The heavenly body polish is a beautifully creamy body scrub with organic coconut shells to smooth rough skin and shea butter to restore moisture. It is massaged into dry skin and rinsed away, leaving the skin feeling really soft and smooth.

Thanks so much for all of your comments about the pack ideas we've been
working on for the past couple of months. We've reprinted our labels now
with the new designs and we think they are LOVELY! We hope you agree. We
ended up keeping our tagline "eco beauty" the same by popular demand and we
chose the most popular strapline "superfood nutrition for naturally
beautiful skin". We think the end result will really stand out well on
shelf. As we manufacture products we will slowly be phasing in the new
design over the next few months so look out for it in store.

Would you like to help us develop new products?

No rest for the wicked. Just as we've launched our summer body products to
the press, it is time to start working on our autumn skincare products.
We're expanding our anti aging range with an eye cream and a facial serum.
Please help us design the serum by filling out our poll (see right). We're also
going to do another version of our scrub for the face (by popular demand
from our team of testers!). If you would like to join our development
kitchen and test new products, send me a message.
  

Help us by writing a product review

Detox your beauty routine!

Happy new year everyone! This month we're detoxing our beauty cabinets and thought we would share some tips about how to reduce chemical exposure from beauty products.

* Simplify your beauty routine and try to use as few products as possible. The average adult uses 10 products a day and is exposed to 126 chemicals.

* Switch to organic and natural alternatives for products you use frequently, such as shampoo, all over the body such as body lotion, or are likely to ingest, such as lipstick. Of course all evolve products are certified organic and 99.5%+ natural so switch to them if you can!

* Learn about a few key nasties and try to avoid products containing them. All evolve products are formulated without nasties. Find out more information here about nasties and why we avoid them.

* Avoid some products altogether. Some of the most questionable ingredients are present in hair dye and nail varnish/removers so don't use them if you can avoid it. 

Detox party!

Heavenly body scrub or coconut smoothie?

Winter  has now arrived and I am feeling the chill. My skin is getting
parched from all of the central heating so I am slathering on lots of lovely
nourishing mega omega moisture cream and using multi action double
cream on my face which is the thicker version of our anti aging face cream
with extra shea butter.

Celebrate evolve with us (and have some mince pies!)

Now the launch craziness has died down a bit and I've stopped travelling
around the country doing training in John Lewis with husband and baby in
tow, I'd like to invite you to a special party - a post launch lunch for
everyone involved with evolve so far. We'll be celebrating the launch with a
few glasses of champagne and looking at how the launch range turned out.
There will also be a special opportunity to stock up on Christmas pressies -
at friends and family prices!
When: Sunday 13th December 1 - 4pm
Where:  My  house  of  course! I'll give you the address when you RSVP

Skin glow hydrating cream...or tanfastic body cream? You decide!

We've had some great feedback about our new summer products which several
very helpful evolutionaries have been testing for us. Now we need to decide
on some names and it is down to you! Get voting on the name for the
summer body cream here! If you don't like any of our ideas, you can suggest
your own by emailing it to me.

Tell the story of evolve

What we are up to
evolve has been trading for 1 month now, and things are going really well.
We've launched in John Lewis nationwide and Laura and Michelle have been
travelling all over the country training the sales teams so they can tell
people about evolve. In Laura's case, this involved bringing baby Daniel
along on a couple of road trips (he didn't seem to mind too much!).

EVO-LOVE

We are so excited about the feedback we have had so far on our products - we
want everyone to try them and tell us what they think by writing a review
online or emailing us. If you haven't had a chance to buy any yet, here is a
special treat for you - during November you can get £5 off any purchase of 2
products or more. Just type EVOLOVE into the voucher box when you check out.

Invite your friends

As you know, we are a small company and we don't have a big marketing budget
as  we  have put all of our resources into making fabulous, affordable
products.  We  want our customers to love what we have created, and to
hopefully  tell  their friends. As another special treat for evolovers
everywhere, we've created a new online invitation tool which gives you a 10%
discount for every 5 friends who register at evolve. If any of your friends
make a purchase you get a further 10% off. Click here for more details
and spread the love!

Summer products

It might seem strange to be working on summer products as winter approaches
but we are working on a fabulous new summer body lotion which adds a bit of
extra glow to the skin and a creamy body scrub to help prep the skin for
summer. If you would like to help us perfect either of these products drop
us a line and we will send you a sample.

All of the products are now in stock on our website and we've started making sales. It is all going very well - thanks to everyone who has supported us so far. We'd love to know what you think of the products when you try them - send us an email or write a review on site to let us know.

We've made a PR splash

We got our vogue article and also were featured in last week's Sunday Times Style Magazine, which we were really pleased with! This weekend, look out for us in Stella Magazine (Sunday Telegraph).

Now for the big one...

We are already available in several specialist organic and beauty retailers. We are now launching into John Lewis nationwide (27 stores) from Saturday 25th October. Now we're busy figuring out how to train all of the sales team. Laura is thinking of making a grand tour around the country - with baby Daniel and husband Jon in tour!!

we are pleased to announce that evolve has launched online and at Planet Organic, Love lula and Big green smile. From mid October it will also be available in John Lewis nationwide, Ocado, Content Beauty and Wellbeing and Appuru. Click here for stockist contact details. Come and buy something and spread the word!!

in vogue!

apparently we are featured in vogue magazine (coming out Friday 9th October) - which we are of course delighted about! you will be able to see the coverage and also our mention in ZEST magazine (hopefully some others as well fingers crossed!!). Click here for all of our press mentions.

new products

we know it seems early - yes we do - but we are already developing some products for launch next summer. We're mixing up a summer body lotion designed to give your skin a glow and boost a natural tan. We're also making a body scrub to prep your skin for the summer. If you would like to try either of these products, do get in touch.

Website is now live!

2 months and counting....

We are looking for a new tagline as we probably won't be able to use "eco smart beauty" due to trademark restrictions (although I am working on it!). The question is - what do you think is the right tagline for the range? I've listed a few other potential options on the right hand side in the poll section:

- organic beauty won't run into trademark issues and is a nice way of reminding people we are organic - but it doesn't say anything about our environmental credentials

- eco beauty talks about our environmental credentials and is also quite similar to what we had.

- eco organic beauty combines the 2

we might be able to amend the tagline to "eco smart skincare" which is very similar to what we had.

Would love to know what you think

Thanks

Laura

UPDATE: thanks so much for all of your comments on this. It was a pretty close call between eco and organic, as you can see below there are pros and cons for each one. As well as these comments, other people emailed me: some people felt that organic was better understood than eco, others felt that organic has become generic.

In the end eco beauty came out as the option that most consumers would understand. It also has the benefit of allowing us to continue to talk about "eco smart" at other points on the site and the packaging, without having it in the logo.

evolve started during summer 2008 when our initial group of insiders first met to decide what the range would be. we had originally thought that we would make unfragranced products from locally sourced ingredients, but it became clear pretty quickly that eco products mustn't be boring or people would feel like they have to make a trade off, and so we changed the plans for the range from unfragranced / locally sourced to superfood based with fair trade ingredients from across the world.

packaging

we spent quite a lot of time looking at packaging. We found biodegradable pouches and recycled bottles and we decided that the pouches looked a bit cheap and it was important that people still feel like they are getting a quality product. So we chose a sleek bottle made from recycled milk bottles which looked really different to what else was on the shelf. read more details about our packaging decisions.

organic

we then had to decide whether to certify our products organically or not. We looked at the French ECOCERT system because we found their rules to be stringent but not so strict that it prevented us from developing high performance products. howeverwe have found that certifying organic does come at a price. It makes the products and manufacturing a bit more expensive - probably by £1-2 per product. we feel it is worth it because customers need to feel they can trust that the ingredients we have used have been independently verified as natural and organic.

branding

from Autumn 2008, evolve started becoming a full time project. we started working on the company name and branding. we struggled at first to find a design that everyone really liked. we initially chose something very fun but the team felt that it didn't look like it would work. so in january we went back to the drawing board and, inspired by the idea of "nature is smart" we chose something very modern yet green.

12 skin, body and hair care products

since january, evolve has developed into a fully fledged company. we have now developed 12 hair body and skin products, in conjunction with our team of insiders who have helped us test them. the products have been developed in partnership with a UK based manufacturer. the hardest products to make have been the haircare products, as they normally rely on lots of synthetic chemicals to make them work.