2009 Personal Care Product Merit Award: Soléo Organics
Jan 1, 2010 12:00 PM
Skin Elements USA earns EWG nod with its chemical-free, organic sunscreen, Soléo Organics
Australian naturopath Leo Fung began searching for a natural but effective sunscreen in 1999 as his mother was being treated for melanoma. Sunscreen was such a national obsession down under the ozone hole that Fung figured he could simply take ingredients that were already proven safe for the skin and create a clean alternative to the existing chemical-laden products on the market. “He thought, ‘How hard can it be?’” explained Richard Sample, CEO of Skin Elements USA LLC, the San Clemente, California-based company that has commercialized Fung's work. “Six years and $6 million in development later, we finally got it right.”
Nutrition Business Journal agrees, which is why we are giving Skin Element's Soléo Organics product a 2009 Product Merit Award. The first organically sourced, chemical-free sunscreen, Soléo Organics uses zinc oxide as the basis for a water-resistant, broad-spectrum, biodegradable formula. Fung and Skin Elements Chairman Peter Malone introduced the sunscreen to the Australian market in 2003. They asked Sample, who Malone knew from the investment banking world, to bring the product to the United States. “My friends thought I was crazy going into the billion dollar sunscreen industry where there were already 1,500 different products on the market,” Sample recalled. “But only seven or eight were clean and only one — ours — was organic. It's an industry that has 99.9 percent of competitors using chemicals, while the public is looking for exactly the opposite.”
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