CEO Emilie Hoyt Celebrates 25 years of LATHER Skincare By Writer and Contributor Emily McGinn
Natural skincare brand LATHER celebrated their 25th anniversary at the end of October.
CEO Emilie Hoyt, a Palos Verdes native, launched the brand in 1999 out of her own need for clean, natural skincare products.
“I had very severe migraine headaches, and I found that they were, in part, triggered by perfume and synthetic fragrance,” Hoyt says. “When I discovered this, I was in middle school and just starting to use more beauty products and hair products. [Synthetic fragrances] were very prevalent, and perfume was very prevalent in the 1980s. So I went to eliminate all the products that contained perfume from my beauty routine and home environment.”
What Hoyt found, however, was that many of the ingredients contributing to her migraines were ubiquitous throughout the beauty industry, regardless of price point and brand. Though clean and natural beauty products are more readily available now, Hoyt discovered that in the 1990s, it was difficult to find clean beauty products.
As a result, it was “almost impossible” for her to eliminate this migraine trigger from her life.
“It just opened all these questions up for me, and that led me on my journey to, through the next several years, always being on the lookout for something, reading about things and looking at alternatives,” she says. “After college and after working for a few years, [I] eventually launched the whole line of products in 1999.”
Hoyt launched LATHER decades before clean beauty became trendy in the beauty industry. As a result, she became a go-to brand not only for those suffering from similar issues as her, but also for those facing different conditions. Hoyt recalls having customers with sensitivities and skin conditions like eczema, as well as people undergoing intense treatments such as chemotherapy.
Over the past 25 years, Hoyt has seen a shift in the industry, especially in the realm of consumer behavior and education. People have become more aware of dangerous ingredients in beauty products — a shift that Hoyt helped spearhead with LATHER.
“When I first started, it was such an effort to try to explain to people why we made our products using different ingredients and in a different way, and why they needed to turn the bottle of the product they're using over and really read the ingredients and understand,” Hoyt says. “Nowadays, we have come so far. There have been times in the last few years where I've had customers educate me about something because they know so much. So it’s been amazing to see the amount of education and the empowerment that consumers have in the beauty industry [now].”
Hoyt says that she has also seen more independent entrepreneurs manage to break into the industry, which has historically been controlled by only a few companies. This change has contributed to the clean beauty movement gaining momentum.
As an entrepreneur entering the industry herself 25 years ago, Hoyt faced many obstacles to reach where she is today. She started her business when she was young and had to navigate leading a company.
“I think when I started and I was very young, I was always trying to prove myself and not wanting to show any vulnerability, and that led to mistakes as a leader and manager,” she says.
She also had to steer the company through multiple world events that rippled through the economy, ranging from 9/11 when LATHER was still a young company to the more recent COVID-19 pandemic. As the CEO, she has focused on quality control for the brand and maintaining high-quality products for customers.
“In making products that are touching people's skin on a daily basis, [you have to] earn their trust,” Hoyt says. “I like to talk to our team and say, ‘We work so hard to earn a spot in someone's shower, next to someone's sink or on someone's bedside table, and that's such an honor and responsibility to be part of their daily routine and to ensure that our products are going to care for them.’ I think it's challenging to develop really special products that are different and are truly needed and that serve a purpose that can't be found elsewhere. It’s a lot of work.”
As Hoyt and the LATHER brand chart their path forward — starting with holiday gift packages heading into the winter season — Hoyt reflects on her favorite part of the job: the feedback from customers.
“Spending time with the customers, hearing their stories and how long they've used LATHER and how LATHER has changed their life and solved a lot of problems for them [is the best part],” she says. “There will not ever be any business success that feels as good as talking to a customer that comes up and tells me that our products made a positive difference in their life.”
Bio:
Emily McGinn is a journalist based in the Los Angeles area. She enjoys reporting on and writing about a variety of topics from lifestyle to news, especially in her areas of specialty, environmental science and political science.
