Odylique: How the World’s First Certified Organic Skincare Brand Pioneered Ethical Beauty

Abi Weeds shares the journey of building a purpose-driven skincare brand, from handmade formulations to global recognition, and the lessons learned along the way

Margaret Weeds (left) and Abi Weeds (right), Co-Founder's of Odylique

In a world where clean beauty is increasingly in demand, few brands have paved the way like Odylique. Founded in the 1980s by Margaret Weeds, Odylique has grown from a small, family-driven experiment in herbal skincare into a purpose-driven brand celebrated for its certified organic products. With over 20 years of certified organic status across skincare, makeup, shampoo, and sunscreen, Odylique has consistently set the gold standard for quality, sustainability, and ethical values.

In this exclusive interview, Abi Weeds shares the journey of building a brand that not only solves real skincare challenges but also stays true to its mission, crafting products that are genuinely organic, ethically responsible, and inspired by customer needs. From overcoming early ingredient challenges to scaling handmade production and fostering meaningful partnerships, Abi reveals the lessons and insights that have shaped Odylique’s success.

1 - Achieving Organic Certifications

It’s now over 20 years since we first achieved certified organic status. Back then, just as now, there were a lot of beauty brands saying they were natural (and of course, a lot weren’t). Certification offered us a way to say look, we’re different, our products are genuinely organic, and you don’t have to take our word for it. And the UK organic standards, which have now largely been incorporated into the harmonised European COSMOS standard, were the strictest organic standards in the world. In a way, it represented the gold standard, which we liked, as it gave the best quality guarantee.

Certification has made life challenging in several ways.

Firstly, it hugely restricted the ingredients that we had to work with. In the early days, one of the biggest barriers was ingredient availability and getting suppliers to provide the right paperwork. You wouldn’t believe it now, but organic avocado oil was scarcely available in 2005. And we had no end of suppliers who’d told us an ingredient was organic but then couldn’t prove it. Then, for non-organic ingredients, we had to do a lot of legwork to get them approved. Only the cleanest raw materials are allowed in certified organic products, nothing that could be vaguely harmful for humans or the environment, all of which we of course agreed with, but the paperwork was quite challenging. And then there are audits, inspection visits and checks, again great for quality control, but tough when you’re just starting out, and it was all voluntary, there was nothing forcing us to take the tricky path of certification other than a desire and will to do things right, (and a little folly!).

In hindsight, that scarcity and rigour of manufacture was good for us (more below). It made us work smarter, made us innovate and possibly made the formulations even better. Secondly, we spend a lot of time explaining what we go through to be certified and that our products are a very different quality to what you might find elsewhere. Certification is still voluntary and there’s no regulation around the use of the word organic. We had to do a lot of explaining about why certified was different. But as time has gone on, that level of understanding has improved. While things still are not perfect, it’s a lot better than it was. Seeing our hard-won products like shampoos, sunscreen and foundation, as well as the old family favourites like Repair Lotion recommended in the national press and win awards and then the makeup used by international makeup artists are some of the moments where we’ve sat back and thought, wow, this is something.

2 - Handmade Production at Scale

Being certified organic from day 1 initially made things quite tough as a tiny company, but actually, it was a blessing in disguise. It gave us a rigour and quality processes that enabled us to scale ‘safely’ from kitchen table size to producing thousands of bottles and jars a month. To be sure, we’re still a long way from being any kind of industrial size; you’ll still find us creating balms in large pans or hand-pouring oils into bottles. But the manufacturing standards we’re audited to for organic certification apply whatever size you are or however you do things. And we’ve always prided ourselves on in-house manufacture, we’re able to control quality more closely, as well as respond to demand more nimbly, and be more creative.

Being a sensitive skin brand, we also do a lot of product testing. We have a keen in-house team and a large pool of customers who are willing volunteers. We’ll often make over 20 versions of a product that get tested on our in-house team (our organic foundation was even several years in development), before it gets to the customers for their final say.

3 - Maintaining Ingredient Integrity with Partnerships

We made the decision from day 1 to certify all our products as organic to give consumers an independent guarantee that what we make is genuinely organic. But that guarantee also gives us an in-built vetting process of the ingredient quality and a traceability from field to bottle. Those COSMOS (organic standards) requirements actually involve a lot more than just being organic. Cruelty-free, no animal ingredients and responsible packaging are also part of the criteria and of course they align naturally with other values we hold dear. We’ve been really careful about the brands we’ve worked with too. We’ve only worked with likeminded brands and are proud to be have had really longstanding partnerships with organisations that have supported us, like Ethical Consumer, The Good Shopping Guide and Naturewatch.

Our other most important partnership is with our customers. We continually ask our customers what they want, but they are also incredibly engaged and proactive about telling us what they want. This close relationship where our customers are really part of the brand is both a safeguard and a driver of ever higher ethical values.

4 - The Origins of Formulation

Odylique was born in the 1980s when my mother, Margaret, started exploring skin-friendly concoctions to help soothe friends’ and family's extremely sensitive/problematic skin. With her qualifications in herbal medicine and aromatherapy, and a passion for the genius of nature, she set about creating truly effective formulations based only on organic herbs, plant oils and natural active ingredients that were compatible with the most sensitive skin.

So yes, family and friends’ feedback was hugely important, as well as learning from formulation failures. There was no blueprint, my mother was creating a new type of skincare, one that was more akin to ‘skin-food’ than the chemistry of petrochemicals and artificial additives, and it wasn’t easy. I have childhood memories of all sorts of interesting concoctions ‘brewing’ in the kitchen.

By 2003 we were able to we launch a range of my mother’s skincare staples, plus a lotion she’d made for my eczema (Repair Lotion) and a shampoo she’d created for friend with a psoriasis-prone scalp (Gentle Herb Shampoo – the world’s first ever certified organic shampoo).

Since then, it’s our customers that have shaped everything we’ve done. Their requests, healthy sunscreen, clean makeup etc have hugely shaped the products we’ve gone on to create.

5 - The Impact of a Purpose-Driven Brand

Seeing my mother’s groundbreaking formulations achieve the success they’ve had has been hugely rewarding and I’m proud to have played a part in making that happen. If we hadn’t worked together, I wouldn’t have necessarily experienced or appreciated that. But in all honesty what continues to make everything worthwhile for us is the often life- changing moments that our products have given our customers. Whether it’s helping someone overcome severe skin conditions like eczema, or an itchy scalp, or being able to wear makeup on otherwise reactive skin.

That we’re able to do that while respecting the environment and having an ethical purpose makes you want to come to work every day.

Abi Weeds, Co-Founder of Odylique

Odylique’s story is a testament to what can be achieved when purpose, quality, and innovation intersect. From humble beginnings experimenting with herbal formulations in the family kitchen to creating products that improve the lives of customers worldwide, the brand demonstrates the power of commitment, authenticity, and listening to your community.

Abi Weeds’ insights highlight that success in ethical business is not just about growth, it’s about integrity, attention to detail, and staying true to your values. For brands aspiring to make a meaningful impact, Odylique offers both inspiration and a blueprint for how to turn passion into purpose, and challenges into opportunities for lasting change.