Lots of news (part 2)

 

In parallel, I am now working on our name and our brand. I have trademarked “evolve beauty”, as most people seemed to really like it when we discussed it last time. So far (fingers crossed) our trademark application seems to be going OK. I’ve thought quite hard about why evolve is a good name for a skincare range, and here are my ideas about what we would say.

 

Firstly – big picture – why are we doing this at all?? I think that all of the doom and gloom about climate change and the environment often leaves people feeling very paralysed and negative about what they can do personally. But the simple fact is, if we continue the way we are going, nothing will improve. It isn’t realistic to think that we will be able to deprive ourselves and dramatically change the way we live now, even if a small number of people are willing to do it. What we need is to fundamentally change the way everything is designed and made to create a clean green economy. evolve needs to be part of the solution – to give everyone the choice to be a little better in everything they do. I’ve called that philosophy “live better” and it explains why evolve is the right name for us to use.

 

Firstly, evolve needs to have an impact on people’s health. The reason we were all interested in creating a range at all was that we couldn’t find nice looking everyday products to use that were 100% natural and organic that really worked because we know about the unhealthy ingredients that are used. However, there is also a lot of confusion in the industry about which products are natural, lots of really complicated explanations about the chemicals that are commonly used in products and what is really healthy to be used on skin. This all needs to be really simplified to persuade the majority of people that natural is better for them. But people already really understand that natural and organic food is better for them. It is also indisputably true that what you put on your skin will be absorbed by your body. So why not use food based ingredients in skin products?? If they are really natural and kind to skin, they should be good enough to eat. You also told me that you liked the sound of delicious organic ingredients like apricot butter when we last met up. I’ve called this “5 a day for healthy skin”

 

Secondly, evolve needs to cause minimum impact on the environment, to help everyone be a little greener. It is very encouraging that recycled plastic packaging is becoming really widely available, and that lots of companies are starting to use it. However, it is still possible to move things forward. Labels and pumps are not always made from the same plastics as the bottles, which makes recycling very difficult. However, brilliantly I have now found a label manufacturer who can make a recycled label in the same plastic as the bottle, and also a pump manufacturer who makes a pump without any springs in it so metal doesn’t get mixed up with all of the plastic. I would LOVE to show you these when we next meet up.

 

If you have got this far (and apologies again for a very long post!), I would like to ask that you write me a little comment back to let me know what you think about all of this. Hopefully we will meet up really soon, but it would be great to get your thoughts in the meantime.

 

 

 

New blog - and lots of news

Welcome to the brand new blog! There is lots and lots of news to share with you.

 

Firstly, apologies for the hiatus over the summer. All I can say is that I was getting married, and it got really really busy!! The lab were continuing to work on products though, so we haven’t lost any time.

 

Anyway, the first piece of news (other than that I am now called Laura Rudoe rather than Laura Howard) is that I have now left my job to work on this project and really move it forward. And we are starting to make real progress. I am hopefully that we will be able to launch in the Spring (hopefully in April if we get our skates on).

 

As I said, the lab are superstars, as they continued to work really hard on the products while I was off getting married, and it was no easy task we had set them. Working out how to make a 100% natural, organically certified range of products is really really difficult. As well as the really complicated rules, it also restricts the choice of ingredients. There are several really amazing ingredients we have had to reject because they were not 100% natural. Just yesterday I had a dilemma about an ingredient which would make the body washes really pretty and pearly shimmering. However, although the ingredient was allowed in organic products, it was only 99% natural which means we would not have been able to say 100% natural overall!! That is such an important thing to be able to say, I had to tell the lab not to use it. However, I’m pleased to say that the lab have understood the rules now and are really motoring along nicely creating fabulous organic products.

 

They have already done a sterling job on both the body lotion and the shower wash. The body lotion is beautifully rich but is absorbed really nicely. It has some lovely oils and butters in it like apricot butter, sweet almond oil and a really amazing oil from South America called “Sacha Inchi oil” which is fair trade. The shower wash is beautifully thick and creamy and leaves the skin really soft and smooth. I can’t wait to show you both products and will set up a time when we can meet up for a face to face catch up.

 

What they are working on now is the hair products. We’ve decided to make a couple more products than when I last saw you. As well as a gentle moisturising shampoo, which won’t dry or flake the scalp, we are also making a detox shampoo for oily or congested scalps, which can also be used on a periodic basis on dull hair with buildup of styling products (our products don’t build up on the hair though because they don’t contain any silicones). We’re also thinking of using an anti-pollution ingredient which will cleanse the hair of any pollution. As well as there 2 shampoos, we are now looking at 2 conditioners. One of them is rich and repairing, and designed for dry or damaged hair. We want to make it so it could be left on overnight as a conditioning mask as well so people don’t have to buy an extra product for that. The other conditioner is a weightless leave in conditioner for oily or fine hair. As well as detangling and adding shine, it also protects from heat and from UV, so it can be used by all hair types as a blow dry spray. Would LOVE your thoughts on these ideas.

 

Am going to split this post in 2 – because it is so long!!