PHYTOMER PROMOTION
PHYTOMER
Director of international development, Tristan Lagarde, explains how PHYTOMER has become a leader in the field of technological skincare development, and how spas can benefit from the brand’s success
What’s the family history of PHYTOMER? We’re a third generation skincare company based in St Malo in Brittany, France. Over 40 years ago, our founder Jean Gédouin began a hands-on scientific study into the benefits of seawater and different seaweeds on the skin. He was inspired by the effect on his own health, and set out to introduce city dwellers, notably Parisians, to the remarkable benefits of the sea’s trace elements and minerals. From there, the PHYTOMER story and range has grown globally, with the subsequent involvement of Jean’s son Antoine, and Antoine’s daughter Mathilde, who still run the company.
What’s special about your products? We use all-natural ingredients and develop them using natural, non-chemical processes to create highly results-driven products. In particular the products that we’ve developed in the past three years truly represent the cutting edge of skincare. Our foundation is the unique marine habitat here in Brittany, and the diverse ecosystem of seaweed, algae and sea micro-organisms that form the basis of our ingredients. The mineral properties of seawater are very similar to the mineral levels in our blood, so there’s a degree of bio-mimicry at play that has very exciting implications for the future of skincare. The real alchemy happens in our extensive R&D laboratories where we’ve successfully isolated molecules from the marine environment and applied them to modern skincare requirements. To give an example, a species of seaweed called Armeria maritima is found thriving in abandoned industrial sites on the coast, and it appears that it has a clear function to eliminate pollution. We isolated this molecule and used it very successfully to the same effect in our products.
Tristan Lagarde (left) and PHYTOMER’s pioneering laboratories (right) where marine sugars are used in high-tech skincare
Can you explain the key processes in your marine biotechnology? PHYTOMER made a real breakthrough in the use of marine biotechnology by using micro-organisms extracted from the sea to produce unique marine sugars. This involves a very complex process in a sophisticated large-scale laboratory, where the optimum conditions we create enable the harvested micro-organisms to grow and produce a biofilm. The biofilm produced is a complex chain of sugars called exopolysaccharides (EPS). EPS cannot be artificially copied by traditional cosmetics, they are eco-friendly and provide an almost infinite number of possibilities for new skincare applications. The PHYTOMER research team has identified 800 micro-organisms that can each produce a unique marine sugar, and patented 30 of those for future developments. For example, our XMF marine sugar (Extra Marine Filler) is the star ingredient of PHYTOMER’S PIONNIÈRE XMF premium range. It visibly smoothes wrinkles in one hour, and once absorbed by the skin, it reinforces the firmness and density of skin layers.