Tea.L - Tea Infused Skincare
I love drinking tea but I also love to try all the various tea infused products out there! Sometimes those products are a yummy snack and one of my other favorites is testing out tea infused skincare. If you look at all my facemasks and lotions you will notice that most of them have tea somewhere on the packaging. I was really excited to discover Tea.L which is a tea infused skincare company. There are a few things that set them apart from most of the skincare I’ve tried right off the bat before even trying their product.
They actually tell you what teas they use in their products. So many products will just say green tea but Tea.L takes it a step further and lets you know that they use dragonwell. They also use yerba mate and rooibos! This stuck out to me as more genuine and that I would get more benefits from the tea in their skincare.
They tell you that their products are 99% natural. So many brands will say they are 100% natural when it just isn’t true. Again, Tea.L shows their transparency in their product. The 1% that isn’t “natural” is a safe product but they differentiate this which I appreciate !
Now, the actual products! If you’d like to watch an unboxing, you can check out my IG TV video here
Tea.L sent me a box showcasing their three products: an eye cream, face cream and body lotion. The eye cream combines green tea + yerba Mate. The face cream combines green tea + guayusa. The body lotion uses green tea + rooibos.
Right off the bat, I really enjoyed the dispensing method for these three products. The eye cream has an easy to dispense pump as opposed to having to stick my finger in a tube or squeeze a tube. The body and face lotion also have a pump mechanism as well which is really cool and I thought made it easy to not get too much out at once.
The other immediate thing I noticed was the smell. There is no artificial fragrance used in these items so they actually smell like tea which I really enjoy! The one with the strongest smell to me is the body lotion. The first time I put it on, my partner told me I smell like bubble tea, I agree with him that it was such a nice smell.
The face cream is nice and goes on well although I will admit I’ve used this one the least of the 3 as I have been testing out different skin care regiments. The smell of the face cream isn’t overpowering and I didn’t notice any reactions to my skin. The body lotion, which I’m almost out of is one I’ve used a lot. In the winter time, my skin definitely need some TEALC (hehe) and this lotion does the job. As mentioned above it has a nice smell and it goes on really well. I don’t have to rub it in a ton and I feel like it kept my skin moisturized for most of the day!
My favorite of the three products is definitely the eye cream. In the past few years as I’ve started my business, many nights with little sleep make eye care key! Their eye cream is a pretty thick consistency which to me make it absorb well into my skin and actually feel like it’s giving me some sort of coverage or layer of moisture! This is a thick cream so there is some rubbing in to do but I think that contributes to the feeling that I’m getting some coverage under my eyes without using any makeup. The skin under my eyes is a bit thinner so I appreciate this in an eye cream!
I’ve really enjoyed using these and look forward to purchasing more when I run out! I think it’s important to also share the people behind this great experience so I’ve asked the duo behind Tea.L some questions. Read their answers below to get a little more insight on them and their products!
Tell me a little bit about who is behind Tea.L
TEA.L was founded by husband and husband Zhao and Ron, who enjoy long walks at night and drink tea religiously. Ron used to work for a Canadian tea company called David’s Tea and Zhao came from a Chinese family with a 3-generation tea-drinking tradition. We don’t mind drinking from a tea bag when in a pinch but we always appreciated loose leaf tea in an infuser knowing their names and origin, and we want to maintain the authenticity throughout our self-care routine. The ideation process was driven by Zhao and Ron, but TEA.L was made reality thanks to a group of diverse individuals who brought in their unique perspectives: LGBT, millennial immigrants, ethnic minority, and women. And we hope that translates to our products where we stay simple by eliminating any assumptions about who should use our products, and we’d love to hear from you on how we are doing on that.
What was the inspiration to start a skincare line?
When we tried to incorporate tea in our skincare routine, we were very disappointed to find out that nothing on the market with tea claims approached tea with the authenticity a tea lover would expect. Everybody seems to be hiding behind ‘tea extracts’ and ‘fragrance’. We found ourselves asking, why can’t we treat tea in skincare as who they are when we drink them? That was really the genesis of TEA.L, if we can’t find one, let’s create our own! As we started our R&D process, we learned that each tea has its unique profile when it comes skincare benefits, just like their profile of color, texture, aroma and taste. Who knows rooibos and yerba mate each contains polyphenols not found in green tea? And this further reinforced our belief that all the tea lovers, regardless of where they are in their tea journey, they deserve to enjoy tea on their skin with the same authenticity in their drinks.
How did you choose the teas that make up your products?
We did the intuitive thing which is diving into our root as tea lovers. Ronald worked for a major Canadian tea brand for years when the loose-leaf tea movement just started to take hold in the US consumer market. Zhao came from a Chinese family with tea drinking habits that lasted for 3 generations (one of the things he packed with him when he moved to the US was a jar of his family’s favorite dragonwell). We have our favorite teas to drink but we knew from early on that we need to put in the hard work and expand our knowledge in understanding how these teas can benefit our skin.So,we spent 2 months digging into academic papers on dermatology and cosmeceuticals to learn everything there was about studies on tea’s effect on skin(with some help from friends in the skincare industry). And we lined up about 8 tea candidates including 3 green tea varietals (Gyokuro, Dragonwell and Sencha) based on our research. The next 6 months was endless trial and err on the other ingredients (oils, butters and extracts) and the infusion process. We had friends and families who volunteered to test our early prototypes, so we were very fortunate to have their feedback to improve on. The biggest challenge was to retain the scent of the tea while maximizing the effectiveness of the antioxidants. 8 months later, we finalized the teas and tisanes that are currently in our product: dragonwell, rooibos, guayusa and yerba mate
What do you think sets your products apart from other tea infused or based skin care products?
The fact that we are a tea-first skincare brand who uses organic loose-leaf tea and tisanes with minimal processing and maximum preservation in our products. And this is driven by our vision to bring tangible value to our customers’ self-care routine, whether they are looking for more ways to benefit from tea or introducing tea as a new element in promoting a youthful look. There’s so much hype and so many new trends out there in skincare, and we aspire to help our customers create authentic self-care rituals that actually work for themselves.
What do you see in the future for Tea.L?
We hope that TEA.L will lead another wave of tea awakening for its role in skincare, just like how loose- leaf tea did with drinking tea. We believe this can be achieved when we connect with the tea lover community through their skincare routines and refresh the definition of tea in people’s lives.
What is your everyday tea and what tea do you want to drink more of in 2020?
Zhao’s everyday is dragonwell from family influence, it is just perfect in every way for him. Ron’s go-to is gyokuro steeped at 95 degrees for 2-3 mins, that way he gets more of the sweet flavor and less of the stringency. We do share rooibos together after dinner to aid digestion and just relax. We both want to drink more Oolong in 2020, as it is actually often overlooked, especially from certain region like Taiwan. We love how it sits between the green side to black side, and that it is versatile. It can be steeped multiple times and we get varied flavor profiles from every steeping. Specifically, we loved this Ginseng Oolong tea from David’s Tea but unfortunately it was discontinued a few years back, they are these tightly winded Oolong tea coated with Ginseng powder, would like to find them again.
Besides skincare, what are your other favorite ways to engage in self care?
Our recent favorite is to improve our sleep hygiene for better quality sleep. Sleep hygiene are the 12 good practices to aid deeper sleep and make you feel energized after you wake up. Among these practices, we are making an effort to get up at the same time each day regardless of the day to keep the biologic block set or entrained, and get off our devices at least an hour before bedtime. So far it’s been working wonders. It is something anyone can try so we highly recommend them.
