Clean Beauty, Plain and Simple
While dealing with her own unbalanced skin after pregnancy, Jenny Huurinainen set out in search of a skincare routine to solve the issues she felt no other products on the market could. Hundreds of formula versions later, the result is OM-SE, a Swedish unisex skincare brand that she launched in 2020 together with her husband Jacob.
OM-SE, which is Swedish for ‘to care for’, consists of only four unique, 100 % natural and plant-based products. We spoke with Jenny about the brand’s simple yet revolutionary take on how to achieve beautiful skin, why the market is flooded with products that don’t measure up, and why there is so little transparency in the beauty industry.
Photography: Alexander Gårdenberg
Skincare is usually shrouded in mystery, fancy wording, and complicated routines. OM-SE’s message is the opposite. How can a total of four products cover the skincare needs of every gender, ethnicity, age, and skin type?
We aim to simplify and be fully transparent, as opposed to many other skincare brands out there. At the end of the day, we want our customers to understand and feel at ease with what they put on their skin. Our extremely user-centric approach hails from our wish to create something that is beneficial for the skin. It isn’t a product line created out of a marketing perspective with a mission to maximize profit. The reason that our products really work for everyone and in every situation is that they are jam-packed with all the essential ingredients that the skin needs on a daily basis. The idea is to offer a fully adaptable, multi-purpose tool that users can personalise according to their own skin’s needs. An example of this is that we decided to create an oil instead of a face cream. In a cream, there’s a fixed amount of moisture and nourishment alongside additives and emulsifiers, while an oil lets you decide if one or several drops are needed.
Why hasn’t this been done before?
Looking at beauty in the traditional retail landscape, brands need shelf space to be noticed. A large portfolio means more space is provided to showcase the brand and its products. That is the harsh reality behind the beauty industry and why there are so many products out there. Fast beauty – to be able to offer novelties to constantly stay on top of buzzy trends and formulations – is today’s norm. We believe in slow beauty and have created a line of products that we use ourselves. From a strategic point of view, our line consisting of only four products might not make much sense, but in our simplified and transparent approach, we aim to revolutionalize skincare. Selling directly to consumers online and through a number of selected retailers allows us to do things differently.
What is your inspiration behind the products, and how were they initially developed?
Inspired by the FODMAP methodology of eliminating one ingredient at a time, I started experimenting with ingredients on my own skin. I also started documenting it, narrowing in on a blend that suited my skin needs. After having enlisted friends to try it out, we initiated a large-scale trial of the products before setting out to find a manufacturer. We now produce our products according to our own formulations right here in Sweden, in small batches to ensure freshness and potency. Naturally, OM-SE’s products meet all the regulations set by the European Commission.
What makes OM-SE’s products so potent and how are they different from other products that claim to do the same thing?
We have completely left out all unnecessary oils and ingredients that are usually added to increase volume and dilute a product. If you were to compare our products with others in the same price range by carefully examining the list of ingredients, you would find that we’ve chosen to include only the very best, most potent ingredients that actually deliver results.
