Skincare, Awards and What it Means For Us

We have two skincare collections at A.S Apothecary, the Classic Range and the Harris Edition. Last week, the Harris Edition won 9 awards in the Beauty Shortlist, which is the industry gold standard. I entered 5 products, 4 from the Harris Edition and the Hamam Soap because it makes me so happy. Some of them won multiple awards, amongst others - The Wild Beauty Balm did particularly well winning not only Best Beauty Balm overall but also Best 'Feel Better' Product for Winter and Best Beauty Balm for Menopause. In fact for Menopause we also won Best Face Mist with the Isle Mist and Best Cleanser with the Cleansing Multi Mask, then the Unblushing Cream won Best Moisturiser to Correct Redness and the Serum was made the Editor's Choice. The Hamam Soap won Best Soap. The Classic Range, which are the products I created in Cyprus weren't entered this year but they have done really well in the past.

The Beauty Shortlist is an international competition, there is skincare entered from all over the world, as far as Australia. Most companies enter many more products than us and most are far bigger and better invested than us. In the world of skincare we are tiny and genuinely different.

There has been a real decline in green indie brands in recent years, squeezed out by the avalanche of new products constantly pushed onto the market by the bigger players with more money and far greater access to the pernicious and ever growing band of influencers, many of whom have little knowledge to make a judgement on a product.

As an aside, I watched a facebook reel that popped up on my feed, of an influencer covering her face in thick stripes of red lipstick, then working a balm into her skin and over her eyelids, her whole face was a smear of red, wiped clean with a cloth to reveal slightly reddened skin. It was to demonstrate how good the cleanser was. It was so unnecessary. It was so symptomatic of puddle deep understanding. If I smeared lipstick on my face I could remove it with our Cleansing Oil #5, our Cleansing Multi Mask or our Harmonising Cleansing Balm - all would do the job but each is created with a different purpose. People need to be informed about why to use a particular product, what it achieves overall and why it's worth investing in. There was literally no value in this reel she might as well have advocated for a wet wipe.  

There has also been such a loss of understanding - the green beauty revolution is no more. The bigger brands simply took the language of green beauty and misapplied it to their products ( I'm resisting my 'this was once a coconut' rant), then they pushed the real innovators out. We have survived I think, because our language is completely our own, because our work is not profit driven but designed to help. We have always marched to the beat of our own drum, making products to meet specific needs and being very creative in how we achieve that, and we have the most fantastic, loyal customers. Raven Botanics, another little Scottish brand, described me as the OG after the results of the awards were announced - I had to google it - it means the Original Gangster. I rather like that and henceforth think the moniker The Godmother may be appropriate.

What I see in many small brands is the wholesale adoption of big brand, highly processed ingredients and a parroting of the same language to merit its inclusion. It's sad because homogenised, industrialised skincare with its lifeless ingredients does so little overall. It doesn't have the vitality of fresh organic ingredients grown and harvested on the doorstep. It doesn't carry within each pot the intention of the maker, it isn't made with love and it doesn't reflect a landscape from whence it came. It begs the question why buy from a small brand if a big brand is doing the same thing but cheaper? If there is so little point of difference.

I formulate every single product we make. I sit down, do the research, do the due diligence and then start to explore how to make a product. I think about the problem I'm trying to solve, that our customers have expressed a need for, and how to do that naturally, with the very best quality ingredients. It takes time, so much time to get right - the balance of sustainable ingredients, effect, texture, sensation. So much waiting - for the plants, for the slow, low-tech processes to complete their cycle. And then all the different iterations to get to the one that does it all. For us, bringing a product to market can take well over a year by the time I'm finally satisfied with it, and then it needs to be formally assessed by an independent cosmetic chemist and all the testing has to happen. It's a huge investment. Conservatively every product we make costs around £2500 to get to the launch day.

I think there are essentially 2 different models in this business - the small brands with big aspirations, the ones that want the exponential growth, that are small only because they are not big yet. Then there are the tiny percentage like us who are small deliberately, who have a de-growth approach, for whom sustainability and efficacy are key. I love that our customers can email me directly to ask about a problem or for advice, if we were bigger that couldn't happen. I now enjoy making our slightly eccentric reels, It's a pleasure having the time to write this blog once a week myself. I love the wildly positive energy that exists within this little business even when times are tough. Most of all I love the fact that we tread lightly on this fragile island ecology because of the decisions we make.

So the winning of the Beauty Shortlist awards means a lot to me because it is an acknowledgment that amongst all those other brands large and small, something about our products sings out and calls to people because they work, they really work. That makes me so very happy.