"In starting Natural Elements with Karen, I have been on my own personal journey as a Biogerontolgist, from formulating products to research in universities and exploring how we as scientists can stop cell erosion and damage cells.
My understanding of the ageing process, how and why we age has evolved, over the years, especially in regards to anti ageing skincare and ageing at a cellular level. It's plainly obvious to me that beauty skincare products simply don't do a very good job. In fact they are often speeding up the ageing process. We have discovered that the industry's reliance on synthetic and petrochemicals has no benefit to cells and even increases the main source of damaged to these cells.
We also became aware of how molecule size affects efficacy in products and how that nearly all creams gels and serums have big molecule formulations which means the ingredients can't get to where they need to be in the skin. The whole beauty industry was a lie ... so we set out to change that and adopted the slogan 'leaders not followers'.
We are happy to disrupt the very foundations of the beauty sector, we challenge thinking on the use and recommendation of sunscreens to the use of substandard ingredients, the abundance of pollutants used and how it all affects cell senescence as well as environmental issues. We are not simply about 'natural' or 'organic' we are about what is contained within botanical compounds and what and how they benefit on a cellular level.
Our great strides in research, led by myself continues within universities and knowledge transfer partnerships which means we develop products which impacts on beauty health and wellbeing. We are uncovering the medical benefit of plants and discovering the impact they can have on many ailments, not just the skin!"
John Hamilton and Karen Blackmore formed a research and development group with a selection of molecular scientists, dermatologists and activists to look at natural skincare products from a scientific perspective. This company was called Essentially Yours and went on to lead the way in natural and organic formulations for the next 20 years. They developed products for hundreds of household name brands as the leaders in advanced botanical formulations - long before natural skincare was considered mainstream.
Essentially Yours were innovators, ahead of their time; striving to break the mould in an industry that was reliant on using man-made petrol-chemicals in their formulations. “We became the natural balance to a chemical world. But no one knew it was us leading the charge. We were the figure heads telling people backstage that the world had to change its idea about petro-chemicals, especially from an environmental point of you. But people were making too much money. It was really the power of the people who changed this industry through their buying power”
karen co founder at 66 this year
john Hamilton
Natural Elements was first created especially for professional Beauty Therapists, salons & Spas across the UK who were concerned about how their customers were commenting on parabens and preservatives in skin care. Natural Elements was the first ground breaking Natural skincare range not to use Parabens in a professional beauty range. Over a decade later the range was used and sold through over 800 professional salons and therapists globally and considered by those in the know that Natural Elements was the no.1 Natural skincare range for professional use.
Described by a leading celebrity beauty therapist “the textures are like silk. Heavenly smells. They’re genuinely beautiful. Why isn’t everyone using this?”
Natural Elements continued to develop products using the most current scientific research and breakthroughs in anti-ageing. In 2012, Janelle Tam from Ontario won first place in the Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge in Canada (SBCC) in the ‘how will you change the world?’ category for her application in nanocrystalline cellulose research. She proved that Cellulose from plants was a powerful antioxidant and may be superior to Vitamin C or E because it is more stable, and its effectiveness will not diminish as quickly. Natural Elements was the first beauty brand to use cellulose in their formulations.