Making magic for the skin
Combining her cheffing skills, and with some advice from a white witch, Adi McMaster has created her own range of skinfood.
As founder, owner and sole operator of skincare company MartyGirl Skinfood, Martinborough’s Adi McMaster also carries the titles of chief cook and bottle-washer, both of which are also vital roles in the business.
McMaster qualified as a chef and worked at Auckland’s iconic Antoine’s restaurant, among others, till the unsocial hours brought about a rethink. After a lengthy spell farming near Martinborough she returned to the kitchen about five years ago, but instead of steak tartare and quail eggs it’s now healing balm and face cream on the menu.
As for the bottle washing, McMaster encourages her customers to send their containers back for refilling.
‘‘I was buying slabs of pots and most of them were ending up in someone’s rubbish. So far, I’ve got 250 women trained to send their pots back to me!’’ she says.
While McMaster is very happy at the enthusiastic uptake of her recycling plan, her accountant was initially puzzled.
‘‘He couldn’t understand how I’d increased sales significantly on the previous year but wasn’t spending as much on pots.’’
Sustainability is a big part of MartyGirl, McMaster says.
‘‘It all started with the pots,’’ she says. ‘‘And then I realised I didn’t need to pack the pots inside another container or a box. So now I’ve got all the neighbourhood collecting their newspapers and bags for me – I don’t buy any kind of packaging at all.’’
What goes into the pots is also the result of a long and carefully thought out process.
‘‘It was a hobby at first,’’ McMaster says. ‘‘I’ve always loved concocting things, and making skincare products is just like making mayonnaise. I call it cooking without calories.’’
Deciding to take her hobby more seriously, McMaster took herself to business classes.
‘‘I was pushed,’’ she says. ‘‘Someone told me that I had a great product, and I needed to go the next step.’’
At the business class, McMaster found herself in a ground of likeminded entrepreneurs.
‘‘We were told to get ourselves a logo and a website straight away,’’ she recalls. ‘‘And then we all waited for the customers to log on, but it didn’t happen.
‘‘The tutor just laughed and pointed out we had to let people know we were there.’’
So McMaster packed up her pots and a gazebo and took MartyGirl to market days around the area. She still does.
‘‘Some people have said to me that I’m really well-known now so I don’t have to do them, but I don’t think of it as having to,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s all about meeting people and talking about the products – and I won’t let them buy anything until they’ve tried it. Then they go home and, if they want to, order online.’’
McMaster has recently filled her first overseas orders, for people who tried her products while on holiday in Martinborough and couldn’t find anything similar back home.
MartyGirl products include hand creams, body rubs, healing balms and cleansers, all hand-made from Wairarapa-sourced ingredients, many of which are commonly referred to as weeds.
Learning which weeds do what took some time, McMaster says. She was doing a lot of online research and belonged to some international skin care forums in Britain and America but found it wasn’t enough.
Googling ‘natural skin care NZ’’ put her in touch with an alternative practitioner in the Akatarawa Valley.
‘‘I ended up working with Donna, who’s a white witch,’’ McMaster says. ‘‘I told her that I hated gardening and she said not to worry, weeds were the ones with healing power. I just got fascinated and started studying.’’
Early on, McMaster decided to avoid water-based products.
‘‘Most hand creams and face creams have up to 80 per cent water, but I don’t use any at all,’’ she says. Instead, she mixes her plant material with 90 per cent alcohol – from local vineyards – and puts the mix through a distillation process, using an alembic still from Portugal.
‘‘I call her Stilvia,’’ McMaster says. ‘‘She’s the hardest worker around here, and I’m scared stiff of her!’’
Stilvia produces hydrosols – similar to essential oils – that are then mixed into a base. It’s time consuming but very cost effective.
‘‘Before she arrived, I was paying a lot of money – $20 per 100ml – for hydrosols but now I get them for free,’’ McMaster says.
McMaster has been using the plant plantain in many products in the MartyGirl range, and rosehips from a nearby field.
‘‘I get what’s in season’’, she says. ‘‘The driveway’s lined with olive trees, rosemary, lavender . . . and weeds.’’
Beeswax and manuka honey used in the popular healing balm come from her farm.
And while she says she failed chemistry at school, McMaster is happy to experiment.
‘‘I’m not frightened to try new things out, and I’ve had some awful flops, but all my friends get those!’’
McMaster tries all her products out on herself first.
‘‘I don’t do animal testing – just me, then friends and family. I give them a form to fill out – what they like and don’t like.’’
She’s also keen to spread the twin message of natural products and sustainability. As well as running classes in her Martinborough premises, she regularly talks to groups of high school students.
‘‘They bring in their mother’s skincare products and we Google the ingredients,’’ she says. ‘‘Then I ask them if they’d be prepared to eat things like that and if the answer’s no, then why put them on your skin? It’s 60 body of your body and you’re absorbing all that stuff through it.
‘‘And we talk about packaging – how my product comes in a lovely bottle with a great label, so I don’t need a lot of boxes to put it in.’’
McMaster runs regular workshops, where clients see how the products are made and then get to wrap, pot and label their own product to take home, as well as ‘‘slather sessions’’ for people to experience a range of face masks, either at her house or another venue.
‘‘That’s very important to me, that they try before they buy so they don’t end up with a drawer full of unusable products!’’
She’s recently developed a special hair cleanser bar for people unable to use regular detergent-based shampoos.
‘‘A lot of women have come to me, and either they or their friends have gone through cancer treatment, and found that their skin erupts with normal shampoos and skin care,’’ McMaster explains. ‘‘I spent a lot of time researching and created a shampoo bar that’s a lot more soothing.’’
A finalist in last year’s Gold Awards Green section and winner of the Solo Mio category of the 2017 David Business Awards NZ, McMaster has been fielding offers to help market the business internationally, but she’s not interested.
‘‘I just want to make my products, and keep things on this scale,’’ she says.