One thing that’s changed for me in lockdown is my skincare. I’ve spent a lot of hours researching new brands. I wanted to make my skincare more sustainable and saw UpCircle on the story of a yoga instructor I follow. This discovery has shaken up not only my skin care, but my expectations from brands on social media in general. 

I’m clearly not the only one who discovered UpCircle during lockdown and fell in love with the brand. With new products, online sales up and an expanding team, this brand (which is also honest about when they fail) is defying all the odds.

I was so excited to speak to their Co-Founder Anna Brightman, and she didn’t disappoint. We discussed how my favourite eye cream and coffee scrub came about, as well as the weirdness of hiring online, music festivals and not being great at managing the work/life balance. 

In your own words, how would you describe what UpCircle Beauty does?

Anna: So UpCircle is a sustainable skincare brand that’s centred on the idea of bringing the circular economy to the skincare industry. 

I wanted to shake things up and basically build a brand that can be both ethical and high performing and stylish at the same time. You can have this kind of mass-market appeal and also a strong ethical message. UpCircle buy products from other industries that we then reimagine as high performing skincare ingredients instead.

The UpCircle story starts with coffee, how did you initially get that idea?

Anna: I own the brand with my brother William. I was 23 he was 26 – we felt a bit like is this it? Is this really what we want to do for our entire lives? We were kind of on the lookout for inspiration, for ideas, for our own business. 

Then one day, on his way to work, my brother walked into a coffee shop and just asked them out of total curiosity, what they did with their coffee grounds at the end of the day. And he was really shocked when he found that they produced so much per day that they have to pay local council to have it disposed of at landfill.

All of a sudden, we had figured out what the problem was. What people don’t realise is that in the ways and quantities we’re disposing of it, it actually rots. And when it rots it produces methane.

My brother was like, I’ve figured out there’s this huge waste problem with coffee but wasn’t sure what to do with it. I was always passionate about skincare and beauty, and I knew coffee was fantastic for your skin. We had recently had the microbeads scandal So all these things kind of came together at the same time. 

We got an innovation stand at the London Coffee Festival. We took hundreds and hundreds of these really simple, like really embarrassing looking back on it, very basic little scrubs to The London Coffee festival and they just absolutely flew out the door. 

People loved them. So that was kind of where it all began to be honest and then we quit our jobs shortly afterwards and went for it.

“It was scary but exciting as well” – Anna Brightman, Upcircle Beauty

And what was it like taking the plunge and quitting your job?

Anna: Pretty terrifying. But I think, there’s things that you can do to be careful, to be sensible and I always advice people to stay in their job as long as they possibly can if they’re starting their own business and to only quit when you’ve got as much certainty as possible. 

So, you’ve got to be careful. It was scary but exciting as well, fundamentally it was what we wanted to do. 

After starting with coffee how did you expand into other products?

Anna: It’s a bit of a mixture, to be honest, people often ask what the order is when it comes to our new product development. it really does depend. 

We quite quickly made a name for ourselves as these absolute nutters going round London collecting all the coffee and turning it into skincare. What I would find is that loads of other businesses would then come up to me, and say “hey, I’ve got this business and I make this product and it leaves behind this. I was thinking do you want to use that?” 

That’s actually how it worked with the chai spices that we used in our second repurposed ingredient, which was our palm oil free soaps. But then in other situations, it might be that I think it’s really important that we make a very specific product. And then for that product very specific ingredients work. Let’s say a hand sanitiser for example. 

I call it having an eyes up approach. So always staying curious and looking around at what’s going on around you.

Is that the advice you give someone who wants to start a business but doesn’t have an idea yet?

Anna: I do think that’s how a lot of brands begin, and I think that that is a good approach to take. Whatever product or service you are offering, it has to be something that people need, or want. 

I know that’s hard, of course, that’s why it took us a while to figure out what we were going to do. It’s so competitive. I never want to beat around the bush that it’s easy because it’s absolutely not. 

Have a clear point of difference. That’s the most important thing. But yes, problem and solution approach is definitely one that works. 

“We always try and keep our humour intact” – Anna Brightman, Upcircle Beauty

In such a competitive industry, how do you keep going on hard days?

Anna: I think starting your own business takes a very specific type of person. You’ve got to have such grit and determination and of course, these things grow over time.

Don’t take on board the negativity, cause there will be that in any business. If you look at my business, we are an ethical brand, trying to do good things. The best intentions in every possible way. We try to be authentic and transparent, and yet still, every single day there is still horrible stuff that gets said. 

You just have to go in there and be like okay, have humour– we always try and keep our humour intact and just tackle things head-on and keep going.

And we’ve talked about UpCircle Beauty being sustainable and ethical but what does that mean to your brand?

Anna: It’s massive. It’s not just your products and your packaging and your ingredients. It’s your general brand values - the bigger picture really. I like this to permeate into every single thing that we do. 

It isn’t just a marketing thing. We are vegan, cruelty-free, hand made in the UK, 100% recyclable packaging, palm oil free. From our unique concept perspective, there’s the fighting waste circular economy element. 

Nothing is ever photoshopped. It’s very authentic. It’s all ages, all skin tones, all skin types, blemishes, facial hair, anything. In the beauty industry, I think a lot of brands or products can make women, in particular, feel actually worse about themselves not better. 

If you take 2020 it was really important in times like that that we provide support for the wider community. We sent out thousands and thousands of pamper parcels to front line workers. 

We donated to save elephant foundation out in Thailand cause all of the elephants can’t be looked after anymore because of course there’s no tourism. Refuge because of domestic abuse, for Black Lives Matter we did a huge book campaign sending out children’s books with minority ethnic protagonists and authors into schools across the country. 

All of that kind of stuff is relevant to overall brand values and the way you want people to see you I think. 

“there have been some real nice glimmers of positivity that have come out of it” - Anna Brightman, Upcircle Beauty

Yeah, 2020 was a tough year, and how do you think it changed people’s consumption to look into the values of a brand?

Anna: Yeah absolutely, in short, I think obviously the pandemic was and is an awful situation but there have been some real nice glimmers of positivity that have come out of it. 

I think one of those was a renewed sense of community. What I think it did was remind people of localness and closeness with the people around you. 

This huge influx of support coming from the consumer side. We still get shoutouts from people, every single day. Support small brands and I think that’s wonderful.

With so much going on over the past year, how have you found the time to relax and unwind from it all?

Anna: To be honest, I’m quite bad at it and it’s particularly hard when you work with your family because there’s no limit to what’s reasonable. 

It’s really difficult. I won’t lie. I think everyone has their burn out points and everyone has their limits. I’m a super sociable person I’ve got an amazing group of friends and I love filling my weekends with fun basically. That’s really hard. 

To justify not working because everything I do has an impact on the brand. I’ve come to realise that obviously, that’s not the way to be. Exercise is really important as well. Every morning no matter what I make sure I get out the house and do some form of exercise outside cause otherwise, I think you can just go a bit stir crazy.

“It was the first-time majority of our team were actually meeting in real life” – Anna Brightman, Upcircle Beauty

Over the last year, UpCircle has expanded their team a lot. What was that experience like when you haven’t been able to see each other face to face?

Anna: Yeah it was a strange experience. We were a team of three at that point so myself, my brother and Sophie who works in sales and that was it. And then the pandemic hit, online sales went absolutely through the roof. So we had to react to that extremely quickly and make lots of changes in order to keep up. 

We did all of our hiring via zoom. The most surreal experience for us was, basically, the restrictions were loosened and we were able to have a photo shoot and I wanted a team picture. It was the first time the majority of our team were actually meeting in real life was for a team picture and it was so strange. It was really nice. 

It was a beautifully sunny day and we all went to the park and we took this picture on the hillside and by the river and it was lovely. It’s really hard. It’s not ideal. We’re eight at the moment but we will be more like fourteen in the next couple of months and we’re all, in such a small team you’re responsible for so much and everyone’s input is so valuable. 

UpCircle Beauty is the nicest brand on social media; you get back to everyone. How do you maintain that and why is it important to the brand?

Anna: As a business, it’s really important that we have it. 

It’s really important to me that we portray ourselves in a way that is authentic. I get so fed up of seeing particularly British skincare brands where they’re using like bikini clad models rolling around in the sand. That is so not tangible.

We’ve built our audience, on Instagram alone is 65,000. That’s a huge bank of people we can get information from in order to improve, so why not ask them questions. Then we can do better and we can get more customers and then our brand will grow. 

I think if people want to share our products to their followers, that is such a kind and wonderful thing for them to do. I hate it when I like shoutout a brand and they don’t even say hey thanks for that. It means an awful lot. It’s how so many people find out about you. It’s the appreciation of people sharing the love about your brand. Yeah I’m all about it. 

What product have you been excited to launch this year?

Anna: So, in September. We released our body cream, toner and eye cream and what was particularly exciting about those. It was three products with five repurposed ingredients but B, within single formulations we were working with multiple repurposed ingredients and that was the first time we had done that. 

So that was a really exciting new step with regards to how complex we could be. So it was, for me thinking about how am I going to explain this? It’s always a new challenge, that I find really exciting. 

It was difficult and figuring out how I was going to go about that and tell that story. I think that they’ve been really well received. Already winning awards and stuff like that against massive brands and people love them. 

So yes, very long story short, the eye cream and the toner.

“You do not have to be an expert.” – Anna Brightman, Upcircle Beauty

You’ve spoken in past interviews about wanting to encourage more women to launch a business, what would you say to anyone thinking of launching right now?

Anna: I would say do it! I think now is actually a really good time to do it. People’s preferences are changing. People’s interests are changing, and you might have a lot of time on your hands to do those things that you need at the start of launching a business. 

Don’t think about it for too long cause all that will happen is you will find a reason not to do it. I think the more you worry and think about all the things that could go wrong the less likely you are to go for it. And someone else will. Someone else will eventually think of it or be braver or have more money or whatever it might be. So I just think go for it. 

And the other thing I would say is obviously I own my business with my brother and we are completely complete opposite strengths. And that’s quite reassuring because whatever I consider myself not good at, I know I can rely on him to be good at. You do not have to be an expert. I have a passion for skincare and that’s enough. 

You have to be a hard shell, determined, extremely hardworking and passionate about making your business a success. Ask advice, ask loads of good questions and you’ll be absolutely fine. The most important thing is that you do it and you get started. 

“I was like wow, this is mad” – Anna Brightman, Upcircle Beauty

What are you proudest of achieving with UpCircle Beauty over the past year?

Anna: That’s difficult. We’re really growing extremely quickly at the moment which is super exciting. I’ll choose a really recent example. We launched our products into Whole Foods in America. 

Getting a big retailer like whole foods out there was a huge deal. I sat in front of my computer screen and pitched our brand to the store teams of over 75 stores. I was like wow, this is mad. It’s one we’ve been really working hard on getting this.

What are you most looking forward to when lockdown is over?

Anna: To be honest nothing crazy. All I want is, ideally in the sun, but just a really good night out with my friends. Like that’s all I crave. 

I would love to go to a music festival. I go for a jog most mornings and I’d always got these sets on, really upbeat dancey stuff to get me motivated, but at the moment I’m just finding it depressing.

And finally what was it like pitching to the dragons?

Anna: Oh, as terrifying as you might think but If I’m being completely honest probably worse. What you see on TV is this unbelievably short version of what actually happened. It was just a brilliant experience. Yeah, it was good fun but scary.

UpCircle are in their fifth year selling a variety of sustainable and ethical skincare and beauty products. Check out more on their website, https://upcirclebeauty.com/ 

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Written By Lauren Waugh

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