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photo: Beauty Kitchen
photo: Beauty Kitchen

COSSMA: What was the origin of your brand?

Jo Chidley, Founder of Beauty Kitchen: Beauty Kitchen was inspired by my own search for natural products. I was surprised to find that some products were not as ‘natural’ as their labelling would have had you believe. I created the brand simply because I couldn’t find the products I wanted to use. My aim was to inspire people to buy natural products – not because they think they should, but because they really work. Today, our brand has stockists all over the UK and the world and we now offer innovative skin care and body care products for the whole family. We also still run the DIY* beauty workshops from our original store in Glasgow, which is where our story began.

What is its main concept?

We all know that ‘you are what you eat,’ and I really believe that your skin deserves to be treated in the same way. So, just as you can pop only the cleanest ingredients into your soup or salad, now you can take control over what goes into your face cream or body wash. If you are a keen DIY’er, we have kits, recipes and ideas that we share, and if you are more of a buy it and use it consumer, we have an extensive range of effective skin care for all skin types and ages. 

Focusing on the DIY beauty side of things, we have seen huge success with our brand-new Raw Inventions kits which is an ‘invent your own’ kit, that takes the concept of clean beauty one exciting step further and allows you to whip up your own products at home using only a handful of amazingly simple and effective ingredients, along with a recipe book packed with ideas of what you can make and create. The kits sold out so quickly that we had to make more almost immediately. We are working on some very exciting new stages for the Raw Inventions programme, as well as a Raw Inventors Academy. 

The other huge focus for us as a brand is on our skin care products for the customers who want a totally natural product, but who maybe don’t have the time or inclination (yet!) to make their own products. 

Always searching for new, effective, 100% sustainable ingredients, our Seahorse Plankton is a great example of finding exciting ingredients for innovative products. The plankton microalgae are the lungs of the earth (producing 50% of the oxygen that we breathe). It also boasts the unique ability to protect itself from environmental stresses, making it the perfect skin care ingredient. The plankton we use has very strong in-vitro and in-vivo trials and is produced in an ethical photobioreactor, in other words a fancy greenhouse, which makes it very sustainable. 

What were the challenges in establishing the brand?

They say that everyone has a brand in them but it takes time, commitment and true flexibility to be able to make things work. Beauty Kitchen started as an idea and has gone on to become something bigger and better than I could have ever imagined, but there have been some bumps along the road, and I can honestly say that we have learnt tough lessons from each and every one of the issues and challenges we have faced. I am responsible for product development, formulations and sourcing ingredients and I go to the ends of the earth to find natural, sustainable ingredients. One of the big hurdles we continue to face is the sourcing side of things. Working with communities all over the world and building relationships with them takes time. Would it be easier to bulk buy an ingredient from a faceless supplier? Absolutely. However, for us, having relationships and building businesses with small communities is what makes what we do so rewarding. Our work with a small community in Uganda where we source the red colouring for our products and green tea is a huge challenge for us but one we love working on.

Why is DIY Beauty making a comeback at the moment?

Google hailed DIY Beauty as one of their top trends in 2017 and listed it as one of their most googled terms, and now in 2018, we see that trend continuing as more and more of us look for a more natural and sustainable way of life. 

As the focus on ingredients grows, and the need to understand what exactly goes into our beauty products becomes the normal approach, so too does the consumer’s knowledge of what ingredients they should be looking out for, and what ones they might want to think about avoiding.

Many consumers are still confused about what natural beauty actually is. They love the idea of it, but they are worried about whether it really works. Many think it is not affordable, whilst many beauty enthusiasts just think natural products are boring. Whilst consumers are becoming more aware of natural ingredients and desire more natural beauty they are forever being bombarded with green-washing marketing, which exacerbates the confusion. DIY beauty allows them to take control of their beauty needs and experiment with different ingredients in an at-home setting as they get to grips with making and creating their own beauty products. 

For me, beauty shouldn’t be too serious but should be fun. This is what we talk about taking back control of our beauty routines and regimes and putting the fun back into beauty. 

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