Here at Spots & Stripes, we’re working hard to create the best – ever! – collection of skin and hair essentials for tweens and teens. If you’ve had good look around the website or heard about us through friends, you might know a little bit about us. Like how natural our products are. And how good they smell! Or how well they work. But there’s so much more to our story and our products!
Want to become a Spots & Stripes expert? Keep reading!
THEY’RE MADE WITH LOVE
Spots & Stripes was created by a mother of a teen and a tween with a background in beauty and glossy magazines (so she knows her stuff!). She saw a gap in the market when she couldn’t find the skin and body care her 12 year old needed once she’d grown out of her baby/child products.
“I’d been very careful about what I’d used on her skin as a baby and child; looking for products that were gentle, natural and earth friendly,” she explains. “But, I found there was almost nothing to bridge the gap between the baby/young child products – which weren’t working anymore – and the teen-acne and adult products that were way too harsh for her still delicate, child’s skin.”
So, she decided to create the products herself. She convinced one of the UK’s best natural manufacturers to take her on. She tested the formulas on daughters and their friends. After two years of trying and tweaking, Spots & Stripes was born.
WE RECOGNIZE THAT TEEN/TWEEN SKIN IS DIFFERENT!
- Tween/teen skin isn’t baby skin. It’s not adult skin, either. It’s a delicate hybrid with its own unique needs.
- Children’s skin is a larger proportion of their bodies than adult’s skin, with a higher water content and thinner epidermis. Protecting their skin’s barrier function by using gentle products is essential.
- Until the age of 12, children secrete less sebum than adults, which makes their skin six times more susceptible to synthetic chemical penetration from haircare, skincare and bathing products.
- Super-gentle baby products aren’t formulated to deal with tween/teen hair (a bit greasy), and skin (a bit sweaty/spotty). And, besides, what 12-year-old wants to be seen using a baby/young child product?
- Adult products, even those for sensitive skin, often contain ingredients that can irritate tween skin. * Chemicals in traditional skincare and personal care can act as hormone disruptors, impacting development in girls entering puberty.
THEY’RE SPECIFICALLY FORMULATED FOR TEENS/TWEENS
We’re not an adult brand giving our products a spin to make them sound suitable for teens/tweens. Our range is formulated FOR teens/tweens:
- Our products address the particular needs of tween/young teen skin and hair: cleansers to keep spots at bay on delicate skin ; shampoos that will deal with greasy roots without striping scalps, sulphate-free washes and aluminium-free deodorants for when they get sweaty, a spot zapper for breakouts…
- Our products are formulated to be safe and gentle on tween/young teen skin (which is a delicate hybrid of child and hormonal), but still have the effectiveness this age group needs, because they are high performance and full of clever ingredients.
THEY’RE TESTED ON TEENS AND TWEENS (NOT ANIMALS!)
Yep, we have a team of fussy, picky, perfectionist teen and tween girls and boys who test all our products. They sniff them, try them, compare them and critique them. And believe us, they aren’t easy to please. If they don’t like the way a new formulation smells, we change it. If they report that something’s not working as well as it should, we go back to the drawing board.
WE’RE SERIOUSLY NATURAL
Natural is a very overused word. Sometimes brands say they are ‘natural’ when really their products only contain a small percentage of natural ingredients or are ‘naturally derived’. What does ‘naturally derived’ mean? That, somewhere down the line, the ingredient started out as a plant. But it doesn’t account for how that plant was processed before it ended up in the product. By then, it could be 100% chemical or synthetic!
We’re the real natural deal! That’s because we use serious, 100% natural actives (not just ‘naturally derived’). That means that the ingredients that are actually doing stuff to your skin are truly natural (and, in our products, almost everything around those actives are natural, too). We also treat our natural ingredients with extraordinary care during the manufacturing process; sometimes cold-pressing them, which is pretty much the gold standard for protecting the good-for-your skin powers, where some essential oils are concerned.
WE SAY NO TO NASTIES
That means saying a big no to any ingredients with iffy reps for safety (no matter how widely used they are). Because, where tween and teens are concerned, there is a whole other worry: chemicals in the products they’re using can act as endocrine disruptors (that’s something that decreases or increases our natural hormone levels).
Think about what happens to bodies in adolescence – huge changes in the reproductive, immune, blood and hormone systems, bone growth and metabolism as well as changes to brain structure and function. And then you have research which suggests that teens might be particularly sensitive to exposure to even trace levels of hormone disrupting chemicals like Parabens and Phthalates…pretty scary!
It’s why we use only the best natural ingredients and if an ingredient isn’t natural, we explain why it’s in there. We also have a long list of ‘black listed’ ingredients that we don’t allow in our products, including parabens, phthalates, sulphates, etc – and we’re always monitoring things. Even some ingredients that are often used in organic products aren’t allowed into ours.
WE BREAK SKINCARE RULES
When we were developing Spots & Stripes, a skincare expert asked us why we were even thinking about using colourful packaging. ‘Serious skincare has to be white!’ she said.
Well, no, it doesn’t. First, our customers aren’t normal skincare users, so they don’t know the ‘rules’. Second, white skincare bottles are a bit clinical and…boring (yep, we said it!). And we didn’t want our customers to think that. We wanted them to feel happiness and excitement whenever they saw our packaging on their bathroom shelves (and studies show that colour really does that to your brain!). Plus, you really can be serious on the inside without being serious on the outside.
WE’RE MADE IN THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE
The English countryside is magic and we are always proud to say, this is where our products are made. Not far from this meadow, in the rolling and very beautiful Somerset hills. We use 100% natural actives and 0% of the ingredients that parents worry about (like parabens, SLS, Phthalates, mineral oils….)
WE USE FLOWER POWER
We believe in flower power! Not just because flowers are beautiful, but because what they can do for our skin and bodies is seriously incredible. Take Lavender, the tried-and-true flower that does it all: antibacterial, antiseptic, calming and cleansing….or soothing Chamomile – a great friend to less-than-happy skin. Then there is Sea Buckthorn, a floral oil packed with vitamins and antioxidants (genius for hair and scalp health).
OUR MANUFACTURERS ARE MAGIC!
We’re lucky enough to work with probably the best naturals manufacturer in the UK. They make some serious and award-winning grown-up brands, too. And have over 20 year’s experience sourcing the very best and most innovative ingredients (often ahead of bigger beauty manufacturers!). They’re aces at sustainability, too, having just won B-Corp status, which means that they’re a company that meets the highest standards for social and environmental performance.
