This Wildcrafting Brand Born In The Mountains Of Wyoming Has Landed At Goop And Credo

Over nearly two decades enduring the New York grind in the beauty and public relations industries, Kendra Kolb Butler confronted the stressors of work: tight deadlines, demanding performance expectations, critical management decisions and long hours. Burnt out, she left the city in 2015 to settle in Jackson, Wyo., where she traded office stressors for environmental ones such as fierce snowstorms, intense dryness and extreme exposure to ultraviolet rays.

“Jackson is a harsh place to live for the skin. We sit at 6,200-feet elevation, so we are right next to the sun. We have low humidity levels. We have big temperature swings. We can have 50 feet of snow in the winter, and it can get hot in the summer,” says Kolb Butler, a former senior vice president of communications and marketing at Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare who opened two-unit retailer Alpyn Beauty Bar less than a year after her move. “My clients coming into the store were telling me they couldn’t find products that would work in this climate.”

Kolb Butler didn’t have to venture far to tackle her clients’ issues. She came across arnica and chamomile in the Tetons overlooking Jackson, and combined them with locally-grown borage, sage and calendula to form a proprietary complex for Alpyn Beauty, a new skincare brand hitting Goop and Credo. The brand is starting with three products priced from $36 to $62 that couple the complex with mighty skincare ingredients like glycolic, hyaluronic and lactic acids, squalene, algae and ceramides: PlantGenius Melt Moisturizer, PlantGenius Creamy Bubbling Cleanser and PlantGenius Line-Filling Eye Balm.

“My whole concept looks to plants that are native. They find a way to survive the same conditions that our skin has to deal with. They’re close to the sun, but also have to deal with the cold. They have to deal with temperature swings from day to night,” says Kolb Butler. “If I can harvest their power and put that in skincare formulations, I can address the concerns of my clientele. Taking it a step further, if it works for my clientele, imagine how it’s going to work for people in places like New York or Los Angeles.”

“My whole concept looks to plants that are native. They find a way to survive the same conditions that our skin has to deal with. They’re close to the sun, but also have to deal with the cold. They have to deal with temperature swings from day to night. If I can harvest their power and put that in skincare formulations, I can address the concerns of my clientele.”

Alpyn Beauty depends on a wildcrafting or foraging method to harvest its arnica and chamomile, and cultivates borage, sage and calendula in a mountain setting to challenge and make them hearty. Kolb Butler describes the wildcrafting process as collecting ingredients at the optimum moment for potency from their natural habitat while leaving plants intact. Alpyn Beauty is planning to incorporate additional wildcrafted and locally-grown ingredients in future products.

“I’m perplexed by the fact that more people aren’t doing it,” says Kolb Butler of wildcrafting in the beauty segment. “It can be difficult because we handpick ingredients and some of them are at 10,000 feet, but I feel the practice is going to become more mainstream because of the sustainability aspect. It’s 100% sustainable. It’s like taking a twig from a massive oak tree. The plant never dies.” She continues, “We have cleaned up the formulas, and taken out parabens and sulfates, but there’s a lot of the same ingredients out there. Where’s the discovery? That’s what I’m trying to provide.”

To support Alpyn Beauty’s development, which spanned two years, and its expansion, Kolb Butler raised money from friends and family. Her husband, Ryan Butler, a private equity expert and former managing director at Portfolio Advisors LLC, serves as COO of the brand and helps guide its business strategies. Alpyn Beauty is sticking to tight distribution at the outset. Kolb Butler plans on visiting retail locations to educate customers and staff, and is keeping its store network limited early on partly to try to travel to them all. Industry sources project the brand could generate $2 million in sales during its first year on the market.

“We carefully selected Credo and Goop because they have a brand ethos that’s perfectly aligned with ours. They have active, engaged client bases interested in clean beauty. Those are exactly the people we are marketing to,” says Kolb Butler. “We want slow, organic growth as we get the brand out there. We prefer to go narrow and deep versus opening too many places at once. I want to explain what wildcrafting is and be able to personally touch everybody I can.”