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How The Skin Care Founder Does More with LESSE 

By Bonnie Langedijk

The $560 billion plus beauty industry can feel difficult to navigate. With the thousands of products that all promise to finally make you feel and look your best. Additionally, the industry has promoted a very singular idea of what is beautiful, often rooted in the Eurocentric ideal. Real beauty is feeling good in your skin. And beauty and skin care brands should feel a weight of responsibility to make all consumers feel seen and heard. The pandemic somewhat shifted the power dynamics within the industry. Before Covid-19 in-store shopping comprised up to 85 percent of all beauty product purchases. In the aftermath of the pandemic nearly 30 percent of the market was shut down which created space for the growth of DTC consumer brands. Those are often the brands catering to audiences that have been overlooked by big corporations, and who take a different approach to skin care and beauty. 

One of the brands offering a new perspective is organic, luxury skin care brand LESSE. Founded by Neada Deters in 2018, the brand is all about doing more with less. Deters experienced feeling excluded herself, and wanted to create a brand that celebrates all. Changing the mindset around overconsumption, and using skin care as a vehicle to create a ritual to reconnect with ourselves. But it’s not our story to tell. It’s HURS.

Bonnie: I’ve never really felt connected to the beauty industry. It always felt complicated, and quite intimidating. Could you speak to how you’re aiming to change that narrative with LESSE.

Neada: I felt as though the industry was so complex and hard to navigate. That’s a function of consumerism, this drive to sell more to people. [They] often try to push products that aren’t necessary and can sometimes be harmful. LESSE was established as a vehicle to shift the mindset away from this. To get back to a place where skin care can be very simple, intuitive and most of all supportive of the skin's inherent functions rather than working against it. I wanted skin care to become this moment where you could reconnect with yourself. We’ve lost so much of that in our lives today. That’s what LESSE is about.

To me, it’s also the more products you have in your skin care or beauty routine, the more it becomes a chore. Realistically, most people also simply don’t have the time.

Neada: Completely. There's this idea that has been pushed by the industry for so long that you need these products in order to be enough, for lack of a better word. Sometimes it’s good to have some tools in your wheelhouse that can help to support the care and integrity of your skin. Just like the way we might be intelligent enough but it’s great to be able to pick up a book and learn something new. It’s not that you aren’t complete without these items. It’s just that they bring extra value to your life. I read this quote yesterday actually and it was so pointed. Have you read any Anaïs Nin?

No, I haven’t

Neada: There’s a fantastic quote that she has and it’s: ‘There is a perfection in anything that cannot be owned’. That really connects with me. It’s not the stuff in your life that makes you perfect. You’re already perfect the way that you are. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize that when there’s so much noise.

“I wanted skin care to become this moment where you could RECONNECT with yourself. We’ve lost so much of that in our lives today. That’s what LESSE is about. ”

Definitely. When you think back, was there a moment or memory that got you to the place of launching your own skin care brand?

Neada: I grew up in Sydney and so protecting your skin from the sun was incredibly important. We weren’t allowed to play outside at lunchtime if we weren't wearing sunscreen and a hat. I remember being very cognisant of this need to care for your skin and how connected that was to your health. Shortly before I was born my grandmother was diagnosed with skin cancer and that’s very real within Australian families. Everyone knows someone who has been diagnosed with skin cancer. She was in and out of remission throughout my life until she finally passed away from it four years ago.

I’m so sorry. 

Neada: Thank you. I remember my parents being very concerned about protecting my skin from the sun. So that was ingrained in me from a young age. I can’t remember a day in my life when I haven’t worn sunscreen. But as far as considering skin within the context of beauty, my other grandmother has always taken wonderful care of her skin. When I was young she would take care of me when my mom went to work. She had all of these pots of different creams and oils and she was very diligent with her skin care routine. I always connected that moment of applying these creams to a moment that you took for yourself. She had five children, and worked. She had a busy, noisy life. I remember this being a moment where she was connected to herself and that for me is a very visceral memory. 

Going deeper into your approach to skin care, you grow some of the ingredients for LESSE products yourself. Could you speak to how you got there?

Neada: I spent a long time finding the right partner to produce our formulas for us. It was almost a year of research, meetings and calls to find someone who aligned with our values. The partner we work with now produces all of our formulas and bottles all of our products. They mentioned they were thinking of getting some land and cultivating some of their own ingredients. And that was something that we were excited about and wanted to help them do. It’s great because it’s regenerative with the soil. It’s just down the road from where we bottle all of our products, which reduces our carbon footprint significantly. 

Does that also impact the effectiveness of your products and how you think of developing new formulas?

Neada: It means we can extract the highest efficacy of each ingredient that we grow. It allows us to create more effective formulas because we are extracting at the prime time and then bottling right away. We have been at a stand still with some formulas in the past. Having the ability to say ‘oh, we actually think this ingredient is missing, and this would be something that would change this formula for us’, has been such an asset. We’re so dialed into what that ingredient does, how it’s harvested, where it’s grown. 

When I think about the development of beauty or skin care products I imagine people in white lab coats. The way you’re talking about it, makes it sound more like a vineyard or vegetable garden.

Neada: Well, it is. All of our formulas are truly organic. We do grow only a number of the ingredients, but are hoping to grow more of them as we expand our crops and what we can cultivate. It’s something I think people don’t necessarily see in our products right away, because we focus on designing an elevated experience when you receive our products. We don’t necessarily have this identity that makes us feel very green. Sometimes it’s very easy to represent this idea that you are very green, but I encourage people to dig in and ask the difficult questions. That’s really where and why things change, when there’s pressure from the customer for brands to do better.

Definitely. The beauty and skin care industry has gone through a shift in the last couple of years. How would you describe where the industry is currently at?

Neada: It’s been incredible to see the shift that is underway at the moment. Much of that’s driven by the pressure consumers put on the industry and on big brands. Consumers are demanding more accountability, more inclusion, better representation. People want more than virtue signaling. They want brands to truly align with their values and reflect what the world looks like today. So many industries have relied on very archaic paradigms. I’m half Filipino, my mom was born in the Philippines. I grew up in Australia and experienced feeling very outside of the industry. I remember being at my mom's wedding and she had to redo her hair and makeup herself. The way that they had treated her hair and the tone of makeup they used just weren’t a match. It’s been under-recognized how much that impacts your psyche and your sense of self. There are so many factors that play into what true inclusivity is. What we’re seeing in the industry now, is finally a shift where people aren’t just casting diversely, but they’re actually creating products in consideration of a more diverse community. That to me is such a sign of progress.

Consumers want to put their money towards companies that understand them and where they feel seen. The shift in the industry also comes down to new players entering the market.

Neada: Completely. And I can see it when a company is female run. I can feel it in the way that they connect with their community, the products that they create. It’s such a celebration of women. Also I very clearly see within the beauty industry when there’s a company that’s run by a person of color, by a woman of color. The type of formulas they’re creating, the way they talk to their community. It’s something I’m so sensitive to. But we still have a really long way to go. 

Definitely. What are some of the changes you would hope to see in the future?

Neada: There’s a lack of transparency in terms of how products are created, who is involved in a team and who is making decisions. It becomes very complicated sometimes when people take investment. We haven’t taken any investment because I never wanted to have to compromise on the choices that I was making. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not a good option for some brands, but I do think that that should be disclosed. And I would love to see a more non binary approach taken by brands. I hope we continue to see progress in a way that allows people to celebrate however they choose to identify. 

What’s the most important lesson you have learned while building your business?

Neada: As a team we’ve learned that building something for longevity is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. That need for rapid growth or to just put things out in the world really quickly, can infringe upon the possibility of building something truly sustainable in the right way. We’ve been fortunate to have an incredible community that really connects with that. They value products that are created in a more considered way over new releases all the time. As a founder, I have learned to know when to sprint and when to rest. It’s a long process to build a company. In the beginning there were so many no’s. People must have thought: ‘Who is this woman?’ I didn’t go to school in the US, so I didn’t have the network here. My focus was really on creating outstanding products that people couldn’t say no to. That along with our focus on being honest and thinking about skin care in a different way has really connected with people. We’re three years in and it has been incredible to see how LESSE has grown. I’m very grateful for that.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

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