These 4 indie brands are going all in on marine ingredients

In the New Year, marine ingredients will be making news in the beauty, personal care, and wellness industry. Ingredient makers, moving away from petrochemicals, are investing to find alternate and more sustainable inputs. (Read about Croda's new marine biotech facility here​.) And collagen is shaping up to be the supplement du jour of beauty and wellness consumers. (More on supplements here​.)

Swallowing the ocean​

Beyond the conventional cosmetics, personal care, and fragrance categories (hair care, body care, nail care, skin care, sun care, etc.), the upcoming IBE will include lifestyle and wellness brands as well as ingestibles brands. And all 4 brands under consideration here fall under that latter designation.

2 of the brands feature marine collagen, while algae is the hero ingredient for the other 2 brands.

In a time when so-called edible beauty​ is often equated with safe beauty and consumer buy-in is so crucial to the success of new ingredients​, it makes good business sense to build momentum behind marine-derived products with supplements, snacks, functional beverages, and other beauty-from-within products.

Collagen is everywhere​

Based in Los Angeles, California, Kalumi is a food and beverage company making ingestible beauty products with marine collagen. Founded in 2016 by Jayla Harnwell and Chrissy Blair, Kalumi has a product portfolio comprising 3 flavors of collagen bars: Lemon Love, Sweetie Pie, and Cocoa Kiss; and a variety pack option.

In a sort of get-to-know-the-founders note headed ‘Beauty You Eat’ on the Kalumi home page, Harnwell and Blair explain, “We include a full 12G dose of Marine Collagen (known for enhancing hair, skin & nails) in every bar. Our bars are gluten free, non-GMO and meant to assist in nourishing the body without all the sugar our other friends have.”​

Hum Nutrition (also headquartered in LA) has been around a bit longer. Founded in 2012 by Walter Faulstroh and Christopher Coleridge, the brand launched a dissolvable collagen tablet this summer, as Cosmetics Design reported​.

At the time, Faulstroh described the brand’s thinking about Collagen Pop, saying, “we wanted to take it a step further by solving a need in the growing ingestible collagen market with the first-ever dissolvable collagen tablet…ultra-convenient…delicious…clinically researched…attractively priced.”​

Algae is everything​

Simris specializes in omega-3 supplements—and that omega-3 is derived from algae. The brand is a project of Simris Alg, an algae cultivation company in Sweeden. Fredrika Gullfot continues to lead the company she founded in 2011.

The brand’s splash page summarizes the consumer brand this way: “Simris Algae Omega-3 is a state-of-the-art line of unique omega-3 supplements, containing marine omega-3 EPA and DHA from farmed algae.” ​(EPA is eicosapentaenoic acid and DHA is docosahexaenoic acid.)

“The EPA oil comes from…Sweeden, and the DHA from Europe. Our productsare 100% plant-based, good for the planet and good for your wellbeing,” ​promises the site. And it ends by inviting consumers to “Fall in love with algae!”​

This brand and other early actors in the marine ingredient movement are doing an end run around possible future sustainability issues (and pollution concerns) by opting to source commercially scalable ingredients by farming, cultivating, or biotech production.

ENERGYbits makes Spirulina and Chlorella tablets. Catherine Arnston founded her Boston, Massachusetts – based nutrition company in 2008.

In October of this year, ENERGYbits launched BEAUTYbits spirulina tablets. A media release about the new ingestible the touts the benefits and advantages: saying the tablets will “improve skin and hair health and are a perfect complement to our RECOVERYbits chlorella tablets which detox, cleanse, and improve wellness. Our organically grown algae tablets have one ingredient, one calorie, forty vitamins and minerals, and are backed with fifty years of evidence-based research.”​

To learn more about the IBE event where these 4 brands will be exhibiting, click here​.

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Deanna Utroske, CosmeticsDesign.com Editor, covers beauty business news in the Americas region and publishes the weekly Indie Beauty Profile column, showcasing the inspiring work of entrepreneurs and innovative brands.