SKINCARE HELP MADE IN THE KITCHEN
A YOUNG businesswoman from Wokingham is preparing to celebrate her young company’s first birthday.
Melissa Chartan, 29, launched Planted last year. The company makes a range of unique skin care products comprising a special blend of natural ingredients – all made from Ms Chartan’s kitchen.
The former make-up artist and beauty consultant was spurred into creating the range after discovering that olive oil helped treat her eczema, psoriasis and chronic itching. This discovery, she said, started her journey to working with plant oils to moisturise the skin.
The range she devised, through years of hard work, is a water-based facial skincare products that include a circulation boosting orange coffee scrub, a face cream and a virgin shea and cocoa whipped body butter.
And her first hand experience with the skincare range means she knows how it could help.
“I had psoriasis and used to moisturise three or four times a day. My skin was painfully dry,” she recalled.
She felt that the existing skin care products didn’t help: “They make the skin dry in the longterm,” she explained.
The turnaround came when she discovered the benefits of olive oil. “It led to such an improvement”, she said, adding that she then started experimenting with different oils.
“Over time I learnt of their effects,” she said.
This led to the genesis of what is now the Planted range.
She said that she felt she couldn’t keep her discoveries a secret and launched Planted last year.
It now has customers all over the world, keen to snap up her beauty creations.
“It’s all natural,” she said. “I researched it all myself and they are all unique recipes, all made from scratch.”
It took her two years to create and refine the range until it was just right.
“It’s not tested on animals and it’s all 100% natural ingredients and good for the environment,” he said.
The 29-year-old said that her little cottage enterprise is on its way to growth, which pleases her Mum who has seen their kitchen regularly taken over by the production line for the latest batch of products.
“At first she wondered if this was really worth it, but now she sees the business is going somewhere she’s really behind it,” Ms Chartan said.
For more details, or to see the range, log on to www. plantedskincare.com