We recently connected with Amandine Azran and have shared our conversation below.
Amandine, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
It all started with a decampment from law school to lavender fields. I come from a family of incredibly creative entrepreneurs in fashion and beauty, and as much as I loved the industry, I never thought I could be successful in it, so I rebelled and decided I would go to law school. At the same time as I was questioning this decision my parents told me they had sold our family home in Toronto and bought an 80-acre farm 2.5 hours away. If you’ve seen the show Schitt’s Creek, you get the picture. A fashion and beauty family are plopped on an expansive piece of land with cows, no neighbours, and pure nature. When the initial shock wore off I was so inspired by this special place, and how well my skin reacted to the simplicity and return to nature.
My mom and I had gone to visit the law school I was supposed to attend, where I sobbed for hours uncontrollably, and she finally said “If you could do anything in the world what would you do”, to which I replied: “I would start a skincare line with you.” She said: “Let’s do it!” and that was the beginning of everything.
We instantly knew what we needed to create – farm-inspired natural skincare that is simplifying luxury, quality products with the right formulas and essential ingredients. We wanted to bring The Farm experience to anyone, anywhere. We created products that are meant to be shared – between mother daughter, best friends, partners. Our products transcend ages and skin types to deliver real results that are equally as enjoyable to use. Each time you use one of our products it is an escape to The Farm.
Amandine, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
We’re on a mission to simplify the skincare through plant-based, effective and luxurious formulations. Dew Dream Spray Serum, Essence and Toner combines the first three steps of the skincare routine into one product to tone, tighten, hydrate, gently exfoliate and deliver a dewy pearlescent finish
Inner Glow Multi-Correctional Face Oil is a blend of 17 active natural botanicals that penetrate the skin to brighten, nourish, restore texture and reveal youthful, glowing skin. Our formula contains all of the vitamins and omegas your skin needs plus our signature all natural aromatherapy blend.
When developing our brand we had a laundry list of the best natural ingredients we could find, and a list of ingredients we certainly did not want to include. Our formulator at first said it would be impossible to create a formula with these ingredients because it would be FAR too expensive. After long conversations and testing, they finally saw our vision. We didn’t want to create just another skincare product to sit on the shelf and waste resources. We want to create products with ingredients that truly made a difference, were extremely enjoyable to use, and would be sustainable over the long term to harvest. Our goal is to eventually grow our own ingredients in order to be more sustainable, and this is why one of our ingredients, honey, is so important to us. Since bees are so crucial to our ecosystem and our ability to grow flowers and food we knew we wanted to do what we could to support the bee ecosystem. We currently have an apiary on our farm to try and rebuild our local bee community. We purchase honey for our formulations from a local 4th generation Ontario beekeeper who is focused on sustainability. We do not use ‘buzzy’ ingredients for marketing, each ingredient is carefully selected based on its ability to produce results and keep the product shelf stable without the use of harsh chemicals. Our standards for ingredients revolve around efficacy, safety and sustainability.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn the feeling that my personal success and worth is directly tied to my professional success. I can’t pinpoint where this feeling came from initially, but it became much worse when running my own business vs working for someone. In a normal workplace you are told ‘good job’ or your hard work is seen by others who encourage you, being an entrepreneur you only get that feeling from yourself, but being your own harshest critic can lead to never really having those moments. Through speaking to other founders who have been through this I have learned that they are not correlated whatsoever, and my professional success, or failure, is independent of me as a person.
Have you ever had to pivot?
In the five years running Amandine Sol Botanicals I have moved from The Farm in Canada to LA, then from LA to South Carolina, This has been very challenging from a logistic perspective, but also with each move my life and business has been uprooted. It is difficult to build a network each time, find your resources, and create your work cadence. I had to pivot every aspect of the business and my personal life with each move. This has taught me to be very resilient, to keep putting myself out there, and it has given the business an opportunity to grow locally in each of these new communities which has added something special and very real.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://amandinesolbotanicals.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandinesolbotanicals/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/amandine-sol-botanicals/?viewAsMember=true
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandinebotanicals
