“We're delighted to partner with District Ventures Capital and to continue growing the Province Apothecary brand with their knowledge and expertise,” says Julie Clark, Founder of Province Apothecary, in her remarks to the press this week.
“From the outset,” she says, “Province's mission has been to create not only a product, but a brand that promotes health, wellness and sustainability and we look forward to a partnership with a fund that shares this interest.”
District Ventures Capital invests in clean beauty and wellness
District Ventures Capital invests in food, beverage, health, and wellness businesses. And this is the fund’s second investment in the clean beauty sector.
In June 2019, the fund invested $150,000 in Graydon Skincare, when that brand—founded in 2012 by Graydon Moffat—completed a stint in the seventh cohort of the District Ventures Accelerator (which, like the investment fund, is also led by Arlene Dickinson).
Now the fund has invested in a second Canada-based clean beauty brand: Province Apothecary. “After learning about Province Apothecary and their organic product line, we were excited to learn more about the formulation process and company mission,” says Dickinson, General Partner at District Ventures Capital, in this week’s media release.
And, she adds this, explaining (at least in part) the motivation for the investment, “We came to discover a product that not only provided incredible skincare results for consumers, but a Canadian company that supported an array of sustainable practices and provided a fresh perspective into the beauty industry. Today, we are enthused to call them partners.”
Province Apothecary makes small-batch skin care with natural inputs from Canada
Julie Clark founded Province Apothecary in 2012, when the current indie beauty movement was just a whisper in the cosmetics and personal care marketplace. Her focus is on skin care formulated with sustainably sourced, certified-organic ingredients.
Today, the brand sources naturals from each of the 10 Canada Provinces. From British Columbia, for instance, raspberry oil and glacial clay; from Alberta, beeswax; from Manitoba, lentil flour; from Ontario, sunflower oil; from Quebec, maple syrup; and from Nova Scotia, seaweed. (And it’s worth noting that the brand’s sourcing strategy caught the attention of Cosmetics Design several years back, at the 2016 IBE New York event.)
The conscious efforts of Province Apothecary extend beyond ingredient sourcing. The brand takes care to do something few businesses in North America do—acknowledge that the land the business operates on are “traditional territories of First Nations Peoples.”
The land acknowledgement statement on ProvinceApothecary.com notes that those territories include “the Anishinabek Nation, the Huron Wendat Confederacy, [and] the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.” And the acknowledgement, penned by Diane Longboat of www.soulofthemother.org and signed by Clark, calls on the brand community to “work together in harmony, may we respect one and another, may we honour the Original Peoples of this land and thank them for caretaking on behalf of future generations and all of us present today. May we learn from their relationship with the natural world.”
