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The first thing that catches your attention about Emma Lewisham is her skin. The 39-year-old New Zealander sits in a stark boardroom at her office inside a converted warehouse in Auckland’s city centre, sipping a cup of licorice tea. Her face is natural, but remarkably luminous.
Many have already taken notice of Lewisham’s skincare routine. she threw it beauty brand of the same name from your kitchen table in 2019 and, after growing rapidly in Australasia, its formulations (numbering 12 so far) are now gaining traction globally. The brand has 203 doors, including Space NK, Liberty and Harrods in the UK and Goop, Net-a-Porter and Melanie Grant in the US (and Credo starting next year). Global RRP sales for the year ending March 2024 amounted to NZD$13 million (around £6.1 million) and are on track to reach NZD$27.5 million (around £12.9 million) this year.
Emma Lewisham’s main selling point is the use of natural ingredients formulated to work with the skin. She was driven to start the brand after her own difficulties getting pregnant, as well as the loss of her mother to breast cancer in 2016, which caused her to reflect on the potentially harmful or carcinogenic ingredients found in baby care. the skin he wore. “That started me down the path of looking at what’s best for my health,” says Lewisham, who previously worked as a strategy and marketing executive for Japanese technology company Brother International. “It wasn’t necessarily that all of these ingredients were harmful, but some just didn’t seem luxurious to me anymore: ingredients like synthetic fragrances, which are derived from petrochemicals, or hydroquinone, parabens or phthalates.”
Emma Lewisham’s star products
Supernatural Blemish Serum, £68
Supernatural Elixir Vitale Refill, £75
Supernatural Skin Restoring Serum, £85
When looking for alternatives, she came up short. “The natural products on the market eight years ago came from organic health food stores, which were all very earthy, felt and smelled funny, and often lacked evidence.” Instead, she created her own product, the now best-selling Supernatural Skin Reset Serum, which uses a blend of bioavailable vitamin C, niacinamide, and the natural amino acid ergothioneine to combat hyperpigmentation.
Lewisham says its bespoke formulations, which are designed to address its own skin concerns as well as those of its clients, are what sets the brand apart. “I think we are unique in the fact that we take our formulations to laboratories, so we own all of our intellectual property. None of our products are standard formulated with an added ingredient, which is pretty typical in skincare. For me that is a totally different company. We do not set out to create a beauty brand or be a marketable brand.”
One of the brand. Recent launches is the Supernatural Blemish Serum, a proprietary acne product that uses live probiotics instead of strains from the gut or dirt. “Incorporating a formula that prioritizes a healthy skin barrier and supports the skin’s own protective microbiome offers both corrective and preventative benefits,” says Melanie Grant, Australian skin expert and celebrity facialist, who uses the product for blemishes every day. days. “I don’t experience breakouts often anymore, but I struggle with sensitivity and rosacea and this serum has been a game-changer as well.”
However, the best-selling product at Space NK is the Supernatural Vitale Elixir, promoted as “Botox in a bottle,” which was launched this year. It seeks to replicate the same relaxing effect of Botox, preventing muscle contraction that leads to the development of wrinkles and fine lines. “It’s different to putting on retinol: it has several ingredients, one of which is a relaxing complex that inhibits the skin’s intrinsic tension behavior,” adds Lewisham. “And the formulation has been shown to reduce muscle contractions by up to 91 percent after 24 hours.”
She then formulated a mineral SPF50, which she says has been the “most difficult product to crack”, and which will launch in the UK next year. “Zinc oxide, which is the natural ingredient used for sunscreen, is a very large white molecule that also has a greasy, oily feel, making it very difficult to work with,” he says. “You have to figure out how to get the skin that whiteness with the right levels of other ingredients.” The final product, which Lewisham has been working on for eight years, has a pink tint but absorbs into the skin colorlessly and leaves no oily residue. “It’s a medical-grade product that’s also luxurious and we’re very proud of it.”
Lewisham achieved B Corp certification in 2022 through its circular business model, which encourages customers to purchase refills (a rarity in luxury skincare) and send back their empty capsules and bags to be refilled or recycled. “At some point, the beauty industry decided it was acceptable to be a linear model,” says Lewisham. “But I also think that the brands were not aware that the packaging, when it went to the recycling plants, was not being recycled.”
Lewisham has also made public the intellectual property behind the circular frame. The brand’s customers are also increasingly participating in the programme: 30 per cent of total purchases on Lewisham’s website are now for refills, and the number of empty containers returned for refills has increased by 150 per cent. 2022 to 2023.
“I just want people to have products that really work (they pay a lot of money for those products) and see real results,” Lewisham says. “I am very happy when people tell me that they see results. And that’s why we really don’t skimp on ingredients. “I would rather lose money and have less margin, but I know they work.”