Maturing as a Business

Someone recently referred to me as the OG of natural beauty. Having googled it, I see it means the Original Gangster (which I definitely prefer to Old Grannie!) which is slang for knowing what you're doing, an expert in something. It made me reflect that I have been running A.S Apothecary since 2015 but working with plants and making products for many decades longer.

 

I began to reflect on the journey of the Apothecary and how now, as a more mature business, we have really found our feet and direction and we are able to invest in our future with more plants, more making space, a small filling machine to save all the hand piping and jar tapping, and eventually a good labelling machine so that instead of spending countless hours hand labelling we can go and do something more interesting instead.

 

When I started out I was making products for patients realising that for many, the skin problems they were experiencing were directly attributable to the products they used - soaps where the process created a bar that dried the skin or an excessively alkaline liquid soap that disrupted the natural biome. Creams that were full of pthalates and parabens and toners that were savage in their action stripping away all the natural oils and destroying the skin's natural balance.

 

I made creams, balms and soaps largely from my kitchen, I distilled outside in my garden when the weather allowed (often in Cyprus, less frequently in the UK). Making more than 10 of anything was rare. The pleasure of it was to provide a service, to help people help themselves, to educate and offer an effective alternative. 

 

I worked by myself to start with, juggling childcare, a busy practice and making. Later I worked with a friend in Cyprus and then a small team in Lewes. I moved from my kitchen to a barn with growing space in Sussex and worked there for several years, honing my farming skills and gradually making more products. 

 

The transition to a beauty and wellness brand was gradual, it coincided with the more general realisation that many of the ingredients used in mass produced skincare were not great either for the skin or the environment. The Green Beauty movement emerged and I was at the vanguard of that, supplying Content Beauty, which was at the very epicentre and other shops right across the EU that supported small green brands. 

 

All these years on, that movement has largely been undone by conventional mass-beauty brands hijacking the language of green beauty but not the spirit, ingredients or approach. It has been fascinatingly depressing to watch as the controversial old ingredients were ditched in favour of the 'derived from a coconut'  new ingredients that are as far from a coconut as it's possible to imagine. Hyper-processed dressed up as natural. I wrote about it in an earlier blog here.

 

Of the brands that were small, many went bust, some because they attempted to emulate the move to 'cosmecueticals' and simply couldn't compete, others because the space for their products simply disappeared. Many of the more successful brands such as Tata Harper sold out to L'Oreal as did Aesop and the Body Shop. Unilever swept up REN, Paula's Choice and Tatcha in a bid to expand into the clean beauty space. I think their products changed as a result - not immediately but over time.

 

I meantime, worked incredibly hard keeping afloat, determined not to compromise, even through Brexit when we lost literally every one of our EU stockists and then Covid when we moved the whole business to Harris and effectively started again. I've never wanted to follow trends or fall into the trap of thinking every new exotic is worth embracing. Unless I can see a real benefit, I prefer to use the incredible plants we have growing here on land and sea. I've resisted mechanisation preferring the human touch, I've refused investment on many occasions, believing that staying small and resilient is the best way to ensure quality, and to be able to pivot where needed without having to consult anyone beyond my own team.

 

Now, all these years on, I have a brilliant team at the Apothecary, each person bringing such value to the whole. We are good growers, careful foragers and expert makers of a beautiful selection of products with all the care and attention they deserve. We listen to our customers and understand what is needed and then, after masses of research and experiment, we make it - from skincare to tinctures, balms for everyday complaints, soaps to shampoos, cacao to Wild Eve and of course the Sleep Cream which has revolutionised so many people's sleep.

 

We share our daily work on Instagram and Facebook, make reels of our processes and the places we work. We continue to educate and support and perhaps most importantly, we keep learning ourselves. The more we know, the more we can hone our skills and products to be ever more effective and that benefits all of us. So Old Grannie or Original Gangster, I'm so happy, with your support, to be able to do what I do, in the company of such lovely people, in the most beautiful place. Long may it continue...