This started with my own skin.
Not a business plan. Not a market gap analysis. Just years of buying face oils that promised everything and delivered a greasy film we had to blot off by noon.
We tried the $15 ones and the $150 ones. The Korean ones and the French ones. The ones with 30 ingredients and the ones with three. Some were too heavy. Some smelled like a spa diffuser having a breakdown. Most just sat on my face, doing absolutely nothing except making my pillowcase shiny.
So we stopped buying and started learning. I studied lipid chemistry. We talked to formulators and flew to ingredient sourcing regions because we needed to understand why the same plant from two different countries could produce completely different results.
What we found was simple and kind of infuriating: most face oils don’t work because they’re made from the cheapest version of the right ingredients. Cold-pressed? Sometimes. From the best source? Almost never. At therapeutic concentration? Definitely not — that would cut into margins.
So we made the oil we wished someone had made for us. 15 botanicals from 10 countries. Every one sourced from the specific region where that plant produces its most potent compounds. Cold-pressed or steam-distilled. No synthetics, no fragrance, no filler.
We didn’t set out to start a brand. We set out to fix our own skin. Then we gave bottles to friends. Then their friends started asking. And here we are.
Less, but right.
I didn’t make a skincare brand. I made the thing I needed and couldn’t find. If your skin has been through the same cycle of hope and disappointment that mine was — this is for you.
