We’re an adventurous beauty brand that’s had enough of so-so salons and grey-beige products. We want to bring the world to your senses!
The Great Escape is a beauty salon located in Truro, Cornwall that opened in November 2008.
We could never find a range of products to use in our treatments that were fun and full of incredible ingredients
…so we decided to make our own!
Currently we only have a range of candles and a cuticle oil but we are full of ideas for expanding this range and would love to be able to raise enough funds to create a variety of skin and body care products.
Not only would this enable us to create a range of treatments unique to us at our salon in Truro, but also it would mean we could take TGE on the road to pop up markets and events.
We want our brand to be more readily available to everyone across the country and create not only high quality skincare, but also a whole experience… a great escape.
We’re bored of the generic materials and shapes gracing the cosmetic counters, the same old ingredients being used over and over especially those ones that you can’t even pronounce.
The Great Escape skincare will be made by hand in small batches and with complete transparency. Every ingredient is there for reasons we can explain, from sources we trust and can trace. We want to create inspiring skincare utilising ingredients from all over the earth, fusing together fun and function.
Each product is inspired by a different part of the world and encompasses everything about that place, from the illustrations on the skyline labels, the scent and the ingredients themselves.
Our packaging is detailed and of the highest quality. Our entire branding and final look of our product is as important as the product itself. We want to tap into memories of your adventures that had otherwise been forgotten, inspire more ‘great escapes’ or even just provide an experience in your own home to forget the stresses of the 9-5.
I’m Emma and I’m the owner and founder of The Great Escape.
When I was 19, after completeing my training to become a Beauty Therapist, I was very lucky to get a job on board a cruise ship and had my first taste of the big wide world.
After sailing the merry seas for 8 months and falling head over heals in love with travel, I returned to my beloved Cornwall and back to reality.
Wanting to satisfy my wanderlust, and the desire to stay within the beauty industry (not to mention my new found independence!), I decided to open my own salon, The Great Escape.
I was fed up of so-so salons and I hated the clinical feel most of them had and wanted to create something completely different…NO white walls and NO whale music!
I wanted it to reflect my love of colour, movement, the big wide world, and mixing things up.
So, with lots of help from my parents, I created a little sanctuary in the city of Truro in Cornwall, complete with themed rooms and a range of treatments, travel inspired stationary, and, of course, an atmosphere of pure escapism.
The Great Escape grew quickly. After just 6 years I took on another premises just two doors down from the first to keep up with demand.
That same year after many months of training, researching, developing and designing, I started making our own products by hand in the new salon, and soon after, I launched four soy, scented candles with wooden wicks that crackle as they burn. As well as our own cuticle oil blended with rice bran, flaxseed, vitamin E and our own jojoba and vanilla maceration.
Within 2 months of launching, I applied to sell on notonthehighstreet.com which is a marketplace of the best creative small businesses, and was accepted right away.
Fast forward to today, and TGE is a well established, 8 year old business, with a team of 7 fantastic women providing a range of professional, high quality treatments to an incredibly loyal customer base.
Our passion to grow and develop our brand is as strong now as it was back then. We just need a little help to reach our goals…
Currently everything we do is funded by The Great Escape, profits are invested straight back into the business to pay for training, investment in new brands, marketing, salon improvements and new staff.
We’re always on the go, trying something new, travelling, blending, experimenting and perfecting.
We’re launching this Crowdfunder campaign to raise funds to launch several products in one go, instead of one-by-one which is what we can currently only afford to do.
By pledging towards our Crowdfunding campagin you will be helping us along our journey, supporting a small local business with big dreams, and getting a pretty great reward in return (look to your right).
If we raise enough funding we would like to launch 4 more products (scroll down to see what!), have some professional printed retail bags made, and also have the boxes for our first, ‘Island Escape’ gift set designed which would contain mini sized versions of 3 of our new products, plus a mini candle.
It costs around £1000 to bring a brand new product to launch, this includes:
The names of our products may be playful, but our formulations are serious. We’ve been purchasing unrefined, raw and interesting ingredients from all over the world. Using butters and oils we’ve never even heard of, directly from local co-ops in destinations such as Ghana and Brazil. The purchase of ingredients such as Shea and Capuacu butter from remote, indigenous comunities, helps to preserve the natural habitat and directly improves local economic conditions.
The four exciting products we will be launching if our campaign is successful are as follows:
**Body Butter
An African inspired body butter using shea and allanblackia butter purchased and traded fairly with local co-ops in remote communities in Ghana. We’ll also be including some avocado oil which is rich in essential fatty acids, olive squalane and the brilliant baobab oil. Baobab oil has a higher vitamin C content than oranges and is rich in powerful antioxidants.
The name and scent will be revealed when we hit £1000!
**Body Scrub
Dedicated to my most recent travels to Croatia, this triple sea salt scrub will contain lashings of coconut and olive oil, as well as a sprinkling of lavender petals and a moreish scent.
Croatia is one of the largest producers of olive oil and lavender in the world and were widley available in the little shops lining the narrow streets.
The name and scent will be revealed when we hit £2000!
**Muscle Melt
Available for retail and to be used in our massage treatments, our muscle melt will be a cocktail ofkombo butter from Ghana, arnica macerate, lime seed oil amongst others. Kombo butter is well known in Africa to be a natural anti-inflammatory and pain reliever making it the perfect massage medium for your knots and strains.
The name and scent will be revealed when we hit £3000!
**Hair Treatment
A Caribbean inspired hair treatment using Haiti’s national flower, hibiscus, and the beautifully scentedsapote seed oil from its neighbouring country the Dominican Republic, amongst some other beautiful oils. Clinical tests prove that sapote oil is an effective oil to stop hair loss, promote hair growth and ideal for dermatitis.
The name and scent will be revealed when we hit £4000!
If this project is successful, not only will you be able to pop in for a completely bespoke ‘great escape’ using our new products, as well as being able to purchase them to take home, but we would also be able to launch another project to work on a facial range and who knows what else, the world is our oyster!
Your support means everything to us and we would be so grateful if you are able to pledge towards our idea, and in return for your contribution, you will get a reward which you can see in the panel on the right.
If there’s nothing there that quite takes your fancy, then they would also make excellent gifts for someone else.
Or, if you like you can just contribute to the campaign without the rewards, knowing that you’re helping an independent British business grow.
Finally, if you just can’t stretch to contributing, then you can still give us a helping hand by sharing our project to anyone and everyone! Use our social media channels, or pop in for a flyer to help spread the word.
Thank you SO much!
The TGE team.