Lip balm not just for women, say sustainable product creators
Two guys are proving that lip balm is unisex – and its packaging doesn’t have to contribute to plastic waste. When four year 13 students from Timaru Boys’ High were thinking of products to create for the Youth Enterprise Scheme (YES), eco-friendly was front of mind.
They decided on lip balm, a product dominated by international corporations, but before they even began, they had a hurdle.
“There was quite a bit of criticism and jokes,” Ecobase co-founder Hamish Stayt said of the fact they were four guys at a boy’s school creating a product predominantly used by the opposite sex.
“Peers and even mentors were asking ‘are you sure this is a good idea?’. That made us want to do it even more.”
Not only did they set out to create a sustainable, affordable, local lip balm, they wanted to “help fight the stereotype lip balm is only for girls”, Stayt said. “We all get dry lips. Lip balm is obviously different to lipstick ... it’s a health product.”
Their successful YES business, Ecobase (which creates Ecobalm), was recognised in 2020, at the end of its first year in production, with two honours at the National YES Awards, including National Excellence Award for Sales and Marketing and Award for Accounting and Finance.
When the team finished high school, the group of four whittled down to two, with Stayt and fellow co-founder Mackenzie Annet continuing to produce and market the lip balm.
Stayt admitted when he and Annet started at the University of Canterbury, the pair focused more on their studies than on Ecobase, but over the past year, they “got back into it”.
Their studies at university complement the running of their business, with Stayt studying finance and economics and Annet studying marketing.
“It fits well with what we’re doing. We can apply the real world to our studies.”
In April, the duo pitched to the Princes Trust Aotearoa New Zealand in a bid to receive funding from the He Kākano seed fund for young entrepreneurs, which clinched them $20,000.
“It was massive. That really got us going, and helped continue our product and evolve it and helped with expansion.”
The money was used to revitalise the packaging, marketing and production process – which has paid off.
Ecobalm is currently stocked in more than 20 New World supermarkets across the South Island, is branching into the North Island, and is sold at Auckland Airport and Christchurch Airport. The team is also in negotiations with a national gift store.
The lip balm is encased in a long-lasting, quality cardboard tube with a wax-coated inner tube. It has done away with all the plastic bells and whistles usually used to wind the stick up and down – instead, users push it up with their finger, and down with their lips.
Stayt said it was “simple New Zealand intuition”.
Research carried out by the Ecobase team found that hundreds of millions of plastic lip balm cases ended up in landfill every year, and due to their size, they were never recycled.
“People might think they’re only small ... but the small ones are the biggest problems,” he said of how they ended up in our waterways.
The pair were looking to expand their production into moisturisers and deodorants.
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