Benjamyn Gardner is the founder behind the mission driven beauty brand AntiBeauty. A beauty expert with over 15 years of experience, they came to realise how damaging the beauty industry was to their mental health after they were told to cover their tattoos, take out piercings, and change their hair back to a natural colour. Essentially that their appearance did not fit the “ideal” beauty standard.
AntiBeauty is now one of Australia’s fastest growing and most rapidly awarded skincare brands, winning 17 awards in its first year and a half of operations.
Benjamyn is an advocate for mental health awareness, domestic violence, homelessness and trauma having experienced all of those things first hand.
Here’s our interview with Benjamyn.
We want consumers to question what their perception of beauty is and to be re-educated on ethical beauty. We have been conditioned by beauty advertising for hundreds of years to believe that we are flawed and require fixing, AntiBeauty is here to challenge that and turn self care into health care.
Was there a particular spark or a significant turning point that led you to start AntiBeauty?
I’ve been working in the beauty industry for the past 15 years on and off and more recently as the top salesperson in Australia for the past few (until they found out about my brand of course) and I started to realise how damaging the industry was to our collective mental health.
I was informed by my employer that my appearance did not fit their standard of beauty and told me to cover my tattoos, take out my piercings, and change my hair back to a natural colour.
A few years into the job they started creating ad campaigns with people who looked like me and were from my community whilst still having the policy that their staff were not allowed to express their appearance the way they were comfortable.
That really struck me, showing me that the way they were marketing was not actually what they believed “beauty” was, they were just trying to profit off all markets. The reason that I focused on hormonal skin (As well as beauty in all forms) was that I noticed my trans friends were being left with no options to treat their unique skin concerns, and were instead just being used as “tokens” in ad campaign.
What drives you?
I am so passionate about changing the industry because I myself have suffered negative self-worth and self-image for so much of my life, and never really understood why until everything finally clicked. We are literally conditioned from childhood to believe that we are not worthy and require fixing. In fact, I developed a mental illness in relation to it because of how pervasive the message throughout my childhood, youth and early adulthood was. I am trying to prevent the same thing from occurring to our future generations and am so passionate as we now must combat the rise in negative self-worth caused by social media and filtered reality as well.
It is my mission to make the whole world feel as worthy as they are.
Something that I rarely speak of, is that my father also took his life due to not feeling worthy as a man and father after some really bad things happened with his business which he grew bit by bit from the age of 14 until he was extremely successful, and so even though people may outwardly appear like they are ok, sometimes they aren’t and we need to normalize speaking about mental health and self-worth without people feeling shamed for it.
When you initially started your business, what hurdles did you face?
I faced quite a few hurdles!
The first major one was that after spending $8000 on pre-launch marketing (my page actually had higher engagement than Marc Jacobs Beauty and Gucci Beauty combined!) and Facebook banned my business from advertising with them on any platform and also removed our pages. The reason they did this was that they had just started to implement AI for ad reporting and restriction, and my ads were being constantly reported by the public as they were trans positive. The first 30ish times that it occurred, Facebook reactivated my accounts and apologised for the error, and then eventually they put it into the too hard basket and just deactivated and banned everything.
For the first 7 months of my business, I was fighting Facebook to get my pages reactivated, which was essentially impossible. I had to restart everything and lost all of the traction that I had and all of the potential clients I had built up as the start of the movement.
Since then my biggest hurdle has been finding a business support network and people within my community who believe in what I am doing, as you can imagine, the beauty industry certainly are not fans of my movement!
I also found a lot of pushback about the name of my brand, but that was something that I expected. I have been told in front of big groups of people such as my cohort in Curtin Ignition that I need to change the brand name for my company to ever work, luckily though, I take all advice with a grain of salt. That was probably the second hardest part of my business, being told in front of a huge and well respected crowd, that my baby… was worthless…
Who or what was integral to you overcoming these hurdles?
My absolute and unfaltering resilience and my mum.
You won’t hear a lot of people utter these words, but I am grateful for all of the trauma that I have experienced in my life as they have given me the strength, courage, and determination to essentially get through anything in life. I will never give up on trying to better myself, my life, and the lives of those around me.
I believe that it is my purpose in life to make a change, and that is why I’m still here!
The beauty industry is notoriously competitive, what makes the AntiBeauty products unique?
You are 100% correct, it is one of the most saturated markets in the world.
AntiBeauty prides itself on the quality of our products, they are:
- Award-Winning
- Only 5 star rated
- 100% Australian Handmade and Owned
- Organic where possible
- 100% Vegan and Cruelty Free
- Completely Natural
- Native to Australia
- Sustainable and Ethical
- Carbon-Neutral
- Free of Sulphate, Parabens, Phthalates, Petrochemicals, Synthetic Colours and Fragrance
But in all honesty, the real beauty lies in the fact that we have done the research into all skin types including hormonal skin, and we embrace the fact that skin changes over time, so instead of saying to clients “We can no longer help you” which is what occurs with brands who target only one specific niche or skin type, we can alter our clients routine throughout ANY change they may experience.
We are also one of the rare few skincare brands who actually guarantee that our products work otherwise we will give you your money back.
We also NEVER alter our before and after pictures, or take imagery of clients in unfavourable and then favourable lighting in order to fake results without altering the image, which is VERY common in the industry and totally unregulated.
You’re non binary, how has your gender identity shaped your experience in the entrepreneurial ecosystem?
This is a big one for me. I have found it extremely hard to get backing whether it is through mentoring, partnerships, investment or support networks because I don’t fit into the “boys club” but am also ineligible to join most female oriented groups.
Unfortunately in Australia the queer community doesn’t have a very strong business presence and most people don’t understand that we also experience adversity. For a LONG time my brand was viewed as only being suitable for the trans community as we were inclusive of it, and the first truly inclusive company in the world with skincare for that community.
I have actually also needed to remove the rainbow from my logo as we were just receiving non stop backlash from the public about it.
I actually receive a lot of support from the queer community in the US and they are just waiting for my brand to more easily available there which is an exciting proposition for the future of the brand!
I am also trying to set up a business group for the queer community that have support backing, at the moment unfortunately the extent is a “business drinks” event every few months and the majority of the people who attend are not entrepreneurs or business owners.
There is a clear need to inspire underrepresented genders. Have you found it hard to stay true to your why and message?
It has been pretty difficult for the above reasons, I have actually pulled back on being so blatantly forward with our representations of certain communities as there has been too much pushback, my community at heart know what we represent but I have needed to approach the situation in a slightly different way than I previously was.
The brand will never stop being inclusive of ALL people, but until Australia is a little bit more open minded, I need to balance my business goals with the blatancy of my messaging.
What is a piece of advice you wish you had been told before starting your entrepreneurial journey?
I fortunately have had previous success in growing a very large, very unique business, but it was not my own, I wasn’t going into this blind, I don’t know if I would have survived if I was!
To be honest the best advice would be:
Don’t listen to the advice of people that don’t normally champion your brand.
In saying that, I mean that you will always receive non stop unsolicited advice or even solicited advice that is not necessarily correct. I now listen to feedback from the people who understand how big my mission is, and then I am very wary of the advice of those who are negative about my brand. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t understand the scale and necessity in what I am doing and are quite negative about it.
If I had a dollar for every person who told me that this movement and message could never work, I would be loaded. I now listen very closely to the people who understand and appreciate the brand, but openly tell me things they would change or disagree with and my customers.
I do almost everything the opposite way to what is recommended in business, to be inclusive, I have to!
I am always VERY open to feedback and advice, but I take a lot of it with a grain (or cup) of salt. One of the comments made by “experts” made me doubt my brand and message SO much that it almost made me give up totally.
How do you handle doubt?
By constantly reminding myself of what I have achieved before, and my why.
There is an absolute necessity in what I am doing and although it has been a long hard road, I am seeing the payoff… When my clients message me thanking me from the bottom of their heart, it makes me remember why I started this movement.
‘Nothing great ever came that easy’
We Are Emersyn uses an inclusive definition “female” and “women” and we welcome trans people, women, genderqueer women, and non-binary people who identify, have identified, or have been identified as female, women, or non-binary.