by Stephen Ley, MD of Marshall Curtis
As a man working in the beauty and skincare business, it’s not always easy to know what women want – to coin a phrase from a well-known film!
Developing a range of products which look good, smell good, do what they say on the “tin” and meet my own strong code of belief in organic materials has been challenging to say the least.
That’s why you’ll often find me and my (male) colleagues outnumbered by an average of 2,000 to one by the fairer sex at various baby and beauty events up and down the country.
Talking to women about beauty products and what they want to put on their skin is what we’re passionate about. Hence the shows we attend, the groups of mums that we talk to and the product testing that we do.
Indeed, it was female nurses who set me on the path to wanting to discover more about organic and natural beauty and skincare products in the first place – and that’s when I found out it wasn’t going to be an easy one to tread.
I’ve worked in the healthcare business for well over 25 years, so I was very familiar with various products used in patient care – for example for washing and moisturising – but I also knew that many of the nurses I talked to were actually quite worried about the effects of some of the ingredients in those products.
They wanted to know if there were more natural alternatives which would be kinder to their patients’ skin. After all, when people are in hospital, their skin often becomes dry, perhaps as a result of the drugs they are taking or a change of diet, or simply the fact they are unable to move about as they normally would and become a bit dehydrated. That set me thinking that if nurses were worried about chemicals in skincare products, most women who buy these items on their weekly shop are probably worried about it too.
Which is how the idea for the Raw Organic range was born.
Of course, having the idea was one thing, but making it happen was another. There were two areas in particular that I wasn’t prepared to compromise on: gaining accreditation from the Soil Association and the Vegetarian Society.
This was really important to me, not just because I am passionate about these areas personally, but because doing so gives our products integrity. There are lots of brands around that use the description “organic”, but only have a few organic ingredients in their products. Our Raw Organic range is one of the few brands that use purely SA accredited products and we’re incredibly proud of that.
The Soil Association is an environmental charity – its incentive isn't to help us sell our products but to support the protection of the environment and we endorse that view wholeheartedly. Complying with the Soil Association’s strict standards keeps us honest and we’ve taken the view that if we can't do it to Soil Association standards, then we won't do it at all. Our motto is: make them good for the environment. If they are good for the environment, then they are good for the person using them.
Likewise, we don’t use animal products and we don't do any testing on animals and we’re delighted to have accreditation from the Vegetarian Society as well.
Our starting point was agreeing the items which we wanted to develop first: the liquid soap, the hand and body lotion and the conditioning shampoo. From there, it was a question of finding the right mix of ingredients which fitted in with our ethos and did the job they were supposed to do.
Our regulatory affairs manager, Nigel Brassington, played an important role in researching and identifying suppliers and manufacturers who matched the standards we wanted to achieve. Some were already approved by the Soil Association, which gave us a head start, while others had to be able to demonstrate the audit trail of their ingredients.
It wasn’t an easy task, traceability is incredibly important and it took us a long time to find sources for our ingredients that we trusted. We walked away from several companies and the fact we were determined to only work with UK firms in order to ensure full control over the manufacturing process and avoid unnecessary transportation, made it an even harder task.
The highest quality organic ingredients tend to come from Europe, where the climate is more favourable to the plants concerned but, for example, the evening primrose oil we use is grown and pressed in England. Where products are sourced from overseas, we’ve gone to great lengths to ensure that our suppliers only use ingredients from proven sustainable sources and we’re proud to be able to do that. All our products are mixed and manufactured in England, so we’ve done everything we can to minimise our carbon footprint.
Having established our key suppliers, we then began mixing and testing the ingredients, both in the laboratory and with focus groups. Everything was dermatologically and allergy tested, and we had plenty of first-hand feedback on texture, smell and performance so we were able to adjust the ingredients until we had them exactly right. Altogether, it took over 18 months in research and testing until we were satisfied, but there’s no doubt it’s been worth all the hard work and the filling in of forms and paperwork to get the necessary results.
The “raw” in Raw Organic refers to the limited amount of processing that we carry out on many of the ingredients we use – it is probably as raw as possible for toiletries and oils.
All the massage oils and baby oil are made from more than 99% of cold-pressed essential oils – with no heating involved in the pressing and the maximum temperature reached during pressing is never more than 40°C. So, for these products, most of the ingredients really are even raw in the food sense. We cannot avoid some higher temperatures in the manufacture of soaps and toiletries but, once again, all the added essential oils are cold-pressed and otherwise unprocessed.
To give you another example of how we are doing things differently, our conditioning shampoo with bilberry and juniper uses aloe vera juice to cleanse and condition the hair but its soothing and antistatic ingredients help prevent the fly-away effect that many women will be familiar with.
What this shampoo won’t do is foam strongly because it doesn’t contain any harsh synthetic foaming agents, which makes it a lot easier to wash away and is kinder on the environment. Foaming agents don’t help shampoos work, they just give the impression that they are working, they don’t actually need to be there and just end up making a lot of foam in sewage plants.
As a Dad of three (although they are now grown up) I also wanted to produce an organic baby oil for all those mums who enjoy baby massage. We put a lot of work into this product in particular and the soothing and relaxing properties of its evening primrose and chamomile oil work really well, with product tester mums saying they really love it.
The feedback we receive, both face to face and by email from people who’ve bought our products, is always excellent. We’re often asked if it’s possible to make your own versions and we know that some of the best ideas have started at the kitchen table.
For example, by combining two of the Raw Organic massage oils, you can create your own custom fragrance, for example, blending the Relaxing Massage Oil and the Massage Oil for Delicate Skin results in a lovely exotic and relaxing fragrance.
If you’re looking to go further though, and make toiletries such as soap from scratch – using basic organic ingredients – then a couple of good books that can help include: “The Soapmaker's Companion” by Susan Miller Cavitch and “Making Natural Liquid Soaps” by Catherine Failor.
You never know where you might end up!
