UpCircle Beauty

Reused, repurposed, reloved.

UpCircle's vegan and cruelty-free Lemongrass and Coffee Exfoliating Body Scrub buffs away dry, dead cells to leave skin feeling soft, smooth and refreshed.

Made with repurposed Arabica coffee grounds from London cafés, a blend of sea salt, Shea butter, lime and coconut essential oils refine and moisturise the skin.

Photo by Klaudia Nowak

UPCIRCLE BEAUTY

Breaking beauty boundaries

interview by Nicola McCullough and photography credits Mad Seventies and Anna Pluskota

When UpCircle Beauty founder, Anna Brightman, first suggested turning salvaged natural ingredients into quality skincare, mentors and investors said that the beauty industry wasn't ready. The rapid growth of this award-winning ethical brand has proved that not only was her vision possible, but extremely popular.

The concept is simple: UpCircle Beauty elevates leftover natural ingredients, from used coffee grounds to residual chai spices, and brings them back to life as stellar beauty products. With beauty consumers demanding more transparency and ethical ingredients, UpCircle Beauty belongs to one of an increasing number of brands paving the way towards creating a positive environmental impact, with products that are 100% natural, sustainable, vegan and cruelty-free.

Here we spoke with Anna about overcoming challenges, self belief and going a step further to stand out.

We love a good back story and yours is inspirational. Tell us how UpCircle Beauty evolved?

I came from a fairly corporate background but was left feeling ultimately unfulfilled. I wanted to start a business with a purpose beyond profit, a business that left the world better than I found it. It all started five years ago. I asked a local coffee shop what they did with their waste coffee and was shocked to hear that they were producing so much that they had to pay the council to have it removed and disposed of on landfill sites. Throughout my teenage years, I wanted to be a makeup artist so always had a keen interest in beauty and skincare. I knew that coffee had loads of great skincare benefits, so…that was my lightbulb moment! Why not repurpose the coffee into sustainable circular skincare products? We began our journey collecting coffee grounds from one coffee shop, we now collect from hundreds of coffee houses across London – our list is always growing!

So, it all started with coffee, but why stop there? Our palm oil-free soaps are made with residual chai tea spices left over after making chai syrups. The UK produced 23,000 tonnes of fruit stone waste in 2012 alone, so we knew something had to be done there too. We’ve now released our “fruit stone range”, within which each product is made with the powder of a different discarded fruit stone. Nothing is safe from being UpCircled – only our imagination can limit us! Next up, we’re saving flower petals from florists and wedding venues.

As a relatively young brand, UpCircle has grown extensively since its inception. What's the most significant business lesson you've learnt to date?

I’ve learnt not to take on board too many people’s opinions. I’ve come to believe that this was in fact distracting, and only served to water down my ideas through fear of offending or minimising my audience. I now think you risk being pulled in too many different directions at once if you take on too many opinions. We underwent a rebrand two years into our brand journey to undo all the advice we received from people we thought knew better than us. Turns out they didn’t! Instead, be bold, have conviction and don’t be afraid to be the first to do something.

The very existence of my brand, given the brand mission and model, is a demonstration of taking the lead with regards to sustainability within our industry. We’re the only brand to scale up repurposing ingredients into skincare formulations. The pioneering nature of what we do is illustrated by the extent of the opposition to our idea at the start, mentors and investors alike told us that the industry was not ready, that tackling issues of waste in the “shallow” beauty industry would not work. Our rapid growth has proven that not only is it possible, it’s in fact extremely popular. We hope our success will inspire the industry as a whole to become less wasteful - without compromising on quality or style. The circular element to UpCircle is what makes journalists write about us, retailers stock us, and customers try our products.

We hope our success will inspire the industry as a whole to become less wasteful - without compromising on quality or style.

Which elements set UpCircle apart from other skincare brands?

Skincare is a crowded market. Lots of skincare brands can claim to be vegan, natural, handmade, organic, cruelty-free etc. and so can we.. but we want to go a step further. How many brands can claim that their products have saved literally hundreds of tonnes of valuable skin-loving ingredients from ending up in landfill? We say, “natural” is the new “normal” and normal is boring. To stand out you have to go a step further and that’s why we create waste-fighting formulations. We are the only brand who recycle coffee grounds into skincare products at scale, so the range is the definition of innovative! Our tagline is “Pioneering skincare that’s regenerative by design”. We are challenging people’s perceptions of what they consider as waste. Rather than bombarding people with doom and gloom headlines about the scale of environmental issues, we focus on positive change and that we can all make a difference in small steps. Rather than saying 500,000 tonnes of coffee grounds are sent to landfill in the UK each year, we say, each of our face scrubs rescues the equivalent of four espresso shots from being discarded. It’s tangible, it’s uplifting, it makes you feel good, it’s something to be proud to support. We like sharing our ideas for making things better, we like asking questions of our audience, we like being held accountable, we like discussion – we pride ourselves on transparency!

At UpCircle we’re not trying to save the world, or scold others for not doing more. We're never preachy about what we do. We're conversational and down to earth. That's why people listen to us, and it’s how we make an impact.

Photo by The Dot Factory

We admire your ethical ethos... do you think creating a positive environmental impact is becoming increasingly important to customers? Not so long ago, the gold standard for beauty brands was to deliver a great product. Now brands are expected to go much further, to stand for something beyond their products. Beauty brands must prove that there is a reason for their existence, one that contributes in some way positively to the environment, to society, or to supporting individual expression. Our products are natural, organic, vegan, cruelty-free, palm oil-free, sustainable, handmade in the UK and housed in 100% recyclable packaging. We back this up with certification from Soil Association and COSMOS.

In terms of brand morals, it’s important to us that we represent inclusive skincare. The beauty industry that we DON’T want to be a part of can make women feel insecure, intimidated or like they are not good enough. Exclusivity is a social sustainability issue in the industry, and people need to see themselves represented to feel engaged and empowered. As a female-led business, with a predominantly female team, we want our brand to represent skincare for all. We’re body positive, gender neutral, represent all ages, and encourage diversity in all forms. Our products are modelled by real customers, family and friends and we are passionate about using authentic visuals that are never Photoshopped. We stand for authentic, real beauty in its many forms.

What's the best feedback a customer could give you? That our products have made them feel more confident. When customers take the time to email or even send letters, showing before and afters of their skin and letting us know how much they love UpCircle – those sorts of things are what I value more than anything. Growing our team is also something that excites me greatly. With each new member, we have a new wave of excitement, passion and personality. We hired our first ever staff member in 2019, in 2020 we grew to a team of eight and only three months into 2021 we now number eleven!

What are you most proud of to date? It’s so hard to choose one! Having 3 dragons fighting over us on Dragons’ Den was certainly a high! Last year I won a live pitching event to Sainsbury’s buyers which led to our range being launched in their stores nationwide… that was obviously pretty amazing too. In 2020 we launched our range into over 800 stores with one retail partner in America – that was a pretty big deal!

Which must-have UpCircle products do you include in your daily skincare routine? At the moment I am particularly loving our Cleansing Face Balm and our Face Moisturiser. I wear our Moisturiser every day and think the texture is unbeatable! It’s so light and yet deeply hydrating. It doesn’t feel greasy and makeup sits really well on top of it. I love our Cleansing Balm for the scent alone… and love that its bright yellow! It melts onto your skin as you massage it in, lifting off dirt, grime and all traces of makeup – including mascara. It’s magic! It leaves my skin glowing, I’m obsessed.

If we were to splurge on only one element of a skincare regime, which would you recommend? Moisturiser. It’s a product that can vary vastly in quality and it’s the product that is the absolute staple in anyone’s routine. SPF must also be treated as an absolute essential.

What's the highlight of your working day?

I love first thing on a Monday and last thing on a Friday afternoon. At the end of the week we like to round up our wins and fails, one shared character trait of each person in our team is the ability to find humour in any situation. You need this in a fast paced brand like UpCircle. During Covid, we've all kept in touch closely as a team with regular virtual socials and constant daily banter and chit chat via Slack. As soon as the roadmap was announced we booked in a weekend in the summer to all catch up for beers in the park! This is the sort of thing that makes me look forward to coming to work each day.

Your vision for the future of UpCircle?

Our product launches for this year include an ocean-friendly SPF, a Hand Wash, Hand Lotion and Hand Sanitiser Trio which we plan to launch widely into restaurants and hotels. We’re also developing a Night Cream and Lip Balm – all set to launch in 2021. The repurposed ingredients for those include seaweed extract and kiwi water! It’s still early days and we’re eager to be able to offer a full skincare offering, to cater to whatever skincare concern you may have, so new product development is a big focus for us. We’re highly motivated to continue sourcing varied ingredients that are ending up being thrown away prematurely.

In 2020 we launched our sustainable skincare range into 2000+ retail doors across the UK and USA, tripled the size of our team and launched seven new products. All in the height of a global pandemic. So it's safe to say we have bold ambition for the years to come! E

Brand website: upcirclebeauty.com