Podcast interview (Josh Trent with Emilie Toups) about skincare, the cosmetics industry’s lack of US regulation, and Emilie’s personal journey founding a skincare company after her daughter developed severe eczema; she discovered tallow-based topical treatments that improved inflammation and led to product creation and distribution among friends and family.
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People love cosmetics. It is a multi billion dollar industry. They make us look and feel and smell better. But these chemicals are. They're easy to access and make. You can make them cheaply. In the US there's very, very little regulation on skin care and people don't realize that. So many people say this phrase to me that it's sold at XYZ Box store, then it must be safe. It couldn't go on the shelf if it wasn't safe. That is completely untrue.
Emily, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you, Josh.
It's been a long time coming. I've been excited about this. You know, I don't wear makeup or have a lot of skincare products myself. However, my woman, my partner, and so many people that listen to the show. This episode is so much deeper than skin. You know, it starts with skin. People know you as the co founder of Toups and Co and tell people just how you even got into this world of skin care. This was something that we all know. The epidermis is the largest. It is literally the largest organ that we have, our entire body in the entire body. And people just don't think about this, Emily. They don't think about what they put on their skin. It's literally drinking whatever we're putting on our skin. So give us the quick story, not the deep one, just the quick story of how you came into this world of tubes and company.
Yeah, well, someone would have told us 10 years ago that we would be running a skincare company. Like what? It definitely wasn't the trajectory that we were on, but we had our first daughter and she had severe eczema. You know, it had us looking for something else, other answers and not being satisfied with the answers that we were getting. So, you know, like a concerned mother will do. I just dove deep into researching and I had to know, like, there's. There's got to be another way. She had, you know, cracking and bleeding skin, and we had gone to the doctor, we did the traditional routes, steroids, petroleum creams, and all the things, and it just wasn't working. And we weren't satisfied with that. And, you know, my husband and I multiple times looked at each other and there was like, there's got to be something else that we can do. And through my research, I found tallow and just started making some products for her. She not only had eczema, but a lot of allergies, like topical allergies. And so, you know, we started with the basics, just tallow on her skin. And it was just incredible. It's helping with the inflammation. And I started to make those products. People love them. I gave them away, friends and family. And that's just the beginning of how we got started, which is just. It was just a God thing. It was there when, you know, we filled a need when we saw it, and that's how we got started.
It's wild because I think about how many people on the path of healing or of making themselves well or their family well. It starts with their own journey. It starts with something where they had to actually figure it out they self. They had to really get down in the weeds and be like, okay, I'm experiencing something. I'm not finding the answers in the traditional system.
