Bryan Meehan

Why did you—a 39-year-old man—decide to go into green skincare?

While I was at Fresh & Wild, I noticed there were a lot of customers coming in and buying their organic food on a daily basis. But when it came to skincare, there were basically three different types of customers. You had the hippie, crunchy customer, who would always go for the natural skincare products. Then you'd have the well-educated customer who just had no idea that the current cosmetics they were using contained a lot of synthetic ingredients. They thought that Estée Lauder was all natural. Then you had the third type of customer, who was aware that the current performance skincare products contain synthetic ingredients, but they were not going to compromise on their skin. They felt that natural skincare, although it makes sense and was all nice and pure, was not a performance product. I saw this happening and thought, 'organic food has become trendier, but skincare is still 10 years behind the times in terms of the packaging, what the formulations are like, and what the smells are like.' Most products are too homespun. I thought, 'it’s time for natural skincare to take a gearshift and become more contemporary.'

So what makes Nude a more contemporary skincare line?

Like the natural skincare companies that came before us, we still focus on what's not in the products in terms of synthetics, but that's only half the story. The other half has to be what's actually in these products, or what can we put in them that will give women the confidence that they are effective and that they will actually do something for the skin. We want to give women more of a choice when it comes to natural skincare, something that is more high performance and efficacious, to show them that there’s no need to compromise on their skin and their beauty.

What are you putting in your products that makes them so different?

Nude is about high performance and not using any ingredient that your body would not recognize naturally. We're using things like natural milk peptides that stimulate collagen, hyaluronic acid to lock in water and provide hydration. We also use a range of approved prebiotics and probiotics: On your skin is a barrier called the skin acid mantle and that acid mantle is protected by friendly bacteria. To keep them strong and to keep the acid mantle strong, which in turn defends the skin against premature aging, you need probiotics, which are the bacteria, and prebiotics, which are the sugars that feed bacteria. Once you put those in the formulation and they hit your skin, the byproduct of probiotics and prebiotics is water, so they naturally hydrate the skin as well. That's quite a new concept in natural and in synthetic skincare. It's going to be massive.

Why aren't your products 100% organic

The philosophy of Nude is 100% effective. We don't want to make it 100% organic, we want to make it 100% free of synthetics—and we've achieved 99% synthetic free with just 1% left for preservatives. The way the organic standards are set up with the USDA is wrong for skincare. You don't want an organic skincare product right now. With the guidelines they use, you end up having to use a lot of alcohol, a lot of glycerin, usually a food-based preservative system, which is still synthetic even though it's used in food. What you want is a formulation that is synthetic- or artificial-free. You want that assurance. Obviously, if the shea butter is organic, brilliant. And it is in the case of Nude. But I'd rather have milk peptides that are not organic, just naturally sourced, than not have milk peptides at all. The organic certification process will say that you can't use milk peptides because we can't really get them organically right now. Maybe we will in the future, but right now there's no such thing as an organic probiotic. We had no interest in certifying our products organic because I know the organic standards and you end up with a product that actually is not good for the skin.

Why do you think the effectiveness of organic and natural personal care products is often weak compared to non-natural products?

I think when you work in the natural products industry, you're very much in a box. You're not looking at Vogue every month, you're not following trends on beauty, you wouldn't be aware of all the brands and what they’re doing. When we were selling Dr. Hauschka at Fresh and Wild for the equivalent of $30, we thought that was expensive. We didn't realize there was a whole world out there where women are spending $150 on a bottle of cream. You get kind of enclosed in a world, into a way of thinking, and that way of thinking is, 'I'm going to give you a skincare product and I'm going to assure you there's nothing synthetic in it and that's it.' That's where they stop and they think their job is done. But really what you get instead is a product that has a high level of alcohol, lots of glycerin, lots of food grade preservatives like sodium benzoate that I think irritate the skin.

Why do you think so few companies (especially the big ones) have greened the packaging of their products?

It's really, really difficult to do. We had to start from scratch. One of the benefits of me not having experience in skincare before, is I did things which probably someone who had been in skincare might not have tried, like trying to get green packaging. It's taken us a long time but it's been worth it. We had to develop our own packaging, it wasn't off the shelves, so there were a lot of upfront costs involved in actually creating it. A lot of trial and error and a lot of time wastage trying to get it right.

What steps have you taken to make Nude a carbon neutral company?

I'm actually kind of nervous about this whole thing. Because what it does is it gives you a little ethical pat on the back, it's kind of like, well, I can buy my way out of what I'm doing to the environment. I'm not 100% thrilled about it, but I feel like I need to do it because it's expected of me. I don't really feel like, 'Hey, aren't I a wonderful guy?'

Can you tell us about your socially responsible investment firm, Greenmont Capital?

Greenmont Capital was thought up by five of us who had been entrepreneurs in the green industry. One of the guys started Horizon Organic Dairy, one is on the board of Whole Foods, one of us was involved with Celestial Seasoning Teas. So we all had a background in the natural foods industry. We'd all had venture capitalists on our own boards, but we kind of felt like the people involved in those deals never really shared our values. They were more interested in making money. So we thought we'd set up a fund for people who were primarily interested in environmentally friendly products, and were interested in making money at the same time. We invested in the IZZE soda line four years ago, we invested in a green bank, and we've invested in an eco-timber company that supplies green sustainable wood to the building industry. We have about eight or nine different companies we've supported so far.

When did you become aware of environmental issues and start to incorporate greener habits into your life?

I had no idea of the food I was eating or about the organic movement until I met my wife who is half Swiss. She basically grew up in a family of complete environmentalists. They've been living that life for 30 years, before it was even trendy. She grew up eating organic food and being very environmentally aware. Certainly she opened my eyes to that lifestyle. When I was in business school in America, I thought this would be a neat industry to get involved in because I liked it personally and it felt like an industry I could make a difference in.

Do you have any eco-sins?

I have to fly for my job. And I do go on holidays abroad. I think the world has to continue and try to reduce our emissions, but I think if everyone could try and reduce the things they do on a daily basis by 10%, then we could all enjoy our holidays in the sunshine. In London, we don't get a lot of sunshine and we need it to be healthy.