from lip care to gut health with Kristina Cueva
Welcome back to our “Redefining Luxury” interview series, where we contemplate the essence of luxury and explore its meaning. Through open conversations with creators, entrepreneurs, and passionate individuals we talk about the process behind designing luxurious, pleasurable, yet thoughtful creations and their importance in the modern world. In search of joy, marvel, and inspiration.
This time around we sat down with Kristina Cueva, founder of IKA Beauty and co-founder of brand new project Biodami. We met at a Next Women event (preparing an investors pitch), went for coffee afterwards and found we had a lot to talk about as solo startup ladies.
Originally from the Philippines, Kristina has been living in the Netherlands for 27 years. She has a degree in biomedical sciences, public health & economics, and has a broad experience working in the regulatory affairs for pharmaceutical companies. From that world, she moved on to research, development and innovations, and, in February she quit to be a full-time entrepreneur – to further grow her line of vegan luxury red lipsticks IKA Beauty.
LIP AUTHORITY
It started with a passion. As Kristina explained, she has always had a red lipstick as a sort of a secret weapon, a finishing touch to accentuate who she is. Gradually she began to understand the power of the effect it has on people around her when she’s wearing it and how much of a statement red lipstick really is.
“I feel red lipstick is so powerful. It can have many meanings depending on who you are. It’s passion, it’s sexuality, it’s powerful, it’s identity, it’s a lot of things. It was something that I really wanted to share with the world. I decided to come up with good quality red lipsticks that everybody can wear. I do believe there’s a shade of red for everybody. I started with red lipsticks and hope to become a lip authority in the cosmetics industry.”
We’re talking high-performance lipsticks. Not only are they vegan, but they keep their word in terms of delivering what we claim . There might be different preferences, but the highest priority is for the lipsticks to be lightweight, comfortable, high-pigment, and very moisturising. Kristina made sure the formulation is such that they don’t bleed, or feather.
“Red is both a high maintenance, but also low maintenance kind of colour. You don’t need much, and you don’t need a lot of other cosmetics products when you have red lipstick on.”
Exploring interesting ingredients, trying several combinations and working with various pigments, Kristina looked carefully into working with the best manufacturer possible: the needed to have extraordinary skills in research & development in the labs, and had to be willing to listen to her ideas as well, since she herself has quite a background in this field. She’s learned a lot more about reactions and cosmetic ingredients, and about what you can and cannot do from a reulations perspective. When wearing lipstick you actually often ingest a bit, so there’s a sensitivity to certain ingredients. There might be thousands and hundreds of thousands of ingredients in the world that you can’t use, just because they may potentially end up in your mouth.
“Working with pigments, you have to take into account the types of pigments that you use. Karmine is the most popular ingredient in deep red, but I wanted to be vegan, so I can’t use that. We used iron oxide, which is a more natural mineral, but more earthy in red. It was sort of a back-and-forth process, an experiment of how to get the right mixture of red to get the right shade of red, which all affects the oiliness or the waxiness of the final product as well.”
Aside from lipsticks, Kristina started looking more deeply into lip care in general and figured that people who wear lipsticks also tend to wear lip balm underneath. From a customer perspective, this seemed like a nice entry-point to explore a new cosmetics brand. So she recently launched a tinted lip balm, 90% natural with lots of natural oils. Something to bridge the gap between wearing nothing and a very red lip, something that mimics and enhances the natural pink of the lips.
Kristina is currently working on new products to set IKA up as the true lip authority. IKA is not here for gimmicks so she’s looking to develop something that would be game changing for our lip hygiene.
IKA Beauty lipsticks are available online, at Retreat in Rotterdam. Kristina is slowly growing the distribution around Europe, so you can also find her products in Spain if you’re in Barcelona or Cadiz!
PROBIOITICS & STICKING TO YOUR GUT
Together with an old colleague, Kristina also founded a new brand called Biodami, which is a range of probiotic-based food supplements for Iron deficiency, gluten intolerance, gut related stress reactions.
“We’ve gained so much more knowledge from what’s called the Human Genome Project about our gut microbiome and it’s foundation for health. 70% of your immunity is from your gut. So we don’t know everything yet, there are trillions of different microbes in your gut, but slowly they are finding strains and types of good bacteria in there that specifically have effects on our health. It makes sense, because our gut health is there not only for immunity. It helps you digest food, it helps you absorb nutrients, so it has quite a lot of functions. People say that it’s our second brain, and I’m beginning to really think that it might be our first brain.”
Investing thoroughly into science, clinical studies and additional research, the main aim of the Biodami is to revolutionise our health through the gut, starting with a few food supplements for stress, gluten intolerance and iron deficiency. Kristina is mildly gluten-intolerant herself and her co-founder had a lot of issues with iron deficiency, so they did a lot of research in these areas they are personally affected by. In fact, everybody is gluten intolerant to a certain extent, but you just can’t always diagnose it. As for iron, it’s the number one nutrient deficiency in the world.
“For an element that is so abundant everywhere, iron is toxic in excess. You only need a small amount of it in your body. 75% of the iron you need it very much for oxygen transport via the red blood cells in a protein called hemoglobin … but your body doesn’t actually absorb iron very well, at best, you absorb 10% from food. If you eat healthy and your diet is well balanced, you should get sufficient iron from food but there are certain groups that benefit from iron supplements. Think of: pregnant women, menstruating women, vegans & vegetarians and athletes. There’s a lot of iron in vegetables, but the problem there is that it has to be transformed by your gut into a more absorbable form and in general it’s just very difficult to get iron out of your food. There are a lot of iron supplements available but the problem is that it is ingested in a salt form but that type of salt will affect the way in which iron is absorbed and gets into your system. You want something that is absorbed well. Because Iron also influences your gut microbiome because unabsorbed iron makes the bad bacteria grow and disturbs the good bacteria.”
Together with the Biodami team, they’ve managed to create a food supplement which actually allows you to absorb your iron better, not only by using a different form of iron salt that is more bioavailable - using iron bisglycinate, which is more absorbable, and more advanced. They also have probiotic strains in there that were specially selected, to be able to metabolise a molecule that helps transform this iron into an even more absorbable form. So it’s a 2-in-1. The supplements are made in the Netherlands so they’re also very local, the strains are being freshly made in Belgium in great quality, which is key for them to colonise in the gut, and make sure they reach the gut while they’re still alive.
TRUE LUXURY
“Luxury to me is whatever makes you feel good. Luxury has nothing to do with price. It’s very different to a lot of people, and that is part of what we all have to remember. Luxury is not the designer labels. Luxury can be sitting at home with the love of your life, because some people don’t have that. It all depends on your references. Whatever makes you feel good. If it’s a serum, or cream, or a good cup of coffee… It’s personal. Good health is also luxury“