Small Brand Spotlight Herbar - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Beauty Small Brand Spotlight Herbar By Georgia Green - August 31, 2022 Every week, we shine a spotlight on the best small brands we think are worth shouting about. We love our great British high street, but there are so many fantastic independent brands out there making clothes, accessories, homeware and more from a place of passion and love and we need to support them – now more than ever. From fashion and beauty to homeware, accessories and food, we bring you the best small businesses you need on your radar. This week, we chat with Catarina Oliveira and Rui Liu, co-founders of Herbar, the adaptogenic powered beauty brand that launched this week. How did Herbar come to life? It all started back in 2017 in Berlin when Rui overheard me talking to someone about adaptogenic coffee. Safe to say, not many people were into these shroomie concoctions back then. We instantly bonded over our deep love and appreciation of adaptogenics. We started it with the aim of showing that health and beauty can go hand in hand and that we could bring ancient healing strategies into modern beauty rituals. It’s been a two year process to nail down the formulation, the branding, the bottle we designed and the Gua-Shroom [the brand’s mushroom-shaped gua sha facial massage tool]. A long journey full of love, attention to detail and care has gone into our Adaptogenic Face Oil and Gua-Shroom. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Herbar (@herbarofficial) What three words sum up Herbar? Adaptogenic, thoughtful and committed. Who is Herbar for? For every body, every skin, every soul, every mood, every person – especially for those that believe that health and beauty do not need to be mutually exclusive. Tell us about your design and making process? Catarina: It started two years ago, back when we first started formulating. We started working with our in house designer and together we tested lots of different directions for Herbar. The bottle however was a no brainer. We got it right from the start and just worked around the colours and harmonies. Rui: For Herbar, inspiration always come naturally from Mother Earth, the fungi kingdom and the adaptogenic world. Colours, shapes, assets, copy are all centered around the idea that the future is fungi and adaptogenic. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Herbar (@herbarofficial) What’s a typical day for you? Catarina: I’ll wake up, make myself an adaptogenic latte and check emails so I can put out any fires that happened over night while sipping on some cortisol-reducing reishi. Then if I’m home, I’ll go for a run with my dog by the ocean – it’s the best way to disconnect from my to-do list and stop my brain from racing. After that it’s back-to-back meetings, calls, work, tasks and admin. When you run your own business you wear many hats throughout the day. Luckily we have the best team and Katie, Rachel, Élise and Verity make a day at Herbar the very best. My new mantra that I’m trying to become better at is ‘Work hard and rest hard’, so I try to slam my laptop shut at the end of the day and enjoy dinner with my partner. Rui: I’ll wake up and drink a glass of warm water with squeezed lemon juice. Then I start the hard tasks while I have a cup of coffee. Because I’m in the last push of my plant nutrition PhD, I usually start my morning by researching, writing or reading papers. After a couple of hours I head to my institute where I have quite a lot of experiments going on, so I monitor my plants and prepare plant samples for further analysis. I’m also doing Herbar work in between if there’s something urgent (which there always is). View this post on Instagram A post shared by Herbar (@herbarofficial) What’s the best thing about running your own business? And the most challenging? Catarina: The very best and the worst is that we are part of the whole journey, from formulation to designing our packaging, discussing strategy, talking margins and KPIS. With this baptism by fire, our accomplishments and skills lift us up but our shortcomings beat us down hard. Rui: Thankfully we bounce off each other, Catarina is the right brain and I’m the left so we’ve always got each other’s backs. However, being in different countries definitely makes it even more challenging but we make it work with daily calls, Zoom and constant communication. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Herbar (@herbarofficial) The best moment so far? Catarina: Nailing our first stockist, giving an important interview to a publication we love and being hit with a massive production invoice all in one day! Laughing and crying with Rui on FaceTime daily is priceless. Rui: The first time I saw our sample. Before starting Herbar, I never imagined that there were so many things to consider in order to make a simple bottle work (because we designed our own bottle rather than going for an existing one). After a million back and forth alternations, communication and frustration, the product come back looking so stunning, which made it all worth it. Which product is your favourite? Catarina: The Gua-Shroom is super special to me, it took us a long time to craft it and nail it right but it was very much worth it. It now sits proudly around my house just so I can stare at its beauty. But our adaptogenic face oil is part of my morning and evening ritual every single day so that will always have a special spot in my Herbar heart, too. Rui: I am in line with Cat on this question. The Gua-Shroom is my favourite if I can only choose one. You’ve never seen a gua sha in this shape, nor in the materials we use. They are just so unique in all kinds of ways. It not only carries the richness of a billion years of mineralisation, it’s also a bridge that re-connects us with Mother Earth. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Herbar (@herbarofficial) Anything exciting in the pipeline? At this stage everything feels exciting! Our first supper club launch is happening in London, Herbar is starting to hit the newsstands, our stockists will be announced soon, our first collaboration is launching in a couple of months, our follow up product is being finalised, but most importantly is that people will start enjoying our products and that Herbar will be part of their daily lives. Shop Herbar at herbarofficial.com and follow @herbarofficial. 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