'This journey has given me purpose' says Sian as she targets America with her sustainable skincare brand

People start businesses for a variety of different reasons.

For Sian Louise, Founder of Southampton-based Obvs Skincare, it started in response to a difficult period in her life.

“When I was going through IVF, it gave me terrible adult acne from the hormones, which was painful both physically and mentally,” she explained.

“I’ve always been a bit of a hippie – I’m vegan, I love organic produce and I try to be as plastic-free as possible.

“But all of the skincare products I could find both online and in the shops were being greenwashed. They would market it as organic but it was actually 1 per cent of the ingredients, or it would say it was plastic-free, but it was actually plastic inside wood.

“My acne got so bad I was prescribed some tablets for it, but one of the possible side effects was that they could cause infertility – while I was doing IVF!

“Unfortunately, the IVF resulted in two miscarriages so I really needed a distraction and I needed a good skincare routine.”

At the time, the coronavirus pandemic had just hit, meaning Sian was working from home and had more time on her hands.

She started looking into the ingredients of some of the creams she had been using and researching organic and natural alternatives.

“Through a lot of mess, and a lot of failures, I came up with what is now our hero product, the intensive skin recovery cream. It cleared up my acne within a week.

At the time, one of her friends had a newborn, and asked if she could use the cream for her baby’s nappy rash.

“Everything the doctors were prescribing just wasn’t working. It was a fairly big step to go from using it on myself to her child, but I knew it was safe and organic so she gave it a go.

“It cleared up the rash overnight.

“That’s really when it caught on, and all my friends and family wanted to try it for their skin ailments.

“Because the ingredients I was using were the best I could find and they were all organic, I knew it would cost me a lot of money so I thought ‘let’s make this into a business’.”

And so, using the money Sian had been saving for her last round of IVF, Obvs Skincare was born.

Sian currently works from a lab her husband built in their garden.

“It really is my baby. The name was one of those 2am realisations, ‘Obvs’ stands for Organic, Biodegradable, Vegan and Sustainable.

“I got Soil Association, Vegan Society and cruelty-free certifications before I properly launched, as I wanted to make sure I wasn’t greenwashing.

“The packaging is made of wood pulp and plant polymers – we’re the first Soil Association verified brand to use it.

“We plant a tree for every order and offset the carbon from our deliveries. I also put a lot of thought into where I get my ingredients from. For example I source the shea butter from a Woman’s Institute in Ghana and they get paid a fair trade.

“I wanted to make sure that if I ever meet Deborah Meaden I’ve got an answer for every question she has, but more than that these are things which are really important to me.”

Life wasn’t done throwing curveballs at Sian yet, however. A year after starting her business Sian was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

“It was actually quite lucky they picked it up when they did. I was given an appointment early in error and if they hadn’t picked it up when they did it would have spread.

“It was a difficult time, but it really gave me the motivation to give up my ‘proper’ job and push forward with this.

“Exactly a year after the diagnosis I made it on to Superdrug’s website. It’s a bizarre story, but it feels right.

“If you’d have told me back when I miscarried that everything happens for a reason, I would have told you to do one. But now, I feel like this journey has given me my purpose.

“There’s two most important days in your life – the day you were born and the day you find it why you were born, and I was born to help people with their bad skin.”

Having already launched in the EU through a third party, Sian now has her sights set on the US.

“I just need to get a few more ducks in the row, but it’s coming. Hopefully by this time next year we’ll be working from a new warehouse having successfully broken into the US market.

“If people reading about my story were to take away one thing from it, I would want it to be that it’s never too late to realise your purpose.”

• https://obvs-skincare.co.uk/