Although dating back to the 1800s, the standard chapstick may not be the best solution for your dry lips—or the environment. Not only do most lip balms contain chemicals, but the external plastic tubes are not exactly helping to combat climate change, either.
Seeing these two problems, two high school students have created a new eco-friendly solution called Twin Skin. The company makes lip balm, lip scrubs and lip tints that are made from all-natural ingredients and packaged into biodegradable tubes.
“We want to encourage people to decrease their carbon footprint,” said Kate Lapierre, who co-founded the company with her twin sister, Kristianna Lapierre. “We want people to switch to more sustainable options, and with Twin Skin, you can.”
Twin Skin lip balm is made from USDA-certified organic shea butter, beeswax, coconut oil and essential oils.
The lip scrubs contain the same ingredients but are mixed with a sugar scrub instead of the balm material, which helps get rid of dead skin. The tints are a natural alternative to lipstick.
“A normal lip balm is filled with chemicals, and lipsticks have color dyes ,and these sometimes will make your lips chapped just because of the harmful ingredients in it,” Kate told Rhode Island Inno. “Because of our natural ingredients, our customers and people who have tried it have found that their lips stay smooth all day.”
The Lapierre sisters launched the company during their sophomore year at North Smithfield High School after Kate took an entrepreneurship course that tasked her with creating a business plan.
She then teamed up with Kristianna, and through a process of trial and error, the two began mixing and melting the ingredients, then pouring them into biodegradable tubes.
Now high school seniors, Kate and Kristianna have seen their company gain some serious traction.
Kate said Twin Skin is currently being sold in a salon in Massachusetts, with the product soon to be rolled out at other local businesses as well. The company also sells the product through its social media sites and is preparing to launch an e-commerce website, potentially as soon as the end of March.
Twin Skin received entry into the Lt. Governor’s Entrepreneurship Challenge in both 2018 and 2019. The challenge is a statewide business competition in Rhode Island that allows high school students to compete for $12,000 in scholarship funds. In 2019, the two sisters won a $2,500 scholarship in the challenge.
Most recently, Twin Skin was one of 29 businesses in the Ocean State to be named as a 2020 Inno on Fire winner.
As they gear up for college, Kate said the duo plans to continue building the business, focusing in the near-term on branding, with the possibility of adding new products further down the line.
