EP67. Has the CBD skincare trend gone too far?

CBD or cannabidiol-based beauty is everywhere. You can now get CBD skincare, body care, hair care, makeup, perfume, toothpaste and bath products. And that's just the cosmetics that contain CBD. But do they all actually work? Or has the beauty industry gone slightly mad? So settle in for this episode in which I speak to Colleen Quinn of Labaroma to unpick the CBD craze in the beauty world, in which we also take a look at the hottest new cannabinoid Delta 8 taking the industry by storm. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make and sell your natural beauty formulations. We tackle topics that will make you think and encourage debate about green beauty with your friends, followers or customers. I'm your host, Lorraine Dalmeier. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award-winning online organic cosmetic formulation school, Formula Botanica. We have thousands and thousands of students in over 175 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website at formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. So today's podcast interview is with Colleen Quinn, an award-winning celebrated clinical aromatherapist, cosmetic chemist and researcher. Colleen specialises in cannabis research, formulations and education and is on a mission to inspire and empower you to become a confident plant enthusiast, able to curate truly effective therapeutic plant remedies by understanding your plant science and backing it up with evidence. Colleen also runs Labaroma, a plant chemistry-based learning tool for the aroma therapy and herbal industry and has just launched her CBD beauty book. So who better to come and talk to me about the latest CBD trends in beauty? So welcome to the podcast, Colleen. Lovely to have you on. Thank you. Someone to so weird to be on the other side of a podcast. How are you doing today? I'm good. It's a can't believe it's worth it and I can't believe when you're in May a time is just flying. So today we're going to talk about CBD. We're going to talk about cannabinoids. We're going to talk about your area of specialty. So I thought maybe we could start at the top and talk about what are cannabinoids? Perfect. Great question. So cannabinoids are one of those, would we call phytocamacol families? So if you work with the aroma therapy or essential oils, you're aware of these kind of families because we talk about things like esters, monotarpane, cesotarpanol, all of those families. Cannabinoids are just another phytocamacol family that contain lots of different molecules like CBD, THC, CBN, CBG, and they're all individual phytocamacols. I think the reason why cannabinoids have never really been talked about until the cannabis movement took off, the hemp movement took off was because cannabinoids are very rarely found in any other plant, incredibly rarely found. They're in keel, they're in cocoa, dark chocolate, but they're not like esters that are scattered throughout most plants that some representation. So I think that's why as plant people and formulators, we've never really dealt with them until the hemp plant belongs. The interesting thing about the hemp plant is that they are primarily made up of cannabinoids and then there's some trappings in there and occasionally they all have flavonoid and ester, but generally they're made up of cannabinoids, which is why we talk about them so much now. So how many of them are there in total roughly? So there's been 113 identified cannabinoids, you know, that changes every couple of months, there's more identified. And what I would say is that there was what we would call major minor cannabinoids for a long time. So your majors were CBD and THC and then your miners were CBG, CBN, and it was a really unfair and actually an accurate classification because CBG is a much more important cannabinoid than any other cannabinoid. So we call CBG the mother cannabinoid because it is what cannabinoid can be from, like all cannabinoids start a CBG or CBGA. So if you want to have a major, it's not CBD and THC, it's CBG. So that kind of distinguished and classification system has kind of been made redundant, but what I would say is that if you want to consider majors and miners now, the majors are the ones we know most about, but there are so many other ones that we know off they've been identified. We don't really know the therapeutic property. We don't really totally know their molecular structure and there's other ones that are identified that haven't even been near-mjet. Wow. So this is really cutting edge stuff. And just for the listeners, what does CBG send for or CBGA? So when there's an A after a cannabinoid, that means acid. So CBG is a cannabinoid. CBGA is the acidic form of that cannabinoid. So if you want to think about it like this, all of your cannabinoids will start as an acidic molecule. Once they oxidize, they become the solid molecule. Now that's not to say that the acidic molecules are not beneficial, they're incredibly beneficial. And now there's a real movement, especially in Northern California, to actually try to preserve those acidic molecules, which is very difficult because as we know, once you have an acid and that oxidizes, touches air, then it just evaporates or converts in some way or another. So people now induce raw hemp and raw cannabis because that's a great way to get the acids. So what does CBG stand for then? So CBG is what we call the mother cannabinoid. And it stands for cannabagral. So CBGA is the acidic cannabinoid, which is the precursor and it stands for cannabagralic acid. Thank you. So I'm making you read all of those out. So then looking at cannabinoids in the beauty industry, why should we care about them? So there's two main reasons we should care about them. And these are the two, not only are these so useful for skin care, but they're also the most supportive claims we have on CBG and the cannabinoids. And that is that they're anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant, which is what we seek as formulas so much in the skincare we're making, especially if we're making skin care for mature skins or with dealing with skin irritation or skin sensitization. So anti-inflammatory and anti-opera are the two main therapeutic properties that not only the strongest in, but that they're most technically supported in. Yeah, okay. So that makes perfect sense. And obviously a lot of plants then contain antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, but from what you're saying, obviously CBG potentially and cannabinoids potentially have even more. So what do you then think is driving the big trend in CBD and beauty? So well, I think two things. I think there's an outward trend. I can't call it the inward trend and the outward trend. So the outward trend is we all want to be working with something new and the new exciting ingredient to the new exciting area. And CBD's excitement and trend is absolutely validated, but most people, what I call a green train, was actually knowing the inward trend and the inward trend is the endocannabinoid system. So and without getting too sad about the whole thing, until we actually understand the endocannabinoid system and understand what those cannabinoids do and where that anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant effect has the greatest benefit in our body, we're making skincare products without actually knowing what's happening when there was ingredients get into our skin. Okay. So the thing that I find so interesting is that there's this beautiful divide between brands that are working with CBD, doing it wonderfully and educating on the endocannabinoid system so that we start to understand why our body has such a strong anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant impact. And it's because the endocannabinoid system has been kicked into gear because it's being fed by the cannabinoids. And then there's the other brands that are still making beautiful CBD brands and I've either don't know what have chosen not to go down that scientific route and that's your product of the brand owner. You educate how you feel it suits your brand and your mission and that's perfect. But when you're doing it without that piece of education, you're relying on branding, you're not relying on science and skincare, both of those words have existed and co-existed perfectly fine for a long time. It just depends on your customer. What is your customer? Who are they? And what do they want to know? Is your customer the person who wants to use their skincare and feel empowered by no one will just do them to your skin? Or do you just want to use the beautiful skincare brand? Did you know that works? You don't really care how it works. And I think that's where there's been this beautiful divide evolving within the skincare weren't within CBD. Oh, that's interesting. So there's quite a bit of pseudo science, by the sense of things. Yeah. Okay. So what kind of when you were a formulator, what kind of kind of anodes are available to you and how are they actually used when you're making skincare? Yep, so that's a great question. So when this all started, CBD was the main cannabinoid that was available. No, that is not the case now. You can easily get CBD, depending on where you live, obviously there's a whole little little regulation restriction around the plant. But you can depend on where you live. You can get CBD, T-Hit-C, CBN, CBG, and no CBC, all as individual isolated compounds. So you can buy those as isolated compounds and use them and that's great. They tend to be water soluble, which is brilliant. But you get also then use hemp, which is the entire cannabinoid catalogue in one product, which is oil soluble, which makes a huge difference in our skincare formulations. So under depends of your, let's say you're in the UK, for example, you can use hemp as long as you're T-Hit-C is below 0.2. Okay? And that's great. You get this beautiful array of cannabinoids, but if your only priority is CBD, you might be better using a nice lift because you get higher concentrations. It's more affordable and you don't have to run the risk of accidentally having too much T-Hit-C in your product. People People still are terrified of T-Hit-Safe because it's a psychoactive cannabinoid. So even on skincare, people are afraid to do it. And that's fine. It's going to take a long time to educate people that, you know, hemp doesn't contain and I'll have a lot of T-Hit-Safe is going to get you in peared or intoxicated. But so a lot of people would choose isolate because it's a safer route to go down, especially in skincare. But the biggest reason for choosing CBD isolate is that you can affordably get a lot more of it into your skincare product than if you use the plant. That makes perfect sense. So it sounds like there are quite a few options available to formulate as an obviously quite a few interesting ingredients out there that people can use. And of course there's been an absolute proliferation of CBD brands come onto the market. And tying in with that, I wanted to ask you a question actually about the types of brands that are out there. I was reading an article the other day on Beauty Independent actually and it was asking all of these different CBD brand owners where they saw the market going. And I was really tickled by one particular brand owner who was sort of going, who was ranting a bit about the fact that people were making CBD hair care, CBD toothpaste, CBD, all sorts of things. You know, deodorants, there's probably CBD, makeup, there's probably CBD perfume on the market. Can CBD actually work in all of these other formulations as well? Like hair care, like toothpaste, like deodorants, etc. So I love this conversation. I knew and I have sort of talked about this and extent in the past. My issue with CBD literally being used everywhere. I've seen this mascara. So it doesn't have a, when you're making a formulation, there has to be logic. You're ingredients have to be through rational logic behind your ingredient choices. And this is what I mean when I talk with people jumping on the green train. It's like red ochre, it's trendy now. Let's see if we can make some money on this while it's trendy. The risk of that is that you damage the reputation of the plant. You damage every other brand that's trying to be authentic, chance at the market. But above all of that, and most importantly, is the conservation of the plant. Now, hemp and cannabis is called weed for a reason. It will literally grow like a weed, the men that you planted, which is great. It's not going to make the red less at some point of being an endangered species. But she's still a plant. And there's no reason for us to be wasteful of her. There's no reason to be using the cannabinoids in the plant where it is not rational, where it's not useful. And where you're just trying to make some money, it's just sustainable there in the respect of the plant that isn't being honored in a lot of ways. And we have this in loads of endosities. We have this for organ oil 10 years ago. And organ oil became the heroin. It then appeared at everything made that stay down. We're going to always get ingredients like this. I think the CBD popularity and the kind of the madness that's around the brands that are just, you know, maybe have lost their mind for a short period of time. I don't think that's going to go away any time soon, simply because there is money to be made in CBD. But one thing I would say is that my can of, I've done this, I've walked into webdegos and Tescos and I go to their beauty shelves and I like, so I'm not even thinking about spacing care and hard, it's not as old as I'm talking about our main mass market retailers. You can get hemp and CBD in every which way you might want it. But my question to consumers, I'm brand owners, is it useful in that form? Is it useful as a mascara? No. Because not serving any purpose. Is it going to help acne from an anti-inflammatory point of view? Absolutely. So it's a validated ingredient. As a formula, you have to make choices that are justifiable. You have to explain your choices. You as a brand owner, you have to stand over those choices. Can you stand over a button CBD and a toothpaste? I would struggle to. So let's talk about Delta 8 in particular. As this seems to be the next big thing in CBD, obviously we had a chat before we recorded this podcast. You were telling me all about it. What is Delta 8 and how can we use it in skincare? It's another cannabinoid and Delta 8 has been talked about in Canada and North America for probably about 20, 40, 18 months. But it's really starting against some fraction and other parts of the world. The Delta 8 is very, very similar to Delta 9 and Delta 9 is T-Hit-C. So T-Hit-C is beautiful from a medicinal point of view. It is very beneficial from the skincare point of view but not very legal in the world. So we'll not go into why we would use it. That "Hit" however has all of the therapeutic benefits of Delta 9 but it is not psychoactive. So you're not going to get impaired by using Delta 8. So Delta 8 is pain relieving which is brilliant if you're working with things like acne rosacea or muscular aches and pains like anything. It's anti-inflammatory, it's antioxidant but it also is very soothing. So not just being anti-inflammatory has the ability to soothe skin and soothe irritation brilliantly. So Delta 8 is definitely going to become a cosmetic ingredient that is new in trend day but it's also highly effective. The problem we have is that it's not legalized. So Delta 8 is one of the cannabinoids that lives in the gray planet in that it's not illegal but it's not legal. So and then that from a broad owner point of view, a real challenge because a broad owner you have to make the decision, are you going to step into the gray and you're working with the cannabinoids you do step into the gray to a huge extent as well? So you're going to step into the gray and work with it because therapeutically that's validated and you want to do that. But what happens then if you invest a lot of money in formulation development in packaging and then let's say the government in your area does decide to make it illegal then you want to waste a lot of money. But you might make a lot of money in the meantime while they're trying to decide whether to legalize it. So that's the decision that has to be made. So let's talk a little bit about the legalities then. I mean how hard is it for a formulated to obtain different CBD compounds to formulate with? I know that some countries are quite happy to formulate this to work with them with skincare brands to use them but it's not the case all over the world is it? No, absolutely not. So and I know your audience, the reins, global. So CBD is a lot easier to work with than any other cannabinoid. Even like CBD which is the mother, it's easier to work with CBD. CBD has been, when most parts of the world tackled and defined. It's either defined as illegal or countries like Afghanistan for example have identified that CBD and hamper the exact same things. CBD and cannabis the same thing, it's all illegal. Okay, so some countries just take the broad sweep and just say it's all illegal. We're not acknowledged in individual compound. You're not dealing with it okay or you'll be in prison if you do. Whereas countries like the UK have said yes CBD is fully legal, you're absolutely fine. You can use it from the ham plant. You can use it from an isolate, don't let it hit, see creep in there at about 0.2% or above on that spine. Whereas in America CBD is fully legal, Canada is completely legal and in Canada we'll skincare brand use it from hamper cannabis because the plant is fully legal. So no one your regulation, not only where you are based, it's really important to put where you intend to sell into and I think that's something that people miss from a formulation point of view. You could be based in the UK where CBD is legal but if you want to sell that into the Middle East or you want to sell it into areas in Australia or territories in Australia, it's going to be illegal and also you may not get a shift. So shipping it is one thing, the oceans have not legalized CBD. So some careers will not ship it over an ocean for you because it's not being defined. So those kind of things are really important. Wow, that's fascinating. I didn't even thought about the oceans. I think the complexities of working with CBD. FedEx are one career that I've just done at home work I think and they've just said, okay, look we're going to work with this plant, we're going to ship it. There's going to be a lot of red tape but we'll hold your hands through the process. So brands that I work with in the States that sell in the UK, FedEx is their partner and FedEx does it really, really well. But that part, shipping partner is really important in any brand, especially if you do online sales. They become your husband or wife but especially when you work with a cannabinoid they become incredibly important. Yeah, wow, fantastic to hear that there are careers out there who are already looking at this because obviously when you infuse CBD into literally everything like drinks and toothpaste and mascara, it's presumed there are a lot of consumer goods now that contain these compounds. So do you think CBD is here to stay for the beauty industry? Yeah, I do and I've said this from my good interest industry and people have scolded me in the past percent. I get scolded a bit less now so maybe I'm right. It is here to stay but a scona just become another ingredient in our kit. The popularity of CBD is going to plateau and I see a plateau in a rally where we are going to as formula, just look at our kit and CBD is going to be one of our options. It is not going to be front and center all the time and that I think is bright. It shouldn't. It is a beautiful compound but I also want to work with things like YARO because of the sebinane compound in there and I think that's the thing that we've all kind of got a bit carried away and forgotten. We can work with essential oils and we work with lots of other plants. We can even work with our carier oils that have some beautiful amigas and essential oils but none of us have ever said I want to take the sebinane out of YARO and I only want to work with that which is ultimately what we've done with CBD. We have dissected the plant, took one compound out and said I'm isolated in that and that's what I'm using. We don't do that with other plants so I think it will all become a bit more logical and sensible in the future and it will become a beautiful option in our kit but it will only be an option in our kit. I love that point actually and that's so true. I mean all of our formulators like to work on a whole plant basis and then they go right you know I'm going to infuse, let's take camera mile for it as a very logical easy example you know I'm going to infuse the whole plant in there and I will use the hydro salt and I'll use an infused carrier oil and I'll use an essential oil that way I get all the chemical compounds from the plant rather than just focusing on these isolates and I suppose in some respects the legality surrounding CBD have forced us down this route with the hemp plant. So what advice do you have CBD beauty entrepreneurs who want to use CBD in their business? You've already dropped a couple of little sort of bombs in there throughout the podcast but what would you say to someone who's thinking about using CBD and starting a business around it? Yeah, I know I sound a wee bit critical of CBD beauty brav, I'm not, I love them, I think, forget with the green tree and I think it's definitely an ingredient and a product that you should absolutely work with, not just because there's demand for it, but because it works. I think that's one of the other things that it works with when you're working with other plants, a lot of them they need to marite and they need that entourage effect of other plants to be really effective. CBD doesn't, CBD is highly effective on its own, so my advice would be, well I've a couple of places, first one is be very authentic, so get spent hang sitting in the decision to do this, and if your backbone of authentic reason to do it is because you know this ingredient is going to help your target market, then own that, write your story around that, your branding and your messaging is so important and it has to be authentic. It doesn't have to be CBD cured my acne, now I want you to have it, it doesn't have to be that, you know, profound, but there has to be an authenticity because it will shine through, it's, I'm sure you've seen it right, it's very obvious, the CBD brands have come from a place of, you know, purpose as opposed to CBD brands that come from place of revenue and we're in business, we have to make money that is, you know, and we want to make money that is the whole point and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's going to be very hard to cut through the noise and there's only going to be more and more noise in the CBD beauty space, it's going to be very hard for you as a marketer and a brand owner to cut through that noise if your story is not authentic and your reason and your mission isn't authentic and pure, so that's my first thing, the second thing is does your target market care? If don't do it just because it's good, if your target market doesn't want you to do it, if your focus groups aren't interested, I'd say with far rather you stick to what you're doing, if you do, let's say you do re-intuitive and fuse car aeronauts and that's beautiful and you're going to start out and CBD, does your customers care? Because work in the CBD is not as easy as working with other plants, so you need to be committed to that journey, so just make sure your audience wants it and I obsess my customer, I torture them for answers, I run focus groups all the time because if they say no to you, that's the second best answer in the world because no main job waste time and money, it doesn't something that no one's going to buy. Yeah, those are great pieces of advice and I suppose they go for any beauty brand as well, really, I mean be authentic and you know, we see that so much that people just, they make something and they just start selling it but that's why they're selling it, why they chose those ingredients, what their formulation story is, what their personal story is, what their brand story is and it goes exactly the same for CBD, so that's really great advice, thank you very much and thank you so much for sharing that. The only other thing I would say that makes CBD different is your supply chain, we all need good supply partners but you really need a good CBD supply partner and there's some brilliant companies out there that sell isolates and plant, but if you're in a position to work with the plant, the close to source you can get the better, so the close to the farm that is growing your plant, the better because are the extractor the better because the supply chain of CBD is very fickle and that's a disaster because if it's your core, your own gradient and your supply chain falls apart, that's a massive production problem and a business growth problem. So I would say spend time and invest time finding the right partner and build a little relationship with them. What sort of countries are most of the CBD compounds, whether they arise from where are most supplies based in the world? Canada, American, SPF. Israel's student supply, but I would say Canada, most of Europe is finding their supply in Canada but SPF is coming up very quick for some beautiful hand plants, some beautiful cannabis and oil profiles. Interesting, so obviously it's easier maybe for some North American and European entrepreneurs than others but obviously hunt around and find good quality supplies. Obviously as you've heard Colleen say it's incredibly important. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. If anyone wants to find out more about you, about lab cannabis, about lab aroma, about all the works that you're doing and I think you've got a book coming at as well if you want to tell us about that, where can they find you? So you can find me at labroma.com, this is probably the easiest place to find me, my email supported labroma.com so you can grab me there personally and yes the book comes out on the 8th of June so it might be run at home at the podcast. So from 7th of June it's a sickle with the publisher Herb Brilliant and it's a CBD beauty book so they've worked with me last year and just said they wanted to make a book that anyone could put into their hands, go into their kitchen and make ingredients. So as a formulae it was quite difficult because I'm so used to working with you like you look at a development kit so then I had to start going to the green brochures and find a new ingredient so it was really weird to work with fruit and veg and you know rosemary herb as opposed to the essential oil and kind of making that all. I do work with essential oils, I can help myself through my babies so it's loads of essential oils in there but every single ingredient has CBD oil that you can you know buy in your local home and bar that you can add in some ingredients so there's 35 recipes in there so it's a pretty big book. Awesome well I can't wait to see it on the market we will include the link with this podcast episode I hope it does really well and it's been so lovely chatting to you today Colleen thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Nice pleasure thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed this podcast with Colleen Quinn and a feeling excited about the potential for CBD in your form relations. Make sure you come and tell us on our social channels what you thought of today's episode and if you enjoyed our discussion please do leave green beauty conversations at five star review. The more people who rate the show the more people who get to hear the important messages we're putting out into the world. Thank you for joining Colleen and I for this latest episode of green beauty conversations. I really hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Spotify and stay tuned for the next episode. 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