Green Beauty Conversations by Formula Botanica

The beauty sector is a half-a-trillion-dollar global industry, but it's only recently that beauty brands are finally starting to take part in the sustainability conversation. Largely, this is in response to greater consumer demands for transparency in how beauty does business - all the way from its supply chains to the truth behind its claims. We've seen this play out on this podcast. Over the past year, sustainability has featured in just about all our episodes in some form. We have covered topics such as circular, net zero, zero waste and climate neutral beauty along with the issues like biodegrability, sustainable retail and skinimalism. But, there are plenty of brands, from multinationals to indie beauty, who are are out there using sustainability terms as a veneer; green-washing us in other words. How do we as beauty consumers verify the truth of a beauty brand's claim that their packaging is made of recycled materials? Or that they've offset their last year's carbon emissions? None of us can hold every single beauty brand to account on every single impact. One ambitious entrepreneur is on a mission to change that by encouraging the beauty industry, as well as many other industries, to verify their claims and turn positive social and environmental impact into brand value; a win-win for brands and consumers. In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier talks to Jessi Baker, MBE, the founder and CEO of Provenance, a software solution verifying sustainability claims and helping empower shoppers to make sustainable, ethical choices at the point of purchase.

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion on the challenges indie beauty faces in sourcing natural ingredients. Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier shares her views on the main takeouts from the podcast interview with Timo von Bargen of Covalo, a one-stop platform representing 40k beauty industry suppliers. Lorraine welcomes the arrival of innovative marketplaces like Covalo and praises entities like in-cosmetics Global, which facilitate the matchmaking of suppliers with customers. But, she reminds us that indie beauty has faced an enormous uphill struggle to be recognised by ingredients' manufacturers as a force in the industry. Even today, some in the industry don't understand that the indie businesses of today can be the giants of tomorrow. Formula Botanica has seen this attitude change and is itself now approached by suppliers keen to reach indie beauty brands. However, the industry seems to have forgotten that some famous, decades-old beauty brands were in fact started by indie formulators. Lorraine challenges us to connect and communicate as a collective voice to change the dominant culture in some quarters of beauty industry that downplays the value of indie business. 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.

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.

Welcome to this Green Beauty Opinion on the sustainability of the beauty industry. Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier shares her own views on the main takeaways from the previous episode with guest Anna Teal of the British Beauty Council. Lorraine, a chartered environmentalist herself, praises the British Beauty Council's 2020 report 'Courage to Change' which raises the industry's unsustainable practices and challenges it to change. But, she asks if the industry can ever do more than pay lip service to sustainability if rampant consumption of beauty products lies at the heart of its economic model. There needs to be a complete rethink in the way the entire sector operates, from manufacturers, retailers and buyers to the media right down to individual shoppers. Lorraine is astonished that the beauty industry, while talking sustainability, has gone silent on the elephant in the room: its traditional model of volume-driven profit. After all, we can't shop our way to 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.

"For beauty brands, the risk of not changing is starting to outweigh the risk of changing, uncertain and fraught with challenges as it may be." When Green Beauty Conversations' host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier read words like these in the British Beauty Council's report, The Courage to Change, she realised that the beauty industry had reached more than a light bulb moment in its drive for sustainability. The Council's 48-page report, which is full of wake-up call statistics and hard-hitting quotes from surveys and leading industry names, is more than window dressing. It shows that the British Beauty Council, a not-for-profit body founded just over three years ago, is already a catalyst for that change. The beauty industry impacts the environment heavily and touches all of us whether we're directly involved in the industry or not. From the obvious actors such as personal care manufacturers and beauty retailers to each of us taking a shower every day, this is one industry that we all participate in. The beauty industry is not traditionally known for its collaborative approach nor to value the environment more than the volumes of product it churns out. However, the Council's report states that some 88% of consumers want brands to do more to help them make a difference. Given the sheer diversity and scale of this sector, how can its players collaborate and be the actors of change consumers are demanding? Lorraine spoke to Anna Teal, The British Beauty Council's Pillar President for Innovation and a leader with over two decades in the commercial beauty sector. Listen in to hear how the Council, headed by visionaries like Anna Teal, is determined to help the beauty industry change the habits of a lifetime.

Welcome to our Green Beauty Opinion on the sustainability of essential oils hosted by Lorraine Dallmeier, Formula Botanica CEO, who is also a Chartered Environmentalist and biologist. In this short opinion piece, Lorraine picks up on the key takeouts from the last episode when she spoke to Dr Sally Gouldstone, a long-time conservationist and founder of Scotland-based natural skincare brand Seilich. The overuse and misuse of essential oils is worrying not only qualified aromatherapists but also environmentalists. Essential oils can leave a heavy production footprint to the detriment of the planet. Urging us to reduce our use of essential oils, Lorraine points to botanical alternatives that formulators can explore for their scent and skin benefits and talks about the option to go fragrance free. Can you cut down on your own personal use of essential oils? Would you pay more to buy the limited amount you need from ethical suppliers that support a sustainable essential oil industry? 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.

A few decades ago, essential oils were used mainly by aromatherapists and barely featured in our daily lives. Now, we use essential oils in everything from cosmetics to household cleaners. Essential oils are also a mainstay of natural skincare where they are used for their gorgeous scents and also as skin-beneficial ingredients. However, our use of essential oils is putting pressure on plants, pollinators and the planet's sustainability. Essential oils are big business for entities like multi-level marketing companies and large cosmetics' manufacturers. Even indie beauty, which generally works in small batches and low volumes, is contributing to the global demand for essential oils. Lorraine Dallmeier, podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO, talks to Dr Sally Gouldstone, conservationist and Founder of natural skincare company Seilich. Sally puts forward some controversial opinions on essential oil use and starts by asking: "Just how essential to our lives are essential oils?" This episode challenges Sally to square the circle for natural formulators who want to continue using essential oils, but mindfully and sustainably.

Welcome to our Green Beauty Opinion on sustainable beauty retail. Lorraine Dallmeier, Formula Botanica CEO, a chartered environmentalist and biologist, voices her views on the key takeouts of the last episode with Jazmin Alvarez, founder of retailer Pretty Well Beauty. In this short opinion piece, Lorraine says that the retail industry has the power and responsibility to make sweeping changes to the way cosmetics are sold. While we are now seeing schemes such as Clean at Sephora and Target Clean, most large beauty retailers are fumbling in the dark about what to do. Should mainstream retailers start refusing to stock some big name brands because they can't demonstrate their sustainability credentials yet - if ever? Can we envisage a retail world with store categories such as Circular, Biodiversity, and Zero Waste? Consumers are seeking out these labels already. Systemic change won't happen overnight but we encourage beauty retail to start having those conversations with brands. Lorraine challenges us to speak up and ask retailers for evidence of beauty brands' sustainability credentials. 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.

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.

Welcome to Green Beauty Opinions. In this five-minute short, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier reflects on the key takeouts of the last episode with Austin Whitman, CEO and founder of Climate Neutral; a non-profit actively assisting beauty brands to become certified to its carbon neutral standards. Sustainability will define the next decade in beauty and beyond. With indie beauty brands coming under intense pressure to demonstrate their sustainability credentials, and facing a bewildering number of new certification options, Lorraine queries how they can decide which schemes to embrace. And how does a brand measure its carbon footprint and in a way that is open to public scrutiny? Lorraine prompts us as beauty consumers to be a 'sustainability task force', pressing for change in the industry, but also reflecting on what we really need to use and buy. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So what's new in the world of CBD or cannabidiol skincare? Quite a lot it seems. Cannabidiol cosmetics are now mainstreaming as major supermarket and drugstore shelves testify. You can find CBD cosmetics ranging from skincare to haircare as well as, more surprisingly, in cosmetics like makeup - even mascara. With CBD in cosmetics commonplace - though still illegal as well as highly regulated in some parts of the world - we wondered whether brands' and consumers' fascination with cannabinoids is likely to fade. Is the beauty industry milking the CBD trend as a cash-cow while it lasts? Has it gone too far by including cannabinoids in formulations where it makes no sense? And just how can indie beauty brands use CBD in their formulations and gain a share of what is now a very crowded CBD skincare marketplace? To answer these questions and more, podcast host, chartered environmentalist, biologist and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier turned to Colleen Quinn, who is an award-winning, celebrated clinical aromatherapist, cosmetic chemist and researcher specialising in cannabis research, formulations and education. With a book on CBD skincare publishing as we go on air, Colleen is certainly the go-to industry expert to help unpack the truths from the myths and make sense of CBD as a highly effective, active cosmetic ingredient. Colleen Quinn, Founder LabAroma and Labcannamist, is committed to delivering functional, therapeutic, plant-based products. Her mission is to inspire and empower people to become a confident plant enthusiasts skilled in curating truly effective therapeutic plant remedies by understanding plant science and backed with evidence.

Circular beauty is on the beauty industry's lips and may seem yet another trend that's here today and gone tomorrow. However, circular beauty should not be seen as a 'trend' at all. It comes under the concept of the circular economy or 'cradle-to-cradle' principle, which sees products as having a lifecycle in a loop. Most of us have heard of the 'cradle-to-grave' linear lifecyle in which products see out their useful life to be disposed of sustainably. In the cradle-to-cradle product loop though resources used in and for product manufacture effectively stay in circulation. They are reused, recycled, reclaimed, upcycled and so on. The circular economy has zero tolerance of any waste and byproducts that can't be recovered and returned to the loop; if not the original product loop, then someone else's. While the concept of the circular economy is fairly easy to grasp, the same cannot be said for putting its principles into action. The beauty industry in particular is a newcomer to the concept, which is why circular beauty may seem yet another sector trend. As beauty products are ultimately washed off, absorbed by the skin, evaporate, are sloughed off with the skin or ditched – responsibly, we hope – it is impossible for the beauty sector to truly conform to the circular economy. However, there are ways in which beauty product manufacturers, and we include indie beauty here too, can change their outlook and their processes to adopt circular economy practices. They can start to design its principles into their businesses and set their sights on aspiring to its aims. At Formula Botanica, we have yet to come across a really insightful, practical definition of the term as it applies to beauty, and in particular, indie beauty. So, in this episode, podcast host and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier discusses with colleague Ana Green the very challenging concept of circular beauty giving us plenty of encouraging, practical examples of it in action. The beauty industry has always had its pioneers. Circular beauty needs current and next generations of beauty entrepreneurs to take up its challenges now and not pay lip service to it as a 'trend' – for the planet's sake. In this episode on circular beauty, you will hear: The 4 key principles of circular beauty and how they differ from and go way beyond the 'do no harm' mantra of most beauty industry efforts to be sustainable. Examples of big and small beauty industry players who are taking practical, meaningful steps to include circular beauty in part of their production processes; and how some indie beauty business are leading the way! A run through some of the barriers facing beauty businesses and a realistic assessment of just how challenging circular beauty is to the industry. The effective and easier to implement ways indie beauty can play its part; for instance, by formulating products that can be used in lower quantities and therefore keep resources out of 'the loop'. Key take-outs The key take-outs include the first steps a beauty brand should take if they want to bring circularity into their business model, which are: Digging deep into the supply chain of all your supplies, from ingredients to packaging, which might prove challenging and take resourcefulness and perseverance; Looking at redesigning products to reduce their footprint and keep sourced materials to a minimum; Knowing exactly how much waste your business creates - and include packaging waste you pass on to your customers; and Seeking ways to create environmental net gain, not just mitigating your footprint's damage by, for example, giving to charities.

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.

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 i

Parabens is a collective name for a group of chemicals used as preservatives in consumer products such as food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. They have been synthesised in labs for almost 100 years. So far then, parabens seem quite boring ingredients. But, in just under two decades, parabens have become the bogeymen of the beauty industry, pitting at times the mainstream personal care industry and science against indie beauty, the media and beauty consumers. Even someone with just a passing interest in the personal care industry is bound to have heard about parabens in cosmetics products. Just take a look at row of cosmetics on any drugstore shelf these days and you're likely to come across a good many brands sporting the words 'paraben free' on their packaging; even though in some places, like the EU, it is considered unfair competition. Parabens are permissible in cosmetics in the EU at regulated levels. If they have been known of and in use since the 1920s, surely we know a great deal about their possible side effects in our consumer goods like cosmetics? When and why did consumers' parabenoia, as we call it, take hold and is the vilification of parabens justified? In this episode, Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier, a biologist and Chartered Environmentalist, digs deep into paraben science, history and hysteria. She takes a neutral standpoint to dissect the facts from the fiction. Lorraine talks us through the controversy and timeline as parabens moved out of science labs into media stories provoking a crisis in beauty consumer confidence and on to their pivotal moment in pioneering the indie beauty movement. This is the episode to listen to if you've ever wanted to get behind the headlines and truly understand the furore over parabens in cosmetics. Will parabens continue to coexist with natural, paraben-free beauty? Has indie beauty been too hard on them? Lorraine presents the debate, but only you can decide. In this episode on parabenoia, you will: Find out that the defining moment for parabens was research published in 2004 showing that parabens had been found in breast cancer tissue. While no evidence of causal linkage was provided by this research, from then on, parabens were vilified by many as 'toxic chemicals'. Learn that no scientific evidence has yet suggested that all parabens need to be removed from cosmetics but that the lack of concrete evidence hasn't shifted public opinion on parabens. Hear that since the outcry over parabens, a long list of chemicals used in cosmetics including Sodium laureth sulfate, phthalates and PEG compounds were added to those to avoid in personal care - often to the disdain of cosmetic scientists. Discover that first the DIY beauty movement and then early entrant natural beauty brands emerged as consumers sought to avoid buying 'nasty chemical-laden' beauty products. Early indie beauty products often couldn't compete with mainstream products in terms of performance. This gave big beauty leverage - and so the two camps of natural and mainstream cosmetics became even more divided and not only over the paraben issue. Key take-aways include: Thanks to the paraben saga and its aftermath, consumers are far more aware of science's role in cosmetic formulation and are sceptical of claims whether made by mainstream or indie beauty brands. Indie beauty/natural beauty are coming of age and realising they need to present the inherent benefits of natural cosmetics rather than live off scaremongering and using 'free-from' claims. The paraben story has now come full circle as mainstream cosmetics giants and ingredients manufacturers are ploughing research into natural ingredients and products and also listening to and even investing in indie beauty brands. Parabens and their fellow decried chemicals not only created the indie beauty sector but also changed the mainstream too - time will tell just how defining parabens have been to both camps in the beauty industry!

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.

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

This is a very special episode of our podcast as it marks three years since we launched Green Beauty Conversations. To celebrate our anniversary, we go behind the scenes at Formula Botanica. School CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier invited some of our now 40-strong team to chat about their roles and to share their insights and stories - both the fun and the mishap moments - in day-to-day life at Formula Botanica. We're a truly multinational team dedicated to serving a global student body of 12K students and growing. We celebrate also the very people who make our work possible; our students and graduates who show us each day the limitless possibilities the green beauty space can open up. Green Beauty Conversations: 3 years in brief Over the past three years, Green Beauty Conversations has clocked up 60 episodes, almost 300,000 downloads and interviewed some 60 guests. We've hit the number one spot in iTunes for beauty and had deep dive conversations into both trending and controversial topics in the green beauty industry. We have redefined what natural and clean beauty are, examined so-called blue beauty and raw beauty, and challenged the mainstream personal care industry to look behind short-term gains and discussed its sustainability credentials. We have shown that you don't need to be a cosmetic chemist to be a competent skincare or haircare formulator. Along the way, we have pushed our guests on their topics and learnt from their expertise. We've been amazed by the innovation and tenacity of many of the green beauty business founders we've interviewed and never cease to be surprised by the sheer range of indie beauty niches they represent. Our Team Behind the Scenes If you have come across Formula Botanica from our podcast only, you may not know that we are a large, ever-growing team of dedicated professionals behind the scenes. It takes around 40 of us to run Formula Botanica which now has over 12,500 students in over 175 countries. We received thousands of emails, chats, messages and comments on all our platforms from our school helpdesk to our many social media channels. To celebrate the three-year mark of our youngest media outlet - this podcast - we chat in this milestone episode to members of our Education, Student Experience and Marketing & Tech teams. We will let their voices take you behind the scenes on what has been an incredible roller coaster journey from a small-scale student body following a single course delivered by email to the world's largest online education platform for natural organic formulators and indie beauty entrepreneurs.

Think of upcycled beauty and you probably think of DIY home formulators mixing up a body scrub or face mask from kitchen store cupboard ingredients. You may have even tried using left-over coffee grounds as scrub particles. But it takes brave, inspired and curious minds coupled with phenomenal drive and business sense to turn waste coffee grounds into a global and sustainable beauty business in just four years. Our guest in this episode did just that, and more, by upcycling organic waste and redundant byproducts from food and drinks' industries into star ingredients in a line of natural, sustainable cosmetics. In this podcast, we hear from Anna Brightman, co-founder along with her brother Will, of Upcircle Beauty which launched in 2016 with the vision of "..leaving the world better than they found it" by finding useful, profitable purposes for others' waste. There's treasure in waste and Upcircle Beauty is proof that this old saying rings true. The sibling pair discovered that more than 500,000 tonnes of coffee grounds that are consumed each year in the UK alone are sent to landfill. They decided to start collecting coffee from cafes across London and transforming them into their sustainable skincare range. Since their launch four years ago, the brand has saved over 275 tonnes of coffee. By the time we interviewed Anna, Upcircle were upcycling 10-plus food and other botanical byproducts and were set to launch a further three products to add their impressive range of over 40 variations of exfoliants, moisturisers, serums and masks. At first, investors and others in the beauty industry were sceptical and doubted that an industry as fickle as beauty would grasp the concept of upcycled ingredients let alone embrace it. But Anna, Will and their growing staff along with a dedicated network of upcycling partners in the food and drink sector have successfully upscaled to sustain a British-based operation selling beauty products into 800 retailers in the US alone. Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier, a Chartered Environmentalist who has a passion for delving into sustainability, spoke to Anna Brightman about the challenges of building a business that relies on difficult, often messy waste byproducts and where Upcycle find inspiration for new products from new sources of waste. Whether a beauty consumer or natural formulator, you'll find this an inspirational listen about a company truly pioneering circular and byproduct beauty. In this episode on upcycled beauty, you will: Learn the two definitions of an upcycled ingredient. Discover that upcycled waste and byproducts, despite first impressions, can provide the beauty industry with innovative, reliable and sustainable ingredients. Find out that the most important attributes beautypreneurs need in looking for innovative waste byproducts to upcycle are imagination, curiosity and determination to research and pioneer their viability. Learn that using upcycled ingredients is a huge step for a business wanting to grow along sustainable principles, but that business owners needs to take a rain check also on how sustainability is factored into other aspects of their operations. Key take-outs include: If you are green beauty entrepreneur, look around you actively for inspiration for upcycled waste. For example, Anna Brightman is now working on how to upcycle flowers and plants into cosmetic ingredients after she noticed local florists discarding them. Think laterally about how to work not just with the end waste, but also with local farmers and other businesses to provide a win-win for both of you. For instance, Upcycle has helped other industries profit by working with them and training their staff on how to process their waste or byproducts for cosmetic ingredients. If you want to scale your business and need to rely on sources of upcycled ingredients, think about which industries or venues are already producing that waste product in volume. For instance, hotel chains might be throwing away in bulk a particular waste product you have your eye on. Be prepared to do a lot of research and experimentation when using upcycled ingredients you source. Not all will work. Anna mentions that only certain type of coffee grounds suit their products. It takes perseverance and you need to build good relations with your source industries.

Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations. Our host Lorraine Dallmeier, CEO of online organic cosmetic science school Formula Botanica, tackles topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers. The global green beauty community looks to Formula Botanica for guidance on major events in the industry, such as new ingredient releases, innovative formulation techniques and indie business guidance. Formula Botanica is at the forefront of the global green beauty industry and is committed to bringing you the best and most up-to-date information from the green beauty world. Listen to the Green Beauty Conversations podcast and become part of the global green beauty movement.

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.

Do natural deodorants work? If you have tried natural deodorants and been disappointed by their performance in combating sweat and body odor, then this episode of Green Beauty Conversations will be a real learning curve and eye opener. The first question to tackle though is what is sweat? Body sweat has a primordial purpose even if today's taboos and societal conditioning have put paid to us broaching the subject of sweat in a reasoned way. Sweating has a core function in cooling our bodies when we're hot or under stress. Its other role of signaling 'fight or flight' hints at how homo sapiens functioned millennia ago. Once we understand the role of sweat, we can choose the right natural deodorants to work in tune with our own particular needs. If you buy regular, mainstream antiperspirants or deodorants, you may choose them for their scent and strength. Yet, using the same one-size-fits-all, drug store deodorant or antiperspirant year in year out is not necessarily the best nor healthiest approach to masking body odor nor to our overall well-being. To unpack the discourse on sweat, shame and body image, we speak to Ada Juristovski, Co-founder and CMO of Nala Care, a natural, personalised deodorant brand based in Vancouver, Canada. Ada gives us an in-depth, enlightening insight into physiological and psychological aspects of sweat and, in the process, helps us understand sweat better so we can choose healthier deodorant options for our daily personal care routines. Research has shown that we each have differing armpit microbiomes, which is an aspect of our skin that Nala takes into account in formulating its natural deodorants. Listen in as Formula Botanica CEO and podcast host Lorraine Dallmeier digs the dirt on the types of sweat, how we deal with body image and underarm cleanliness, and the pros and cons of natural deodorants, including their reliance on baking soda and activated charcoal. We think you'll come away realising it pays to understand more about sweat, and to get hot under the collar about ideal body images. In this episode, you will: Learn about the different types of sweat and its function in keeping our bodies in a state of healthy equilibrium. Hear about how societal conditioning has influenced notions of the female body image and fostered the pursuit of beauty over health and well being. Discover that sweat is now beginning to be talked about more positively as it is associated also with exercise, sex, empowerment and strength. Find out about how natural deodorants work in tune with our bodies by letting us sweat again rather than by clogging sweat glands. Key take-aways include: We all sweat to different extents and in different situations, so we should think of mixing up our deodorant product choices to suit varying needs. Our lifestyles, our water consumption, whether we are on medication and so on can affect our levels of sweat and on a daily basis. Natural deodorant formulas usually include and rely on the odor-neutralising ingredient baking soda which is highly alkaline and therefore not in line with the skin's pH. So look out for brands which offer different formulation strengths, including a baking soda-free option. Other ingredients play a huge role in natural deodorants' efficacy too. Copaiba oil, for example, has stress-reducing properties so by inference has the potential also to reduce sweat production when we face stressful situations. Be more mindful of what causes you to sweat; and be mindful too of the products you use to mask body odour. Using a deodorant isn't just a routine, two-second affair each day.

We've all heard of sustainability. After all, barely a week goes by without news of activist movements' agendas, political and corporate pledges and celebrity campaigns on sustainability issues. Yet, do we really stop to ask ourselves how we as individuals can live more sustainably? For a start, do we know what sustainability is? Sustainability is made up of three pillars: economy, society, and the environment, which are informally and more memorably labeled: profit; people; and planet. The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals comprise 17 areas in which sustainability must be a paramount consideration. These include not only the obvious ones such as climate action and sustainable and renewable energy, but also zero hunger and zero poverty and a right to quality education. As you can see, the three pillars were identified as they need to co-exist in equilibrium for the planet to be on a truly sustainable trajectory. These are huge questions that you may feel beyond the capabilities of indie beauty brands to address as they go about starting up and growing their businesses. The larger companies may have the cash to splash on reports and in publicising their sustainability credentials, which may not be all they seem either, but there are plenty of opportunities for indie beauty brands to make a difference. Even the small steps indie brands make can help their customers understand how individual actions deplete or sustain the world's finite natural resources. Listen to our CEO Lorraine Dallmeier, a chartered environmentalist, and our Membership Coordinator Ana Green who is also a long-time green beauty blogger, discuss why the beauty industry is perhaps tackling sustainability from the wrong perspective and where indie beauty brands can have an edge in playing their part. In this podcast, you will hear: Why the size and scale of a beauty business should not be a deciding factor when it comes to embedding sustainability into a business. Why sustainable practices are far more than about the manufacturing or use of resources. That on a positive note, the five, big-brand beauty companies we researched all had sustainability commitments and policies well publicised and easy to find on their websites. However, that some of these big beauty brands pledged themselves to long-term goals that had vague benchmarks against which to measure the success of their actions. About our survey of indie beauty brands in our community which showed their huge desire to operate sustainably, but that they faced overwhelm at how to go about that and stay profitable. Key take-aways on indie beauty brands and sustainability include: Examples of three indie beauty brands that have made significant progress in operating sustainably in three different areas of their business: refilling; upcycling; and circular beauty. How indie beauty brands can start their sustainability journey more easily by focusing on a single area of their business, such as plastic waste reduction, or sourcing ingredients from suppliers who support Fair Trade. Why indie brands have an enormous opportunity and edge over big beauty businesses by shifting the conversation to talk about slowing down our relentless consumption of beauty products. How indie beauty can educate its customers about the need to consume less in the first place by buying for example more multi-functional and longer-lasting products.

It's a first for this podcast to talk about green makeup, but rest assured we've been thinking about it for a long time. Behind the scenes at Formula Botanica, our R&D team is working on an organic makeup formulation course. A question we asked ourselves at the start was whether green makeup could take on mainstream colour cosmetics as a viable alternative? The natural beauty industry has been dominated by skincare. The global colour cosmetics market size though is expected to reach $9.9 billion by 2024 - rising at a market growth of 7.6% (CAGR) between 2018-2024. No doubt, the green colour cosmetics' segment will rise on this tide too. Key growth in the colour cosmetics market is forecast to come from Asia-Pacific and Latin America, which is interesting given our podcast discussion covers also green makeup's role in inclusivity. As we learned in conversation with our podcast panelists, consumers are demanding greater transparency on the ingredients in colour cosmetics and not just those in their skincare products. You may have come across the much-quoted factoid that women eat about 3kg (around 7lbs) of lipstick in a lifetime. Whether fact or myth, figures like this went viral and startled beauty consumers into taking a closer look at exactly which ingredients go into their colour cosmetic products. Meet Our Green Makeup Discussion Panel Today, the naturals' sector is occupied with more reality checks; this time on the efficacy of green makeup. Can natural colour cosmetics offer the same palette, applications, textures and performance of mainstream makeup? The answers to these questions lie not just in how green makeup is formulated in the lab, but also in our perceptions and expectations as consumers. Our two expert panelists in this episode - one a green makeup entrepreneur and brand owner; the other an accomplished makeup artist and blogger - respond to the criticisms leveled at green colour cosmetics. Their own paths and stories are encouraging as they show us just how far green makeup has come in a few years. Listen in to hear also how they feel green makeup can be a force too for inclusivity in the cosmetics' industry. Kim Roxie is the Founder & CEO of LAMIK Beauty, a clean beauty brand that caters to multicultural women. After opening her own bricks-and-mortar makeup shop at age 21, in Houston, Texas, on a $500 investment, Kim ran the store for 14 years. She was also the youngest African-American woman to have her products carried in a major department store. In 2019, Roxie pivoted her business and launched LAMIK as an e-commerce beauty company. Roxie was featured in CEW, CNBC, and MarthaStewart.com for her rapid growth since the launch of LAMIK 2.0 in March 2020. Canadian-born Samantha Kolk, aka 'hullosam', has been a content creator in the green beauty space for over five years and has a background in makeup artistry. Her goal is to make her clients feel as beautiful on the outside as they are on the inside. Sammie has hosted makeup masterclasses and other fun beauty events where she educates on the brands and ingredients being used, as well as giving makeup 101 tips. She spent most of her life with sensitivities and intolerances. Her passion for all things 'green' arose when she realised that she not only wanted to put healthy, pure and safe things in her body – but also on her body. Sammie believes that if the health of our skin is nurtured, it will help promote full health to the body and mind. In this Podcast on Green Makeup, you will: Hear why our panelists believe that by swapping to green makeup, you needn't compromise on applications, colour ranges, textures and performance. Learn that formulating green makeup is liberating once you shift mindset and explore the exciting green, all-natural ingredients on offer. Discover how indie cosmetics' brands can be quicker and nimbler in responding to consumers' desire for natural, colour cosmetics as they are generally founder-led and more in touch with their customers. Hear how green makeup brands can lead by example and be a clear voice for inclusivity in the beauty industry. Hear some insightful predictions on where green makeup is going next. Key take-aways include: Our panelists point out that green makeup should not be another elite segment of beauty by excluding consumers on the basis of price, culture or choice. It would be a hypocrisy to have green colour cosmetics create more exclusivity. Green makeup actually looks to mainstream cosmetics to push itself to innovate as it aims to create products consumers desire but to formulate them as truly high-performing green alternatives. Women of colour spend up to 80% more on makeup than other beauty consumer segments so it is high time that cosmetics' brands see them as regular customers, not a segment, and formulate comprehensive colour palettes. Consumers these days are savvy researchers and are an indie, green beauty brand's best resource. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Formul

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.

The latest industry buzzword to emerge as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is safe beauty. The thinking behind the term 'safe beauty' is that consumers are now more willing to accept preservatives and synthetic ingredients to ensure they don't experience product contamination and expiration. In fact, some industry players are now claiming that the arrival of COVID-19 will further push the notion that natural isn't always better, especially when it comes to ingredient safety and shelf life. It's safe to say that the Formula Botanica team was fairly horrified to discover the emergence of the term safe beauty. After all, shouldn't all beauty be inherently safe to use? Why should a pandemic suddenly encourage the beauty industry to look for a new marketing term, when Good Manufacturing Practice should ensure that the billions of beauty products manufactured globally? Do you think that safe beauty is a credible term or are some industry players simply trying to play on people's fears? Would you buy a formulation labelled as 'safe' or do we as consumers simply expect all beauty products to be safe? And do you agree with us that safe beauty is the latest industry buzzword we should all resolutely ignore and move on from? In this podcast, you will: Hear the Formula Botanica team discuss how the term safe beauty has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn why all cosmetics should be inherently safe for use and why this latest buzzword is trying to play on people's fears, when fear-based marketing has already created so many subsets of the beauty sector. Listen to Lorraine and Ana discuss why we should all ignore the term safe beauty in the latest marketing hype to come from several mainstream industry players and resolutely move on. Key takeaways include: The beauty industry does not need any further buzzwords to cause confusion amongst consumers and polarisation amongst brands. Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) exists to ensure that all cosmetics are manufactured to industry safety standards. As long as GMP is met and formulations are adequately tested, all cosmetics should be safe for sale. The terms clean beauty, natural beauty and safe beauty are not mutually exclusive. In fact, Formula Botanica redefined the term 'clean beauty' in a recent podcast to include formulations that are safely and hygienically made. The very meaning of the word 'clean' is hygienic, after all. Consumer opinions are not shifting towards enhanced safety in personal care formulations. If anything, consumer opinions are shifting towards enhanced sustainability of beauty products, as people emerge from lockdown aiming for a modified, greener society where beauty brands work as activists for change. 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.

Indie beauty brands are taking over the beauty sector. With tens of thousands of small brands globally, there is simply no doubt that they are swallowing up a percentage of the global beauty sector which traditionally might have gone to the mainstream giants. Shoppers are increasingly looking to support small, local businesses and often place a greater degree of trust in a founder-led brand. However, this increase in consumer confidence and support has seen some of these indie beauty brands soar in terms of their revenues, reach, distribution, channels and size. If you follow the latest news in the beauty industry, then you cannot have missed the stories of founder-led brands being bought up by the mainstream giants who see enormous potential for growth and development by bringing these indie beauty brands into their portfolios. In the latest episode of the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, we're joined by Wizz Selvey of Wizz&Co to discuss when an indie brand goes mainstream. What does it take? What defines the tipping point for an indie brand to go mainstream? And does everyone agree with this definition? But is an indie beauty brand still indie if it's achieving global domination or has been bought up by a major multinational? What makes an indie beauty brand truly indie and at what point can you no longer really call yourself indie? If a business is selling millions in stock, can they still be indie? In this podcast, you will: Discover what the main difference is between mainstream beauty and indie beauty brands. Learn what it takes to grow an indie beauty brand to the stage that it can go mainstream (spoiler alert: it takes many years of blood, sweat and tears!). Hear how growing an indie brand to mainstream global domination requires input from distributors, retailers, investors and community. Discover how the mainstream beauty industry is starting to take indie beauty more seriously, which is of course why they're buying indie brands. Hear about the massive opportunities for indie beauty brands globally, as retailers, social media and technology make indie beauty far more accessible to customers. Key takeaways include: A true indie beauty brand has gone under the radar so far and not yet attracted any investment. They are waiting to be found by consumers and have lots of potential ahead of them. Once an indie brand scales and has the potential to be taken over by a larger corporation, their formulations might suddenly be discovered by a large part of the general public who had never heard of the brand before. The founder's heritage story is integral to the success of an indie brand. It creates an emotional connection between the brand and the customer and allows the customer to relate to the story and formulation. Large multinationals buying out indie brands will often try to keep that brand founder ethos in place. Beauty is emotive and personal. Consumers want to talk about brands that have made them feel different about themselves and this is where indie brands can capitalise on opportunities that the mainstream industry often misses. Wizz Selvey is the founder of Wizz&Co, a retail strategy consultancy in the UK. Wizz was formerly Head of Beauty at Selfridges and has worked in the beauty industry for fifteen years which has provided experience across brands at all stages of their development. Wizz also works with both indie and mainstream beauty brands so is well placed to discuss the transition from kitchen table to global multinational. Visit Wizz&Co's website, follow Wizz&Co on Instagram and sign up for Wizz' freebie on how to think like a CEO. 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.

Is the cosmetics industry ready for disability friendly beauty? We've been pondering this question for a while and decided to convene an expert panel to discuss the topic of disability friendly beauty in our latest Green Beauty Conversations podcast episode. It feels as if disabled beauty shoppers are sometimes (often? mostly?) overlooked, but it's important to remember that 1 billion people, or 15% of the world's population, experience some form of disability. Let's not forget that all of these 1 billion people will buy personal care or beauty products, which is why it's so shocking that it's taken us this long as an industry to embrace disability friendly beauty. Luckily, the topic of accessible and inclusive beauty is one that is gaining traction in the industry. Furthermore, in the social media era, where shoppers can have a direct conversation with brands on a variety of topics, beauty businesses are receiving real time feedback on what we want and need - and they're hearing from customers who want them to do more. Recently, someone even filed a lawsuit against Fenty Beauty accusing them of engaging in intentional discrimination due to the current inaccessibility of its e-commerce site for customers who are visually impaired. Meet our Beauty and Disability Discussion Panel Disability friendly beauty is a topic that everyone in the beauty industry should be thinking about, which is why we invited a panel of experts on this topic to talk to us about their experience and work in the industry. Some people might think only about the packaging of a product when it comes to making accessible and inclusive beauty. But what are the different ways that people with disabilities might struggle with the beauty industry and the products it sells? Our fantastic panellists on this month's edition of Green Beauty Conversations discuss disability friendly beauty in more detail to help you understand the changes that need to happen for shoppers and brands. Emily Davison is a blogger and freelance journalist who, at birth, was diagnosed with a rare congenital condition called septo-optic dysplasia. She started her blog Fashioneyesta with the aim of challenging people's perceptions of sight loss through her love of fashion, beauty and style. Trishna Daswaney is the founder of Kohl Kreatives, an innovative make brush company who make adaptive equipment for applying making in the form of flexible brushes that bend both forwards and backwards, making them perfect for everyone, including those with motor disabilities. Victoria Watts is the founder of the natural beauty brand Victorialand Beauty, which as well as empowering women through their skincare range also has developed a beauty inclusive business model where products are made accessible for people who are visually impaired. Victorialand Beauty is one of the emerging disability friendly beauty brands on the market. In this podcast, you will: Hear the expert panel discuss whether they believe the beauty industry is disability friendly. Understand some of the key issues that may affect disabled people with regards to accessing and using personal care products. Hear about the amazing work being undertaken by several brands and advocates to speak up for people with disabilities. Learn the changes the beauty industry needs to make to become more inclusive and accessible. Key takeaways include: Whilst progress is being made, clearly the beauty industry has a way to go in terms of becoming more accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities. We think the indie beauty sector can play a huge role in can play a huge role in improving accessibility, inclusivity and visibility for people with disabilities. Keeping this important conversation going is essential for the beauty industry to make further progress and we can all pay our roles in this as entrepreneurs and consumers. Disabled consumers can give constructive feedback to brands on their experiences with both products and the purchase experience. 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 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.

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.

You've probably heard of food miles, but have you ever heard of beauty miles? Food miles measure the distance that your food travels before it reaches your plate, while beauty miles measure the distance that our beauty products are transported from the time of harvesting, to processing, to manufacturing, to retail until that lotion finally ends up on your bathroom shelf. Similar to food miles, beauty miles are one factor that we can potentially use when testing and measuring the environmental impacts of our beauty formulations. But are they the right tool to use when determining the sustainability of our formulations? For this podcast episode the Formula Botanica team reached out to our community, to ask their burning questions on this topic and they were answered by Chartered Environmentalist and Formula Botanica CEO Lorraine Dallmeier. In this Podcast you will: Hear the Formula Botanica team discuss beauty miles and answer key questions on this topic. Learn some key questions that we should be asking as formulators and consumers about the cosmetic ingredients we use and their environmental impact. Key takeaways include: Knowing your supply chain and asking key questions is essential for formulators who want to calculate the overall carbon footprint of their formulations. Every formulator should be thinking about the carbon footprint of not only their ingredients but also their entire operation as a business. We expect to see more brands make claims about the carbon emissions of their products in the future, including claims for carbon neutral products achieved by carbon offsetting. Conscious consumerism is on the rise and customers are more interested than ever in all aspects of sustainability. 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. Found out more about our award winning courses at - formulabotanica.com

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.

Can Indie beauty brands ever partner successfully with large multinationals? Or are Indie brands who sell to large corporations, in fact selling out? In this episode of The Green Beauty Conversations Podcast, we tackle the tricky subject of Indie brand acquisitions and why all brand founders should have an exit strategy for their business. Recently, brands such as Dermalogica, Schmidt's Naturals, TooFaced, Tatcha and many others, have all been snapped up by major multinationals such as Unilever, L'Oreal, Estee Lauder and Procter & Gamble. Over the last five years, these huge beauty corporations have spent billions on acquiring beauty brands from across the world – including many successful indies. Drunk Elephant's recent $845 million dollar sale to Shiseido, is the latest acquisition to cause controversy and receive comments also within the Formula Botanica community. We interview two beauty entrepreneurs on the topic of selling your business, to hear their views. First we speak to Julie Longyear, the founder of independent natural beauty brand Blissoma based in the USA. Julie founded her brand in 2001 and creates raw, plant-based, skincare by hand, using herbs and essential oils, in her herbal studio in St. Louis, Missouri. Our second guest is Sian Sutherland, beauty brand founder and multi-award winning serial entrepreneur. In 2005, Sian created Mama Mio Skincare, a premium pregnancy range followed by Mio Skincare for active women. Sian sold her business in 2015 to The Hut Group, a global eCommerce company based in the UK. Sian now runs A Plastic Planet, a social impact non-profit with a single goal - to ignite and inspire the world to turn off the plastic tap. In this Podcast we explore: Indie Beauty brand attitudes to selling to multi-nationals How and why an Indie brand may want to sell to a large corporation The public perception of Indie brands that are sold and if the sale changes how they are run Key take-outs include: All business owners need to think of an exit strategy that suits their business There are many different options available to Indie beauty brands as an exit strategy There is no right or wrong choice as to what to do with your business and here at Formula Botanica we celebrate all entrepeneurs 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.

This is 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 that will make you think and encourage debate about Green Beauty with your friends, followers or customers. In this episode we delve in to the difficult topic of conscious consumerism and its effect on the beauty industry. What does it mean to be a modern consumer of beauty products? A conscious consumer is someone who wants to encourage positive impact through their buying choices, encouraging brands to be more eco-friendly and sustainable overall. Anyone who spends any time in the natural beauty sector will know that there is a polarised debate around the way ingredients are chosen and used – on one side you have a hardcore group of naturalistas who reject synthetic ingredients and on the other side you have a group of frustrated chemists, who are upset about their ingredients being vilified without science. In our previous podcast - Clean Beauty: A redefinition, we discussed some of the controversy surrounding the term Clean Beauty and what it means. In this podcast we build on that further by asking whether consumer trends should inform how brands formulate? Should brands shun ingredients with a proven safety record simply because they have become unpopular with the public? How can consumers who want genuinely natural products shop with confidence? To help us understand more on these issues we interviewed two key industry professionals. Firstly we spoke to Sam Farmer, founder of a namesake range of unisex personal care products for young adults. Sam is passionate about science communication within the beauty industry and feels strongly that the industry should be leading with facts and an evidence based approach, rather than simply reacting to consumer trends when it comes to the complex topic of formulating and ingredients. Our second guest is Dr Mark Smith the Director General of NATRUE, an international private standard for natural and organic cosmetics. NATRUE sets standards for the ingredients, packaging and product formulations carrying the NATRUE label and also advocates on behalf of the natural and organic beauty industry. Mark is a chemist and has a long career in research, science and regulatory policy. In this episode on the topic of conscious consumerism we explore: What conscious consumerism means and how this applies to beauty. Whether our beauty choices are being led by populism and ask the important question: Is the consumer always right? How we think the industry can move forward and start to join the contrasting view points. Key take-outs include: Although consumers are engaging more than ever with what is in their beauty products, product formulation and ingredient information isn't always easy to communicate or understand Formula Botanica believes that conscious consumerism has a role to play when it comes to the sustainability of the beauty industry and we feel strongly this is an area the industry needs to improve. Opinions are still split on whether consumers should be driving formulation choices. Although there is clearly a need for education, we also have to accept that not everyone will engage with that information or use it in their purchasing choices. Learn more about our guests: Find Sam Farmer on Twitter Learn more about certification on the NATRUE Website We want to hear what you think. Whatever your views on this controversial topic, we want you to join the debate and leave us a comment on our social channels. The Formula Botanica team love hearing from you so come and tell us your views. Find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

What is clean beauty? It is one of the current buzz words in the cosmetics industry with major brands such as Drunk Elephant adopting the term as a key part of their marketing message. Large retailers such as Sephora now stock a selection of brands they consider clean and have adopted their own clean standards. Despite its rapid rise, clean beauty can also be controversial. There is an increasing backlash from many in the industry, who believe that clean beauty is driven by fear mongering and poor science. As there is no official standard of what is meant by 'clean', consumers need to be aware that individual brands and retailers all have their own definition, which can vary greatly. In this episode of the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, we discuss the origins of the term clean beauty, why it has been driven by concern regarding certain cosmetic ingredients and is intertwined with a consumer search for products that will support their wellbeing. We also discuss the Formula Botanica Philosophy on clean beauty, where we redefine what the term means and talk about how it should evolve. Ingredient safety data sheets (SDS) will contain key information about toxicity and environmental impact. A key tool for formulators to understand some of these issues further. Misunderstanding of data and an ingredients ability to do harm is fuelling the clean beauty debate online and maintaining the controversy. We also explore the legalities of cosmetic claims in Episode 3: How to Comply with Cosmetics Regulations. In this episode of the Green Beauty Conversations Podcast you will learn about: The origins of the word "Clean Beauty" in the cosmetics industry. We delve in to other current buzzwords such as "non-toxic" and talk about why when it comes to cosmetics, dose and exposure are so important to understanding toxicity. We also discuss the difference between acute and chronic toxicity. The Formula Botanica philosophy for the four points that we think should define Clean Beauty: 1) Bringing together the concepts of beauty and wellbeing 2) Transparency and Ethics 3) Clean for the planet as well as people 4) Clean products should be safe and hygienically made. We also discuss why transparency is particularly key for natural and indie beauty brands. "Transparency in the beauty industry isn't a trend, it is a movement" - Lorraine Dallmeier Director of Formula Botanica Key take-outs include: Beauty products should be clean for the planet as well as people. Topics such as overall sustainability and pollution are becoming increasingly important for eco-conscious consumers. Formulators should also consider more complex issues such as their water and carbon footprints when creating their brands. At Formula Botanica we would like to see the conversation focus on overall sustainability looking at the whole picture, rather than single ingredients or a natural vs synthetics approach. Impact can be measured in different ways, including community and supply chain impact. Brands need to have a clear vision of their own philosophy and use this to connect with their consumer. Terms like Clean Beauty should not be used to make people guilty about their personal choices. Customers should be choosing products based on their own preferences and to enhance their personal wellbeing. Brands should be celebrating their ingredient choices rather than simply focusing on what isn't in their products. The term Clean beauty shouldn't be used as a way of denigrating mainstream or synthetic cosmetics. Clean Beauty should be hygienically made following GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) and safely and efficiently preserved. We believe formulators should be proud to use preservatives, as this ensures consumer safety. If you enjoyed this podcast why not listen to Episode 1: What does Natural Beauty mean? Please like, share and subscribe 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.

If you're dreaming of launching an indie beauty brand you may wonder if you have the mindset to become a successful skincare entrepreneur. Even just a decade ago, we would tend to use the word entrepreneur to describe the personalities driving big conglomerates and reserve the epithet for figures like Richard Branson. Now though, entrepreneurs are just as likely to be individual makers and creatives launching businesses from kitchen tables. This wider use of the label entrepreneur can still be daunting for the small indie beauty brand founder. We may fall into comparisonitis and doubt ourselves capable of executing our plans and following through on our dreams. Our guest in this episode of Green Beauty Conversations removes the mystery of beauty entrepreneurship by taking us on her own business journey. Zeze Oriaikhi-Sao, founder of Malée Natural Science, says that the mindset of a beauty entrepreneur can most certainly be learned and is not something we are born with. Zeze's story is one of a young African woman in the UK who had to become entrepreneurial after a move to South Africa where she faced a period of unemployment. Creating an ethical, luxury fragrance, bath and body care range was furthest from Zeze's mind when she started her working life. Having gained two degrees at just age 24, Zeze was aiming for a corporate consulting career when life changed and set her on her entrepreneurial path. Zeze is a woman who discovered by chance almost her passion for the people, natural beauty and healing rituals of her home continent. She went on to harness those to create a brand that could change her life and others' for the better. Her motto to any would-be beauty entrepreneur is to stay true to your beliefs even in times of failure: "My biggest successes have come when I was focused on my beliefs. It doesn't matter if you fail, but don't let your fears rule you. Focus on the people you want to solve problems for. That becomes more enriching. How you approach your journey is the most important point." In this episode on the mindset of a skincare entrepreneur, you'll hear about: The four types of entrepreneur around today and how the indie beautypreneur is likely to be a blend of all four; Why knowing your purpose - the reason why you started out - is the most important guiding factor in your journey; Why running an ethical business that is founded on beliefs will give you more joy and be able to sustain your passion for business; How not only adopting the mindset of a beauty entrepreneur but becoming a sustainable, successful business takes time; remember, Amazon took 19 years to become profitable! Be patient and give things time to work Key take-outs include: Setting business goals is fine, but what you really need to focus on is the purpose of those goals and understand them thoroughly. Your overriding goal should to be the best you can at what you do and what you offer. Every rejection or failure has its reason. For example, if a retailer turns your brand down then realise that it's probably not the right time in your business journey to be stocked with them. See the rejection or failure as a way to sharpen your tools and get back out there with a better offer, mindset and approach. Remember that work-life balance is not some idealised vision or version of your life. Just work on your own terms and own that balance, making it individual to your needs and lifestyle. Work smarter not harder. Document what you do and when so you can see where time is wasted on non-priority actions. Time is the only finite in our lives as entrepreneurs, so don't squander it. Find out more about Malée Natural Science and Zeze's story: Malée website. Malée on Instagram. Malée on Facebook Malée 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.

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 conversation

When an emergency physician decides on a radical shift in life to choose natural skincare as a career over medicine, you begin to realise just how powerful a sector green beauty is becoming. However, as Dr Sarah Villafranco, founder of Osmia organics and our guest in this episode says, while her career change certainly raised some eyebrows back in 2012, it proved a logical move that had parallels with her role as a doctor. As as an emergency physician, I felt I was a fire fighter and I wasn't sure I was helping people prevent disease. I wanted to intervene sooner in people's health and their daily choices and focus on the important pillars of good health that Western medicine had largely forgotten, such as diet, stress management, joy and fitness. The more medical research I did on effect of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, the more I realised what a big piece of medicine was involved in skincare. Sarah Villafranco launched Osmia Organics as a way to help people not only choose natural skincare, but also as a space to learn about a more holistic approach to health and self care. Osmia's blog and social media offers insights and advice on developing a health-focused, positive-living mindset to generate the conversation on what Sarah says traditional medicine sees as 'alternative' routes to health. Transitioning from a high-stress, emergency physician's role where split-second decisions can be life determining, to running a natural skincare business designed to impact our longer-term health and well-being is quite a leap to make. Sarah Villafranco says it can be scary to follow your dreams but adds that building a natural skincare business isn't about dreaming, but hard realities. "You can't leave a career that makes money for one that won't. You need to plan your dreams as it takes time to build a business." Dr Sarah Villafranco has a unique vantage point from which to assess the current shape of the green beauty movement. Her medical background and ability to interpret and filter the science enables her to cut through the scepticism and also the green washing that can surround green beauty. In this wide-ranging interview, Dr Sarah Villafranco gives invaluable advice to budding natural skincare entrepreneurs, from whatever walk of life. In this episode on choosing natural skincare as a career, you'll hear about: Why the natural, organic skincare sector is a rigorous, demanding yet rewarding a career choice for someone from any background; Why the green beauty sector needs more people involved in the industry who are prepared to train, hone their professional skills as formulators and dig deep into the science of skincare to tackle green washing and strengthen the industry as a whole; How becoming a skincare entrepreneur and running a business and a team is not something to be scared of but a role you grow into and make part of your lifelong learning; Why honesty and transparency in your business dealings with everyone from suppliers to customers and staff is paramount to your success; and How being courteous to other business leaders and brands in the naturals' sector and sharing the green space amicably will help your brand and others grow mutually: "A rising tide lifts all boats' should be your motto. Key take-outs include: As a product formulator, you will need the patience and resilience to persevere and to take formulation failures in your stride. See any failure as learning your trade. Think consciously about the environment in all aspects of your business. Realise that there is no such thing as 'eco friendly' but rather prefer to use the term eco conscious. Don't green wash - be prepared to answer consumers, trade and media queries about your products or business honestly and research before you reply. If you don't know something, admit it and say you will find out. Try to enjoy life's sensory moments and the ride that being an entrepreneur brings with it. Find out more about Dr Sarah Villafranco and her brand Osmia Organics: Osmia Organics website. Osmia Organics on Facebook. Osmia Organics Instagram. Osmia Organics Twitter. Osmia Organics Pinterest. Why not choose natural skincare as your next career move? If you are thinking of building a natural, organic cosmetics business and would like to develop your entrepreneurial skills in the beauty sector, enrol in our BRAND NEW Diploma in Beauty Brand Business Management - the ultimate online training programme in starting or growing your indie beauty brand. Our newest and biggest online course is a combination of award-winning teaching materials and a web summit with 30+ influential speakers drawn from the best in the beauty and business community. Sign up for news of our next term dates. Why wait to start your dream beauty business? Find out more now!. 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

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.

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 scaremonger

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.

At Formula Botanica, we receive a good many queries from prospective students wanting to know if they need to be a qualified cosmetic chemist to formulate skincare products. The cosmetic chemist vs skincare formulator conundrum has gone higher up the agenda in recent years as we've seen ever more non chemists as formulators and founders of indie beauty businesses. At Formula Botanica, we teach diplomas and certificates in cosmetic product formulating. An increasing number of our graduates go on to formulate beautiful, high-performance products as well as run successful indie beauty businesses having been inspired and empowered by the courses they took with us. This is possible because in nearly all parts of the world, irrespective of whether the formulator is a cosmetic chemist or skincare formulator, the cosmetic products themselves must meet strict compliance regulations to be sold legally. What we teach at Formula Botanica are the key concepts of chemistry; a competent cosmetic product formulator would need to know to create products that are safe, stable and meet - and often exceed - consumer expectations. Some core components of cosmetic chemistry that we include in our Diplomas are pH measurement and monitoring, emulsification, methods of natural cosmetics' preservation, and the use of solubilisers and surfactants. Some Differences between a cosmetic chemist vs skincare formulator There are of course some fundamental differences between a cosmetic chemist and skincare formulator. A cosmetic chemist would be steeped in the science of how cosmetic ingredients work together and would know the likely outcome of any formula even without a practical lab trial. A cosmetic chemist would need formal, recognised, usually graduate-level qualifications in chemistry along with a specialist training (a post-graduate qualification) in cosmetic science. They may well end up working in the R&D lab of a large cosmetics' firm. A cosmetic product formulator would not necessarily know the in-depth science of how ingredients work but could, through applied study and practical application of their formulating skills coupled with detailed observation, build up a considerable knowledge bank about their ingredients and formulation outcomes. A cosmetic chemist working in a large lab might not be the one who dreams up the lovely new formulas as they might be more restricted in how much of the route from first creative idea to marketable product they get their hands on. However, they may be at the forefront of R&D bringing innovative cosmetic ingredients to market. It is inevitable that there is some overlap in roles and also a lot of grey areas and misconceptions about what both careers involve. In this podcast, Formula Botanica School Director, Lorraine Dallmeier and podcast host and Relationship Manager Gemma discuss the two roles and career paths along with their respective pros and cons. This podcast is a must-listen for anyone wondering about the training and career options in formulating cosmetics' products especially if looking to focus on natural, organic formulation. In this episode tackling the roles of a cosmetic chemist vs skincare formulator, you'll hear about: Why your decision to choose one training route over the other may be more down to personal circumstances such as lifestyle, finances, commitments and time, and your desired career in the cosmetics' industry; How a cosmetic chemist has the chance to work in world-leading beauty brand labs but conversely how a product formulator may enjoy more freedom and creativity in formulating products and in career options; Why a cosmetic product placed for sale in most parts of the world, whether it is formulated by a chemist or product formulator, will have had to undergone the safety, stability and microbial testing to be placed legally on the market for sale; Why it is imperative that any cosmetics' business founder is transparent about their own personal or their employees' cosmetic formulating qualifications and must be confident in explaining how and why their qualifications - whichever route they choose - enable them to do their job professionally; Why building a successful cosmetics' brand requires a swathe of skills that are not inherent in either product formulation nor chemistry backgrounds and would require extra skill sets; Why the lack of formal, tertiary-level cosmetic chemistry courses worldwide and the costs entailed in continuing in higher education might make a shorter-term, distance-learning formulation course a more accessible option for some. Key take-outs include the three main steps to becoming a competent, natural cosmetics' skincare formulator: Step one: First, get to know your ingredients thoroughly and learn how to research their properties. This will give you a sound basis on which to build your formulating skills. Step two: Practice formulating and never stop testing out new combinations and ratios of ingredients. Only through practice can yo

Did you know that one of the most effective ways to pitch your beauty products to a buyer is to formulate your cosmetics' range from the start with your ideal retailer in mind? Understanding what a retailer is looking for in your beauty brand and getting to know their retail space inside out is just some of the groundwork you need to do before approaching a buyer. After all, they get hundreds of email pitches every day and you need to grab their attention. In this near hour-long episode of Green Beauty Conversations, our guest Gemma Harling of Lumi Consultancy provides a goldmine of information for the beauty entrepreneur serious about getting stocked in top retailers. As a former senior buyer for one of the UK's largest beauty retailers, Gemma gives us insights into the role of the time-poor beauty buyer. She knows what gets buyers to sit up and take notice of a new beauty brand and has seen also just about every pitfall eager start-up founders make. As Gemma says, she has seen "the good, the bad and the ugly" of brand pitches, and is here to see your brand stands out and gains traction with your target retailers. Getting a reply to an email, let alone a foot in the door to pitch your beauty products to a buyer in person is tougher than ever in a fast-moving beauty retail world where brands can come and go off shelves in less than six months. Buyers are on the look out for the 'next big thing' and while they don't wish to miss the chance of discovering a truly innovative, exciting indie brand, they also need to keep their large, established cosmetics' brands happy. Your pitch needs to be strategic if you're to get noticed! Be prepared to take notes as Gemma walks us through her top 5 tips on how to pitch your beauty products effectively, from first email to buyer presentation. Gemma has kindly prepared a workbook to download - 'Race to Retail' - which is a brilliant roadmap to follow in preparing to get retail ready. In this episode on how to pitch your beauty products, you'll hear about: Why it is important to be clear about who your target customers are. Don't just think of an avatar but drill into any data you have to back up your brand's customer profile. Understand too the retailers' customers and see if yours match their customers' profile. How to select your target retailers with intention. For example, a luxury-end department store with one branch might not be appropriate for your brand even if it seems a glittering prize. Think laterally and do your homework on which retailers are more suited to your brand. Why you need a clear retailer USP: understand how your product range and brand give the retailer an edge, perhaps by filling a gap in their current offer. Why you need to know your target retailers inside out. Walk the walk by going into their stores and seeing which brands and trends they promote. How visiting some live beauty events or trade fairs can be a great way to meet your target retailers and buyers. They are also brilliant opportunities to understand retail trends. See our post on latest indie beauty trends in our round up of In-Cosmetics Global 2019. Key take-outs on your brand's pitch include: Find the right buyer to contact. Try using LinkedIn to research them and then follow them on social media. Many beauty buyers have their own accounts. You will pick up on what they are looking for in a brand and understand more about their approach to retailing. Include a 'power statement' about your brand in your initial email. You could use impressive sales statistics, testimonials or press coverage. Don't be woolly about your business projections in your pitch; present sales' forecasts for each retailer but don't pluck figures out of the air - do your homework! Include your pitch presentation in the first email, but ensure it's clear, concise and visually impressive. Some buyers might be curious about your power statement and want to see immediately whether your brand is worth following up on. Be persistent in following up any communications with prospective buyers, but don't pester them. If you enjoy this podcast, see also our post 10 Tips to Attract Retail Beauty Buyers to your Skincare Brand. Find out more about Gemma Harling and Lumi Consultancy's services to indie beauty brands here: Lumi Consultancy website. Lumi 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.

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.

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 St

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 S