What problem does sk*p solve?
sk*p is a clean, conscience hair and body care brand on a mission to break the beauty industry’s addiction to plastic. Packaged in the industry’s first and only fully recyclable, paper-based, and shower-friendly BeautyCarton™ — with a proprietary microbiome-balancing ingredient, G-HoneyBiome™ on the inside — sk*p was inspired by the generation it was created for, a generation that is eco-aware and knows that taking care of our planet is just as important as taking care of our own skin + hair!
Tell us about the founder. What is their background?
April Hardwick has over 15 years of experience working in publishing for national magazines and newspapers. She has been a contributing writer to numerous publications with a passion for covering sustainable design and is the mother of three young daughters who are environmental enthusiasts.
Mark Veeder co-founded the award-winning natural skincare brand, Farmacy, the same year his twin daughters were born. Being new to the beauty industry, he became acutely aware of the proliferation of plastics our industries are driving into our landfills and the effect that it’s having on the planet they will inherit crystalizing the reason to create sk*p. He is raising his family (and looking after a big family of bees) on his upstate New York farm. These pollinators make the honey used in all sk*p products.
How did you come up with the idea?
Being raised on a sustainable farm in upstate NY by a father who taught me at a very young age to respect the environment – he would always say “no matter what you do, Treat the earth well as it is not given to us by our parents, it is loaned to us by our children”. So when I learned that the beauty industry was one of the leading contributors to the environmental crisis fueled in part by single-use plastic, I knew that I needed to do something to lead the industry in a more sustainable direction. Paper cartons have always been on my radar as a huge step in the right direction, and while they are not perfect, they are leaps ahead of any other alternative packaging currently available.
How can this transform the world or our day-to-day lives?
Currently, the beauty industry contributes over 80 billion pieces of plastic waste to landfills and waterways each year. More than 500 million of those pieces alone are thick plastic shampoo bottles, and less than 10% of plastics, in general, are recycled successfully. This means, if only 5% of plastic shampoo bottles were replaced with an sk*p BeautyCarton, there would be approximately 27.5 million fewer plastic bottles polluting our environment annually.
sk*p’s paper-based BeautyCartons™ are not only shower-friendly but made of over 81% FSC-certified paper, free of harmful chemicals (no BPA or VOC) and lightweight so has a much smaller carbon footprint than a plastic shampoo bottle.
I made a conscious decision to design a line that does not try to change consumers’ behavior by offering an alternative delivery system such as the waterless or bar form options, but rather offers a clean, efficacious, more sustainable option for consumers to feel good about buying. The more people we get to make small changes will lead to the greater impact of the overall mission to reduce plastics in the environment. I truly believe that people want to do their part in saving the planet — and I think sk*p offers them that easy solution.
What do customers love most about the product?
We have gotten incredible reviews from customers who mostly call out our sustainable packaging and mission to help save the planet one BeautyCarton at a time, as well as our incredible formulas, how they make their skin, scalp, and hair feel clean and nourished.
Where can people get this product?
Consumers can find sk*p products at over 700 Ulta beauty locations nationwide and will be in all 1400 stores by august 2022 and on Ulta Beauty