Active Recovery: the personal care and wellness category for people living energetically

Danielle Pitts launched DUCALM, a brand “described and trademarked as ‘active recovery for your skin’” ​in the fall of 2016. Asked to explain her concept further, Pitts tells Cosmetics Design that “To us, this means our products are both calming yet packed with active ingredients to balance, tone and help the skin recover after a tough day, post workout or travel.”​

Linda Gillette created a personal care brand for the unique needs of salon professionals: Parodi. The brand portfolio includes a daily moisturizing and an intensive moisturizing hand cream, an exfoliant for feet, a foot cream, and most importantly here a Comforting Muscle Lotion (which has been on the market since a soft launched in the spring of 2017 at America’s Beauty Show in Chicago).

Important skin care​

Pitts is confident her brand is a first in its class: “We are the first company to use this [recovery] terminology for skincare within the specific active lifestyle space that it was designed for,” ​she tells Cosmetics Design.

“DUCALM was born out of a necessity for myself,” ​notes Pitts, “and I feel the category is important to others too. We are living hectic and active lives, we pack it all in but we still want to keep up with quality skincare. The key is for the products to work with us on-the-go and serve our skin what it needs, when it needs it.”​

The Parodi Comforting Muscle Lotion was also born out of need. “From working with salon professionals, weekend athletes and people that regularly use muscle lotions I knew we needed to develop something that worked and could be the ‘next generation’ of muscle creams,” ​Gillette tells Cosmetics Design.

“The formulation,” ​explains Gillette, “took over two years to finalize. I worked with a chemist in Paris, France, a chemist in Los Angeles, California, and an alternative wellness author and educator in Chicago, Illinois. The input along with the trials and errors of these wonderful women helped create what I believe is an amazing formula that is the next generation of muscle care.”​

Active lifestyle​

DUCALM products retail at (among other doors and channels) select Olympic training facilities. But Pitts recognizes that every life is an active life; it’s simply a matter of any given customer’s activity level.

“The Olympic customer was interested in the beauty of our cold weather solutions designed to heal skin after being exposed to the elements,” ​Pitts says. “High performance athletes are just one facet of who we are. Most people take part in physical interests and we’re all exposed to the elements, so recovery is a basic need.”​

For Gillette, a salon and beauty industry veteran, active recovery is also more about the benefits than the exertion of Olympic skiing or salon blowouts. “In the cosmetic world, I believe [active recovery] means using ingredients or having a product that is actively doing something to the skin and also having an element that helps the skin recover,”​ she says. “The PARODI Comforting Muscle Lotion actively cools the skin to help the muscles feel better while the arnica and magnesium oil relax the muscle to feel better.”​ 

Always moving​

To be sure, there are more active skin care and beauty products on the way. At DUCALM, Pitts explains, it “is never about duplicating or repeating products. Our up and coming ideas will aim to round out our collection in various ways to up the game even further, making sure, as always, that everything works well as a whole.”​

“I don’t think any brand that looks to get into this space benefits by just following what others are doing. New brands should connect with a specific tribe and design for it. There’s lots of use ‘in scene’ to be done and for us, performance is key,” ​she says. DUCALM will be exhibiting, and launching new products, at the upcoming IBE LA event this January.

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Deanna Utroske, CosmeticsDesign.com Editor, covers beauty business news in the Americas region and publishes the weekly Indie Beauty Profile column, showcasing the inspiring work of entrepreneurs and innovative brands.