February is internationally renowned for fashion: London Fashion Week gets under way next week, and Paris’ Fall/Winter Fashion Week starts on 28th February. With the impacts of the pandemic still prevalent for so many businesses and startups, it’s more important than ever to recognise the companies bringing new and innovative ideas to the table.
From makeup and skincare to platforms helping you to find the products and services you need, these companies all have a unique offering that the team at TechRound wants to showcase!
Beauty & Cosmetics Companies Featured:
- Little Danube, founded by Katrina Borissova
- The Natural Beauty Pot, founded by Shauna Gallagher
- Renude, founded by Pippa Harman & Cate Nisson
- Glambook, founded by Alex Tomchenko
- Youth Tree Organics, founded by Nerea Safari
- Active Silver, founded by Lucy Roberts & Dick Goodall
- Whitfords, founded by Paula Ortega
- Lexi Nails & Beauty, founded by Alexia Boukou
- Scintilla, founded by Rebecca Dallimore
Little Danube
Website: https://www.littledanube.co.uk/
Founder: Katrina Borissova
London-based vegan skincare brand Little Danube is changing the way customers use and see personal care products—one sustainable soap at a time. The brand will be launching eight unique nature-inspired soaps, each with its own star ingredient and skin benefits, is about cherishing beauty through the senses and making self-care sustainable.
In the brand’s scheduled launch in March 2022, Little Danube (also dubbed “the vegan soap brand born when Britain went into lockdown” by Enterprise Nation), aims to create all-natural, vegan, eco-friendly soap bars with allegoric scents that are nostalgic and imaginative, transforming your everyday shower routine into an experience you’re excited to discover.
Several new soap formulas also contain repurposed ingredients, such as coffee grounds from a local coffee shop.
Rather than having these perfectly useful ingredients go into the bin, Little Danube’s circular economy vision repurposes these natural food scraps into ingredients that benefit your skin and your senses. In Lozen, Little Danube’s lavender scrub soap, the natural ground olive stones that would typically be wasted after olive oil production gently exfoliate and cleanse the skin alongside mood-stabilising essential oils lavender and orange.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
The Natural Beauty Pot
Website: https://naturalbeautypot.co.uk/
Founder: Shauna Gallagher
The Natural Beauty Pot creates natural products in their studio in The Buttermarket courtyard in County Fermanagh. Founder Shauna believes in the power of going back to basics by creating simple formulas with high quality ingredients. This produces gentle yet effective products which are suitable for everyone to use and enjoy.
The natural and organic ingredients that they use in their products are sourced from around the world. Products are created in small batches to maintain the quality and freshness. The current product range is anhydrous (free from water) and free from preservatives.
The skincare range by The Natural Beauty Pot is completely natural – all of their ingredients come from natural sources such as plants and minerals. They believe in going back to basics creating simplistic but effective skincare products with natural and organic ingredients, producing gentle products which are suitable for any skin type.
They’re also keen to be kind to the environment in the process – they encourage you to reuse and recycle their packaging. They opt for glass as much as possible, offer refill options where they can and are continuously looking for ways to reduce their impact on the earth.
Renude
Website: https://renude.co/
Founders: Pippa Harman & Cate Nisson
Renude is an online skincare recommendation and concierge service that aims to lower the barrier to access specialist and personalised skincare recommendations. Founded in 2020, Renude uses a mixture of computer vision and expert aestheticians to help create the best routine for you and provide you with products that will help you achieve your skin goals.
The mission at Renude is to help you build a skincare routine that achieves your skin goals. Each routine is hand-selected for you by their experts, based on your questionnaire responses, skin images and video consultation. The data their community then generates is used to support their aestheticians with their decisions, through machine learning and computer vision technology.
Renude’s aestheticians have immense experience, working in CQC accredited aesthetic skin clinics alongside the UK’s leading doctors and dermatologists (and all certified with an NVQ Level 3 or 4 in Beauty Therapy). They’re well qualified to offer the best advice for your skin.
Consultant dermatologist, Dr Justine Kluk, is a scientific advisor to Renude and supports the development of our computer vision technology. Dr Justine has her own private clinic on Harley Street and is a spokesperson for the British Association of Dermatology and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
Every product they recommend at Renude has been expert-vetted based on high-performing ingredients and clinical data. They only recommend products that are industry leaders for their proven formulations and top of the charts reviews.
Glambook
Website: https://www.glambook.co.uk/
Founder & CEO: Alex Tomchenko
Glambook is a Global SaaS platform for independent beauty professionals and their clients. Founded in 2020, It is designed to help self-employed beauticians and hairdressers to start their businesses. It works both for beginners and specialists who have an established customer base since they optimise some costs and processes. The platform allows customers to find the best deal in their city by filtering price, service reviews, and location.
Professionals can showcase their work, connect with new clients, and easily control their work, time, and profits. Glambook supports independent beauty specialists and helps them to create their brand and build up their audience. In this way, Glambook offers to masters a full-fledged CRM system for managing current and new clients at a price equal to the commission of three clients per month. The platform has been designed to enable beauty professionals to choose the place where they can provide their services — at home, at the client’s place, in some kind of co-working space, or in a salon.
Today, Glambook has more than 10,000 self-employed professionals from London, Berlin, Milan, and 50 other cities across Europe who have already registered with the platform.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Youth Tree Organics
Website: https://www.youthtreeorganics.com/
Founder: Nerea Safari
Youth Tree Organics is a small business that Nerea runs single handedly, but with a big brand & team mentality! Nerea created self-care pamper boxes & personalised gift boxes filled with their own handmade, organic skincare products with selected fairtrade treats.
“After years of raising my eldest daughter, trying to juggle my office job and having little time for myself, I had an idea that I wanted to create pamper boxes to cater for women like me so they could take time off their busy lives to pamper & dedicate some self-care time to themselves. It took 2 years before I actually put my plan into action and I believe the lockdown was the catalyst which helped spur me into action.”
“I launched in September 2021. Etsy was the first place I set up my new business, then I turned to creating my own website. It was like a hobby and after a few sales & great reviews, I entered Theo Paphitis’ Small Business Sunday competition via Twitter towards the end of 2021. Theo picked me as one of his winners in December 2021 which was fantastic and interest in my Pamper boxes increased. It has only been 6 months and I’m really enjoying building my startup and creating each and every single box. It’s great knowing someone is going to open one of my boxes and enjoy what I created. Long may it continue!”
Active Silver
Website: https://active-silver.co.uk/
Founders: Lucy Roberts & Dick Goodall
Founded by father and daughter in 2016, Active Silver manufactures Colloidal Silver, an extremely effective natural and antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal solution. Using this as the key ingredient, this start-up have formulated a unique Colloidal Silver skincare range. The antimicrobial properties provide skin repair benefits, helping to heal and keep skin trouble free, in the most natural way possible. Formulated using colloidal silver in skin care products means it also acts as a brilliant natural preservative, meaning it’s free of nasties and parabens too.
The latest product is a gorgeous body butter, scented with the essential oil Mandarin with a rich, velvety texture. The combination of the Colloidal Silver and Aloe Vera Gel ensures the nutrients penetrate through all skin layers, which can reduce scars, and soothe skin irritations as it is absorbed. New skin that emerges is therefore repaired and in optimum condition.
Active Silver has had a growth in annual turnover of 442% in the last 3 years, innovation remains the key focus for this entrepreneurial family business in expanding their natural anti-microbial skincare range. The products helps so many customers with various skin conditions or who are looking for pure and natural skin care.
Celebrity clients include Fearne Cotton and Debbie McGee, who whilst on Strictly Come Dancing maintained a dose of Active Silver a day was a key ingredient to her longevity in the show. Active Silver also regularly give back to the NHS sending hand creams in batches, to midwives at Guys and St Thomas’s London to soothe and heal their working hands.
All products are lab-tested, safety assessed and fully compliant with EU cosmetic regulation 1223/2009 which prove the products are antimicrobial. Vegan friendly and absolutely not tested on animals.
Whitfords
Website: https://www.whitfords.co.uk/
Founder: Paula Ortega
“We are an award-winning, independent skincare brand driven by efficacy and sustainability. We launched two weeks before the pandemic started (!) and we have a range of seven products for face and body, formulated and manufactured by us for sensitive skin in South East London – no off-the-shelf or white label formulas. All our products are also gender-neutral and certified cruelty-free and come in endlessly recyclable aluminium jars and bottles.”
“Our latest launch, the Triple Algae Glow Restoring Oil is housed in an innovative, multi-use FibrePod, made by us from unprocessed loofah – a vegetable from the same family as the cucumber. It replaces the single-use cardboard box and customers can give this packaging another lease of life and use it for weeks as a body or kitchen scrub. At that point, it can metamorphose again, allowing customers to use it to germinate seeds, instead of using plastic pots. And at the end of its (third) life, you can simply put it in a compost bin or plant it in the garden along with its seedling.”
At Whitfords, they want to change that cardboard skincare boxes end up in the bin within a few minutes of customers receiving their order, so have developed the FibrePod: a multi-purpose box made from unprocessed plant fibres.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Lexi Nails & Beauty
Website: https://lexinailsbeauty.com/
Founder: Alexia Boukou
Lexi Nails & Beauty was created to empower new mothers that can’t spend so much time at the nail salon. Each curated press-on is handmade and comes with twenty nails and a preparation kit.
“I started Lexi when I found myself stuck at home with two newborns, no family around, and no time for myself except when they were asleep. Creating a spa manicure was my way to focus on stress relief and relaxation.”
“My mission is to make mothers feel alluring and regain self-confidence. I believe that practising self-care as a new mom is a vital part of the journey. In order to cater to the needs of my twin boys, I had to put myself first which for me looks like creating a manicure spa experience at home.”
“This year, I plan on designing a spa bag with different tools to upgrade and amplify this home experience. I will be adding a pedicure set and more tools for moms to take of themselves.”
Scintilla
Website: https://www.wearescintilla.com/
Founder: Rebecca Dallimore
Scintilla is a brand of natural, sustainable and ethical home and beauty products that only uses ingredients and materials from trusted suppliers.
Founded by Rebecca Dallimore, Scintilla is committed to sustainable and ethical sourcing and practices in everything, from ingredients to product packaging and delivery. Scintilla offers a range of products made from natural resources, nature-identical ingredients and upcycled materials – from natural essential oils and seed butters to other plant-based, raw ingredients.
Scintilla is dedicated to creating simple formulations that help you expand your mindset to see skincare as self-care. All Scintilla products are gentle for the skin, without harmful chemicals, and are optimised to last longer. Orders are also minimally wrapped in re-used, recyclable or recycled packaging, such as glass jars with an aluminium lid, with the goal to leave the tiniest trace of a footprint.
Scintilla’s recently launched essentials skincare line includes universal skincare staples for the conscious consumer such as a Lip Balm, Hand Cream and Body Milk, all lightly scented with a delicious natural coconut infusion.
Following its successful rebrand in April 2021, Scintilla has now circled back to where the brand originally started: to re-invent some key skincare essentials. With this new skincare line, Scintilla aims at rebuilding the foundation of a sustainable daily routine for skin. Taking on board the latest research into plant-based ingredients, as well as advances in the sustainable alternative to using natural resources, nature-identical ingredients and upcycled materials, Scintilla now continues to move towards a wide range of sustainable skincare products that are as good for the planet as they are for skin.
Scintilla offers sustainable alternatives that are good for people and the environment, using holistic sustainability in its formulations – most of them between 98-100% natural. Ingredients used in Scintilla products range from jojoba, apricot kernel, avocado, olive and sunflower seed oils to aloe vera, cocoa seed, shea butter and lavender.
10% of Scintilla profits go to SEED Madagascar, a sustainable development charity working primarily in the southeast of Madagascar, and Mind, the mental health charity in England and Wales.
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
