3 out-of-the-box beauty tools from indie brands

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Most skin care tools coming to market now are high-tech electronics or digital devices. However at this month’s BeautyX Summit and Indie Beauty Expo events in Los Angeles, California, Cosmetics Design learned about 3 beauty tools made of simple metals (copper, steel, and brass) that are redefining the category.

Thanks to lifestyle brands and the wellness movement, beauty consumers are thinking beyond the face, hair, and skin and finding beauty products that promise to begin a chain reaction of sorts, bringing the secondary benefit of hygiene, stress relief, and meditation to bear on physical appearance.

The following 3 beauty tools are not only changing what it means to be a beauty tool, but changing minds about how beauty from the inside out can work as well.

Copper

Chey Birch founded Black Chicken Remedies in 2002. Based in Australia, Black Chicken Remedies is “an organic health and wellness company,” Birch tells Cosmetics Design, adding, “we focus on skin care.”

The multi-million dollar brand also has body care, oral care, and what Birch calls a “mind range” as well, which is a collection of essential oils and related products with aromatherapy benefits.

The brand’s uncommon beauty tool is a Copper Tongue Cleaner. “We believe that health starts in the mouth,” explains Birch. “If you can detox your body by scrapping your tongue every morning…It’s not a very glamourous thing but you’re actually removing the toxins so your body doesn’t have to process them,” says Birch summarizing the benefits of this popular tool.   

Steel

Facial massage has spiked in the last year or so as a self care and beauty ritual with the reemergence of semiprecious stone rollers and gua sha. And acupressure is certainly nothing new.

What is new is the surgical-steel face and body massage tool (which combines both facial massage and acupressure) from a new brand called SelfKaire. “If your body isn’t healthy, your face is going to reflect that,” SelfKaire CEO Kathy Chou tells Cosmetics Design.

The weighty Kairetool she’s developed uses carefully configured “acupressure-style pressure pins” to “remove toxicity in your soft tissue,” explains Chou.

The Usage Method included on each Kairetool product page (the tool comes in various finishes, colors, and jewel-top designs) reads: “As little as 30 seconds per area a day or as much as you would like to recharge your skin and body. Can be used on bare skin, over clothing, face masks, or with your skincare routine…”

Brass

Is sound a beauty treatment? If the team at Sound Self Care has anything to say about it, it is. Jana Hess, who, in 2018, took over the brand (founded in Germany by her father in 1989) has intentionally positioned Sound Self Care in the self care space—and, by exhibiting at IBE LA this past week, in the beauty space as well.

Sound Self Care handcrafts brass bowls, singing bowls to be more exact. And the brand promotes a self care ritual that relies on the physical and audible vibrations made when a bowl is struck with a felt-topped mallet.

The bowls proved quite popular at IBE; Hess and her team where kept busy at the event taking orders and introducing shoppers, media, and buyers to the various sized singing bowls.

And while there are no plans for a product line extension yet, Hess tells Cosmetics Design that she see a potential for her brand to partner with more conventional wellness and beauty product brands to develop product kits that include Sound Self Care bowls, bringing the practice of sound massage into more peoples beauty routines.

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Deanna Utroske, CosmeticsDesign.com Editor, covers beauty business news in the Americas region and publishes the weekly Indie Beauty Profile column, showcasing the inspiring work of entrepreneurs and innovative brands.