I want to tell you a story, it is my story of how I came to make these products.
It started back in 2016 whilst working as a Holistic Therapist, for which I have been for nearly 30 years. I was getting many clients with Cancer coming to see me for mainly Reflexology and Reiki, and during their appointments many were asking me which products would I recommend as they were looking to decrease the amount of toxins in their products. This is something that many Cancer patients are looking to do. It seemed an obvious question to ask me, however as someone who had always made her own products for self use it wasn’t a question I could answer very easily.
At the time I was actually working on creating my own natural deodorant, which I had found had been working very well, so this original question got me thinking, maybe I could actually make my deodorant to sell?…. Could that really be possible?
So I set myself the task of learning the ropes of not necessarily how to make the deodorant but how to get it to market. This I would discover was no simple task. I learnt it simply isn’t as easy as making the deodorant and setting up a stall and selling – oh no no no. Every skincare product here in the UK (EU at that time) has to comply with very strict UK regulations to ensure the products used on our skin are safe. This meant there was a whole lot of learning in regards to these regulations. I therefore started training to become an Organic Skincare Formulator.
Before I could send my product off for safety testing I had to work out how I was going to package my deodorant, THIS was the biggest challenge. I just couldn’t’ work out where I could get the kind of packaging I really wanted without buying in massive bulk from China (which simply wasn’t an option for me – I had no finances to assist in this product launch at all) Finally whilst on a night out with some friends one of them suggested it simply be in a tin and people rubbed it in with their hands, this creating a reminder to check your breasts – GENIUS! And there it was my connection to how I had started, it was my cancer patients (who mainly had breast cancer) that started this whole thing off anyway, and this could be a great way to encourage us all to check ourselves.
So once I had got to a certain point through my training I felt ready to get my deodorant to market, after creating what was going to be my final formulation I had the nerve wracking wait from my assessor confirming that my product was fit for use and could safely be put on the shelves (or in my case on my market stall).
I decided that I would include a little brochure from Breast Cancer UK with each of the deodorants so people would know how to check themselves. I found myself some lovely little linen bags and the deodorants were now looking really great so I was ready…
I remember my first market in Faversham feeling so excited I had created “Love your Pits” natural deodorant, I had 2 scents Patchouli and Lime and Neroli and Ylang Ylang. These 2 little products looked somewhat lonely on my stall, but it was my goal to have a new product at each market I attended. The following month saw the release of “Love your Lips” lip balms, this was quite exciting on my stall as there were 4 different options for scents making my stall much more appealing to passers by.
Within a year of its release Love Your Pits had won its first Green Parent Beauty Award, I was so chuffed with myself – I had done it, I had created a product that everyone seemed to absolutely love, the reviews were coming in thick and fast.
Over the years my little Love Your brand grew with a variety of simple products which I really enjoyed selling at various markets, but I was being asked for a cream constantly. Now this was a much more difficult product to produce, it contained water to start with, now if you formulate skincare you will know this opens up a whole other world in regards to your safety testing. Molds and yeast can grow quite prolifically in water so you need to really understand the process of ensuring this doesn’t happen and ruin your products, it also means you need to understand how to create an emulsion – after all oil and water don’t mix we all know that right? The biggest issue now was the fact that the cost of my safety tests immediately doubled. Anyway I didn’t let any of this put me off, and got to work straight away getting lots of people to test my cream. The feedback was always good, but I will be honest I really struggled formulating this product, I have never really been into using creams on my face – as a massage therapist I am much more of an oil kinda woman, so everytime I would try to use it on myself, I never really enjoyed the feel (not because anything wrong with it, but because I simply don’t like creams – well on my face anyway), so basically I would use the residue on my hands and it felt really nice as a hand cream. I realised that if it felt nice on my hands it would be great also for the feet, and so I started to use it in my Reflexology treatments and right there is when Face2Feet cream was born – and the rest as they say is history!
Although I rebranded I still have a great love for my original Love Your products and many of them are still available here at Ollogii. Sadly the idea for encouraging people to check your breasts seemed to get a little lost and that concept did disappear after a few years, but I would still very much encourage you all to check yourselves and the information on the Breast Cancer UK website is a must so do check out!
Useful Links:
Check out this website for information on reducing chemicals in your environment https://www.breastcanceruk.org.uk/reduce-your-risk/chemicals-and-environment/
Need a reminder to check yourself? https://coppafeel.org/