Our Timeline

If I had to narrow down my main inspiration for Tropic, I’d say it came from two places. The first was my grandma, a medicinal chemist and toxicologist, who taught me that, like our bodies, our skin deserves to be fed with the most healthy, nourishing, natural ingredients.

The second source of inspiration has to be my upbringing and childhood home in Cairns, Australia. From fresh aloe vera plants to exotic fruit trees, the abundance of ingredients I would see everyday had a huge effect on the products I would later create.

After moving to London aged 13, I started to think about selling my favourite homemade body scrub recipe to help my mum pay the bills.

I’d started to make this blend of jojoba and macadamia oils, exfoliating sea salts, and lemon myrtle, bergamot and eucalyptus essential oils back when we were in Cairns. It was the tropical origin of the ingredients that would eventually lead me to name my brand Tropic.

Aged 15, I poured a freshly made batch of body scrub into 50 jam jars and sold it for the very first time at Greenwich Market. I had complete faith in my product, but even I couldn’t have imagined I would sell out in one day!

It was over that school summer holiday that I realised I wasn’t alone in my passion for fresh, natural skincare.

Alongside my studies over the next six years, I devoted weekends and evenings to formulating recipes, making products in my mum’s kitchen and selling them across London.

The more diverse my range of products, the more rapidly my customer base grew.

After I appeared on BBC’s The Apprentice, Lord Sugar was so impressed by the products that he invested to become a 50/50 partner, and Tropic’s life as an official company began.

We finally moved from my mum’s kitchen into our first ever Tropic HQ!

I always loved the personal touch of making connections directly with my market stall customers, so I didn’t want that to change when Tropic officially launched. On May 4th 2013, we began our social selling business platform with 400 founding Ambassadors.

Our mission? To empower people to build their own beauty business with us by selling the natural products they loved. In the last eight years, I’m proud to say we’ve made that a reality for over 20,000 active Ambassadors.

In 2021, we were recognised by The Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 as the UK’s fastest growing skincare brand for an incredible five years running! We also did some counting and realised that we’ve scooped up over 300 industry accolades, with winning awards in everything from body care and hair care to makeup and baby products.

A big year for Tropic. We reassessed everything from the ground up and evolved in all parts of the business – updating everything from our logo to our formulations! 

Most importantly, we upgraded every single formula in our core skincare range and achieved COSMOS-certified organic status for the majority of those products. We also updated our packaging to include more post-consumer recycled plastic than ever before, making big strides towards our Infinite Purpose of creating a greener, healthier, more empowered world.  

In an industry first, we also introduced INNERBOTTLE™ technology make our best-selling and brand-new moisturisers zero-waste and easily refillable. We believe in progress, not perfection, and we’re continuing to take measurable actions in order to become as eco-conscious as possible. So, watch this space! The future is Tropic.