Anne Owen, founder of new functional tincture range Tomen, was first bitten by the entrepreneurial bug when she left her role as publisher of Modern Luxury’s Miami publication and moved back to her hometown of Chicago in 2014. At the time, she says Chicago was “a complete healthy food desert.” To help turn the desert into fertile ground for healthy food, she opened juice concept Owen + Alchemy and expanded it to three locations by 2016.
“I partnered with a classically trained chef because I wanted to educate people on the benefits of plant-based food and healthy eating for themselves, but also for the world,” she says. “If it doesn’t taste good, people aren’t going to stick to it.” Though she’s no longer operating Owen + Alchemy, she gained a knowledge of and passion for herbs such as gotu kola, ginseng and dandelion while running it. That knowledge and passion has driven the launch of Tomen.
After Owen + Alchemy, the brand started to bloom when Owen was consulting for Field & Farmer, the local food movement pioneer previously called Here Foods. When Field & Farmer announced they wanted to incubate Tomen, Owen realized she couldn’t develop the line alone. She enlisted her friend Linné Botanicals founder Jenna Levine to assist her. Owen says, “She’s a botanist. She’s one of those people you can throw into a field, and she’ll come back with a dinner and a face mask for you.” Owen + Alchemy had carried Linné Botanicals products.
“I wanted five formulas. I knew the functionality that I wanted, but I really wanted them to taste good, and that was definitely the challenge,” says Owen. Informed by traditional Chinese medicine, the five multifaceted adaptogenic liquid formulas are Digest, Calm, Immunity, Detox and Focus. They contain a multitude of ingredients including rosemary, white sage and bacopa leaves, lavender, lemon balm, elderberry, licorice, holy basil and reishi mushrooms.
Owen describes each blend as having distinct notes similar to fine wine. “I brought on a female sommelier, and we worked on the tasting notes because this is something kind of new for people, and I wanted to kind of guide them through what they should expect,” she says. Owen recommends customers put Tomen’s formulas in sparkling water. The brand’s bottles with 30 doses retail for $60. Subscribers get a 10% discount off the retail price.
Tomen launched exclusively at Brooklyn beauty haven Shen Beauty. The 10-year-old shop-cum-spa is a leading destination for emerging beauty and wellness brands, thanks to the discerning eye of founder Jessica Richards. “When I was approached by Anne, I thought, ‘Who needs another ingestible?’” says straight-talking Richards. “After seeing the product in person, meeting Anne and getting to know her and the story behind the brand, one of the initial things that stood out to me was, on her website, the line ‘created with respect and humility.’ The way she created her brand stood out to me as well. Everything is sustainably harvested, certified organic and is actually efficacious.”
Prior to Tomen’s launch at Shen, Richards spiked the champagne served at the store’s holiday shopping soiree with Tomen’s tinctures. “We sold through all the inventory that day,” reports Richards. “I knew Tomen would be a welcome addition to our lineup. They all taste amazing, and they are truly resonating with clients now that we have them in stock.” Owen says other stylish wellness-focused retailers like Clean Market and Goop would be good fits for Tomen. Of Paltrow’s online lifestyle emporium, Owen says, “This product makes sense for their consumer. They’d probably have an automatic understanding of what this is. It [wouldn’t be] quite as new and different to them.”
Owen raised a seed round of $300,000 from angel investors, friends and family to get Tomen to proof of concept. The founder is currently raising a series A convertible note bridge round, which she expects to use for future Tomen products. Owen points out Mother Nature has many more raw materials ripe for formulating. “There are so many botanicals out there, we’re just scratching the surface,” she says. “There are maybe 20 that are top of mind and buzzy, but there should be 500. I think the natural pharmacopeia is so powerful, and I do think the more that we learn about that, the more that we’re apt to protect our land where all of these plants are grown.”
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