RAspect got a mention in a great feature on Wavescape recently – thank you Spike! We’re super excited to get some air time with one of the bastions of surfing in SA. Keep your eyes peeled for more on this wavelength over the rest of summer! Full story follows…
Turtles and Rays
Fri, 3 November 2017
The ingredients of RAspect, the brainchild of Anne of The Apothecary, are 100% natural and hand crafted, comprising organic Mozambican coconut oil, castor bean oil, natural zinc oxide, Cape beeswax, organic fair-traded cocoa, vanilla oil and cinnamon leaf.
RAspect is the culmination of seven years of work stemming from a unique date, 10/10/10 (10 October 2010), when Anne and her surfer husband Carl contributed to www.350.org‘s Global Work Party on climate change by showing the advantages of removing harmful synthetic chemicals from our lives.
Anne then began to experiment with herbs and oils, and the infusion of vinegars and “mixing various ingredients” to create household cleaning agents. “It thrilled me how well these simple, natural concoctions did so many jobs and were so versatile and beneficial in a huge range of ways”.
Anne was enthused by the notion, and put recipes on her website Spotless Living to encourage people to follow suit, but “as much as I tried to share that joy and inspire others to try their hand at it, increasingly friends and family would ask me to make up things for them, which they could buy.”
For some years, she only made products for her home and family, or as gifts. She slowly realised she had found something that she loved to do, was passionate about, and had value. When she realised that the best way to spread the message of Spotless was through creating wholesome, honest products, The Apothecary was born, with the stated goal to MAKE IT BETTER.
The Apothecary’s first batch of products went on sale in November 2014. “I started very small, emailing a small group of friends and family that had expressed an interest. I would take orders, and then make a bespoke batch of products to meet the order.
“I kept on like that for some time, as it allowed me to take another giant step in learning what other people liked and wanted, and what it felt like to make the things I loved on a slightly bigger scale than just for myself.”
Her first retail client came in February 2015, the Back Area Gardens shop in Oude Molen Eco Village, who still stock her products. This year operations have expanded and The Apothecary is now listed by a growing number of natural and organic online stores and retail outlets such as Foragers Deli in Scarborough, and Faithful to Nature, who stock her range of household cleaning, personal care and skin products.
One such product is RAspect, a totally natural, edible, waterproof sunscreen. Like all of The Apothecary’s products, RAspect began as a home-brew, bru. For a few years she fine-tuned it on her family, but it was when Carl returned from a boys trip to the Mentawais in 2015 that the proof truly was in the pudding, and things heated up.
Positive feedback from some respected surfers (including Dale Staples, Mike Schlebach and Greg Bertish) has given Anne the confidence that RAspect is what it sets out to be – in the words of Tereza (Kom Surf): “Well done with such an amazing product! All surfers desperately need a proper sunblock and this one seems to be the one”.
RAspect is available to purchase at these stores.
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