18 INTERVIEW
ingredients. So then we have to say there’s very little known about this ingredient and the bit we do know, was tested on animals. We don’t condone that, we’re still going to tell you about it, but we’re really not happy about it. And you’re going to have to trial this ingredient and see how it works. And I think that’s the same for many of these brands big and small around the world really. So, maths, research and then
just a desire to experiment, and you have to be willing to have complete disasters and not be downhearted by it. You have to look at that and think wow okay, this went horribly wrong I’ve made something that doesn’t look right, what went wrong here, what can I do to fix it and what can I learn from it? And that’s what makes a good formulator, you have to trial it out.
PC: How has the pandemic over the last 12 months impacted the school? LD: Well massively. I didn’t quite know what to expect in the beginning and nor did anyone of course. So I decided to invest when we went into lockdown which was again a slightly crazy thing to do. We were scared of the future, you don’t know what’s going to happen. But I looked at the reserves in the school and I thought you know we’re in a really good place, I spoke to some of my contractors and they were going to have to furlough quite a few of their staff members. So I said actually you know let’s invest more in you, so that you can spend more time working for us and we can actually get working on some of these projects that we’ve wanted to work on for years. And then I also said to my team let’s go and talk to the students and ask them how they’re feeling. And everyone just came back and said give us stuff for free, get us formulating. So we dropped everything we were doing and we made a small free online course, a mini course on how to formulate. And so we did it and we instantly had 8,000 people sign up and it lifted their spirits. They were doing something in lockdown, it was a really scary time for lots of people, but they had something to occupy themselves. And so I thought we might see a downturn as a result, but we’re okay. And actually, what happened was we grew by 85% last year and hired 25 more staff.
PC: So the pandemic has really focused people on making products for themselves. Do you
PERSONAL CARE May 2021
“Being able to trace ingredients back to the source and having that information available publicly is incredibly empowering for a lot of indie formulators in particular.”
think there’s going to be a growth of indie brands over the next 5 years as a result? LD: Possibly, I’ve seen quite a few launch in lockdown as well, which I think is really a brave thing to do. But I think we’ll also see a boom in formulators as a result. People are empowering themselves to just learn how to formulate for themselves without turning that into a brand. And we cater for those people as well and that’s exciting because people are taking back the power from the beauty industry in a way and saying actually I’m going to make my own formulations. And I’m going to do so in a safe and stable way and I’m going to learn how to do so properly, but that empowers me to make the products I want when I want them.
PC: Which technologies or topics are particularly exciting for you as a formulator that you’re seeing coming from either ingredient suppliers or brands? LD: I’m really excited by the fact that we’re starting to have more conversations around sustainability in general. And I think that’s been a big outcome of the
pandemic actually, that the beauty industry has finally started talking about sustainability. Because as you can imagine having done my Master’s degree in environmental sustainability 20 years ago and having worked as an environmental consultant for over a decade. I then wonder, hang on a minute, why is no one talking about this here. So things like blockchain technology, I think that’s very exciting to see. I think blockchain could be very interesting in how we actually look at the origin and provenance of some of the ingredients that we use. Being able to trace ingredients back to the source and having that information available publicly is incredibly empowering for a lot of indie formulators in particular. I hope to see that the industry
starts to really embrace the sustainability message further though. Because we’re spending a lot of time talking about packaging and a lot of time talking about ingredients, but we are avoiding the big elephant in the room which is consumption. The beauty industry has
a massive role to play in trying
to encourage people to consume
less. And that is not something that the industry will inherently ever do because we live in a capitalist world, but it has to happen because at the moment the average woman has 16 beauty products on her bathroom shelf and I’m sure that wasn’t the case 20 years ago.
PC: Can upcycled ingredients help with that over consumption? Because you’re using products that would otherwise have been put in landfill or wasted? LD: Possibly yes, I agree I think they play a fantastic role in the whole discussion. I think however there’s still very much this push to say you need these 5 different products rather than saying actually maybe we can combine them in one. Actually, you don’t actually need all of these products and that’s something that I think the beauty industry is quite complicit in and they need to really, they really need to change their tune. So I think technology wise,
blockchain and I think there’s a lot of interesting new ingredients that could come onto the market. I would love to see the beauty industry push forward more things like natural solubilisers and chelators and cationic surfactants and silicone alternatives that have been derived from plant matter. And I think that will happen because they’re realising that that’s where the market is going.
PC: Thank you so much for speaking with us, Lorraine, and we look forward to catching up again with you soon. LD: You’re welcome.
PC
www.personalcaremagazine.com
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