Prem Skincare is one of those companies that once you have tried their products you become almost instantly addicted to them like you would with your favorite brand of chocolate that temps you to come back for more. The fairly new company based out for Brooklyn, NY is quickly growing a well deserved reputation for its all natural organic products that are vegan friendly and cruelty-free.

Besides creating delightful products the real heart of this company lies with its three founders that put love into each handmade item. 

Recently I had the pleasure in interviewing Juliet, Rob and Michelle who are the three friends behind Prem Soaps.

The Green Stylist(TGS): When you wake up in the morning what makes you smile?

Juliet: Right now I feel I’m living a really blessed life – I’m married to the man of my dreams, I have the cutest dog in the entire world, and I’m expecting a baby. I love waking up to my husband and my dog!  I also love my job.  I used to work in a NYC public middle school, which was very stressful.  Working at home, in my kitchen, with one of my best friends and my husband makes me smile every day.

TGS: What inspired you to go vegetarian/vegan?

Juliet: I was actually inspired to go vegetarian by Michelle!  I was trying to lose weight, and she snuck the book Skinny Bitch into my bag.  When I read how animals were treated by the industrial meat machine, I knew I had to stop participating in the system.  I do eat eggs and cheese, but I’m really careful about the source.

Rob: When I moved out to go to University and started cooking for myself, I found raw meat really gross. There were plenty of vegetarians amongst my family and  friends at the time, so I was really ready to take the plunge.  I tried going vegan for a while, but could never give up cheese. Today I am as selective as I can be about where my animal products come from.  Whenever I control it, I reduce the environmental impact of my eating.

TGS: What do the words high-quality, all-natural, organic, cruelty-free, environmentally sound luxury products mean to you?

Rob: I hope I’m not taking you too literally here – I broke it out, term by term. =)

High quality: I think this is the hardest one to answer.  Quality is in the eye of the beholder.  To me it means that someone cared about where your ingredients come from, how things are made, packaged and shipped, and that they don’t just look at the dollar cost and dollar profit in making decisions.  

All-natural: This is a sort of useless word these days, because people call all sorts of things natural.  To us it means that things have been through the fewest steps possible from their natural state, be that a plant or a mineral.  Most oils are physically pressed or chemically extracted with fairly simple processes.

Organic: To me it means “grown with the tools we had about a hundred and twenty years ago, but with the knowledge we have now.”  No chemical pesticides (and even minimal use of natural ones), careful soil preservation and minimized environmental impact, and healthy outputs.  In practice, USDA certification is the best proxy available for this — though it misses lots of stuff, it gives a good assurance of a basic standard.  And we buy from people who claim to go above and beyond USDA standards whenever possible.

Cruelty-free: That’s fairly easy when your products are vegan (though not always – see the answer about palm oil!  And that means we might not be perfect; I have no idea where our soy comes from, but if we could find out, we would.)

Environmentally Sound: For me, being environmentally sound means you’re thinking and learning a lot about what you’re doing, making careful choices with the environment in mind, and pulling things as far in that direction as you can.  It doesn’t mean being a hermit in a cave, but it does mean striving to have a much smaller impact than competing options in terms of extraction, energy use, pollution and waste.  There’s a good example that we got called out on by a curious correspondent: where did the wood in our soap molds come from?  I answered that I didn’t know, and hadn’t asked; I did ask and the maker asserted that they were in fact Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certified (though it’s not clear link to wikipedia how much that means these days, unfortunately).  I should have checked, for sure, but in the grand scheme of what we’re doing, ingredients and packaging and shipping are by far the big-ticket items, so we’ve focused most of our energy (and energy savings!) there.

Luxury Products: These aren’t scratchy toilet paper, or candles that don’t stay lit for long, or soap that dries your skin. They’re great products, and we’re getting great reviews to prove it.

TGS: Which of your products do you use in your daily routine?

Juliet: I use our soap and lip balm daily.  I would use the massage candle daily, if only I could get Rob to comply!
Rob: I use the massage candle daily.  I have no idea what Juliet’s talking about… 

TGS:Your lip gloss is my all time favorite to use because it’s so effective in giving  my lips a glossy shine and keeping my lips moisturized, how challenging was it for you to came up with the recipe?

Juliet: Our lip balm recipe was the one we worked on the most.  At first, I was just substituting soy wax for beeswax, but I found the balm extremely soft, so I added more wax.  That made the balm really, really waxy.  A careful blend of soy and candelilla waxes was the solution – but it took several tries to get there “We also had the desire to tint ourbalms – you can read more about that challenge in our blog about lip balm”, with “blog about lip balm” linking to http://blog.premsoaps.com/post/6353815957/thoughts-on-lip-balm

What are your best sellers?

So far, our best sellers have been lime with cilantro soap, coffee soap and mint lip balm.  The most popular of all, though, is our coconut lime salt scrub!

Do you feel the term “natural” is being misrepresented in the beauty product industry?

Juliet: We use the word natural, and what we mean by that is that we use no synthetic chemicals in our products; lye is really the only “chemical” we use, and soy wax has been through a fairly simple chemical process. That said, the way it is used in the industry renders the word totally useless.  It actually has no meaning whatsoever.

TGS: In general what ingredients should people be aware of when they are looking to purchase body products? 

Juliet: I think the most over-used and not-so-great ingredient is palm oil.  Palm oil causes deforestation, habitat destruction and increased greenhouse gas emissions.  Furthermore, the manufacturers of palm oil are accused of some pretty serious human rights violations.  We’re planning on posting a blog entry about palm oil soon. Other things that are almost certainly bad for you are parabens and phthalates, and some ingredients like sodium laurel sulphate can really dry out the skin (or mouth! it’s in most toothpaste).  Lots of ingredients are animal derived; things like tallowates and some palmitates.  Skin Deep is a great resource for learning about mainstream cosmetics.

TGS: Name one thing you wish people would recycle more?

Rob: Actually, it’s not recycling that gets me going, it’s re-use.  I wish that bottled products were standardized enough that you could always send the bottle back for cleaning and relabeling.  I grew up with beer bottles being this way, and a few companies (like Ronnybrook Farms) do deposits on milk bottles.  That’s why we use mason jars for our products – in the hopes that they’ll find another lifetime.

TGS: What’s in store for the future?

Juliet: Expanding our market and becoming more well known!  We’re also have ideas for a couple of new products.  Many business grow and lose integrity in the process. They sacrifice quality and craft for profit and scale.  We intend to increase our integrity as we grow: to know more and be even more selective with our ingredients and to continuously provide excellent products to our users.

 

 

(Photo Courtesy: Prem Soaps and Jodi Truglio)