Why French Skincare Brands Grow Their Own Ingredients
Dear Skin,
A few years ago, I toured a lavender farm in Provence. The guide explained how they harvest at a specific time of day when the essential oils are most concentrated, how the soil composition affects the plant's properties, how they let certain sections rest between plantings.
I remember thinking, "This is a lot of effort for something that's just going to end up as a fragrance note in someone's lotion."
But that's the point. That's exactly why some French skincare brands grow their own ingredients instead of buying them from suppliers like everyone else does.
The Problem With Sourcing Ingredients
Most skincare brands don't make their own ingredients. They buy them from suppliers who buy them from other suppliers. By the time an ingredient makes it into your moisturizer, it's passed through multiple hands.
This means the brand has limited control over quality, freshness, growing conditions, or how the ingredient was processed. Ingredients can be diluted, contaminated, or oxidized before they ever reach the formulation lab.
A brand might design a formula around a specific botanical extract, but if the extract they receive is lower quality than what they tested with, the final product won't work the same way. And most brands would never know because they're trusting their suppliers.
Why French Brands Take the Hard Route
Some French skincare brands decided this wasn't good enough. Instead of outsourcing, they grow their own ingredients.
This is not a small undertaking. We're talking about buying land, hiring agronomists, dealing with weather and pests. It's expensive, time-consuming, and significantly more complicated than ordering from a catalog.
But it gives them complete control. They control what goes into the soil, when plants are harvested, how ingredients are extracted and processed. They know exactly what's in their formulas because they grew it themselves.
The Farm-to-Face Philosophy
Farm-to-face skincare mirrors the farm-to-table food movement. Shorter supply chains mean fresher, more potent, more traceable ingredients.
When a brand grows its own botanicals, they can harvest at peak potency and process ingredients immediately instead of letting them sit in storage. They can experiment with cultivation methods to maximize beneficial compounds.
For example, polyphenols (the antioxidant compounds in plants) are most concentrated at specific times. If you're buying from a supplier, you have no idea when those plants were harvested. If you're growing them yourself, you can harvest at the exact right moment and process immediately to preserve maximum potency.
The same plant grown in different soil, in different climates, harvested at different times, will have different properties. When you control the growing conditions, you control the outcome.
Transparency You Can Verify
When a brand says "made with organic rose extract," what does that mean? Where did the roses come from? How were they grown?
Most of the time, the brand can't answer these questions because they bought the extract from a supplier.
When a brand grows their own ingredients, they can answer everything. They can show you the farm, explain their cultivation methods, walk you through extraction, and provide third-party certifications that cover the entire operation.
This level of transparency is rare in the beauty industry.
The French Botanical Tradition
France has a long history of botanical research and plant-based medicine. French pharmacies have been selling plant-based remedies for centuries. There's a cultural respect for plants as legitimate sources of active ingredients, not just pleasant additions.
French brands study plants scientifically to understand which compounds provide which benefits, then figure out how to extract and preserve those compounds effectively. That's different from just throwing lavender oil in a product and slapping "botanical" on the label.
When you grow your own ingredients, you can conduct this research directly. Test different varieties, experiment with growing conditions, study how storage affects potency. This expertise takes decades to develop.
Does It Actually Work?
Theoretically, yes. Fresher, more potent ingredients should create more effective formulas. Better quality control should mean more consistent results.
But it also depends on formulation expertise. You can grow the highest-quality rose extract in the world, but if you don't formulate it properly, it won't matter.
The French brands that invest in growing their own ingredients tend to also invest heavily in research and formulation. They're not just farmers rather, scientists studying how to transform botanical properties into effective skincare.
What This Means for You
You don't need to only buy from brands that grow their own ingredients. But it's worth understanding the difference between brands that control their supply chain and brands that don't.
French brands that grow their own botanicals aren't doing it because it's trendy. They're doing it because they believe it's the only way to guarantee quality and effectiveness.
The skincare industry has a lot of marketing that sounds impressive but doesn't mean much. But a brand that owns a farm, employs agronomists, conducts botanical research, and can trace every ingredient from seed to product? You can't fake that level of investment.
Cheers,
The Relterra Team
