Meet Our Founder Sophie Oliver

Here at Baie Botanique, we love having a great relationship with our customers and we think you deserve to get to know the team. First we'd like to introduce you to our founder, Sophie Oliver. She started the organic skincare brand in 2014 and it’s been blooming ever since.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO START BAIE BOTANIQUE?

'Since a young age, I’ve had a real love of all things beauty. When I was very young my father used to work as the international sales director for several large-scale cosmetic brands and I used to go along to shows and exhibitions. I so loved to play with the products and pretend with all the stock in the garage that I had my own shop. This probably had a large influence on my training as a beauty therapist and later training as a makeup artist.

My passion has always been to make people look their best with the most minimal makeup possible to achieve that fresh clean and glowing skin.

In the last 20 years, I have become increasingly more interested in health and vitality through the food we eat and the products we use and in general living as close to natural and clean life as possible. This is where my passions have come together and now I am putting all that knowledge and keen interest into creating beautifully textured skincare products to rival those classic brands who are full of synthetic ingredients but instead packed full of wonderfully powerful natural plant based and mostly organic ingredients.'

CAN YOU DESCRIBE BAIE BOTANIQUE IN A NUTSHELL?

‘Innovative, Botanical, Skincare.'

DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE PRODUCT FROM THE ROSE RENEW RANGE?

‘Our new Rose Renew Regenerating Eye Cream is my new favourite followed by the Regenerating Serum. Our new Eye Cream is so silky and smooth and feels beautiful on the skin. It has a great instant tightening and lifting active made from Red Algae plus Edelweiss stem cells and Hyaluronic acid to name a few of the superstars….’

WHAT’S THE BEST PIECE OF SKIN CARE ADVICE YOU EVER RECEIVED?

‘I think it was to start caring for my skin early, I started getting into using eye creams etc quite young around 19 I think starting young means that you don’t miss the critical time when your skin slowly starts to lose collagen and elasticity. The other was to protect my skin from the sun and keep my face in the shade on holiday whenever possible, big rimmed hats etc, my mum used sun beds and was a sun worshipper so she advised me not to do the same. I decided to be paler and use a sunscreen whenever outside for a few hours even on a cloudy day the trick was to find a nice face cream containing SPF, we’ll be bringing our own one out in the near future.’

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO USE CRUELTY-FREE PRODUCTS?

‘Because it’s not necessary for animals to suffer in any way for us to be able to care well for our skin, nature; as in plants has everything that we need and more to keep our skin youthful and healthy. Most people are fine with not testing on animals far less so with there being any animal related ingredients in their products. I think one of the things that is overlooked the most is just how destructive our lifestyles can be on our environment and everything in it. For me, cruelty-free is literally cruelty-free as in no harm afflicted to any animal, for example, bees which play a vital role in our eco-system, can be harmed or killed in the production of honey and beeswax. Our products contain no animal ingredients and are certified cruelty-free and vegan by PETA'

WHICH PRODUCTS COULDN'T YOU BE WITHOUT?
'That’s quite a tough question to answer. The products which are my holy grail that I use every day, morning and night are the Serum and Facial oil aka the ‘Skin Glow Duo’. These are my default skincare products. I need these two to make my skin feel hydrated, nourished and look fresh and plump. If I had to choose just one other product it would be the eye cream as it really masks my fine lines.'

CAN YOU LET US IN ON ANY SECRETS ABOUT FUTURE LAUNCHES?
Suffice to say I’m an uber perfectionist when it comes to getting our formulas right, they must meet many criteria and above all be able to rival that of a luxury non natural product which isn’t always easy to do working with natural, unadulterated, raw materials. I have been working hard behind the scenes to perfect our next range which uses the powerhouse that is Sea Buckthorn and Neroli to illuminate and radiate dull, dehydrated and sun damaged skin. In the mean time we’ll be launching our new lip balms early next year.

Meet Sophie