Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Zaffrin O’Sullivan, 41, first had the idea for Five Dot Botanics back in 2017. She wondered why the packaging for skincare products listed impenetrable ingredients at a time when consumers were demanding ingredient transparency in food and cleaning products.
It was not as if O’Sullivan did not have enough to do in her day job as a senior lawyer at the BBC.
Plus O’Sullivan had no beauty industry background, so she partnered with a cosmetic scientist and spent two years designing the brand and a website.
The idea was to create a range of skincare products with only five easily understandable ingredients each. Five Dot Botanics had its first manufacturing run in the spring of 2019 and launched direct to consumer last July. The brand is already stocked in health food chain Holland & Barrett.
O’Sullivan says: “We created it in response to the growing complexity and lack of transparency when it came to skincare. We could see a market opportunity for us to offer a British skincare line that used only minimal plant-based ingredients, tying in with the growing vegan movement. We also knew that beauty was not super inclusive, so wanted the brand to be