Tell us more about Lük Beautifood and what makes the brand so unique in the skincare-cosmetics fusion category.
Lük Beautifood is all about harnessing the beauty in food (hence our name Beautifood) which means we use edible botanicals rich in nutrient active ingredients like vitamins, minerals & antioxidants to nourish, hydrate and protect skin. We are 100% natural and don’t use any synthetic ingredients including colourants which means all the ingredients in our cosmetics are active and feed your skin.
We are passionate about natural beauty, our idea of a beautiful woman is someone who is alive and nourished, who loves life and does what they want. They are not caught up in following trends or complicated beauty routines and they understand that beauty is more than skin deep.
We are unique because we have a whole-of-body approach to beauty & cosmetics. It’s all about nourishing your skin from the outside in and inside out.
What inspired you to launch Lük Beautifood and why is natural formulations and sustainability so important to the brand?
We started out in 2012 as lipstick-made-from company as I became aware of what makeup was made from. Being a food scientist I was surprised I could not read the ingredients in a formulation and when finally deciphered I could see they were oils, waxes, butters, colours, flavours, emulsifiers, preservatives, fragrances and fillers. What did not make sense to me was, we know what goes on our skin goes in (think hormone creams) so why not make makeup from the same healthy foods we eat for beautiful skin & vitality instead of synthetics? As lipstick is also digested, it was a ‘no brainer’ to start there first … along with several other commercial reasons!
Sustainability without sacrificing style has always been important to our brand, it is deep rooted in my values and how I have lived my life. At home we always composted, ate healthy food and used natural furnishing over modern synthetics. It was just common sense to keep everything as natural as possible with minimal processing as the ‘inputs’ were known and in retrospect minimised our exposure to toxins & chemicals.
When I began Lük we did not use boxes to ship and sell our lipstick, instead we designed a glass cleaning cloth and wrapped each one by hand to protect them, this provided an after use for the packaging and told the story of the brand. Today it is so much more and encompasses the entire supply change for ingredients and packaging. Our focus is to reduce plastic, increase refillables and align ourselves with the United Nations Sustainability goals to reduce carbon.
100% Natural formulations (not just a sprinkle of naturals or organics) goes without saying, our products are made without ingredients such as phthalates, PEG’s, silicones, synthetic preservatives (parabens, phenoxyethanol, triclosan) fragrance, talc, heavy metals, mineral oils and a host more as listed here: https://lukbeautifood.com/pages/dirty-list
Lük Beautifood has recently embarked on a new initiative called the Modern Beauty Standard. What is this and how does it impact consumers and other areas of the business?
One of our core values is simplicity so it gives time back to our customer and make things easier, less stressful so she can do the things she loves. With the growth of health & wellbeing and the rapidly growing consumer concerns about not only what they eat but now what they wear means she has to research and understand what these terms mean – natural, organic, clean, green, sustainable and conscious and not just at a top level but by ingredient and product type and not only formulations but packaging too. Layer this with global regulations by country or regions and compliance or lack of it and well, a woman has a lot of work to do to make sure she can select a product that aligns with her values and is truly safe and healthy for her… and that is before we get to performance!
And if you look at it from a brand perspective, big multinationals and anyone with a big enough marketing budget can ‘greenwash’ consumers so as a scientist I decided to build our own beauty standard that encompasses so consumers can understand what we are doing across formulations, packaging, sourcing and what expertise we have and use to validate and monitor what we do.
The Luk Beautifood Modern Standard sits at the nexus of foundational pillars of clean, conscious and credible to meet the needs of our customer – a modern woman who is looking for safely, efficacy and sustainability. Later last year we took the first steps towards certifying as a ‘Business for Good’ by starting the process to become a BCorp. This next evolution of Lük will see us elevate ‘positive impact’ across the team, customers, suppliers, shareholders, community and the environment.
Tell us about your career/background and how your skills have transferred over to Lük Beautifood?
Food has been my world from cooking as a child and studying food science and nutrition to cooking for one of Australia’s pioneering caterers and building the biscuit empire Lüken & May. Everything I did was ‘effortless’, not that I don’t work hard but what I mean is, it’s not a struggle because I have always followed my heart and been ‘on-purpose’. I fuel ‘life & work’ with eating well and getting outdoors, playing sport – sailing, bush walking and climbing mountains.
This attitude manifests itself in courage and confidence and having a simple beauty routine with a natural look. When I was looking for another business idea after I sold Luken & May and had 2 kids….. beauty products hit the sweet spot. A VC had said to me if I could bottle what made me successful with Luken & May then I’d have a winner. So, when I saw lipstick being made over 15 years ago and figured out I could make it from food and women were craving to know “how to be a natural beauty’ it was pretty easy to set up a business model the same as the biscuit market – outsource manufacturing and focus on marketing with product development and storytelling at the core. With beauty & wellness merging, low cost digital marketing and ecom platforms emerging and with an industry that needed a major facelift the time was ripe for a founder owned indie beauty to enter. Higher margins, a bigger audience than gourmet biscuits and a product with little or no shelf life (compared to food) it was easy to transfer skills especially as I had the science, nutrition, product development and business running creds.
What are some of the challenges you face running a business?
2020 and 2021 with COVID were incredibly testing. We are a lipstick company and with people stuck at home and when they do go out they have little need for wearing a lippy as a mask is covering their mouth! Thankfully our hero range is Lip Nourish is a little lick of daily luxury to feed and hydrate lips and provides a wash of pick-me-up colour. We also lost the majority of our international business including our amazing agents in the USA, our country of choice to scale the business and ironically our biggest distributor is in Russia which equals a major set back and Hong Kong has seesawed from conflicts to restrictions causing shoppers to evaporate. Then mid last year I did the worlds quickest NPD and developed and launched 9 new products in <5 months from concept to being in warehouse, it was no mean feat but essential to grow and survive by diversifying out of lipstick.
Describe a typical work day for you?
It starts at 5.30 with a quick 2000m row and stretching, breakfast, household family duties and via my handheld get a helicopter view of the day by looking at 10 or so Apps: scan, star or swipe left emails (work & private mainly for kids activities), brand social activity & mentions, check conversations via What’s App, see what money has come in, do a quick flick in Shopify for online sales and performance metrics, see what’s on my calendar and lastly Asana for what’s due. I like to leave home by 7am to listen to the ABC on the way to work and hit my desk by 7.30 with latte in hand and stay put til around 6.00pm.
The next 3 hours are my power hours at my desk where I get the important project work done that moves the business forward. As luk is a small business I carve up my days and weeks to get across all the areas. I work front & backend, on & in: general management / leadership, marketing, sales – ecom + wholesale, finance & board, shareholder relationships, rarely operations as purchasing, stock management and orders + technical / QA are well managed in house but need my input on forecasting, new product & promotional activity.
A typical day could be writing the strategy for Christmas, reviewing & approving current campaign creative, product photography and updating the digital asset register, pitching to key accounts or doing promotional slottings, signing IAS or approving payments, applying for grants, assessing new product samples and running the weekly team check in against strategy and deliverables and whatever is thrown at us! It always starts and ends with my inbox in Google and Asana being addressed and project status in check.
What about your personal life – how do you relax and unwind after a busy day in the office?
That is super hard for me as my husband was diagnosed with younger onset alzheimers in 2016 and has not worked since. We have 2 young teenagers and very little family support – my mum is 150km away. My role is pretty intense at home as I run the house – kids (school & activities), finance & admin, upkeep (cleaning & maintenance), household (grocery, washing, cleaning etc), ‘events’ and NDIS which is a great help.
I make sure I get 7 hours sleep and read before, chill out and watch TV, get a massage, eat out, and always set my eye on a mini break or planned holiday as that gives me a goal to work to – not that it has been easy the last few years with travel restrictions, isolation and homeschooling.
Do you have any particular milestones as an entrepreneur that you’re proud of
Surviving in business with all that has been thrown at me but seriously, raising $2m in 2 weeks from high net-worth individuals to scale Lük Beautifood in 2017 – not that it has been plain sailing.
Awarded my honorary Master of Science at 33 for my contribution to industry and inspiring young women to enter into the science field.
Two of my team worked for me in the 90’s for 4+ years each and came back for this adventure!
Extending and renovating our mid century house in Middle Cove in 2019/20 and more than tripling its value.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Have kids five years earlier!
What does Lük Beautifood have in store for the coming years?
Innovative product launches, back to business in the US and fire up the DTC channel.
For more on Lük Beautifood, please click here.
