We were lucky to catch up with Britt Kimmel recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Britt thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
We’re on a mission to simplify self-care through sustainable skincare.
When I was pregnant with my first little one, I couldn’t find skincare products I felt safe using. I already felt guilty about the plastic lotion bottles I was going through each month, and when my mama-bear instincts kicked in, I was suddenly also deeply concerned about what was inside each bottle. Product after product, I’d take time to research each 5-syllable ingredient in the lengthy list, only to come across a deal-breaker 12 ingredients down…I felt like there was an unspoken “trust me” factor even with brands claiming to be non-toxic and natural.
Between the demands of motherhood and a full-time job, I felt overextended and exhausted. Like many others in that position, I craved simplicity…if self-care was going to fit into my schedule at all, it wasn’t going to be with products that required research or through some 12-step skincare regimen.
I started making my own products because I couldn’t find safe, simple, effective and eco-conscious products. When I decided to turn my kitchen crafting into a business, I had busy moms like me in mind. I wanted to take care of the care-takers by helping them simplify their own self-care with sustainable skincare products they could feel good about.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
One of the best things about being a small business is being able to intentionally weave our mission into every step of our process.
Formulating: Lotions are notably absent from our product line up, because they’re typically 60-80% water. Our concentrated (water-free) formulations deliver more uses per glass bottle. Undiluted goodness is better for your skin; and smaller packaging is better for the planet. Our products are also plant-based and Vegan, which means, no beeswax, honey, dairy products, etc. are included in your Seedling products.
Ingredient sourcing: Did you notice the lovely USDA Organic seal on our products? We take that very seriously because it means that we and our suppliers all have detailed and audited practices that maintain organic integrity. Organic farmers also protect wildlife and promote biodiversity; use integrated pest management; and work to improve and maintain ecosystems for future generations. For ingredients that have fair trade standards available (like Coconut Oil), we only source products that are both Fair Trade Certified and USDA Organic Certified.
Production: If you’ve watched any of our behind the scenes videos on Instagram, you know every step of our production is done by hand in-house. From blending, to filling, to labeling, to shipping. We take care of it all right out of our Long Beach-based, USDA Organic Certified home kitchen.
Packaging: All of our products are in glass bottles or jars, and none of those are re-packaged in boxes. For our clay mask, infused salt, toners, body oil, cleansing oil + hair oil, we squeezed all information onto our bottle labels in order to skip the outer boxes. For our face oils, we shrank our paper footprint by ditching the boxes in favor of tags that we attach with reusable hair ties. We’re also working towards offering refill options in 2023!
Shipping: Our shipments are carbon neutral through carbon-offset purchases. When you check out with Shop Pay, Shopify covers this cost. When you check out using any other method, we’re happy to make that investment ourselves.
Planting trees: We plant 1 tree for every product sold, and 5 for every organic facial booked with our spa partners. Because we love accountability + transparency, we’ve partnered with Tree Nation so that we have a tree certificate that shows the type of tree and location of the planting project for every tree we plant.
Empowering women: While planet care is central to sustainability, to make those efforts sustainable, we also need to take care of the care-takers, which means prioritizing and simplifying self-care and empowering women around the world. We love how Tree Nation helps us align planet care with empowering women through their “Employ to Plant” program that provides fair wage employment to people living in extreme poverty to produce, plant, and protect millions of native trees every month. By donating to Water.org we also join the mission of making the essential human right of safe water access a reality.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
When I decided to turn my kitchen crafting into a small business, I knew I wanted oversite and accountability. Maybe it was the former banker in me, or maybe it was how uncomfortable I was with the lack of regulation in the skincare industry, but I decided I wanted an auditor to verify the organic integrity (how ingredients are grown, harvested and processed) of my suppliers as well as my own practices.
It took over a year, but I developed an Organic Systems Plan and had my home kitchen in Long Beach, CA certified by CCOF as a USDA Organic Processing and Handling Facility. During the evenings and weekends, plenty of messy art and cooking projects take over the kitchen, but while my kids are at school, I have an obsessively methodical process for prepping the space for production runs before bringing equipment and ingredients out of my dedicated organic closet.
I’m proud that these products are both kitchen-crafted, and USDA organic certified.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
After nearly 2 years of R+D, sourcing ingredients from organic + fair trade suppliers, finding glass packaging and compostable shipping materials, designing the logo and labels, developing the website, establishing my organic certification, I finally had products for sale in fall of 2019! By January 2020, 2 amazing spas signed up to offer organic facials featuring my products, and I was scheduled to table at markets and tradeshows beginning at the end of March…but then, the world seemed to stop spinning, and I was suddenly homeschooling my two kiddos…
The pandemic was isolating, anxiety inducing, exhausting, and yet, I know our family was very fortunate in how we managed through it. I was able to put this little business into hibernation mode, basically just keeping production up for myself, friends and family.
When we emerged from that extended period of quarantine, I think in many ways our course was permanently altered. I think we collectively reassessed values, lost our sense of security that things would continue as planned, and gained an appreciation for our time with loved ones. For me, it emphasized the importance of community and our interconnectedness. It renewed my mission to help people prioritize and simplify their self-care, while also caring for others, as well as future generations.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.seedlingorganicskincare.com
- Instagram: @seedling_organicskincare
- Facebook: @SeedlingSustainableSkincare