A new Scottish-based beauty accelerator for natural start-up beauty brands has launched this week, aiming to support emerging companies in this rapidly growing sector of the beauty industry and create a new standard of ‘clean beauty’ in the global marketplace.
Founded by beauty entrepreneur Raquel Wing, The Clean Hub is the first program of its kind to offer specialist support for independent start-up businesses compliant with the most stringent standards of natural and ethical production – free from animal testing, toxins, carcinogens and harmful ingredients.
With bases in Edinburgh and California, The Clean Hub has partnered with a range of beauty industry experts and regulators to help businesses overcome many of the challenges they face in bringing their clean beauty brands to market, from finance and export regulations to branding and marketing.
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Through a series of guides, webinars and consultations, members will have a wealth of advice and expertise on tap from specialists such as international marketing specialists The Young Group; UK/EU regulatory experts from Personal Care Regulatory; trade mark specialists from Withers & Rogers; and beauty export experts Divin Consulting.
Businesses included in the accelerator program will also be offered a route to retail through a new partnership with PURE Spa & Beauty’s eight UK outlets, where The Clean Hub will host a retail concession which will be marketed to PURE’s customer database each month.
The global clean beauty market is growing by 9 per cent each year (Persistence Market Research 2016), and is expected to reach $25 billion by 2025. Raquel, a former wealth management professional with Morgan Stanley and UBS, and an MBA alumna from the University of Edinburgh, felt that there was a need for a central platform of specialist support for clean beauty brands at all stages of their business – as well as a desire from consumers for more transparency and accountability from ‘natural’ beauty brands.
She commented: ‘From a very early age, I couldn’t use many beauty products because my skin was intolerant to some of the ingredients they contained. I had to become forensic in my approach to checking every pack’s ingredients list, which took a lot of time and effort to cut through the claims to find the simple facts of what was actually in each formulation. It was also very frustrating to discover that many ‘natural’ products were in fact full of the chemicals and toxins that I couldn’t use.
‘Through this experience I realised that there is a real lack of clarity and trust over natural and clean brands in the current marketplace – for producers and consumers alike. With The Clean Hub we are aiming to build a new community that overcomes this problem, promoting clarity, trust and authenticity for brands that are offering products that are genuinely clean and free from the toxins that increasingly no one wants in their skin and personal care regime.
‘There are many wonderful small beauty businesses and emerging brands out there which are committed to offering a genuinely natural product range for consumers, but the industry is fragmented and needs support and a stronger voice. The Clean Hub is here to provide that, as well as helping consumers like me who want to easily and quickly find beauty brands whose claims they can trust implicitly.’
The Clean Hub has launched with fifteen businesses taking advantage of its accelerator program, including Vera Mona, Province Apothecary, and Eden’s Theory. Initially serving US and UK brands looking to launch into the UK and Europe or build more traction within their home country.
