What is your name? What is your brand name?
Julia Wills and Alex Kummerow, we are the wife and husband founders of Herbivore Botanicals.
What do you make?
Truly natural and results driven skincare. Our products are made with food grade, botanical based, therapeutic ingredients and made without synthetic fillers, additives, or other chemicals. Every ingredient we use is active and directly beneficial to the health of your skin. All of these factors add up to highly effective and luxuriously nourishing products. We are also a cruelty free company and test only on ourselves and our generously obliging friends. We believe in tangible results which you can see and feel and we believe in the power of nature to bring these results.
Tell us about a day in the life of you!
We love being outside and in the sun. We are both very passionate about the brand and naturally talk about it all of the time since we are always together. It’s great. There is no business formality that needs to exist between us and no judgement with even the craziest of ideas. We can just be hanging out in a park chatting and we may come up with our next big idea.
What's unique about your process?
We are very ingredient inspired. We love plants! We will find an ingredient we know we need to use and design a product that highlights its unique benefits. Anytime we travel we always hit the local plant conservatory and/or botanical garden plus we just started a greenhouse featuring some of our favorites such as Jasmine Sambac, one of our signature scents, and another floral fav, Tahitian Gardenia.
Pick a candle fragrance that would describe your personality. Why?
NO. 76 - Key Lime, Orange Blossom, Almond Cream. Well this one smells summery, uplifting, and a little nutty lol :)
What images, people, places and things inspire you?
See below answer :)
Where do you live? What is your favorite thing about your surroundings?
Seattle, WA is home for us, but we find a lot of inspiration during our travels. We spend time in Hawaii every year and have of course become familiar faces at several of the islands' local botanical gardens. We love the natural diversity and lush, yet fragile plant-life of the islands. You can definitely see this influence in the many tropical ingredients we incorporate into our formulas. I mean, who doesn't want their daily beauty routine to transport them to a tropical paradise? We think taking care of your skin should be always be fun and refreshing!
Share one thing about being a maker that might surprise people.
Something a lot of people probably don't realize is that when we started Herbivore we had no overhead financing and we truly started from the ground up with a soap kit in our kitchen. We had neither taken out a loan nor had an investor and most people thought we were crazy for starting something this way, but truly doing what we loved empowered us beyond all of that doubt. Life really is full of infinite possibilities!
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