Tell us more about Ewe Care and what makes the brand so unique (or ewe-nique rather!)?
Ewe Care’s uniqueness is not only that we use our Awassi sheep milk as the feature functional ingredient but also that we are committed to 100% petro chemical plastic free and compostable packaging. We feature the functional benefits of natural Tasmanian ingredients in ewenique sustainable and 100% compostable packaging
We believe that Ewe Care is one of the most sustainably innovative beauty brands on the market delivering a deliberately slow approach to beauty. Every element from the creams to the packaging has been designed to create a super sensory approach to the beauty rituals.
What inspired you to start Ewe Care and why is sustainability so important to the brand?
Our mission at Ewenique Enterprises, and Ewe Care by extension is to create socially and environmentally conscious solutions to value added sheep milk products thus, when it became clear that lower solids start of season milk was marginally profitable for cheese making we started to look peripherally for solutions. Given that it is inbuilt in us to innovate in accordance with our values and our mission statement we set about trying to understand where there was a gap for sheep milk products in the market and landed on skin care pretty quickly.
It’s our belief in business and life that sustainability isn’t optional. It has been the cornerstone of what we believe to be responsible land and business stewardship for the last 20 years. Whilst we understand that conversations in this capacity are only really starting to gain momentum, we have rolled out of bed every day to have these sometimes difficult and costly conversations with our customers in every element of our day to day.
Our entire now 20-year-old business was born out of an obsession with waste in all its forms. The original farm was built on a model of closed system polyculture that uses waste as nutrient in many different forms to benefit soil and animal health.
Grandvewe, the cheese factory, was the first licensed dry floor factory in Australia. Food manufacture is a very heavy consumer of water and, given the only water we have is whatever falls from the sky (the entire business is run on tank water) it was imperative that we push for a dry floor factory with a closed loop water reticulation set up despite push back from authorities. Still to this day Grandvewe is the only factory of its kind in the country.
As further commitment to waste minimisation and evidence of how we see waste as an opportunity and not a cost, in 2014 we set up Hartshorn Distillery. Hartshorn set about solving the problem of what to do with our ever-increasing volumes of whey. As the cheese business grew, so too did our biggest waste product, whey. Whey contains many things other than whey protein. It also contains sugar, and sugar either wants to be acid or alcohol. So we took our biggest waste product and cost to the business and fermented it, then distilled it into Hartshorn Sheep Whey Vodka and Gin. In 2018 Hartshorn won the illustrious title of ‘World’s Best Vodka’ beating out the giants of the industry such as Ciroc, Belvedere and Grey Goose. It is still to this day the only Vodka produced in the Southern Hemisphere to have ever won the title of World’s Best at The World Vodka Awards in London.
Tell us about your career/background and how your skills have transferred over to Ewe Care?
My first love in an employment sense was wine. I had thought that this would be my career for life but cheese was a close second and clearly they often go hand in hand. Having been on the tools as a cheese maker for the last 15 years, writing cheese recipes and understanding the uniqueness of sheep milk in it a functional food context, that experience was actually not such a large stretch to its functions in skin.
Many of the functional food benefits of sheep milk are the same in skin care, we just use slightly different vocabulary to describe it. Sheep milk has three times the Vitamin C of any other milk and twice the fats, proteins and minerals. These elements are as important to digestive wellness as they are to the skin microbiome so to translate from cheese making to skin care wasn’t the stretch that some may think.
We hear Grandvewe Farm is recognised for some pretty tasty cheese! Tell us more about this and the on-site distillery, Hartshorn?
Grandvewe Farm is the home of three unique sheep milk inspired brands; Ewe Care, Hartshorn Distillery and Grandvewe Cheeses. Aside from making our tasty and nutritious award-winning sheep milk cheese here, we also make our tasty award-winning spirits here too!
We have operated our tasting house here on Grandvewe Farm for visitors to try our wares and experience our quirkiness since 2002.
Aside from tastings we offer tours by prearrangement and fabulous experiences like our Old World Butter Making experience and our Gin Alchemist Experience. All experiences at Grandvewe are highly educational and VERY left of centre! We aim to take customers on a journey that somehow embodies some of the oddities that are in part the inner workings of our minds (we are a family of three). It can sometimes be a little out of the ordinary, but it’s always ewenique!
What are some of the challenges you face running multiple businesses?
Time and head space! Every element of every side of the business deals with every channel to market and every element from raw ingredient to manufacture and distribution, and that creates mind torsion and time poverty!
We are a farm, a tourism outlet, we have three e commerce websites, we have wholesalers, distributors, the whole shebang! A vertically integrated beast times three and thus everything to everyone……..
Describe a typical work day for you?
There’s not really a typical work day per se. That’s the beauty of it really (pardon the pun). I wake up (then hopefully get to the gym). Do whatever is immediate (usually kids). Do whatever is immediate work wise (usually my other kids, AKA staff). Hopefully move on to whatever is not immediate but otherwise is requiring of being done, soon. Have something to eat at some stage (forgot that by now I’ve consumed LOTS of caffeine). Have a meeting or two, some phone calls (hopefully not too many. I don’t like them much. Not fond of ZOOM either). At some stage I go home and do the usual home stuff then bookend my day by tying up the tie able loose ends and emails. I then fall into bed (after teeth brushing AND face care!) and dream of hopefully not working on the weekend and mentally chastise myself for not getting to the gym…….
What about personal life – how do you relax and unwind after a busy day on the farm?
I like wine, and cider…….
Usually unwinding is exercise. Tasmania is blessed with space and clean air and it’s my absolute critical unwinding strategy. Spending times with and without friends and family in the pristine Tasmanian fresh air outdoors (add food and wine and life is exponentially better!) I am fortunate enough to live on the 40acre property which has panoramic views from all aspects. If I can’t physically leave to unwind then walking the paddocks is my magic antidote.
What advice would you give those wanting to start a business in the skincare category?
Like anything, do it because you believe in it. You can’t enter into anything entrepreneurial for any other reason. You will fail. Customers can smell falsehood a mile away and you will set fire to wads of cash in your pursuit of pulling the wool (pun intended!).
Out of all of your proudest moments as an entrepreneur, is there a particular one that stands out the most?
I employed a young woman on gut feel who during the interview could not maintain even a remote semblance of eye contact, but I knew she really wanted to work. She dropped out of school at 14 and was barely literate but I knew she really wanted the job. She needed to work for us. I knew that employing her wouldn’t simply be a transactional undertaking of you work we pay, but the investment in her would involve building her back up again in every sense but she would repay us in more ways than money could indicate.
We trained her to a Cert Level 4 in Manufacturing over a five year period and she left us full of confidence fearing less and moved to a much higher paying position in Civil Contracting. She still drops in for the occasional chat and coffee.
What’s in store for Ewe Care in 2022?
2022 for me is all about telling the Ewe Care story and continuing the conversation of the values of Ewe Care in the beauty space. It’s my goal that by the end of 2022 Ewe Care will be a brand that finds its way beyond the shores of Australia and into the bathrooms of people beyond our shores. Here’s hoping there’s also a little bit of travel associated with it too, finally!
To find out more about Ewe Care, please click here.
