Aubrey Organics Interview

Interview Transcript:

M: First, can you start by telling me how about the company and Mr. Hampton?

K: The company was started by Aubrey Hampton; he is the founder of Aubrey Organics. It started back in 1967 in New York City. And it basically started because Aubrey Hampton was working for a company called Fabergé Cosmetics. He had lived with his mother who was French and a botanist in Indiana. She would make all the herbal products in their house and sell them in the rural farm land area. This was back in the 1930s and 40s. She was making her own soaps, dish soaps, everything they needed because that was what she was used to. His father was an organic farmer.

When he went to New York to get his degree, he was working for Fabergé when he came up with his first product: Relaxer Bath. The soap product has a lot of ginger, Aloe Vera and herbs in it. It was made to relax the body. He had a friend who wanted to try some. Aubrey gave him some to try and came back and said there is a health food store in New York. I showed them the product and they wanted to try it. So Aubrey made some products in his kitchen, gave it to his friend and sold it at the health food store. They wanted more, he made more, and they kept selling out. So Aubrey thought this was great and just kept making it and selling it to little health food stores.

In the 1960s, Aubrey asked the owner of Fabergé if he wanted to include the Relaxer Bath in their line of products or if he could formulate some products that didn’t have so many chemicals and petrochemicals in them. The Fabergé Cosmetics company said no, we don’t need that. We have our own line. Aubrey said there are these chemicals that could make it more natural and would make it better for people to use. Fabergé said no, we’re not interested. Aubrey kept after them and eventually Fabergé said if you’re this passionate about it, you should go start your own company. Aubrey said it wasn’t a bad idea so he left Fabergé and went to start his own company.

So that is the history of how the company began. After that, he made our second product which is our number one selling product today called GPB (Glycogen Protein Balancer). It’s a hair conditioner made from lactalbumin and glycoprotein—two kinds of protein to strengthen and revitalize hair fiber—plus vegetable proteins from almond and soy. It gives a nice shine and softness to the hair. It also strengthens the hair shaft. That is the second product he ever made in his line and is our best selling product.

In 1971, Aubrey moved to Tampa Bay, Fla., with his wife. He bought a home and started making his products in his kitchen and selling them out of his home, by mail order, word-of-mouth in the Tampa area, and also in small health food stores. In 1970 the industry was made up of small independence. The health food stores were very much into herbs and into showing people how to make their lives better by using natural products.

As the years went by, the industry and our company grew. We by the 1980s in over 2,800 health food stores and by the 1990s we were in over 4,000 health food stores. Today, he is still in the natural products industry and supports that industry. You won’t find us in mass production stores like Walgreen’s or CVS. We are completely in the natural industry which Aubrey supports. We have over 220 products in the personal care field.

M: Why organic cosmetics?

K: (Laughs) Aubrey always says, “Why use something synthetic when something natural works so much better?”

M: Fair enough. What is the major difference between your cosmetics and the leading cosmetics company’s?

Well if we are going to compare ourselves to a mass produced product, the major differences is we don’t use petroleum- or mineral-based ingredients in our products. In our industry, Aubrey has never has parabens in his products and that’s one of the things that is used as a major preservative in products. We don’t use preservatives in our products. One of the things that separates us from other companies is that we still hand make all of our products. We make them in batches of 50 gallons or less.

M: So there is no big factory?

K: We don’t have a large factory and we don’t manufacture our products. We make enough to meet shipments and ship almost immediately. So even our overseas customers get fresh products. We just make them the way he traditionally made them when he made them out of his kitchen in the 1960s. Our largest batch, which is only 50 gallons, is how we can ensure our quality control on the products. We can assure testing on the products by making those batches small.

M: It’s like Aubrey Cosmetics is just working out of a larger kitchen now.

K: Yeah pretty much! When we do scheduled tours and we bring people into the lab it’s like being in the kitchen. You will see the staff putting in the ingredients that they need just like a recipe. All the products have batch cards, and all the batch cards are like a recipe. Like I said, the thing that keeps us different is our small batches help us ensure the freshness, quality insurance, and that we take the time to really look at our products to make sure everything we are sending out the door is fresh.

M: On your Web site you list the 10 synthetic ingredients to avoid. Why do you think cosmetic companies are continuing to use harmful synthetic ingredients?

K: Well number one, all of those things we say to avoid especially DTA and DEA, have been researched and have been linked to carcinogens. The others are still in studying and research. The most they have come out with is that they are potential hazards. So most of the time, since these are ingredients that you can buy in bulk and at a lesser price, it comes down to your company is trying to survive. For us that’s not it. You should avoid those ingredients, if you can, and there are alternatives out there that are available and better for the body.

They have done studies and they know that everything you put on your skin from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet gets absorbed into the body. Although they are absorbed at different rates, it all makes it way into your body. There are certain links now between endiocronchic ingredients that disrupt the endiochronic cycles in males and females in puberty. Males, it’s affecting their reproductive organs, and in females it’s causing them to go into puberty at a faster rate. Females are developing breasts at a much faster rate and males are having more reproductive difficulties. They are linking this to personal care ingredients.

M: That is really scary.

K: Yeah, it is scary because they also know there is a link between salmon. They have found salmon, which go to their birthplace to spawn and then die, when they have done studies on salmon that the salmon have both the male and the female reproductive organs which is not supposed to happen. They are finding this because a lot of these toxic chemicals and ingredients are making their ways into streams and lakes. They are finding thing in studies on this type of species.

One of the sites I can recommend you can go to about the safety of ingredients is called environmental working group. It’s from a consumer safety site. They go out and test ingredients and do studies on them. They also rate different manufacturers like a lot of the makeups. They find how much lead is in cosmetics and things like that. However, some ingredients like Aloe Vera, for example, don’t have a rating because they haven’t done studies on it. No one really goes out and tests it because it has been around for so many centuries and has been known to heal man. And you also have arsenic which contains lead and if you have too much of it, can be toxic if ingested or applied topically can cause death.

There are certain ingredients, herbs, and botanicals that definitely have been researched and studied and you wouldn’t use them. Others like lavender, there hasn’t been a bunch of studies because it’s been used for centuries and seems work as an aromatherapy and is calming. But it also works on the skin. It works on all fives senses. So what they do at EWG is to give a rating to the consumer of the ingredients that are in certain products. Some of the times, with our 220 skews, they don’t give us a rating. But because we use over 400 herbs and botanicals and essential oils that most of ours say ‘not tested’. There really isn’t anything to test for because they are such natural ingredients that come straight from the earth.

That’s why when we say avoid these top 10 ingredients is because there are so many alternatives that are safer for the body and the skin that can be used instead.

M: When it comes to the difference between the leading cosmetic companies and your products, what is the difference between natural and organic?

K: Oh, that is such a big thing for the personal care industry now because the personal care industry is regulated by the FDA. They don’t have an organic standard. They don’t even have a natural standard. There is not much guidance regardless. They don’t test a lot of personal care products. They just don’t get involved in it. The most definitive way to put it is if it’s “organic” then the soil, room and product from an agricultural standpoint has not been treated chemically. There has been no crop dusting; they use beetles or some other natural way. It means the soil has not been chemically treated for at least three years. And it is an agricultural and national organic standard.

You must be using all organic ingredients in the product for it to be “organic” by the USDA, which monitors meats, produce and dairy. That standard falls under the USDA and not the FDA. The standard does not fall under the FDA whatsoever. So, our industry and the natural products industry, including our general manager, Kirk Vulva, have been involved and helping over the past seven years what natural standards and what are organic standards. There is no clear definition because it does not fall under any law.

But if you are using agricultural or botanical ingredients that have been grown to that standard and have been certified by a third party, which is a very important factor, then it can be labeled “organic.” One of the things in the United States is the Quality Assurance International of San Diego, Calif. They have a standard for what can be labeled as “organic” but they are all using different standards between the different third party inspectors.

If you are going to put the USDA organic symbol on a product, that product must contain at least 95 percent by volume certified organic ingredients. And we go by the USDA and National Organic Program standard is. Again, all these labels must have a third party certification. So customers can look for symbols from QAI, Oregon Tilf and National Organic Program. We are currently one of the top companies that are helping to write the standards for organic ingredients so that all manufacturers are on the same playing field and the labels aren’t confusing the consumers.

M: As a consumer, what is the most important thing we need to know about cosmetics ingredients labels?

K: Read the labels. If you don’t know what a product is call the company and ask them. What is this ingredient? And ask about their process. A lot of companies will say they have an organic ingredient but don’t have a third party certification and they are processing the organic ingredient with a chemical solvent. That is very important. As a consumer, if I want to make sure a label is correct and there is anything that I can’t understand or doesn’t make sense to me – call the company and they should be able to tell them.

Our company has an organic certification; we get certified every year, even for our plant. We have a certification that says we don’t use any chemicals to clean our equipment and we’ve been certified since 1994 and were one of the first in the field. It says that we are equipped to handle certified organic ingredients in our plants and put them in our products.

M: It sounds like a lot of extra work but is worth it for the consumer in the end.

K: That’s one of the things Mr. Hampton did. His line is always give the best to the consumer even if it costs a little bit more. We always try to be competitive in retail prices but our quality is second to none. The quality of the ingredients we source from around the world and certified ingredients that we put into each product and the quality of making them into small batches so they are easily controlled and the quality of not warehousing our products, we ship them fresh. These are things we do to ensure our customer that they are buying a high quality ingredient at a good price.

M: Do you know if there is any legislation in place that requires cosmetics companies to list their ingredients on the labels?

K: There is now, but back in the early 70’s there was no law that said you had to put your ingredients on the label. But since 1967, years before the Cosmetic Labeling Act made full label disclosure mandatory, Aubrey has been telling our customers exactly what is in our products. He decided that he wasn’t using anything but herbs; he had nothing to hide, so he listed all the ingredients on the back of the labels. He is a strong activist for consumers reading their labels and knowing what is in their products.

One of the things that is changing in the all of the cosmetics and personal care industry, including the Estee Lauders and Aveda of the world, is there is a law that requires you to use INCI ingredient labeling which is really misleading for the consumer. We are a simple company that uses simple formula and simple ingredients. But, there is a law that has not been enforced by the FDA and these ingredients are a set of ingredients that are created by pharmacists, chemises, and engineers. These people have said that instead of calling it Aloe Vera we are going to call it Aloe Barbadensis. If you are someone else who doesn’t know what that is, it can be very confusing.

We are trying to educate the consumer. We have put out a dictionary that has these terms so that when a consumer has a question, they can look it up and have the answer.

M: I noticed your online dictionary and all the facts about the different ingredients. It really takes the guess work out of the labels and answers questions for the consumers to help them be safer.

K: That’s what we do, that is part of our education. Aubrey has been doing that since the conception of the company in 1974.

M: Can you tell me a little about yourself and your role in the company?

K: I am the executive director of national sales so I am responsible for all the North American sales. I came from the military and going into organic cosmetics was really a neat experience for me. I really appreciate everything I have learned because it helped me change my lifestyle including what I eat. I used to run to McDonalds on a regular basis but now I am little more educated and wise about my decisions. It opened my eyes to what we are doing as a country and world with what we put into our bodies.

For Aubrey Organics, we want to stay in business to be a business but also to stay in business to make the industry safer for the consumer. We don’t want to put anything out there, we want to put high quality product out there that will have benefits for the consumer. So if they have an infant and they go to put a cream on them, they know they are putting something on their child that is going to make them sick or give them eczema or something of that nature. They can put it on and feel secure in the knowledge that it is a healthy product.

M: Since you started working for Aubrey Organics have you switched to organic cosmetics?

K: Oh yes! (Laughs) When I found out some of the ingredients I could believe it. I was like are you kidding me? I’ve been putting that on my skin? You know, one of the things that totally floored me was back in the 60’s they used to put a product called ‘urea’ which comes from horse urine. And some countries still use it but luckily for us, it is mostly synthetically produced now. There are also a lot of cosmetics that still contain a high percentage of lead. A certain amount of lead is okay because it is a mineral, minerals come from the Earth, so they are natural, but you have to be careful how much you are putting on. Over time, that can become a lot of lead.

A lot of people, after a period of time, when they are putting on their cosmetics notice that their face breaks out. They may blame it on stress or hormones but sometimes it’s just the make-up because it contains a lot of ingredients that aren’t the best for your skin.

M: It’s amazing how the word “natural” can make a product seem better when in reality is not tested to be any safer for the consumer.

K: The industry as a whole is trying to product the consumer by coming up with simple standards so that the consumer can realize these products are created wholly to increase your health. And although cosmetics may not be ingested, one thing we want to do us causes no harm.

M: Is there anything else you think I should know?

K: You covered a lot of the hot topics, especially the difference between “organic” and “natural” labels. That goes back to consumer trust in a company and that’s the most controversial topic at this time.

Contact Information:

Karen Ress, National and International Sales Director
4419 N Manhattan Ave
Tampa, FL 33614-7650
Phone: (813) 877-4186 ext. 235
E-mail: karenr@aubrey-organics.com
Web site: www.aubrey-organics.com