BEHIND THE BRAND with Reset Beauty Australia
I know it has been a long few weeks in between your favourite read (I.e Behind the Brand) however, I can confirm this is the most positive & informative way to start your week! We are here with Stephanie from @resetbeautyaustralia.
Get your coffee ready & enjoy some well deserved quiet time!
WHAT IS RESET BEAUTY AUSTRALIA?
Steph: Reset Beauty Australia – regenerative artisan grown and crafted skincare for well ageing. Ageing is a privilege. It’s an opportunity to collect more experiences and more memories. This is exactly why I’ve never agreed with the negative connotations towards the word (ie. anti-ageing), and is exactly why I create supporting nourishment for the skin that honours its natural ecosystem and works to hydrate, regenerate and protect, so we can age well and get on living the good life.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST PRODUCT YOU EVER MADE?
Steph: The Reset Barrier Balm was the first product in the Reset Beauty line that was developed initially for my daughter. It has now become one of our best sellers, being such a multi-purpose product that can be used on any part of the body – lips, eyes, hands, face, scarring, pregnant bellies and baby bottoms – and that’s suited to all skin types from the sensitive and young to the dehydrated or compromised. It contains eight raw herbs known for their anti-inflammatory and healing properties, as well as fatty acid-rich botanical oils such as jojoba, olive squalane and neem oil for its natural antifungal properties, three deeply nourishing kinds of butter including mango, murumuru and kokum, as well as restoring extracts including oat and sea buckthorn. It is truly a plant-powered skin hero that is vegan and essential oil-free.
WHAT INITIALLY DREW YOU TO THIS KIND OF WORK?
Steph: Reset Beauty initially evolved from my own experiences – when my daughter was quite young, she started getting patches of eczema which over time became quite a battle and grew from small, short-lived flare-ups to larger patches that weren’t going away and began to really interrupt her day-to-day activities and the outdoor lifestyle we love. A lot of the typical mainstream creams and eczema treatments contain all sorts of nasties that are not great for your skin, let alone a child’s skin that is already compromised.
I began the journey of researching into everything that comes into play from how the skin functions, how best to support it both internally through diet and externally, to research about herbal medicine, botanicals and other ingredients. When I couldn’t find the type of nutrient-rich product that was going to be safe yet effective for a young person’s skin that was compromised, that’s where I decided to make my own – and enrolled in an internationally accredited Diploma of Organic Skincare Formulation.
I’m quite a perfectionist and after all the research I had been doing into botanicals and the range of phytonutrients they hold, I knew I could offer her skin so much more than just a few natural oils blended together. This is where the foundation of Reset Beauty began – every product starts with a botanical concentrate that is made through a time-intensive artisan process using raw whole plants to form the base botanical complex specific for that product and its purpose for the skin. In some instances I choose to use the entire plant, in others I use a part of the plant, such as the roots or leaves, to work synergistically within the product and better deliver the specific desired results – all with the goal of supporting the complex, natural functioning of the skin.
WHAT DOES A “NORMAL” DAY IN THE LIFE LOOK LIKE?
Steph: Being a mother of two, it can be a little busy sometimes but these are the real joys of life. We’re definitely an outdoors family and love our camping, boating and exploring, and it’s these times that remind you what it’s all for. This has also been a huge part of Reset Beauty – reminding people to reconnect to nature and the things that make us feel alive to reset. If we put this at the heart of everything we do, whether in business or in our lives, I think the world will be a better place including our minds, bodies and footprints we leave behind.
Doing this in Reset Beauty has led me on such an enjoyable journey. A number of years ago I started growing one of my ingredients as a result of not being able to source it within Australia, and not being comfortable with where it was coming from – a huge overseas corporate company that gave no transparency in terms of where it was grown, how it was grown, how old it was, not to mention the travel and cost to bring it here. This was our first farm-to-face ingredient, the Spilanthes Acmella, which has since set us on a path of growing more and more of our own botanicals, including many of our Australian natives such as the Kangaroo Paw.
But to create and bring into the world bottled up botanicals full of phytonutrients, vibrancy and life takes a lot of work, commitment and love that’s not always visible. We’re not a concept brand and we don’t take short cuts. No two days are the same – whether it’s building garden beds, sowing seeds, watering, weeding, feeding, harvesting, drying, extracting, formulating, crafting, ongoing research and studies, investigating the best sustainable packaging that also helps preserve our concentrated actives, sourcing the best ingredients that we can’t produce ourselves, not to mention all the business side of things. But I absolutely love the journey and it continues to surprise me – who knew I’d be studying about soil health when I set out to create transformational skincare.
WHERE DO YOU SOURCE YOUR MATERIALS?
Steph: We use the highest quality of ingredients that are raw, organic where possible, cold-pressed, with a focus on plants that we’ve either grown ourselves, consciously wild-harvested like our Australian wattle or from Australian sources. Australia has some incredible ingredients like our Tasmanian mountain pepper leaf, macadamia oil, jojoba, blue cypress and sandalwood, as well as farmers that grow all sorts of herbs. I think it’s so important we support local as much as possible.
I also place a priority on using ingredients that are sustainable, and those that have had little to none processing, chemicals or heat used in production. This is vital to ensure the ingredients retain all the wonderful array of dense nutrients that will be transferred into the final product.
Growing our own botanicals means we have complete control and knowledge over how the plant is grown, the health of the soil it is grown in, what is used on the plant, harvesting at the peak times to capture it’s the rich level of activity and nutrients, how the botanicals are handled and prepared, and extracting and using the ingredient as soon as it’s ready for absolute freshness and highest possible concentration of undiluted nutrients to your skin.
There are instances where our ingredients come from sustainable and responsible international sources like our cold-pressed pro-vitamin A-rich murmuru butter. This butter is sustainably harvested from the fallen seeds of the astrocaryum murumuru palm native to the Amazon. The harvest and production of the raw butter does not impact on the health of the tree and provides a livelihood to communities in the Braganca region of Brazil. Ultimately this means we are encouraging the preservation of this native tree, making it more valuable standing than cut down.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT BEING A STALLHOLDER IN THE SUNSHINE COAST COLLECTIVE MARKETS?
Steph: The community 100%! The relationships formed with the other stallholders, the like-minded makers and artists, the lovely helpful team behind the scenes that make every market a pleasure to be at, as well as the relationships formed with the local community who come along and are always so keen for a good chat. It always a positive experience, every market.
AND LASTLY…
IF YOU HAD ONE PIECE OF ADVICE TO GIVE TO SOMEONE THAT WAS JUST STARTING OUT, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Steph: Create from the heart, and don’t let your passion for what you do be lost along the journey.
What a wonderful way to end the blog, thank you so very much for letting us into your life!
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.
