Hi I'm Laura, the Founder of Evolve Beauty.
I created Evolve in 2009 with the vision of making beauty products that enable people to lead cleaner, greener lives by making products that are beautiful, accessible and effective. 10 years on, this mission is as relevant as ever as more and more people are integrating a clean, green philosophy into everything they do.
Our first tiny studio in 2009
Over the past 10 years, we have grown and evolved as a company. My business started life, as many do, as a small enterprise run from our home, which I created when I was pregnant with my first child. 10 years on, my eldest son is now nearly as tall as me, and we employ 30 people from our eco studio in Hertfordshire. I am very proud of what we have achieved so far but my vision is to take our clean beauty mission even further.
Our team in 2019
Several things remain important to me. The most important of these is that I care about our products making a difference in people’s lives. Whether this is helping someone to take a minute out of their busy day and enjoy a small slow beauty experience that makes them remember the joy of feeling alive, or whether it is helping them tackle a serious skin problem that is affecting their confidence, I am most excited by what I do when I hear from our customers that our products have helped in some way.
10 years on, we are now lucky enough to work with some wonderful retailers like John Lewis, which means we can take caring for customers even further by being able to inspire and support people in store (as well as online) to choose the right products for them. Our team has grown but whenever you meet any of us, my vision is that the same caring ethos comes through.
Our products in the John Lewis store in Oxford Street
The way we make our products is incredibly important. I know that customers trust us to do the right thing and we try to repay this trust by being incredibly careful in how we source, manufacture and package our products in every tiny detail. We make our products in small batches by hand and we make sure that every product that leaves our eco studio is of the highest quality.
We are continually improving what we do as we grow and we will be certifying our range organically this year, as well as getting a vegan and cruelty free certification. Our mission is to be the greenest beauty brand out there by integrating the greenest packaging materials as soon as they are available and making it easy to recycle and reuse our packaging wherever possible.
Creating products
Over the past 10 years, we have also learned an incredible amount about creating the best, most innovative natural and organic products. Most of our product development is done in house and it is a true collaboration between me, Violaine our Head of Product, and our artisan team, with lots of ideas also contributed by our customers.
Making products in small batches makes this possible as we can afford to try things that are truly groundbreaking. Having amazing customers also makes this possible and we currently have a long list of people waiting to try products that have not even launched yet. In many cases we are learning from our intelligent and well informed customers about the latest issues we need to be aware of and we appreciate your input!!
Growing Evolve gradually over the past 10 years has been an amazing journey and time of personal growth for me. I have learned an incredible amount along the way, made plenty of mistakes, together with some lifelong friends and amazing colleagues. I am proud that we still independently own Evolve, which helps us stay true to our vision, as we have no financial investors and we can focus purely on our mission. I hope we can continue making products that make a difference that our customers love for many years to come.
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