The Cure Apothecary

A CONVERSATION WITH NITASHA GOEL, FOUNDER

Words by Josefa Cameron Images by Akram Hamdan

Nitasha Goel is the founder of The Cure Apothecary, a natural skin care brand with a focus on sustainable ingredients. Nitasha moved to Nova Scotia from Toronto last year, bringing with her, The Cure, which got its name from the band. In The Cure’s ingredients, there are no fillers, perfumes, emulsifiers, or parabens.

“There is nothing to hide when it comes to the ingredients,” Nitasha tells Like A Prayer. Transparency is at the core of the company. Every ingredient that goes into The Cure products are selected for their effective and sustainable properties.

The Cure started as a boutique on Queen Street in Toronto where she consulted customers on different skin care products. In Nova Scotia, The Cure became a studio where she creates and sells her own product.

“In Toronto, it was a boutique, I carried brands from Canada, the United States, and mostly Australia and New Zealand. The shop was a curation of all different skin care brands for skin types, hair, and body,” Nistasha says, “It was probably one of the first natural skin care boutiques in Toronto that was outside of a health food store.”

In 2014, Nitasha says that a global and nation-wide “movement was happening with how we ate and how we exercised. We were looking at everything a little bit differently and more holistically.”

The Cure was born out of this movement and out of her personal love for natural skin care. She began noticing gaps in the brands she admired. Filling in those gaps became very important to her as she began experimenting with ingredients when creating her own product. Firstly, she created a body whip moisturizer and cuticle oil.

“I created those products and sold them in my store. I sold them under a different brand, because I didn’t want people to know it was my brand,” she says.

The body whip was created when she had an intense heat rash, “I tried everything, I did the oatmeal bath, the creams, but nothing healed it. I found when I put any sort of medicated topical on, it just clogged my pores even more.”

She started doing research on natural ingredients and why they work. “I looked back to our ancestors, they used natural ingredients and it worked for them. I thought ‘why aren’t we using this now?’ So, I found this very simple recipe for the body whip, used it, and it actually healed my heat rash.”

Shortly after creating her own products, her friends began encouraging her to sell them. “I developed them, tweaked them, and made them what they are today,” she says.

In 2018, Nitasha closed her Toronto store to move to Nova Scotia with her husband Steve. Without knowing many people here, she brought her products and decided to open a studio and see what would happen.

Moving to the Maritimes was positive for The Cure. The face serum product was created and launched here in January 2020. Nitasha refers to the face serum as “a powerhouse product.” It is made with Irish sea moss which grows on the South Shore of Nova Scotia and in Prince Edward Island. “The ingredients work together to help with everything you want really,” she says. She admits that if she stayed in Toronto and tried to launch there, the product would not be the same, “I can say that with confidence, it would not be this product.”

People in the Maritimes, she’s been noticing, have been exposed to local eating and shopping for a while. “Local brands, local food, local wine, and local skin care – there are so many farmer’s markets, there’s one on every corner,” she says. The mindset is different here than in Toronto, consumers are exposed to opposite ends of the skin care brand spectrum and not necessarily anything in between – either small, local brands, or loud, giant brands.

“There’s so much happening here,” Nitasha says, “I feel like I was inspired when I moved here to create this product, the Maritimes inspired this product to be honest,” she says about the face serum.

She is confident that the quality of her brand speaks for itself, “I did zero marketing,” she remarks, “I just gave it to the right people.”

She gave it to the women who run and own Nature Folk Wellness Studio in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Nature Folk, she says, is an infrared sauna, “it offers a little bit of that Nordic spa experience in the city, so lovely. I gave the girls there a sample and they went crazy over it.”

The newfound fan base in Nova Scotia inspired her to launch the brand, “I said, I guess I’m doing this, I guess I’m ripping this band-aid off and putting it out there.”

Nitasha recognizes that skin care does not need to be fussy, but it does need to be functional. Consumers can easily fall into a convoluted trap spun by over-complicated skin care marketing. There also exists an expansion of sustainable, clean skin care in the mainstream beauty world. However, Nitasha has faith in the savviness of consumers.

“Sometimes the term ‘plant-based’ means nothing. A small percentage of the product can be plant-based but the rest can be filler ingredients,” she says. Bigger brands carried in bigger stores find loopholes, but again Nitasha reiterates that “luckily, consumers are very savvy.”

However, brands who advertise as clean and green are at least taking a stepping stone in the right direction, Nitasha points out. “The way I look at clean beauty is, do whatever you can. There are no rules, if you don’t want to have a fully clean skin care routine, don’t. That is totally up to you,” she says, adding “I do believe, though, you will see the best results once you switch to actual clean, natural, plant based, chemical free skin care.”

Growing up, she had always been interested in skin care. “When I was a teenager, I used all of the stuff being marketed: using step one, two, three, four, five,” she says.

As a child, she would sit and watch her mother carry out her lengthy skin routine with numerous steps. Her mother now uses The Cure’s face serum and told her daughter, “in my sixty plus years, I have never experienced a product like this.”

Nitasha says the face serum is “not geared to acne but it does help. It’s not geared to reducing scarring but it does help. The ingredients all work together in combination to create this one product that you need instead of ten products.”

Nitasha recognizes that life is busy and skin care can be intimidating and exhausting, which is why simplicity is key to The Cure.

“More people than not have an overwhelming feeling when it comes to skin care because they’ve been told they need to do this and that,” she says.

To Nistasha, skin should feel healthy and hydrated, then everything else will follow. The Cure is “ideal for the busy person who needs reliable skin care,” she says, “I know it’s not going to be for everybody, but as long as a few people are happy, I am happy.”