Naturally Smart Skincare are Judith Watson and Norman Ogden, both ex-teachers from the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. They have been friends – well, more like brother and sister! – for many years, and after leaving teaching both drifted into complementary and natural health.
Judith has been a complementary practitioner for over 15 years trading as Smart Therapies, offering treatments in Bowen Therapy, Reflexology and Daoyin Tao. Wanting to develop her facial massage skills into facial treatments, she realised that many of the products that were available to her weren’t as natural as she would like, and started investigating making them herself.
Having found a supplier who specialised in selling all the raw materials she needed, she attended training courses to learn how to use them: they were very well received by her clients and she felt they may be suitable to sell to a wider audience!
She now spends her time between treatments and formulating new products – there are so many wonderful plant-based ingredients to use and so little time to experiment!
She says: “I feel that skincare making is a blend of my best and worst subjects at school – cookery and chemistry – and I thoroughly enjoy experimenting with new ingredients as much as I do in my kitchen. Anyone who comes to dinner knows they will be experimented on!
I’m passionate about only using organic, plant-based ingredients that not only make wonderful creams that are wonderful to use and do their job well but also benefit the rest of the body in many ways. Multi-tasking products are a big benefit to us all!”
Norman works alongside Judith in Smart Therapies, offering Bowen Therapy and Chinese Foot Massage. He followed her into making skincare products and does much of the manufacturing, but his forte is ensuring all the paperwork and legalities are up to date!
The European legislation of 2013 was a challenge for all concerned, and he had his work cut keeping us on the straight and narrow. Since then we have worked very hard to get our recipes and products registered with the Vegan Society, but now we can absolutely guarantee that our products contain no animal-derived ingredients, and we would never even consider testing them on animals – the only testing of our products is done on humans, mainly our family and friends!
His original aim was to develop a range of Men’s products, but we have come to realize that our products are pretty unisex, particularly as they are not highly fragranced with synthetic perfumes. Most men seem to be quite happy to buy from our main ranges, so unless we get particular requests, we will continue to be unisex in our ranges.
