Liz Earle Naturally Active Skincare blog

For me, the combination of intensely green, mossy, musky base notes in our new Eucalyptus & Rosemary Candle takes me back to the wintry woodland walks of my childhood. Within minutes of lighting it, the candle casts its spell and has me building a log fire and making cream of tomato soup: the ambience it creates is a perfect celebration of all things autumnal and wintery.

When it comes to taking you back to a specific place and time, there’s a magic to fragrance that rivals time machines from H. G. Wells to the Tardis. Except it’s human physiology and not magic at all:  the pathway to our brain used for smell is closely associated with the limbic system that contains the parts of the brain responsible for emotion and memory. Our brains use smells as Post-its or sticky tabs that give access to the depths of the library that is our subconscious. Amazingly, all it takes is a couple of airborne odour molecules to peel back the years and reveal the most vivid of recollections.

We take great pride in all we do, believing that the small details add up to the difference that is Liz Earle. From the cotton and paper wick and the blend of natural soy and beeswax (which combine to give up to 40 hours of burn time) to the gorgeous silver lining of the signature blue presentation box and the blend of 16 essential oils used to create the uplifting ambience that’s a nod to our iconic hero Cleanse & Polish, our new Eucalyptus & Rosemary Candle embodies this approach.

While eucalyptus and rosemary have lent their names to our new candle, beneath their aromatic herbalness lies a real depth of notes that brings a diverse forest of scent to life. Birch, cypress and pine needle overlie mossy and musky notes of patchouli and vetiver with spicy black pepper creeping through to give it an edge. In our signature blue coloured glass, it’s the perfect winter warmer, whether you’re looking to lift the spirits of someone dear well into the new year, or simply bring the outside in.  Just be sure you’ve stocked up on plenty of tomato soup and firelighters before settling in to enjoy the longer evenings.

Without giving away my gifting strategy, I’ve stocked up
on our Eucalyptus & Rosemary Candle for everyone from
our beloved postie Mark to my godmother. And if you have
any clever ideas for giving the elegant presentation box a
new lease on life, I’m looking to upcycle the one sitting on
my dressing table.

Hello,

My name is Rebecca Taylor, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with Liz Earle on the new Special Edition Cleanse & Polish Rose and Lavender.

Earlier this year, I jumped at the chance to be mentored by Liz as part of The Prince’s Trust Tomorrow campaign, which is all about inspiring young people at a time of record youth unemployment.

Together, we’ve created a Special Edition of the best-selling Cleanse & Polish which will be sold to raise money for The Prince’s Trust – a charity that is very close to my heart.

When I first came to The Trust, I was at my lowest point. At 21, I was made redundant from my job in retail, which left me unable to pay my rent. I was also expecting my first baby, and had no choice but to sleep on my grandma’s sofa.

However, The Trust gave me a second chance, and with their help, I set up my own beauty salon in Doncaster. Five years later I now employ eight young women in my hometown and have big plans for the future.

Working with Liz over the last few months has been an amazing experience. I’ve been involved in the new Cleanse & Polish from start to finish – visiting the Liz Earle head office on the Isle of Wight numerous times and even travelling to Geneva for the print trials of the new packaging.

Liz is an incredible role model for a young businesswoman like me – showing that anything is possible through passion, determination and hard work.

I am incredibly proud to have my name on this Special Edition Cleanse & Polish Rose and Lavender, and I hope you will love it just as much as I do!

Rebecca

P.S. Find out more about The Prince’s Trust Tomorrow campaign at princes-trust.org.uk/tomorrow and in our latest Liz Earle’s Beauty Insider.

Juggling work with family life? Thinking of starting a business? In this interview, I ask Liz for her words of wisdom on being a female entrepreneur.

Rebecca: Many of us know that one of the main reasons you created a natural skincare range was because you suffered with eczema, but how did you start out in the beauty industry?
Liz: It was a coming together of various early experiences. My father was a very keen plantsman and I spent many happy hours as a child in the garden with him. I was then given a Vogue beauty book by my Grandma when I was fifteen, which opened my eyes to the wonderful world of health and beauty, and I was especially intrigued to read about how botanicals can boost wellbeing and influence how we look and feel. I got my very first job at Molton Brown, the hairdressing and beauty company, so worked in the industry very early on. This quickly led to writing for women’s beauty magazines, and my love of research and writing took off from there. I moved from magazines to books, which allowed more time and space for researching what I was passionate about, and was later invited to be part of Richard and Judy’s team on This Morning, which is how I became involved in broadcasting.

Rebecca: What do you feel are the benefits of running your own business?
Liz: An entrepreneur starts with a passion, and running your own business is an opportunity to focus your time and your talent on what you care passionately about and what really interests you. I once heard a successful entrepreneur say that if you work in a field you absolutely love, you never do a day’s work in your life and that every day is a joy. I don’t know if that’s 100% true but it certainly helps! It goes a long way to make work really rewarding, as well as being fun.

Rebecca: The hardest thing I’ve had to overcome is juggling my son Harry and managing my workload, which pulls on my heartstrings. In the early days, did you feel the strain of being a working mum?
Liz: Women tend to be multi-taskers, and there is inevitably a juggling of family, relationships, work and running a household that, in my experience, does seem so often to be picked up by women. In some ways, running your own business can be a real benefit, as you can choose working hours that suit your home life. When Kim and I first started working together, we had young children, so we would work during school hours, take a break between 3 and 7pm to do school pick up, tea, bath, homework and bed, then start again at 7pm and work until early hours of the morning. It can work very well but you have to be aware that you end up doing the equivalent of two or three full-time jobs, so you have to have a lot of stamina and staying power, and be truly motivated and believe in what you are doing because it’s extremely time-consuming.

Rebecca: What is your advice for young entrepreneurs just starting out?
Liz: Know your subject inside-out, back-to-front and then some more. Many people have a good idea, but you really need to know your subject and I cannot emphasize that enough. It’s not enough just to read what’s online as there is so much poorly researched information on the web. You need to be really sure of your sources, particularly if you’re going to base a business on it, so reading reputable peer-reviewed factual journals is a good starting point, otherwise you may be building something on the wrong premise. I would also recommend not chasing profit, but chasing happy customers instead. If you produce something people love and provide it to them with good service, they will buy more and tell others, and that‘s how a healthy business grows. Our motto ‘crawl, walk, run’ is very important. Don’t do feel pressurised into doing something just because someone’s saying it has to be now. Sometimes you have to take a deep breath and say “well if it has to be now, it has to be no.” Going too quickly is not always the strongest way to build a business.

Rebecca: I believe the key to having a successful business is to take a notebook to bed. How do you manage to be organised running a business and having a family?
Liz: I’m a compulsive list-maker and also keep a series of small notebooks in which I try and write everything down so I don’t forget. There’s so many different things going round in my head, whether its notes for the boardroom, or checking the contents of the fridge to see if there’s enough milk, or did somebody feed the dog. For me, writing everything down on paper helps enormously. I also try and delegate as much as possible. I used to try to do everything myself, but I’ve now realised that I simply can’t do that. At Liz Earle Beauty Co. we’re very fortunate that, as we’ve grown, we’ve gathered a big team of specialists and that has hugely helped us to share the load. For any early business, it’s important to accept all offers of help wherever they come from, whether it’s a neighbour offering to do the school run, or walk the dog or pick up some shopping. Grab every offer with both hands from friends and family who are around. I try to get the children to help with simple things like tidying their rooms or emptying the dishwasher as much as possible, and we keep star charts to keep the smaller children motivated!

Rebecca: Why do you and Kim support The Prince’s Trust?
Liz: From day one, we’ve had a charity programme running, as we’ve always wanted to put back. As women with children, our focus was always to help young people, and women and young children in particular. The Prince’s Trust is very much about enabling young people to get on in life and to have the opportunity to start their own business, so it was a natural fit for us. As a business, we’ve seen the benefit of mentoring. It’s very common for someone to join our team and go on training programmes, and work their way through the company in various departments, and it’s been enormously rewarding to see people come in, learn, develop and grow. We were delighted to take that opportunity further outside our own company with The Trust. We’ve seen first-hand the work they do and the lives that have changed, and I think if you care about the society that we live in, you really want to see an improvement and a chance for change, particularly for the next generation, building strong businesses for the future just as we’ve had the opportunity to build ours.

This year is proving to be a truly spectacular one for Britain: we have had the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Wimbledon, and of course – still can’t quite believe it’s finally here, after all our eager anticipation – the Olympic Games 2012!

For so many of us, our memories are often interwoven with the very essence of Britishness itself. Our team asked me recently what I love about being British and for me, it is about the countryside itself. I love the variety of rural England – my husband and I share a love for exploring the Great British outdoors with our young girls. For those of you keen to explore the Isle of Wight, it really is a mini version of England with coasts, pretty towns and glorious rolling countryside. One of the other things that I value about being British is our tolerance – we are fair and open as a society, something that I don’t think we always recognise often enough as a nation. There are lots of fab things about being British!

We know that so many of you are excited by all these festivities ahead, how could we not celebrate with you? Based on your choices, we’ve lovingly hand-picked a selection of your multi award-winning favourites – fittingly called our ‘Great British Award Winners Kit’. Here, you’ll find your very own British skin-saving heroes, which will come to the rescue for every skin type, age, colour and condition, and of course, all sent from British soil on the sunny Isle of Wight, where we have always been based.

• Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser – I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t rate this in their top three Liz Earle products of choice; rich and hard-working, this keeps skin in tip-top condition no matter how unpredictable the summer weather!
• Instant Boost Skin Tonic – Our most versatile must-have to refresh, cool, uplift, de-stress, re-motivate and reinvigorate senses even the weariest of skins. Use as a toner twice daily, or to refresh anytime, anywhere.
• Superskin Moisturiser – The perfect SOS-sized pot to revive parched summer skin, come rain or shine. Super speedy, super luxurious, super botanicals – this is on everyone’s lips (and face) for its instant comfort factor.
• Gentle Face Exfoliator – The masterpiece of our treatments range, designed to efficiently yet pleasurably remove the skin’s natural build-up of sebum and impurities; effortlessly leaving skin feeling flawless, fresh and full of life.

Have a wonderful summer and do share your celebration stories with us here and on Facebook (with photos, please!)

P.S.  Our Great British Award Winners Kit is available for a limited time only!

Since day one, our botanical skincare range has been shaped by priceless feedback from our customers, so we’re especially delighted to have won three new awards voted for exclusively by you! I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to vote for us in this year’s QVC Beauty Awards – it’s wonderful to hear just how much you enjoy using the products that we’ve lovingly created, and particularly thrilling to claim these accolades against such stiff competition.

I’d like to share a little more about our ‘fabulous three’ with you…

Best Facial Cleanser – Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser
Cleanse & Polish has become something of a beauty icon since we launched it over 15 years ago. Our concentrated yet gentle formula has stayed the same since day one, delivering exceptional results on all skin types, and is now a daily essential for women in over 100 countries worldwide. This is Cleanse & Polish’s 83rd award – testament to its enduring success.

Best Anti-ageing Product – Superskin Concentrate
Our ‘golden elixir’ is a night-time treat for all skin types, featuring a potent blend of 100% pure plant oils to visibly improve the appearance of your skin. When applying, I always cup my hands around my nose and take a few deep breaths – this lets me enjoy the relaxing aromatherapeutic benefits of Superskin Concentrate before I massage it into my face. Massage any excess product into your hands and let them benefit too!

Best Eyecare Product – Eyebright Soothing Eye Lotion
You’ll always find a bottle of our soothing eye lotion in my fridge – it’s a cooling treat first thing in the morning and perfect for calming puffy eyes. I use it on my entire family! Eyebright contains a botanical blend of eyebright, cornflower, witch hazel and aloe vera, which work together to soothe, refresh and revitalise your eyes.

This is the fourth year the QVC Beauty Awards have been running, and we’re pleased to have won both ‘Best Facial Cleanser’ every year since they launched.

We never tire of learning that we’ve been nominated for a beauty award and, if we actually win, our excitement is palpable (just see Liz’s beaming face in this video, after our recent CEW (UK) award for Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser, which was given the heady accolade ‘Most Revolutionary Beauty Product of the Last 20 Years’).

Hot on the heels of this award, I’m thrilled to be able to let you know that the QVC Customer Beauty Award nominations have now been announced – and of course, it’s the customer awards that mean so much to us…

What are the QVC Customer Beauty Awards? They are the home shopping channel’s annual awards, where customers can vote for their favourite products. There are many categories, and it gives viewers the chance to show which are their absolute beauty must-haves. And it’s not just every brand on air who is nominated – you have to have ‘top ratings’ on the online customer reviews at qvcuk.com.

Thank you for all the wonderful reviews that you have given us, which have resulted in us being nominated for four prestigious beauty awards:

• Best Facial Cleanser Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser (won for past 3 years)
• Best Moisturiser Superskin Moisturiser (won for past 3 years)
• Best Anti-ageing Product Superskin Concentrate (last year’s winner)
• Best Eyecare Product Eyebright Soothing Eye Lotion

We have won Best Moisturiser and Best Facial Cleanser for the three years that the QVC Customer Beauty Awards have been running… but we still get that buzz to learn that we’ve been nominated by you again. On a personal note, I’m thrilled that many of you are experiencing really beneficial results from using our golden oil, Superskin Concentrate, to help ‘slow the ticking’. Combined with Superskin Moisturiser, this amazing facial oil works hard to help rejuvenate and smooth.  Your nomination really does mirror what you tell me online and in person.

It’s also rewarding to see that you still adore Eyebright, our soothing eye lotion – fab for cooling and comforting tired, stressed-out eyes (and ideal for the hayfever season!). This multi-tasker launched alongside Cleanse & Polish, Instant Boost Skin Tonic and Skin Repair Moisturiser 17 years ago, and it continues to be one of our bestsellers. I always see one in your baskets when out and about during my store visits. (I always keep a mini version in our fridge for sore, tired eyes – instant comfort for all the family, young and older!)

Thank you for sharing your honest and helpful feedback both here, on our Facebook page and also on qvcuk.com. We really are ‘all about the customer’ – in fact we live and breathe it!  You really do drive new product development, your feedback helps us ensure our service continues to be outstanding and your positivity keeps us all smiling. Thank you.

If you would like to vote for us, please visit the QVC website and click on the Beauty Awards logo.

I look forward to being on air in a few weeks for the nomination shows and sharing our excitement with you! (We’ll add the show dates to our QVC page online as soon as they’re confirmed!)

Caroline X

With Father’s Day fast approaching, I started thinking about what my Dad taught me about grooming.

I can remember, as a fresh-faced 14-year-old, asking my Dad for some advice on shaving. “Don’t bother” he said, “just grow a beard”.

Ever the optimist, I returned home from school that evening armed with an aerosol of shaving foam and a packet of razors, and headed straight for the bathroom. Ten minutes later, my mother was applying a cold compress to my scarlet face, trying to stop the bleeding. Maybe my Dad was right.

Of course, this was long before I discovered the Liz Earle for Men range and nowadays I could teach my Dad a thing or two about grooming. He tries to make out that he’s not interested, but then occasionally he will send me a text asking me to get him some more ‘shaving stuff’, so I think I’ve managed to convert him.

This Father’s Day, I’ll be treating him to our Men’s Everyday Skincare regime. Featuring four of our must-have grooming heroes, it’s a perfect gift for any hard-working Dad. Here’s why…

1. Wash
Our Face and Body Wash contains a blend of five pure essentials oils to leave skin smelling fresh, and the SLS-free formula helps your skin feel soft, too.  A little goes a long way, so be careful not to use too much!

2.  Shave
Just a pea-sized amount of our Sensitive Shave Cream used with a clean, sharp razor (I recommend using a good quality shaving brush, too), will give you a close, clean shave in no time at all.  We’ve specially selected shave grass, renowned for its soothing properties, and clary sage and eucalyptus to leave the skin smelling fresh.

3. Moisturise
Our lightweight, completely matte After-Shaving Moisturiser is a real must-have for guys of all ages. It sinks in easily without a trace and leaves skin feeling supple and moisturised. We’ve used a unique ingredient called self-heal to help soothe small nicks and calm razor burn.

4. Disguise
My secret weapon for guys just has to be Daily Eye Repair. I don’t leave home in the morning without using this – the genius formula with SPF10 helps keep the skin around the eye area moisturised and reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, while the blend of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide helps to disguise the appearance of dark shadows. Perfect for hiding those late nights and early mornings!

So, if like me, the ‘advice’ you received from your father wasn’t all that helpful and you have any queries about your grooming regime, visit us in store, call our friendly customer centre team on 01983 813913 or get in touch via our Facebook page.

All the best,

Leighton

Wow! What an amazing day. I’ve just returned from the beauty industry Oscars – the prestigious annual CEW (UK) Beauty Awards held in the ballroom of the Intercontinental Hotel in London’s Park Lane. The CEW (Cosmetic Executive Women) is the industry’s leading non-profit networking and mentoring organisation and its award nominations are judged by a panel of around 600 ‘beauty insiders’, including leading experts and professionals. In recent years, we’ve been fortunate enough to win many CEW awards including the amazing accolade of Best British Brand last year, as well as Best New Haircare Product (Prestige) for our Botanical Shine Shampoo. In previous years, our much-loved Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser has scooped the title of Best Classic Beauty Product, and we’ve also received awards for Superskin Body Cream and Superskin Moisturiser. So it really was with bated breath that the team and I sat with hundreds of others in hushed anticipation, under the magnificent twinkling chandeliers, as the results were read out.

The CEW Beauty Awards celebrate their 20th birthday in 2012, so this year they created a very special category to mark the occasion. This highly coveted new award is for the ‘Most Revolutionary Beauty Product of the Last 20 Years’ and, as you might imagine, there were lots of very famous, highly advertised hopeful contenders gathered together in the room. You could have heard a pin drop as the results were read out – and then the shock of hearing the immortal words “…and the winner is… Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser!” Oh my goodness – what an amazing moment in our history. Not only are these awards recognised by beauty professionals, they are also voted for by the cognoscenti and leading lights in the beauty world. We’re so very thrilled (and a little over-excited, as you can possibly tell) to have won this incredible honour that I just had to write and share our news with you.

As many of you will know, Kim and I created our Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser back in 1995. At the time, our range included just four products (Instant Boost Skin Tonic, Skin Repair Moisturiser and Eyebright Soothing Eye Lotion), but we knew we were onto something special with this fresh herby blend, based on botanicals and sensibly priced. Although Kim and I have very different skin types (Kim’s is oily and problem-prone, mine is very dry and eczema-prone), we both achieved fantastic results using Cleanse & Polish from day one. Very quickly, neither of us could do without it, and we soon realised we had a hit on our hands when our early-days mail-order phones rang off the hook with constant orders. Fast-forward 17 years on and we still have just the one cleanser, which we now send from the Isle of Wight to over 100 countries around the globe at the rate of one every 19 seconds! Women of all ages, stages of life and shades of skin just adore our creamy, fresh, plant-based cleanser every bit as much as Kim and I still do. I can’t begin to describe how proud we are of our talented team, who continue to make it all happen – and how wonderful it is to now be sharing our beauty secret with women around the globe.

Here at Liz Earle Beauty Co. we send a report around the company every Friday, highlighting some of the lovely things that have happened during the week: from wonderful customer comments to landmark events, individual achievements and more. We call this our Happy Friday report and I always look forward to its arrival in my inbox. For all of us here today, it’s a Very Happy Friday indeed.

I’m just back from a wonderful maternity leave, and it’s great to return to the Liz Earle part of my world again, hearing all your stories.

Firstly… wow!! Lots of exciting things have been happening while I’ve been running around after my two girls! The launch of Liz Earle Colour was such a thrill, as I know our teams have been working hard with this special project for a number of years. (It’s wonderful that so many of our top customer requests have been fulfilled – men’s, fragrance, haircare, treatments, and now colour too). Perfect to return from ‘growing’ my little family, to a growing Liz Earle product family! Time certainly doesn’t stand still here.

Believe it or not, it’s been a decade since Orange Flower Botanical Body Wash entered our lives, back in March 2002. To call this simply a ‘body wash’ doesn’t do justice to its luxuriously gentle, skin-softening nature. So much more than a wash, this versatile cleanser can be used for an aromatic shower or a brimming-with-bubbles bath foam (I know many of you regularly use it for both). Its benefits are legendary with Liz Earle fans – kind, natural-foaming bubbles that don’t strip (thanks to no sodium lauryl sulphate), making it perfect for those of you who suffer with sensitive skin. It’s gentle enough to use on children too.

For me, it’s also the scent that makes it a year-round winner for uplifting the senses. Those ‘clean’-smelling pure essentials oils just waft you away to a field of flowers, all with a fresh citrusy overtone – heaven! Of the seven pure essential oils in this clever, great-for-all-the-family formula, I love the subtle hint of lavandin and sweet orange – it reminds me of holidays, the children’s bath time and my precious ‘me-time’ showers, all in one go.

Customers regularly tell me that they now regard Orange Flower Botanical Body Wash as their ‘Instant Boost Skin Tonic moment in the shower or bath’ – a great description of the refreshing experience of using this award-winning body wash. I know many of you have shared your own anecdotes about this shower gel and bubble bath before, but please do share again here. We’d love to hear why you love this birthday beauty. A decade of heavenly bubbles – that’s really something to celebrate.

Happy Birthday, Orange Flower…and happy soft skin to all of us!

‘Discovered’ for the western world at the end of the 18^th century by Scottish adventurer Mungo Park, the very original name given to the shea tree was Vitellaria.  A competing botanist gave it the alternative name Butyrospermum parkii, which gained popular use and general recognition. This combines a description of the plant’s key feature, Butyrospermum, the Greek for ‘buttery seed’, with the species name parkii, for Park who ‘found’ it. It still appears like this in the ingredient listings of many products. But our research has shown that the more correct botanical name for the genus is Vitellaria and we have therefore chosen to reflect this in our ingredient listings. Botanists are now reverting to the original name because the first name a plant is given when it is botanically described is considered to have precedence, no matter if subsequent names are more accurate descriptions of the plant.

We have identified, and use in our products, two distinct subspecies of shea which produce butters that have slightly different properties. An advantage of using the name Vitellaria is that it enables us to distinguish between these ingredients on our packaging, so you can see which one we are using and where. In Superskin Body Cream, we’ve used the subspecies commonly known as shea nilotica or East African shea, which has the botanical name Vitellaria paradoxa nilotica. Its butter is slightly softer and melts at a lower temperature when compared to the other version, Vittelaria paradoxa (West African shea). Its leaves and flowers are also slightly larger, and the nut itself has a softer hull and texture.

The small difference in melting point makes all the difference to products that contain East African shea. While doing all the hard work that we expect from shea (enhancing the skin’s barrier function, reducing transepidermal water loss and improving skin elasticity), it brings a unique velvety difference to Superskin Body Cream, leaving you with the impression of effortless luxury.

From the Field
Native to the Nile valley region of eastern Africa, Vitellaria paradoxa nilotica is collected from the wild. In the areas where it grows, shea butter is used by women to protect their skin and hair from the drying effects of exposure to the Harmattan (wind from the Sahara) and the sun.

Klaus Fehling has worked with the Shea Uganda Project since 2004, helping women in Otuke County, Uganda bring their shea nuts to market. He has helped register the whole county of Otuke as organic, to ensure the women collecting shea achieve the best price for this unique ingredient.

JH: Klaus, tell me about the women’s association who collect East African shea for our Superskin Body Cream.
KF: The Shea Uganda Project has more than 760 registered women gatherers. An average household in Otuke has seven family members, so more than 5000 people are receiving additional income through sales of certified organic shea nuts by the project.

JH: How did the Shea Uganda Project come into being?
KF: The project started in 2005, achieving organic certification of 290,000 hectares in 2007. Otuke was chosen for this project since it is considered to have the highest tree density in Uganda. The whole county of Otuke has been registered as organic in order to ensure that this wild harvest receives a premium.

JH: Why is this project so critical for the forested savannah environment?
KF: Wood is prized for charcoal, putting pressure on trees through deforestation. The women of the Shea Uganda Project work very hard within their own community to put a value on the shea nuts and help to preserve the trees. These rural communities have spent over a decade disrupted by violence in the region, but the silver lining to this period of horror was the undisturbed regrowth of shea seedlings on abandoned farmland. The project’s members are encouraging their communities to leave the young saplings when cultivating the land, to ensure there will be an entirely new generation of shea trees from which to harvest in the future.

JH: How is the fruit collected?
KF: The fruit containing the shea nut is only collected after it has fallen to the ground in order to ensure complete ripeness. During the season, the women check underneath the trees each morning, collecting any fruit that has dropped. The nut is removed from the fruit, but nothing goes to waste: the fruit is used to feed the collectors’ families. The nuts are then laid out in the sun to dry for a week. The hull is removed and the nut’s ‘meat’ is placed back in the sun for two more weeks. This process allows much of the water in the nut to evaporate.

JH: How do the shea nuts reach us?
KF: Once a bag has been collected, it is taken to the local ‘store’ or buying centre. There, the storekeeper, another member of the project, weighs the harvest and pays the collector. The storekeeper will reject shea nuts that aren’t dry enough, because she knows she will pay for the water weight which will have evaporated (leaving a lighter nut) by the time I come to collect the community’s nuts. There are five buying centres in Otuke, Adwari, Okwongo, Orum and Olilim. I travel from Kampala, the capital of Uganda, to purchase the association’s shea, and arrange transport to Kampala. A lorry can carry between 10 and 25 tons of nuts. The shea nuts are collected from Kampala by Earthoils who transport them by road to their processing facility at Athi River in neighbouring Kenya where they are cold-pressed into butter for Liz Earle.