Good for you – naturally
Talented mother and daughter duo Mandy and Lucinda Emerson have pooled their talents to create a new natural range of skincare, Swinny Skin. By Katherine Robinson. Photo by Lucia Zanmonti.
To visit the Emerson family home on a lifestyle block outside Masterton is to step into a creative hub. The walls are bright with accomplished artist Mandy’s paintings, and husband Tim is constructing a studio/gallery for Mandy outside. Inside the house, Lucinda has her own beauty clinic, Lucinda Lois Brows.
Swinny Skin, a range of natural skincare products, is Mandy and Lucinda’s latest creation. And if you are wondering about the name, Swinny was Tim’s nickname for Lucinda when she was a child. “We had always said we would make beauty products together. When we were looking a name, Swinny Skin just sounded right,” says Mandy.
So far four products make up the range: a gentle cleanser which includes fine quartz , a Dead Sea Mud Mask, a light retaining moisturiser, and a cinnamon scrub. It’s not surprising they all smell delicious – the ingredients list features edibles such as coconut, kiwi fruit seed, and most importantly NZ manuka honey powder.
“Right from the start we wanted to include New Zealand ingredients but there was plenty of trial and error. Over lockdown we had the time every day to just sit and work out formulations of what we liked and what we didn’t,” says Mandy.
To ensure Swinny Skin met stringent health and safety standards, they enlisted Dr Wendy Maddocks, a lecturer in natural medicine at Canterbury University. “We sent our products for her to analyse to make sure they were safe and the quantities correct. The only thing we needed to change was the Mud Mask, which we had to turn into a powder because it wouldn’t last as a liquid.”
Health and safety regulations demand that products must be made in a commercial kitchen so Mandy and Lucinda regularly hire an industrial mixer and blender in the community kitchen in Masterton. It’s obvious that mother and daughter work well together – and they feel that generationally they cover two ends of the market.
Swinny Skin has already met with resounding success with very little marketing other than word of mouth. The moisturiser sold out within two to three weeks of launching, including sales to Australia.
Packaging is elegantly eco-conscious. “We had little cloth bags made that you could also use for make-up. Our jars are recyclable – you can give them back to us and we will sterilise them and re-use them.”
Lucinda, who at 21, has already been running her own business for the past two years says, “Making the products is so cool, because you literally know what’s going into the product. We use all of our products ourselves because we know exactly what the ingredients are.”
Like any fledgling business, it’s been a rollercoaster: “I thought I knew what I was getting into but there are so many lows and so many highs – you just have to keep at it and it will eventually happen,” she says.
Next steps are a website, the launch of a luxurious new product, and when Mandy’s studio is complete, she sees it as a venue for workshops.
“The sky is the limit, when you are passionate about something, and you are 100% honest and you give it your all you can’t go wrong” says Mandy.
