Hi Jo-Anne,

*Edit: We were going to meet earlier,  but she had to fly back home for an award show and she won.

Congratulations by the way, I don’t know if you got the price but the first time that we were going to meet it was delayed due to the fact that you had to go back home to receive an award.

So, this is really terrible. This year I think we’ve won something like 8 awards that are products of business. It has just been a whirlwind. Thank you! This year has just been a really good year. I think people are starting to understand who we are and the kind of products that we offer and because I’m a real person. It’s starting to feel succesfull – recognize who we are – and that is a bit weird. It’s nice, i’m not complaining,because it was always there. This was just last week, we were at another award ceremonie. We were checking into the hotel and at the reception the girl said: “Oh you’re from beauty kitchen.  I love your products”. And I was like: oh my goodness.  She’s like “I get them in Holland”. She started with the lipbalm. That was almost better than any award, because it was really nice. My husband was with me and he was just laughing. I was just really flattered and a little bit embarrased as well. I can’t wait to get home for Christman, so that I don’t have to travel for a few weeks. 

• I’ve prepared some some questions just to me to be able to have feeling for the brand because, I have to be honest, I don’t really know the brand, not yet anyway. I did receive press releases. I thought let’s just have a talk as a person who doesn’t really know a lot of the brand and we have some regular questions about it. I put some questions together and for me one of the question first came to mind is: I think it is not that easy to start your own company and saying I’m going to plunge into the deep. So I was wondering how did you decide to do it and how did the process work?

I’ve always, in my working life, I’ve worked for large companies, like Microsoft, Ava Cosmtics and Nestlé. In my background I’ve always worked in R&D: research and development.  I’ve studied chemistry in University and I always loved beauty. I always loved to try anything you and I’m quite obsessed with how my skin looked. What I learned from large companies is how to make a difference, but I felt I could do it a bit different. That’s why I wanted to set up my won business and the beauty scene was where I wanted to do it. In the last years there was not a lot of change in how products are marketed and set up. There was some stuff I wanted to do and I’m quite determined and I’m not afraid to take risks. In terms of money it has never been the main thing. I know how to make money and I have no problem in doing whatever it takes to support my family. If you’ve got that, you always have something to fall back on and that lessens the risk of what your doing. The other thing is, because of the companies I’ve worked for, I always had the opportunity to work on a consultancy basis. So I worked for the companies 2 -3 days a week while setting up Beauty Kitchen. This was therefor a little less risk for setting up Beauty Kitchen. We are self funded, we had never had any investors. Anything has come from my credit cards and any other work I could do. I’ve only been able to take a salary 3 months ago. So it’s been a long time. Because the business couldn’t support me and I didn’t expect to support me at the early stages. You know it’s nice trying to find something that works for you in how you want to set up your business, but ultimately you always have to make sacrifices. But there personal, depend on where you are in your life and where you priorities are. I’ve haven’t seen a lot of my friends of family in the last two years, because all of my time is going into this. They understand if they needed me, I’m still there even if I don’t have a lot of time. Doing so I don’t even think about the week as in week and weekends, because everything else is just the next day and the next day. I don’t have Monday morning blues because every day is a monday. It’s kind of like that and you need to know what you get into that and I don’t know anybody that set up their business that hasn’t beenconsumed by it, especially in the early stages. By saying that though, it’s not like work. You live for it. Actually I’m my own business and I can do things in the way i like. You get a certain freedom with it, but with that come sacrifices. . I don’t think I could have done it in my twenty’s. I had a lot of other things going on in my own life to by consumed by it. But there’s a time to do it and some do it when they’re younger or some do it when they’re older. It’s mind – set. You have to be focused.

• You said that you studied chemistry and I read a bit about the brand and saw that you were a beekeeper.

Yes, I’ve always kept learning. I didn’t stop at the degree. I’m a qualified botanist, I’m a beekeeper and there is an area known as foraging. It’s when you would go pick mushrooms or seaweed. So it’s like a farmer. You go in the woods to collect mushrooms if you’re doing it on you’re own. It is around understanding or getting under the skin of an ingrediënt, plant or seaweed. I want to understand everything. Honey is a great example, but through that I found out that bees and flying insects are not doing particulary well. I wanted to give back. You want to have an understanding. That is why I studied botany. Which plants are endangered. For me it ’s more than just taking, but what can we give back.

• I was thinking about this. In Europe you’re not allowed to test on animals. But how are your products tested. Are they tested by people?

It is both. We test them in-vitro in a lab, so on fake skin. We don’t test on animals. It just a bit more expensive and that is why a lot of companies test on animals. They’re also other things. I’m using ingrediënts that have been there for ayears and years. Some have been here longer than we are. That means some ingrediënts have been tested before and other ones are tested in-vitro. Also i’m also the first prson who test the product. Therefor there is a lot more reliability around the testing of it.

• I have no experience with Beauty Kitchen. What product would you advice to start out with to get to know and get into the brand?

I would advice the seahorse plankton facial oil. Everything I’ve done to date has almost created it. It has build up to this. The other thing is, because it is an oil it is very accessible to people. You can use it on its own. You can use it own your whole face  or on certain areas. The scent is coming from the essential oils and the feedback we get from people is that they really like it.

You can also use this with anything else you are currently using. You can add it to your current routine. You can use it before your moisturizer or cream. It is a really flexible product.

We use seahorse plankton. It is the plankton microalgae that seahorses eat. It triggers engagement to ask questions from the customers. Seahorse live long for a little creature and that is because of there diet.

This is for any skintype, but it is perticulary good to look at any problems you have. It seems to diminish the redness in my face. I don’t know the science behind it yet, but it’s my experience.

It also stimulates collagen synthesis by nearly 20%. It is a very active ingrediënt that will almost give an instant result. And it also a 100% natural.

It is all of our experience and science fitted in this little bottle.

When anyone uses our products we don’t get any negative feedback. The only negative feedback we had, is that anyone doesn’t like the scent. But in terms of effacity or how it works we haven’t had negative feedback yet.

• At my chin it have imperfections at the moment. It is probably due to stress and the weather. Which product would you advice to counteract that?

Again, it’s a facial oil. *it the abysinnian facial oil. The seahorse plankton would work, but this is an already establish skin care line.  So abysinnian oil, most people have heard about argan oil, but this is the double charged version of this. In scientific tests it outperforms or does just as good as a job as argan oil or jojoba oil. It is good for all skintypes though, because it works in balance with the sebum level of your skin. If you have acne, other products will try to dry it out. This oil works in harmony with your skin. You can use it all over or on certain areas. Put the oil on, brush your teeth so that the oil has a couple of minutes to absorb and than use your cream.

• Maybe you have tought about this already… On the webshop I saw that you have bath salts that you sell in large glass containers. Every time you buy those products, than you get a new container. Will there maybe be an option in the future so that you can refill those containers?

In Glasgow, the original Beauty Kitchen, customers can bring there jar back and we refill those. That’s what we would like to do through Holland & Barrett or the stores that we sell  too, but at the moment it is not possible. Behind the scenes we’re working too make it possible too.

That’s why we use the glass jars. It are Kilner jars. Once you use the jar up, you can clean it up and use it for something or put it in recycle. We like it when they’re reused. But we love to make it possible to refill them in the future.

• I don’t know if you can talk about it. You’ve just released the seahorse plankton line. Are you working on other new products and can you perhaps lift the veil a little bit?

We are working on a men’s range. It will be a very small range, but it will be flexible products. The men’s balm will be a cleansing balm, a pre shave, a post shave and a lipbalm. They can use it not just to clean their face. It will be a multipurpose product, We also we release a hair, face- and bodywash. For guys it needs  to be easy, otherwise they just wont use it.

Also we are working on compostable facewipes. Everyone loves the facewipes, but they’re very bad for the environment. We are making them so that they are compostable. We will be the first ones to do that.

We are also in the final stages of haircare, but we don’t think that will happen in 2017. It is very difficult to do quality haircare with natural ingrediënts and for people to get the effect they expect.

• I’ve seen now two ranges of products. Are products divided by skintype, by action and are there other important ranges that I need to know about?

We started out with abyssinian. This one is easy to access for all skintypes. If you are a normal person, who just needs something that works. Than the abyssinian skincare line is for anyone.

With the seahorse plankton it start to be more targeted. We try to be clever when creating products, because we do want them to be for everyone. When something picks something up i don’t want them to react badly on the products, but this is more of a targeted range. This more for someone who has an interest in beauty and gets more in to the science of what it is actually doing.

This is the BB cream. You notice that it just melts into your skin and gives you that light tint and evenness. You can wear it under you make-up our on it’s own.

Something like that is a bit more technical than just putting it on :). It’s just a bit more honest. A lot of people think that they have sensitive skin, but most people have normal skin. They’re just not happy with the way it looks.

Thanks a lot Jo-Anne for letting me take this interview. I found it a very enjoyable and interesting experience.