I live in Far Sawrey on the edge of Windermere in England’s Lake District. Gareth & I were long-standing customers of Pure Lakes and bought the business from the previous owners (still working with us) when they wanted to step back / semi-retire in 2016. We make natural & organic skincare by hand in a nearby workshop.
MY MORNING ROUTINE
I spent my 20s in Paris - I was an actress and salsa dance teacher - and my routine then, a jog or yoga class followed by a morning espresso from my favourite cafe seems a very long time ago. Nowadays I still several days a week manage to fit in some exercise - something called Broga that is taught locally and is available online, and is a more strenuous version of Yoga, or a run. However, mornings are chaotic making sure the children are watered and fed, bags packed, including the ‘right’ kit for school and after school activities and a very quick coffee on the go. While life as a working mother of young children is in marked contrast to my Paris life, my commute is pretty special, taking the car ferry across Windermere and eating my porridge as I look at the fells and think about the day ahead. It really helps me ground myself and prepares me for the day ahead.
MY FUTURE PLANS
We are developing a baby range. The formulations are complete and we are now looking at packaging and routes to market. Everything -ingredients, packaging - needs to be sustainable and this part of the journey invariably takes longer than initially expected. We are also planning to build a new workshop, one where our community can visit us to see their skincare products being made. We have planning permission and are now liaising with contractors. It’s all very exciting.
3 THINGS ABOUT PURE LAKES SKINCARE LTD
- We make everything in-house. In a similar way to food, in skincare you can have an ingredient that is ostensibly the same in different products but if in one of those products it has been heavily processed it risks losing much of the benefit to the skin. Making everything ourselves not only helps us create employment but ensures that everything we use is ultimately, of the highest quality and is very effective.
- We offer a refill service whereby our customers can send us back the original jars or bottles and we will refill them at a 30% discount. It is proving very popular with so many looking to embrace the circular economy ethos of ‘reuse not replace’.
- We only use essential oils that are steam distilled and ethically sourced from plantations and estates across the world. None of our products, including our reed diffusers, has any synthetic fragrance.
FIND THE RANGE www.purelakes.co.uk
