I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to sit down a few weeks ago with Alina Rodriguez, founder and CEO of Alta Mara Beauty, to learn about her products, the Green Chemistry philosophy, and her journey as an entrepreneur.
Alta Mara uses the principles of Green Chemistry to create products that are not only safe and effective on skin, but are also good for the environment. But as you’ll learn from our conversation below, promising traceability is no easy feat. And when natural does not always mean good and synthetic does not always mean bad, it can be hard to convince consumers that you are the real deal. Find our more in our conversation below!
Rb6: Tell us the story of Alta Mara Beauty, how did it come to be?
Alina Rodriguez: So I started thinking about Alta Mara while I was at grad school at the Yale School of the Environment. My largest focus there was doing research in Green Chemistry, and I really wanted to figure out what a skincare brand would look like if I were to start implementing the 12 principles of Green Chemistry and build a sustainable supply chain around that, rather than develop a bunch of products and then later on take a sustainability approach.
From there, I thought a lot about what else was important to me when selecting the skincare products that I use. It took me over ten years to find something that worked. I didn’t understand what the ingredients were, how to use the products, or if they were appropriate for my skin type. So I did a lot of work to make sure that I avoided irritating ingredients (which is an ongoing process for me), cruelty free ingredients as well. I wanted to learn as much about my supply chain as possible, so wherever I can find traceability that would basically solidify my vendor relationship. One of the major issues in the beauty industry is that suppliers don’t know where their ingredients are coming from. There is not a lot of traceability there. But for suppliers to actually have information on that, that’s what I strive for with Alta Mara.
Rb6: Can you give us a brief overview of Green Chemistry? What does that mean to the layman?
AR: Sure, so Green Chemistry is a branch of chemistry that focuses on safety throughout the entire supply chain. So making sure that, at no point, are you using ingredients that are harmful or can be harmful once they break down in the environment or harmful when they are in the end-user’s hands. The other part of Green Chemistry aims to conserve natural resources, so making sure that you aren’t creating an imbalance in the natural ecosystem by taking too much from it. The third largest pillar focuses on preventing/eliminating waste. So it’s better to not create waste at all than to later figure out how to get rid of it. And if there absolutely is going to be waste, then ensuring that the waste is safe. So it’s basically taking a step back and looking over your entire supply chain and making sure the whole thing is safe and not wasteful.
Rb6: Okay, and how do you verify the efficacy of the ingredients in your products as well as the overall efficacy of the product when you combine everything together?
AR: So, when I start formulating products, I look through different scientific journals and see what research has been done with every single ingredient. I look for clinical trials where this percentage of people reacted positively to it and experienced this percentage of change in their skin. I look out for any potential allergic reactions as well.
When it comes to combining everything together in one final product, I try it on my skin and if it isn’t suitable for my skin type and is meant for someone else I have pools of people that are mostly family and friends that volunteer to try it out. If someone comes back and is like, this didn’t work, then I look to see if maybe that wasn’t the right skin type for the product or if I actually need to go back to the drawing board and select a different active ingredient. So I make sure that when it’s in testing phases with friends and family, that they can actually see results in their skin, otherwise I’m not going to release the product.
Rb6: You mention on your website that price accessibility is really important to the brand, what is the reasoning behind that? Beauty is an industry known for high margins, so what was the thinking behind the decision to keep Alta Mara affordable?
AR: My direct competitors are typically really high priced, mostly because they do a lot in-house. I really want to find key partners that are already scaling sustainability so that I don’t have to have that level of infrastructure, and then factor that price into my products. And just overall, I feel like super high-priced luxury products are really great and all, but we just continue telling people that if you don’t have a certain amount of money you just don’t deserve to have a better quality product, which isn’t true. So maybe you won’t have a product where everything is made in-house and that does provide a luxurious feel, but at the very least that product is still made with a lot of background checks to make sure we are being as sustainable as we possibly can.
“It took me over ten years to find something that worked. I didn’t understand what the ingredients were, how to use the products, or if they were appropriate for my skin type.”
Rb6: What so far has been the biggest challenge you have faced starting and running the company?
AR: I think the biggest challenge has been supplier transparency, because there are no regulations saying that they have to tell me where everything comes from. Thankfully, consumers demand sustainability, so it puts pressure now on suppliers to disclose that, but they don’t need to. If a supplier comes back to me and says, we don’t have that information, then I just have to accept that and try to find someone else. Finding someone else that’s willing to sell at a low enough quantity for me is really hard.
Rb6: Stepping back to the beauty industry more broadly, what is one thing you wish consumers knew or thought about when buying beauty products? When they go to make beauty purchasing decisions, what do you wish they were thinking?
AR: I wish that customers would, and this is not the customers fault at all, but I wish that they had a better sense of true sustainability in terms of natural vs synthetic. There’s so much misinformation out there. People think that all-natural is always good, and that’s not the case. You can get a reaction on your skin with natural ingredients, and it’s also possible that your natural product is not sustainable if, perhaps, the ingredients have been overharvested or there’s not fair-trade.
While we’ve seen some synthetics come to light that are really harmful, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, because it’s synthetic, it’s less irritating or it works better for your skin or it’s just more sustainable because you don’t have to have a bunch of people go out on a field for hours and hours on a hot day and overharvest this ingredient. So yeah, natural versus synthetic is a huge issue.
“We just continue telling people that if you don’t have a certain amount of money you don’t deserve to have a better quality product, which isn’t true.”
Rb6: You see similar parallels in food, where labels like Organic does not mean pesticide-free or all-natural does not mean healthy.
So we are heading into our final questions. First, what products do you currently offer and how can people get them?
AR: So right now we have a cleanser and a moisturizer. We’re still doing some testing for our serums, but you can order the cleanser and moisturizer on our website, altamarabeauty.com. We also have a shop page set up through our Instagram (@altamarabeauty). You just click on our tagged product post.
Rb6: I know I have loved hearing your story and I know others in the Rb6 community have as well. How can people get in touch with you?
AR: DMs through Instagram (@altamarabeauty) — I check them very frequently. You can email me alina@altamarabeauty.com. We also have a contact page on our website www.altamarabeauty.com.
Rb6: So the name of the blog is RunningBySix, which was born out of my experience working in New York. In the summers, in order for me to get everything done I wanted to in the morning and still get to work on time, I needed to start my morning run before 6am. What I found was that every day when I went out, I would see the same people on the trail and we had this community of people who were literally and figuratively, running by six.
So, with that in mind, what gets you running by six? Or put another way, what gets you up in the morning and makes you want to work on Alta Mara?
AR: I think what gets me up is establishing a solid attainable plan week by week. So usually on Saturdays I have really big brainstorms and I break everything down into very small tasks day by day and suddenly things don’t seem so daunting anymore.
Usually what keeps me in bed is feeling like this is overwhelming, I can’t do this, I don’t even know where to start. But knowing exactly where I should start is very motivating and uplifting. I get up, I have a whole morning routine: I meditate, I read, I cook breakfast. I feel like that really gets me going for the day a little bit more focused.
Rb6: What can we, the RunningBySix community, do to help you and Alta Mara beauty?
AR: Directing people to either the website (www.altamarabeauty.com) or Instagram (@altamarabeauty). We currently have a relatively small following and we just need more eyes on us. Just a way for people to find out who we are and know how to get to our contact pages.
It was so great sitting down with Alina to hear her story. Check out the Alta Mara website and Instagram to try some of her products.
Get excited for more similar content! RunningbySix is excited to feature some of the most exciting startups and founders in the fitness, wellness, and natural food spaces.
Alexa Murray 
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