Feb 24 / Samantha Coates, Marketing Manager

The Story Of Earth To Earth Organics - The Greentrepreneur's Behind The Magic Body Butter

There are many skincare brands out there who are stepping out of the shadows and talking about sustainability. However, there is one company that truly is making an impact on the world and putting their heart into saving the planet.

Earth to Earth Organics has taken this a step further and instead of just publishing an ambling manifesto as some companies are doing, they have put their money where their mouth is by developing a brand that has sustainability at the heart of everything it does. That's why they will be joining us for the BRC Leaders Summer School this year, to share their passion and leave their mark on our delegates.

We had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with the founders, Danny and Tenesia, to talk about their plans for the programme and what they're looking forward to most.  

Let’s start with an introduction to you, Earth to Earth’s origin story, and why you do what you do?  

I moved to England from Guyana and because we're quite a tropical country, my skin was really impacted by the change in climate, and I had uncomfortably dry skin. After a while of going to the GP and trying all these different creams, like, everything you can think of, my skin just wasn't getting better.   

After a while, speaking to my Nan and different friends, I thought, all right, let me just figure out how to do something myself I started to think about what remedies we used in Guyana, everything was pure and natural we used coconut oil and crab oil from the Amazon, two of the best skin healing oils. I started with coconut oil, but it wasn’t enough. I went down a beautiful rabbit hole and discovered cocoa butter, Shea butter, safflower oil, grape seed oil, beeswax etc… over the years the ingredients changed, the method changed, and my lifestyle choices changed. Our Body Butter helped my skin so much that I didn’t need anything else, it’s truly magic. 

Where did you go from there? How did the business aspect begin to form? 

I started gifting our products to friends at first and then after a while, it turned into a bit of a hobby that I really enjoyed. It was then that I convinced Danny to start using them and I thought, yes!  

I was still in the hobby phase but at the time the name Earth Organics came to me along with a few other names, I sent them to some friends to help me choose one and that was it, Earth to Earth Organics was born. I registered the name in 2016 just in case but we just kept it on the side and continued to focus on perfecting our formula.   

We entered Harrow Business Den, came away with the award and launched Earth to Earth Organics in March 2018. That’s why even though we registered the business in 2016 we only count the years running as an actual business from 2018. 
Simultaneously Danny and I were on a journey to having a plant-based lifestyle. After we were married in 2014, we had a complete overhaul of our thoughts and feelings towards our health, our planet, and animals.  
"Simultaneously Danny and I were on a journey to having a plant-based lifestyle. After we were married in 2014, we had a complete overhaul of our thoughts and feelings towards our health, our planet, and animals. "

What was the next step in becoming the Earth-to-Earth Organics brand we know today?   

Simultaneously Danny and I were on a journey to having a plant-based lifestyle. After we were married in 2014, we had a complete overhaul of our thoughts and feelings towards our health, our planet, and animals.   

We started growing our own food, so this is where the brand Organics evolved, and our lifestyle became the same thing as the brand. It was like the universe knew what it was doing when the name came to us. And since then, we've just been more eco-friendly with our personal lives; we moved to Bedfordshire, we're always going for walks and all that sort of thing. It’s really become this whole holistic view of lifestyle and brand. More natural, purer, and just bringing our customers on that journey. For instance, this summer, we'll be doing foraging, walks and things with our customers and they get connected.  

That leads on nicely to how do plan to impact the BRC Leaders’ Summer School delegates and their thinking on the programme? 

Our goal is to have delegates, and anyone who is willing to listen really, thinking more deeply about our connection between the Earth and business. It’s right where the four lenses meet: purpose, people, profit, and planet.  

We feel like there's a disconnect between businesses when it comes to their impact on the planet and actually how that does in fact impact their own profit. Businesses would be doing themselves a disservice by not looking after the planet because effectively if you can't grow your ingredients, then you don't have a business. This is especially clear in our industry where all our natural ingredients come from the Earth. If we deplete the soil or do any type of mass long term damage to it, then it would impact on our business.  

When you consider the long term, you're really investing in the long-term effects on your business as well as on the planet. It’s fitting that we’re included in the ‘Bridging the Gap’ expo because we’re trying to bridge the gap with regards to the connection from soil to profit.  

What are you looking forward to most at the BRC Leaders Summer School? What have you got in store for the delegates attending?  

We're going to do something that we call ‘grow with us’. It’s the third year we’ve done this because as we’ve already mentioned, we grow our own food, so we’ve started to integrate that into our business for our customers. Taking place between January and March with every order that we receive we send out seed packs to our customers with their growing instructions to encourage them to grow their own food and get out in the garden.   

Whether you've got an allotment or even just a windowsill, we want to encourage our customers to gain a deeper connection to the Earth and how long it does take to actually just grow something that a lot of us take for granted. We're going to bring that demonstration to our stand where we will get delegates hands dirty, literally!  

That sounds incredible! What thoughts, feelings, takeaways would you like the delegates to leave with at the end of the experience?  

It’s everything we've just been speaking about, where you want people to go away feeling some sense of responsibility with the decisions that they make. We’ve both worked in industries and positions where you can see on the ground when people aren't being mindful.   

It's also not just businesses - if they're an employee and they're not being as mindful about small actions that they might be making it can make a huge impact. It might be that they're making them because one, they might not know enough or two, because it's not coming from the top down to stringently implement some of those changes. It’s kind of just ticking down into people's minds that everybody has a part to play. It doesn't matter how small your role is as a business, everybody has a part to play for the overall impact. That’s what we're trying to get people to think about. Their impact makes a difference. Your individual impact makes a difference.  

What attracted you to the BRC Leaders’ Summer School? What were you most excited about when you heard about it?  

We first got involved with BRC two years ago through our mentor, and it was initially about being closer to the decision making of the overall retail industry and how we can have an impact. We can have our say about this industry of people and businesses that can make such a big difference.  

With regards to the BRC Leaders’ Summer School, it was the four lenses that really spoke to us, in particularly: Planet, Profit and Purpose. It's kind of saying to yourself, if you’re not in business for these reasons then what’s it all for. 

I’d also add that we’re really excited about influencing change because the programme attracts such an eclectic mix of people, from mindful thinking to spiritual to economy. It's really nice to hear and be in the room with those different conversations. It lets us see how the bigger companies really think, because as much as we’ve previously worked for some big companies, you're not necessarily privy to what everybody thinks, what those key stakeholders are saying and what they're trying to implement.   

It's just a nice space to be in, to be where people are trying to impact change and I think that's the beautiful thing about it. Everyone is coming together for the greater!    

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