KiteNest - The Start of Natural Creations Without Compromise

I’m starting this blog by talking about why we’ve started KiteNest and our range of all natural cosmetics. Why we’ve chosen to use only natural ingredients and why we won’t sell anything that means you have to compromise just because you want to know everything that’s in the product you’re using.

Do you ever pick up your pot of hair wax, shampoo or *insert other* and your eyes accidentally fall across the small text of ingredients? Hidden under a ‘peel here’ or written in Arial 6 it’s easy to miss them, forget them or never find them at all. Maybe unlike ‘old me’ you do search but because of the poor light of the season or peeling due to overuse they are still beyond your reach and out of reach until your next visit to the shops. If however you stumble upon them it’s unlikely you’ll know what they all are. That’s exactly what I thought when I gazed at my Matt Clay… “What are you all doing in there?”, “What are you doing to my scalp?”

Let’s go back a few months; It’s Autumn 2014…

Two eager minds start a conversation about hair styling products. Both of them enthused by the possibilities of creating their own special blend of hair wax and undeterred by the hard work possibly waiting on the horizon. That’s how Chris and I first got into this, imagining a hair wax that worked like it was made uniquely for each of us. Me with my scruffy waves more akin to the beaches of Cornwall and Chris with his short back and sides, a little more on top please.

Leaning over a homemade double boiler on the front left ring of my old gas oven we were more Discworld than Macbeth, Pratchett rather than Shakespeare. Possibly we could be the Banksy of cosmetics? The new rebel in the darkness… Well, that’s what it felt like.

What if we could make everything that we loved completely naturally? What if it also meant we didn’t have to compromise on the quality of the product? (You know, not just using it because we made it and accepting second-rate results, we didn’t want that! No one should want that.) We were especially passionate about both of these ideas.

It was slow at first and we didn’t always manage to create what we wanted but, we got better, a little adventurous and more committed. The more we made the more we talked to people. We got the odd comment, two guys making cosmetics in their kitchen, sounds fun. It didn’t deter us.

We quickly found that it wasn’t just me and Chris who were interested and concerned about the products we were using before we started KiteNest. There is a whole community dedicated to this sort of stuff (maybe that’s how you found your way here now?) all talking about it day after day, hour to hour. Through their writing they attack mass produced miracle creams, protest against parabens and take down animal testing, it’s was all in a days work to these new age nature warriors (most likely people called normal names like Steve and Vera with normal jobs down the local offy) In their free time these people are a revolution revealing each day the products that shouldn’t be going anywhere near our scalp and skin.

I’m no fighter and in the Autumn of 2014 I wasn’t a writer either but, I was my own crazy scientist, we were crazy scientists, without an Igor, but it didn’t matter it was just us baby, us and a shed load of Ebay’s finest natural ingredients! We had some help; our chosen friends and colleagues who volunteered to test drive our natural alternatives.

It’s been clear since we started KiteNest everyone wants us to succeed, that’s why they’ve helped us so much by putting their skin and scalps on the line. Every one of our testers wanted to use all natural products, they wanted to know what they were using but they didn’t want a naff product. They had always wanted to know all of this, we all had, but we were only just waking up to it.

So that’s been our mantra ever since that first evening huddled around our little double boiler “Natural Creations Without The Compromise” and as we continue the journey, as we launch the products and as we expand our range that’s all they will ever be, Natural products where you don’t have to compromise.

Markus.

Originally posted on our Wordpress blog and moved across to our new website for your enjoyment