8 minute read
WAYS TO SUPPORT YOUR
About Us
Our Infinite Purpose is to help create a healthier, greener, more empowered world.
That’s the first thing you need to know about us because it influences every decision we make as a brand, from the products we launch and the ingredients we use to our certifications and charity partnerships. It’s a big goal, and one we’re very proud of, but like most brands we started off a little smaller.
EARLY INSPIRATIONS
Our Founder, Susie Ma, drew inspiration for Tropic from two places. The first was her grandma, a medicinal chemist and toxicologist, who taught her that our skin needs feeding with nourishing, healthy ingredients just as much as our bodies. The second was from Susie’s upbringing in Cairns, Tropical North Queensland, Australia, where fresh aloe vera plants and exotic fruit trees pretty much grew on her doorstep! This would later have a huge impact on the beauty products Susie would create, and it’s also where we got our name from.
2004
SUCCESS IN A JAM JAR
After moving to London as a teenager, Susie decided to start selling her favourite body scrub recipe to help her mum with the household bills. While most of us were smuggling our favourite snacks into the cinema at age fifteen, Susie was pouring her first batch of body scrubs into fifty jam jars to sell at Greenwich Market. While she was studying, Susie devoted nights and weekends to formulating recipes and making products – with her mum’s kitchen quickly turning into a makeshift beauty lab.
2011
BUILDING OUR FOUNDATIONS
You may recognise Susie from her appearance on BBC’s The Apprentice back in 2011. Lord Alan Sugar was so impressed by the products that he invested to become a 50/50 partner, and Tropic moved from Susie’s mum’s kitchen to our first ever Tropic HQ.
2013
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Susie loved building personal relationships with her customers on her market stalls, and that’s one of the main reasons why we launched our social selling model in 2013, with just 400 founding Ambassadors. To put into perspective how much we’ve grown since then, we now celebrate a whopping 20,000-plus Ambassadors.
Now
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Tropic has come a long way since Susie started out. We've been recognised by The Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track as one of the UK’s fastest-growing skincare brands, and our award-winning product range has expanded to include skincare, body care, hair care, sun care and makeup.
OUR Infinite Purpose
HEALTHIER
We strive to stay ahead of the curve in natural ingredient research, supercharging our formulations with ingredients such as plant peptides, encapsulated vitamins and plant ceramides. We’re also firm believers that what you put on your skin should be as fresh as possible, which is why we freshly make all of our products at HQ every day. We source our ingredients from tropical regions around the world to ensure they're rich in antioxidants and nutrients.
GREENER
We aim to do as much as possible to minimise our environmental impact and create more sustainable options within the beauty industry. We’re a proudly certified CarbonNeutral® company, which means we invest in conservation projects to double offset our carbon emissions, and we’re working on making even more of our range refillable. We’ve always been dedicated to animal welfare and stand with The Vegan Society and PETA as a 100% cruelty-free and vegan brand, now and always.
EMPOWERED
We won’t ever stop working to empower more people – and that’s inclusive of everyone. It’s why we launched our charity partnership with United World Schools, to help fund education for children living in some of the world's poorest and most remote regions with every Tropic purchase. It’s why we've donated to – and will continue to support – The Winnie Mabaso Foundation, which works with children and families affected by HIV/AIDS in South Africa, and Young Women's Trust, supporting young women aged 18 to 30, who are living on low or no pay and want to build a better future. And finally, it’s why we’ve teamed up with both Beam and the Trussell Trust, both charities that are dedicated to helping the poor and vulnerable members of our society. So, now we’re thoroughly introduced, we hope you enjoy this issue of Glow as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it for you, and learn some health-boosting tips along the way!
READY TO Refill
STEP ONE
Return your empty products
STEP TWO
We’ll recycle them for you
STEP THREE
We’ll send you a new product for free
STEP FOUR
You save your pennies and the planet! A s part of our Infinite Purpose, we offer a Refill Returns Scheme for a number of our products that are a bit trickier to recycle at home. To qualify for the scheme, you have to send back five of the same products to receive a free product of the same type, and they must be sent back to us together. The exception is our sun care range, where you can return any five empty sun care products to receive a free mini Sun Day! This scheme is only currently available for certain products in our range, so as you’re browsing through your copy of Glow, look out for the below icon to indicate when a product is included in the scheme.
Scan the QR code to find out more about our Refill Returns Scheme.
Refill returns scheme available for selected products only. The five products returned must all be the same type and returned together in order to qualify for one free product of the same type. This excludes sun care, where five of any empty sun care products can be returned for a free mini Sun Day. A lot of our refillable products aren't automatically part of the Refill Returns Scheme because they're easily recycled at home. Always look out for this icon to check whether a product can be refilled and this icon to see if the product is part of the Refill Returns Scheme.
Need a refill? Look out for this symbol Gift buying? Watch out for these icons For unscented versions of your skincare staples, look out for this icon Hello QR codes! Scan these using the camera on your smartphone for more information.
OUR GREEN ROOTS: FROM TROPIC HQ, to everything we do
Tropic aims to be a force for good beyond beauty, keeping our Infinite Purpose at the heart of everything we do. It not only defines our brand DNA, but guides each and every business decision and product launch. Here are just a few ways we implement our Infinite Purpose at Tropic HQ.
01
Each formulation is created in Tropic’s Innovation Lab at HQ, harnessing the best in green skincare science. For freshness, products are made on-site. With thousands of orders placed every day, it’s important that our beauty is green. All the energy at our HQ, where we manufacture 98% of our entire range, is from 100% renewable sources. This is so our customers – that's you – can be proud of supporting every single component of what we do.
02
Our HQ is home to over 200 plants, which are watered from a supply of rain runoff. In fact, all of the numerous water-saving initiatives that we’ve implemented at HQ save over half a million litres of water a year collectively. In 2020, we recycled 122 tonnes which equated to 65% of all our waste. Anything we can’t recycle is repurposed into an alternative fuel (that replaces fossil fuels) to power homes and businesses.
03
We want to conserve our oceans and the marine life that lives there, which is why our entire SPF sun care range is Protect Land + Sea certified, making it completely reef safe.
04
Since becoming a CarbonNeutral® certified company, we've delivered over £2 million worth of value to households, infrastructure and biodiversity through double offsetting our carbon emissions. Through this initiative, we’ve funded conservation work in the Amazon Rainforest and helped to protect 65,000 hectares of forest from unsustainable palm oil conversion in Indonesia.
05
We’ve been ethically accredited for three years and are independently endorsed by the Ethical Company Organisation, with a score of 92/100 which covers a wide range of criteria. This includes animal welfare, human rights and the environment.
AWARD-WINNING BEAUTY
With over 200 prestigious awards and accolades, ranging from our product range to brand ethics and achievements, here are a few of our top award-winning moments from the past few years.
06
Tropic’s entire makeup and sun care ranges comprise refillable, recyclable or returnable (for free) products. We’re also helping our customers to live a lower-impact lifestyle, with a packaging returns initiative that's available for many of our products. Our game-changing Colour Palette is also completely refillable, minimising waste from your beauty routine. Its innovative design has prevented over 12.5 tonnes of plastic waste from being generated, when compared to our previous makeup collection.
2021
ECO LIFESTYLE
WINNER
WINNER
Carbon Neutral Beauty Brand of the Year Beauty Shortlist Eco Lifestyle Awards 2021
WINNER
Best Value Skincare Brand Beauty Shortlist Awards 2020
WINNER
Outstanding Achievement Award Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 Awards 2020
WINNER
Best Luxury Makeup Brand The 2020 UK Global Makeup Awards
