about how the African green beauty industry is growing rapidly, creating and responding to demand for quality and high-performance cosmetic products. It deserves recognition as a rich, diverse and valuable economic sector not just as a raw ingredients' supplier.

Today, for the most part, the rest of the world has little exchange with the African beauty industry apart from its commodities. But we hope this will change, and soon.

To find out more about the green beauty sector in Africa, we talked to two amazing women pioneers of green beauty within Africa.

Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier hosted a panel discussion with Nancy Ndukwe-Ositelu, Executive Director of BeautyFestAfrica, the first and largest learning conference for pan-African beauty business professionals within Africa and the diaspora; and Valerie Obaze, beauty entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded the award-winning skincare brand R&R Luxury in 2010, following the birth of her first daughter.

The two guests explain the main challenges facing beautypreneurs across the continent and about some solutions that the international cosmetics and business world can help with. Importantly, we explore what green beauty in Africa can teach the global beauty and cosmetics world.

From interviewing numerous founders for this podcast, we know that starting an indie beauty brand based on sustainability principles can be more expensive as well as limit your choices of packaging, ingredients, suppliers, partners and more. 

However, if you are a beauty brand founder of colour or from a minority, then both anecdotal and statistical evidence shows that you will face almost insurmountable barriers to entry just starting any beauty brand, let alone one founded on sustainability principles.

In our last episode on the history of slavery in soapmaking, we heard indie beauty founder and minority community activist Dr Candace Parrish explain that embracing sustainability is expensive and that these extra costs limit entrepreneurs of colour from getting into this industry in the first place.

In this green beauty opinion, podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier explores the points Candace raises to take a look at the barriers to entry for entrepreneurs of colour and from minorities, especially when it comes to sustainable beauty.

As indie beauty consumers, formulators and brand founders, we want to act responsibly when it comes to making, packaging, buying and disposing of our beauty products. Yet, for all our goodwill, it is incredibly difficult to know if the measures we are taking to reduce, reuse and recycle, plastic containers in particular, are making a difference.

We've talked to pioneering indie beauty brands running some exceptional return and refill schemes, but our guest in this episode has flipped the idea to create refillable packaging designed to last - not just one or two refills nor a few years, but in theory up to 2,500 years.

Instead of worrying about the time it takes a plastic container to biodegrade (which can be up to 400 years), Izzy Zero Waste is an indie beauty company designing permanence into its packaging. 

Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Shannon Goldberg, co-founder and Chief Zero Waste Officer at Izzy Zero Waste Beauty to ask if the brand has created the ultimate solution to sustainable beauty packaging.

In this opinion episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier delves into the intriguing world of “skintellectuals” and the significant influence Gen Z is wielding in the beauty industry. But who are these self-proclaimed “skintellectuals” and what do they stand for?

With scientific jargon bombarding beauty consumers, it’s only natural that individuals seek to understand the terminology and concepts behind skincare ingredients. 

Accessibility to knowledge has given rise to a so-called “skintellectual movement”, that can only gain momentum. Lorraine proposes that it should play a pivotal role in challenging beauty brands on issues like sustainability. Only by questioning and demanding transparency, can we contribute to cleaning up the beauty industry and making it more environmentally conscious.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

Indie beauty may be driving a generation of female entrepreneurs but women in other sectors still don't make it to the boardrooms. With this in mind, we ask what is gender equality today?

Think of the people running the beauty industry in your locality. The beauty salons, nail bars, hairdressers, spas, and the beauty counters of drug stores are likely to be staffed by women. From a quick survey like this, you would think we should be addressing the need for greater diversity or the promotion of men in the beauty industry instead of the parity of women in the sector.

But, what is gender equality or diversity or inclusivity too if there is no equality of representation across an industry? From shop and salon floors to the boardroom tables of big beauty brands and from the kitchen tables of start-up entrepreneurs to the offices of venture capitalists, gender, and other forms of equality must be factored in, focused on and fast forwarded. Because the beauty industry seems to be the domain of women does not mean it is led by women at management level nor do many female entrepreneurs attract the financing and support they need to help them succeed.

In this episode, which airs a couple of weeks before International Women's Day (8 March), Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier and Ana Green, the school's Education Manager, discuss the vital role that indie beauty plays in fostering women's self empowerment, and also the startling realities many women face in getting to the top and succeeding as beauty sector entrepreneurs.

Over the three years of the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, we have looked critically at almost all trending catchwords, phrases and terms used in the beauty industry. Clean, green, waterless, zero waste, upcycled, microbiome, essential, raw and blue beauty are just some we've covered. A term very much on the rise in early 2021 is conscious beauty.

And who better to define conscious beauty than The Conscious Beauty Union; an entity committed to informing and guiding beauty professionals such as makeup artists, beauticians and salon practitioners on how to make sound, informed conscious choices about the cosmetics they buy, use or promote?

In this episode, host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier talks to the three co-founders of The Conscious Beauty Union (CBU) - Khandiz Joni, Tahira Herold and Lou Dartford - to find out not only about the CBUs' role but also to drill into the fine print on conscious beauty, and in particular what it means to the wider industry as well as beauty consumers.

The Conscious Beauty Union is an informal education platform helping beauty professionals develop sustainable practices but its voice should resonate with anyone engaged in beauty. The CBU defines conscious beauty as making informed choices about one product over another by knowing as much as we can about its full lifecycle.

While sustainable beauty is about looking at perhaps single aspects of a brand or product, such as the packaging or how a key ingredient is harvested, conscious beauty takes a holistic, global view. Conscious beauty examines categories that go beyond sustainability. The aim is for us all, from beauty industry insiders to consumers to be able to make conscious beauty purchases based also, for example, on a brand's transparency, promotion of inclusivity and its ethics.

In this episode on conscious beauty, you will:

• Find out about the key differences between conscious beauty and sustainable beauty;
• Discover that conscious beauty is about giving us the information to start our own journey of travel towards making better beauty consumer choices and is not a prescriptive way of engaging with beauty products;
• Realise that conscious beauty will mean different things to different people; our ability to put conscious beauty into practice will vary with location and budget and, in the case of beauty professionals such as makeup artists or salon practitioners, with the role of beauty products in their jobs; and
• Find out that conscious beauty can mainstream if we all make steps to start asking questions everyday about our beauty purchasing habits and about the beauty brands we use.

Key take-outs include:

• The Conscious Beauty Union offers an educational platform and movement to help beauty professionals (and others) start to ask the questions to make conscious choices about their beauty buying and usage habits. It has member-only advice, educational webinars, articles and other training and information as well as invaluable free resources on its site.
• We should celebrate and feel proud as beauty consumers, professionals and brands of the small wins on our journey to more conscious beauty rather than feel guilty about how we engaged with and used perhaps less ethical or sustainable beauty products in the past.
• We need to accept what we can do with the information we have at the time on a product or brand and lever that to motivate us to educate also our own audiences and circles, whether friends and family or beauty industry colleagues, partners and customers.

As the world’s number one online formulation school with award-winning courses, it is particularly validating to see how far and wide Formula Botanica teaching is spreading. Before the advent of online learning, cosmetic chemistry was taught only in a small number of universities, mainly in the UK and US, which meant formulation training was not as widely accessible as it should be.

Formula Botanica has changed that in a big way. Its teaching now reaches over 19,000 students in over 190 countries.

In this opinion episode, Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier sets out a vision for a better global cosmetics industry; one that sees it entirely normal for local, indie beauty entrepreneurs to create premium skincare brands to rival any of the global big brands out there today.  In fact, Formula Botanica graduate founders are doing just that, as we heard in the previous episode with self-made beauty entrepreneur Dewi Kauw. 

In doing so, they will be challenging the dominant, Eurocentric perception of beauty which should no longer be valid, and certainly needs to be changed.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

“Beauty” – a short, six-letter word that none of us need define. We know what it means. Or do we? The shocking truth is that even many of us in the beauty industry have never looked up nor questioned its dictionary definitions. Now is the time to do both, says Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier.

Our guest in the previous episode, Shaun Russell, owner of Scandinavian-based fragrance and lifestyle brand Skandinavist, and chair of B Corp Beauty Coalition, drew our attention to the definition of beauty, asking us to see it as encompassing the beauty of the natural world, not only the world of cosmetics. He pointed out that in buying beauty products, we should think of their impact on the beauty of the planet. Beauty should be defined by the world around us, not by how we appear to others.

In this opinion episode, Lorraine takes a cue from Shaun’s comments and investigates the world of the word beauty to uncover some shocking and depressing truths about it. Listen in to make your mind up on whether it’s high time to redefine beauty.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.

What does sustainability in beauty really mean? It goes beyond organic ingredients and eco-friendly packaging—it’s about the people who make it all possible. 

In this week's episode of Green Beauty Conversations, Lorraine Dallmeier, Chartered Environmentalist, Biologist, and CEO of Formula Botanica,  explores the deeper meaning of sustainability and what it takes to create truly ethical supply chains.

Tune in now to discover how you can actually make a difference.

Free Resources

Free formulation course | Green Beauty Conversations Podcast | Blog | YouTube

Socials: Formula Botanica on Instagram | Lorraine Dallmeier on Instagram

At Formula Botanica, one of the most frequent questions our community asks is where to buy certain organic skincare ingredients. Our students have access to our resources list of recommended, trusted suppliers around the world. However, knowing more about how suppliers work behind the scenes can help you ask the right questions when sourcing ingredients to suit your formulating needs.

Being a supplier of organic skincare ingredients isn't an easy business to be in. There are numerous challenges in getting specific ingredients to each and every customer when and where they want them.

Ensuring availability of natural organic skincare ingredients isn't the only issue our suppliers have to contend with. As natural formulators, we ask them also about the sustainability of their organic skincare ingredients, as well as whether they were grown, harvested and supplied in line with ethical business practices.

To help explain the supplier's viewpoint, we spoke to Jem Skelding, Founder and CEO of Naissance, a global supplier of natural organic skincare ingredients. As Jem explains, challenges in sourcing and supplying ingredients range from factoring in the 'usual' problems of accessing remote rural regions, and dealing with poor harvests and erratic weather affecting availability to acute situations such as war, famine and flood.

For Naissance, a company whose business ethos is founded on ethical practices and which works in partnership with, rather than just buys from rural communities and collectives around the world farming natural ingredients, these challenges are 'all in a day's work'.

In this podcast episode, host Gemma discovers the surprising lengths Naissance goes to in order to serve not only its end customers - the formulators - but also everyone in its supply chain from its own team to myriad small farming communities across the globe.

Our aim in interviewing Jem is to sensitise us to just what goes on behind the scenes in supplying ethically- and sustainably-sourced organic skincare ingredients, and for us, as formulators to know what to ask of our suppliers as well. Jem also shares his insights into running and growing an ethical business, having founded Naissance some 20 years ago and building it from kitchen table to global brand.

In this episode, on sourcing organic skincare ingredients and ethical business, you'll hear about:

• Why starting out in business from day one with a rock-solid commitment to ethical practices and dedication to providing high quality helps guide and and manage all your business relationships transparently;
• How going the extra mile spending time with your customers, listening to their needs and giving advice is not a waste of time at any stage in business, but rather a valuable investment in your future;
• Why it is worth working towards organic, or other ethical, sustainable or quality certification awards for your products and/or business. However, Jem also explains that your certification goals should not burden your own suppliers and partners; try to work with them and help them to help you so it's a win-win for all;
• How selling internationally is more than just about translating a website. You should seek to understand the countries and cultures you are trading in and put in some 'face time' visiting your trading partners to really grasp your international customers' needs.

Key takeouts from this episode include:

• Ethical business is built on honest, open communications and being sensitive to your partners' needs and goals, whether they are those of your staff or of the numerous other entities that you rely on to do business.
• Don't underestimate the tax and legal side of growing a business, especially once you trade internationally. But do pay your dues in each country you operate to ensure you support people on the ground there.
• Help everyone in your business chain profit, improve and share in your success as your business grows.
• Be sensitive to the daily life and realities of the communities from which you source your organic skincare ingredients. A Shea butter collective, for example, might be eight hours from an airport or port and have to deal with all sorts of issues in delivering your product or raw material.

Naissance-Formula Botanica Starter Kit

Naissance has teamed up with us to create the Formula Botanica starter kit for students completing their award-winning online Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation. The diploma teaches you how to develop your own unique formulations so that you can start the skincare business of your dreams. It contains a good range of essential ingredients including carrier and essential oils, floral waters and functional ingredients like emulsifiers, exfoliants, gums, pH adjusters and surfactants.

Find out more about Naissance, its range of organic skincare ingredients and its commitment to ethical business:

Naissance website.
Naissance on Facebook.
Naissance on Instagram.
Naissance on Twitter.
Naissance on Youtube.

Listen, Download and Subscribe to Green Beauty Conversations

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formula Botanica: Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review on iTunes or Stitcher so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Imagine going from cafe owner to mother to cosmetic formulator, teacher and contract manufacturer in less than 10 years having created a beauty empire built on turning problems into solutions and roadblocks into opportunities.

In this episode, podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine talks to Dewi Kauw, a school graduate and founder of Skin Dewi, an award-winning, Indonesian-based, organic skincare and bodycare brand.

What began as a mother’s quest to alleviate her baby’s skin issues has grown into a formulation and manufacturing empire with a mission to educate on lifestyle and wellness while helping its audience and customers care for a myriad of skin issues.

Dewi explains the trials and tribulations of not only launching a plant-based organic skincare line in Indonesia, but also the challenges she faced on a manufacturing front. She dared to dream of building her own manufacturing facility and with determination and creativity she made it happen. Tune in for an enlightening interview full of juicy entrepreneurial tidbits and wise advice on how passion and perseverance can move beauty mountains.

To learn more about this episode, all of the links that were mentioned and anything else, please visit the show notes on the Formula Botanica website.