Coming from a background centred around the premium beauty industry and leading the marketing for a number of high price point, high profile brands, gave Emma Thornton an insight into how much it actually cost to make these products, how much water was going into them and how little legislation there is when it comes to making natural and organic beauty claims.
“It felt as if there was always some kind of consumer compromise – brands feeling like they could charge a high price just because the word “organic” was written on the box, often without backing, or because it looked pretty. Being a beauty consumer myself, I wanted to create something where no compromise was made,” says Emma. And thus TRUE Skincare was born.
TRUE Skincare was developed with the customers at heart, providing honest, natural, certified organic and waterless beauty. “With so little legislation and regulation regarding “natural” and “organic” beauty product claims, it’s easy for consumers to be misled through deceptive messaging and clever marketing. This is why transparency is of paramount importance to us. We’ve made a conscious decision to reduce our profits without compromising on quality, so that everyone can benefit from premium, natural, organic and yet accessible skincare,” she adds.
All of the products within the TRUE Skincare range are 100% natural, certified organic, vegan friendly and waterless in formulation whilst remaining accessible with regards to both availability and price, without compromising on elegance, ethics or efficacy. They are also extremely proud to be certified organic by the Soil Association and Leaping Bunny certified by Cruelty Free International.
Lack of legislation
When asked about the challenges faced in the initial years and how difficult it was to get into the organic sector she says, “I only started the business in March 2018 and was incredibly lucky to launch with Holland & Barrett in May 2018. We’ve seen consumers shift towards organic beauty over the last 8 years or so, I think the biggest issue is the lack of legislation within the industry which is led to a huge amount of greenwashing by big and small brands alike, which in turn has created a lot of “noise”, making it harder for those who are actually genuinely organic to be heard.”
“However what is incredibly reassuring is consumers are actually doing more and more research into what “organic” actually means within the beauty industry and we can see this from the year on year market growth of certified organic beauty, which has now reached £120.2m in the UK alone, 13% up on last year,” she points out.
The core products within the brand include Clarifying Safflower & Geranium Cleansing Oil, Gentle Superfood Exfoliator and four facial oils to tackle different skin concerns.
TRUE Skincare has also recently launched its Hydrating Blossom & Pine Toner and Radiance Renewal 10% Stabilised Vitamin C Serum, which are both waterless skincare in formulation and use an organic pine extract as a base.
One issue with getting your products certified is that the raw material supplier has to be certified as organic themselves, which comes at a cost. Unfortunately, this isn’t financially viable for a lot of small, innovative suppliers, so even though both of these products are between 83-99% organic, they can’t be certified as the pine extract is not certified by a body.
To be or not to be ‘waterless’
With a typical moisturiser containing up to 85% water in its formulations – often used as a bulking agent – it’s no surprise that the cosmetics industry uses trillions of litres of fresh water every year during the manufacturing process; from extraction, to cleaning, to what we put on our faces.
This is one of the many reasons why Emma chose to eliminate water from all of her formulations. And it doesn’t stop there. She is constantly looking for ways to reuse or reduce water usage in the manufacturing and extraction process, many of which are entirely waterless. So instead of using this vital commodity to create her skincare range, all of TRUE’s products are filled to the brim with skin-benefiting ingredients which are kind to you and our planet. But the decision was a challenging one.
“It’s a bit crazy to be honest as some of the new products which we will be launching using organic pine extract, based on COSMOS’ standards, could actually be certified if we used water, but not if we used a genuinely organic ingredient which has incredible eco credentials,” says Emma.
TRUE Skincare is a UK based business and their products are stocked by some of the UK’s leading retailers. “We do have some stockists in Europe and offer worldwide shipping, however our focus for the not too distant future will be the US market,” Emma informs.
Emma outlines the future roadmap, “We have some really exciting new products in the pipeline including a 1% Hyaluronic Acid Complex and moisturiser, alongside some other line extensions, all of which will be waterless, organic, natural and vegan friendly, as per the rest of the range. We are also really excited to be launching with two further leading UK retailers later this year and jumping across the pond to the US in the not too distant future!”
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