Bienvenue Ar’home readers,
Ar’home’s roots are artisanal. When Sandra founded the brand, her focus was on small batches of hand-crafted, high quality products, created with the goal of bringing the beauty and power of aromatherapy to her local communities – both in France and in Hong Kong. The current Ar’home range of products and services is all about finding ways to filter the knowledge of nature into busy lives and routines that are too often taken over with the notions of convenience and “should”, rather than taking time to notice how we feel.
As Sandra explored her passion for bringing aromatherapy to daily cosmetics and skincare, a full range of products emerged – as you’ll see on her website. While the range is large and varied, most often Sandra still makes small batch products to order as this allows her to guarantee quality and keep volumes manageable as she has to-date been based out of her two small in-home laboratories.
“Home” in France is in Aveyron, where a section of Sandra’s property has been under renovation for the past 3 years as local builders and craftspeople have worked to help create Ar’home’s next exciting new beginning – the Ar’home Spa, and the Ar’home Laboratory. A big thank you must go here to the team at YTP Laboratory Layout Specialists for their professional and timely work on the project, valuable recommendations and high quality service.
In this post, we’ll be introducing you to the laboratory side of this new leaf for the business and sharing what it means for Ar’home. The “labo” (Sandra’s familiar abbreviation for her new workspace:) is a space designed for adventures in aromatherapy, and where controlled laboratory conditions are perfect for making specific batch trials for product and formula development possible. These plans have been a few years in the making, and excitement levels at Ar’home are high as we share the realisation of this dream.
The Ar’home Lab is specifically a Skincare Lab. As a Natural Cosmetic Formulator, this space will allow me to put together paper formulas (my formulator journal) and make batch trials for them. This lab is my dream.
While there are innumerable simple ways to include unblended natural products and essential oils into your routine, the science of combined-ingredient skincare is 100% biology and chemistry (#NatureIsScience). The laboratory allows Sandra a single, larger dedicated space to create and store the Ar’home products she has developed. One of Sandra’s goals is also to create Ar’home white label products for spa and hotels and for high end brands looking to develop their natural and organic ranges. White label products are large volume bases of specific products (think skincare, face cream, eye serum, body massage oils, face oils, and body milks) that can be customised for these clients. Bringing clean, responsible, truly natural cosmetics to B-2-B clients in this industry is not only a solid business decision for this artisanal brand, but also a superb way to introduce the real benefits of aromatherapy-inspired handcrafted skincare and cosmetics to a larger cross section of the beauty and wellness community. To learn more about our values around clean skin care, visit our values statement here.
Ultimately, the complete Ar’home vision will include Ar’home Lab, Spa, Education, Skincare, and Holistic (therapeutic products and services). The laboratory is the foundation stone on which the other elements of the business can be built (hence the excitement chez nous;). In the near future, Sandra is looking to spend some quality lab time on developing her formulas, specifically those for the Ar’home Specialised Skincare & Skincare Fundamentals ranges. So stay tuned if you’re already a fan of these essentials for true skin care, because they’re about to get even better!
The lab is designed around contemporary, aesthetic, ergonomic, qualitative and scalable laboratory furniture and includes laboratory benches, a Smart Flow extractor hood, hot plates, glass display shelves and heating magnetic stirrers to name a few. Sandra says that for her, this equipped lab means “I will establish formula specifications, conduct stability studies – I’m excited to apply my technical competence & knowledge base gained from past few years to generate new ideas and to have a chance to express my creativity”. As an artisanal brand, coming back to this individual creative and curiosity-fuelled element is what it’s all about, and it is Sandra’s personal creative style that lends this brand its unique personality and purpose.
We’ve included some photos of the beautiful new beginning that the Ar’home laboratory represents for Sandra and her business, and you can keep an eye on upcoming social media posts where we’ll be sharing more as we get settled into the new space this Spring. 
Don’t miss our next post where we’ll be introducing the gorgeous Ar’home Spa… 
Merci, à bientôt,
Sandra