The Green Parent

By The Green Parent

16th September 2020

Terence and Kelly Chung are the founders of FRUU. Terence is a biochemist, cosmetic scientist, and a teacher, who was born in Hong Kong and came to the UK at the age of 14. Kelly is a Paediatric Occupational Therapist who grew up in a family of six in East London.

The Green Parent

By The Green Parent

16th September 2020

The Green Parent

By The Green Parent

16th September 2020

We met ten years ago when we were at University and have been great friends, couple and business partners ever since. We currently live a happy, low footprint lifestyle in Buckinghamshire.

It was Terence who came up with the concept for FRUU (fruuurskin.com), as he realised that his students were more interested in cosmetics than chemistry! In one of his lessons, he asked his students to bring in a cosmetic product that they loved. When the students discussed the products, he realised that the majority of them were either made from petrochemicals or natural ingredients that are water, land and carbon-intensive. Moreover, most “green beauty” products in the market are not necessarily sustainable, mostly unaffordable to average households and have plain, unattractive designs to young people.

We, therefore, set out to create FRUU to provide accessible, sustainable cosmetic products young people would love. With £2000 set aside to purchase basic second-hand lab equipment and our spare room cleared, we started creating the beginning of FRUU in our spare room in the evenings and weekends whilst we continued working three jobs between us. As we had such little money to start with, we had to learn to do everything, from drawing our packaging designs on PowerPoint, barcodes, formulation development, to website designs and manufacturing, which were challenging and enjoyable at the same time.

Fast forward three years, we are stocked in close to 1000 stores! We still hand-craft every single one of our products.

SELF-CARE SECRETS

We believe that good skin starts with a healthy lifestyle, this includes good sleep, diet and physical and mental wellness. Having the right products in your skincare regime is important too, try and choose products with natural oils and extracts whenever possible as they provide a wider spectrum of nutrients and multi-action benefits to your skin, rather than products which focus on a singular isolated ingredient.

We also believe it is important to not complicate your routine too much, as using too many products and changing products too often can cause unnecessary skin imbalance, inflammation and stress to your skin.

BUSINESS PLANS

Like many other businesses large and small, this year has been extremely challenging for us, with the lockdown and the huge drop in physical sales. We haven’t been able to receive much help from the government, unfortunately. However, we did make good use of the lockdown time to design and develop new product ranges, including all-purpose balms, deodorants, soaps and shampoo bars, which we hope to launch in the coming months. This will hopefully help us shift some of our sales online and future proof our business for the coming years.

THREE WAYS TO BE MORE SUSTAINABLE

Drive less, fly less and buy less! We cannot emphasis enough about the enormous carbon footprint of Instagram friendly modern jet-setting lifestyles. Flying is the single most polluting activity we do and anything to reduce flying or at least offset carbon footprint whenever you fly would be the most important step. We have become very conscious of our buying behaviour too. New clothes, new shoes, new cars, all of their production, no matter how “eco”, will consume an enormous amount of natural resources and create pollution and waste. Therefore we now think very carefully before any buying decision, repair any broken items we have and try to buy second hand over buying brand new products whenever possible.

loading